So what if Snape really is nasty?

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

This is an idea that came to me as I was tearing apart a children's book for another comm.

We all know that it's common in the Harry Potter fandom to portray Snape as mean, morally-degenerate, creepy, cowardly, and pretty much any other negative you can come up with. We on this comm have also spent large amounts of time debunking these assertions, insisting that actually, he's not as bad as he's commonly made out to be.

Here's the thing, though: even if you DID accept that Snape was just that nasty and evil and horrible, that's not his fault--it's the fault of the series. And it doesn't actually paint the series in an especially good light, because it implies that teachers who you don't get along with must automatically be evil or morally backwards. Remember: Harry takes an extreme dislike to Snape from their first meeting, just because Snape was generically snide and intimidating to him. It's one thing for Harry to dislike a teacher, because that happens to the best of us (particularly at the age Harry is). But to portray the teacher as evil because of it?

But that is pretty much the trend in the series. Teachers Harry likes, or who are nice to him, are generally portrayed as heroes or at least reasonably pleasant, whereas those Harry takes a disliking to are nearly always presented as villains: Lockhart, Umbridge, etc. And even when they're not (see, for instance, Trelawney and arguably Slughorn), they're generally treated as rather pathetic, so Harry doesn't have to take them very seriously. The overarching pattern this creates implies that if you don't get along with a teacher it's because that teacher is evil or morally weak-willed, or that it's generally all the teacher's fault that they're not bending over backwards to please you. And while you could argue that this is all the Harry filter, it's never really challenged at any point in the story.

Now, I am all for the notion that teachers should look after the well-being of their students; but the fact of the matter is, students can't always expect that to happen. It's great when it does, but sooner or later every student comes upon a teacher who for whatever reason doesn't click with them, either because that particular teaching style just doesn't work with that particular student, or the institution is corrupt, or the teacher is careless. I know it's happened to me a couple times over. Some of the teachers I've had bad experiences with were careless, but I wouldn't say I thought any of them were evil.

And remember: this is a series that targets children and young teenagers. It doesn't do them any favors to be presenting them with a narrative that states that any teacher they don't get along with is evil. The notion that Snape must be a horrible person suffering from trauma and acting out of some misplaced selfish desire is a testament to the story's inability to portray anything Harry doesn't like in a positive or even a neutral light, not a convincing portrayal of a disagreeable character (and I have many, MANY convincing potrayals of disagreeable characters that I could use as a baseline).

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

There were so many missed opportunities here. Like much of the rest of the series, JKR set up something really interesting, and then wimped out on following through.

For instance: if Snape is so horrible, then shouldn't Harry eventually grow to the point that he notices McGonagall is actually quite similar overall, but isn't specifically focused on Harry? (Neville might have noticed more similarities...) That plenty of people Harry likes say just as many thoughtless or nasty things, or have prejudices, or hold grudges? This would require actually interrogating what all this means. Decide to let everyone off the hook, including Snape, because turns out everyone does it? Decide to condemn everyone as lost causes? Try to work out the exact proportions of each person's guilt? Try to figure out what actually does the most harm (e.g., not just "am I the target or not," but "is this action actually worse/aimed at a more vulnerable target/etc.")? Decide since everyone's hopeless, he should just judge based on whether he likes someone or they're nice to him personally?

And if he decides at least some of this behavior is truly harmful, whether perpetrated by Snape or by his friends... then what? We never do get that next step in the series. I mean, it's not like I expect to see Harry researching child psychology and developing a new Hogwarts teacher training program (...though someone really should), or dedicating his life to preventing school bullying. But it sure would have been nice if he'd really, truly noticed that he'd unfairly overlooked McGonagall's flaws as a teacher and administrator because she didn't focus much on him personally, or that maybe the Twins were just as awful--or worse--to someone else as any Slytherin bullies ever were to Harry. And if he'd at least felt a little differently about people once he realized these things. And if this had influenced the plot, which by DH dearly needed something other than "it's in the script" to keep it going and didn't get it! Remember how supposedly the Aurors got as cruel as anyone on the "dark side" in the first war? What if Harry had to face up to members of Team Harry, people he liked, being just as cruel and harmful as anyone he was fighting? What should he do then?

But he never had to face such a dilemma. And he kept his double standards well intact. JKR just wimped out in so many ways at the end of the series. She raised issues like the Marauders just maybe being awful people, and wizards treating other intelligent species and Muggles like second-class citizens (or worse), and Dumbledore being ridiculously untrustworthy, and Harry learning to enjoy causing pain enough to Cruciate properly, and then just... dropped them. Not in a way that implied life was complicated and not everything could be fixed instantly, just as if these problems never existed in the first place, were were retroactively no big deal. So disappointing.

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Harry could have realised not paying attention in History hurt him. In DH having to make a deal for the sword with the Goblins - thinking if I had listened I would know the history of Goblins and how to approach them.

Or thinking about how fake Moody fooled him, realizing someone could pretend to be on your side, yet really working against you.

[sunnyskywalker]

Oh, yes. Don't even get me started on how this series stomps all over the idea of history as something that matters. (And, you know, an actual discipline where it takes a lot of work to research and piece together fragmentary and contradictory sources and you will never have the One True Answer to most questions...) For having a plot that depends so much on stuff that happened in the past, the books really go out of their way to spit on history.

You'd think being tricked by Fake Moody for a whole year would have been a good wake-up call to be careful. Apparently not...