Lusting After Snape

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 129582

Betsy wrote:
> Wait, there's a "tell us why you find Snape sexy" thread and I 
> almost missed it?!?  Heaven forfend! :)
><big snip>

> 
> In chapter eight of PS/SS, where Snape is first fully introduced, 
> JKR hits us with both barrels.  The man *knows* how to command a 
> room.  His voice, his sweeping up and down the isles, his knowledge, 
> his poetry!  Snape had me from his first chapter.  And he only got 
> better. <big snip>

> And people say it's all just Alan Rickman. Pshaw, I say. Yes, his 
> voice is *perfect*, but he's unfortunately a little too old (as most 
> of the adult actors are) for the part.  I do like Rickman, but his 
> Snape is not mine.  And despite a sad lack of Snape in the last 
> film, the Snape fandom is still going strong.  So it ain't all 
> Rickman. <snip>

Carol responds:
For the fun of it, here's a snippet from a review of another Rickman
film that was sent to me today that takes the other side of the argument:

"And then there's the role that has brought him a new generation of
admirers, the inscrutable Professor Snape in the Harry Potter series.
In interviews, Potter author J.K. Rowling has said that she based
Snape on a teacher of hers that she detested and that she can't quite
fathom why Snape has become the hero of fan fiction (much of it
erotic). Well, it's like this: you take Rickman, who doesn't look or
sound like anybody else (that majestic nose, that creamy baritone),
and you take his quirky blend of gracefulness and intense masculinity,
and you take his skill at finding the humanness in his characters,
whether that humanness is good, bad or ambiguous, and then you put all
that in a long black wig and a frock coat, and what you have is a lot
more interesting than just the scariest teacher at school."

http://www.portlandphoenix.com/television/top_story/documents/03866737.asp

The reviewer (who may or may not have read the books) does credit
Book!Snape with being "inscrutable" (a large part of his appeal for
fans of both sexes) but doesn't seem to realize that the "quirky blend
of gracefulness and intense masculinity" is also straight from the
book, transferred by Rickman to the screen. And I think Betsy would
agree that what a schoolboy sees as a large hooked nose might be
viewed by an adult witch (who hadn't taken Potions from Snape or did
well in the course) as a "majestic nose." "Creamy baritone"? The
"silky" voice is straight from the books. So, I would argue, is the
humanness, especially after the Pensieve scene. This is a very
complex--and ambiguous--man who is already, in the books, "much more
than the scariest teacher at school," at least for those readers who
can get beyond Harry's perspective. (But frock coat? Must be a
reference to the duelling scene in the CoS film. It's the sweeping
black robes and cloaks that make his dramatic exits possible, both in
the films and the books. And that flair for the dramatic is also, I
think, a large part of his appeal.) I won't even get into the
surprisingly unSlytherin virtues of loyalty and courage (unmentioned
by the reviewer and barely touched on in the films) or the many
unanswered questions that even Harry, who hates Snape, wants answers
to. He's an enigma and there, maybe, lies the secret of his appeal.

Carol, who as an eleven-year-old would have been inspired to like
Potions by that poetic speech and would have made it her dearest
ambition not to be regarded as either a dunderhead or a know-it-all in
Snape's class