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| Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) showing his usual patient, nurturing classroom technique |
Who is Severus Snape, and why do Harry Potter fans have such high feelings about him? From his first appearance in the Harry Potter novels, Professor Snape comes across as a bully, a man-child with unresolved oedipal issues who turns his self-hatred on students. Surely I wasn’t the only reader who shrugged, remembering teachers I had like that. Some people become teachers because they aren’t done learning yet.
This weekend, I posted an internet meme to a popular discussion board, suggesting filmmakers could profitably make a film series about Professor Snape’s transition from one of Lord Voldemort’s shock troopers, to Dumbledore’s inside man. Because I don’t follow fan culture closely, I failed to anticipate the high feelings which this would generate. Besides predictable rants against J.K. Rowling personally, many fans took umbrage at anything foregrounding Snape favorably.
In fairness, I understand that anger. I remember watching trailers for Todd Phillips’ 2019 movie Joker, and reflexively rejecting the characterization. I wrote back then that giving Joker traditional motivations “devalues the character.” Besides the fact that Joker is like a hurricane, and simply destroys because it’s his nature, it also recycles a weatherbeaten writing trope. I’m tired of “nice guys” snapping because they’ve been crushed down so long.
That character arc, the broken “nice guy,” superficially applies to Snape. When Harry sees into Snape’s memories through the Pensieve in Order of the Phoenix, we witness “nice” teenage Severus trying vainly to romance the future Lily Potter, only to get bullied by tall, dashing, broad-shouldered James. Clearly, in Snape’s mind, he had the potential to become a charming teenage lover, but James and the “cool kids” denied him the opportunity.
If filmmakers wrote this story, I’d be disappointed. Not only because we’ve seen this weak story so frequently, but also because it makes Snape a reliable narrator. Please. We know Snape lies as easily as breathing. Not only does he lie to others regularly, but we learn in later books, he lies to himself. The memory Harry sees through the Pensieve has probably been edited numerous times, to offer Snape the justification he eagerly seeks.
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| J.K. Rowling |
Rowling’s narrative emerges from her Scottish Presbyterian religious background. This requires a little theological understanding. Presbyterianism, with its Calvinist background, holds all humans are essentially sinful, or in Calvin’s words, Totally Depraved. We’re all liars, egoists, gluttons, and bigots, awaiting salvation from a merciful God whose entire being consists of everything good and beneficial in this universe. Only God can save us from ourselves.
The catechistic nature of wizard school mirrors the Calvinist journey out of sin. Three school houses encourage different virtues; the fourth teaches students to embrace their Total Human Depravity and remain sinful. Not for nothing is Dumbledore’s domicile at the peak of the tallest tower, while the Slytherin dormitories are in the dungeon. They provide two opposite aspirations… and Snape chooses the aspiration closest to the earth.
Of Snape’s many failings, foremost is his lack of self-reflection. Even after his loyalties cost Lily Potter her life, he continues whining about the unfairness to him, not to everyone Lily loved. He shows no capacity for even rudimentary repentance, because he doesn’t understand himself well enough for that. People like Snape—arrogant, convinced of their own rightness, and plush with privilege—are prime pickings for malevolent manipulators like Voldemort.
(I promise, I’m not talking about current politics.)
That’s the Snape whose backstory I’m interested in seeing dramatised. Not the “nice guy” pushed to breaking, but the deluded sinner, the self-righteous egoist who hasn’t learned to examine himself coolly and revise his faults. I want the Snape who pushes forward with the grace and discretion of a cattle stampede, failing to realize he’s the villain in other people’s stories, until he’s abruptly forced to reckon with the consequences.
I acknowledge, this justification omits many people’s most adamant objection to new Potterverse material: the person of J.K. Rowling. Her insistence on voicing opinions which her young, mostly left-leaning audience finds objectionable, isn’t insignificant. But, as I’ve written recently, it’s a mistake to expect Great Artists to be Good People. Stories like Harry Potter don’t emerge from healthy, well-adjusted minds.
Poor writing could torpedo any Snape story beforehand. Especially if the writer succumbs to sentimentality, or reaches for low-hanging fruit, Snape’s backstory could be irretrievably ruined. But if a writer accepts, in advance, that Snape’s “nice guy” self-image is a delusion, and that he’s incapable of understanding his own Total Depravity, the story produced could be engaging and worthwhile.
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