Snape-the Hero -- Snape-the Abuser

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 143123

 

 Alla wrote:

> BUT I think that if Snape will be punished for who he is, as a 
> package deal, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that abuse will be 
> included in there.

"Punished for WHO HE IS"?  Yikes, dude!  

I guess a lot of people are seeing Snape as fullfilling the
'scapegoat' role narratively.  There's a strain in Hollywood
storytelling that I find particularily pernicious, which is the amping
up of the 'demonic villain', on whom all the sins of the film are
heaped until the audience bays for blood.  The 'scapegoat' is then
exiled, or killed (often after Our Hero offers him clemency but the
Villain is sooo treacherous that he only uses it to sneak up on the
hero, and then the Hero HAS to kill the dirty dog).  And then the
audience can feel all warm and fuzzy because that nasty old goat has
taken all the sins out of the village, and our identifier character's
Purity of Heart has been validated. The most famous example is "Fatal
Attraction", where Glen Close originally was pictured as a sadly
disturbed person who died by suicide. After a few test screenings and
a great deal of soul-selling the ending was changed to the appalling
spectacle of dehumanization we see today.  There isn't any chance,
IMO, that this is where JKR is going with Snape but that so many
people WANT her to go there... I dunno. It's just depressing.  

It's an argument I haven't used against evil!Snape because it's more
of a moral argument, which is not a language we use a heck of a lot in
the film industry, but JKR seems such a humane, generous person that I
have a hard time believing she'd invent a central character who piles
ugliness, meaness, greasiness, and uncoolness on top of treachery,
cowardice, and what-have-you, just so we can revel either in the
vicious pleasure of revenge or the smug pleasure of clemency to the
sub-human guy who has Nothing to Do with us Clean People.  

 -- Sydney, crossly