Sexy Snape / JKR's men (was:Re: What's fun about the HPs?...)

[Ceridwen]

No: HPFGUIDX 152510

Pam:
> I have never posted here before (thing about being embarrassed in 
case I'm wrong) but this one made me jump in with a theory I've been 
formulating on this topic.

Ceridwen:
Hi, Pam!  Nice to meet you and read your theory.

Pam:
> I asked myself, what IS this Snape thing?   Is it the earlier 
mentioned "Rickman Effect", or, as a friend of mine assessed, 
the "Spock Effect" that made women go gaga over emotionally repressed 
men with tons of baggage?

Ceridwen:
I liked, or at least was favorably inclined toward Snape, before I 
ever saw the films.  I love the 'Spock Effect' comment, it just might 
be true.  But, maybe there's another twisted, tortured soul with a 
big nose even farther back:  Sherlock Holmes.  I think both Snape and 
Spock trade on the same sorts of feelings from readers as Sherlock.  
And, hey, they all have names beginning with the letter 'S'!

I think that a certain segment of the population do 'go gaga over 
emotionally repressed men with tons of baggage'.  Lupin is another 
one who has that going for him - he has tons of baggage, and secrets 
he can't reveal.  But Lupin is more... open, is it?  He seems more 
vulnerable.  Snape stands behind a wall of sarcasm thicker than a 
castle's walls.  There is no kindness, no empathy there.  I think 
Lupin would hate to hurt anyone's feelings, which has led to the 
problem of Prefect Lupin ignoring his friends when they got 
rambunctious as we saw in the Pensieve.

Thinking back to Holmes again, and sorry to bring in Miniseries!
Contamination, one thing I liked more about Jeremy Brett's portrayal 
than Basil Rathbone's, was the high-strung, taut as a slingshot 
tension Brett brought to the role.  I thought it was very in-canon.  
Snape, and to a lesser degree Spock, also have that tension.  They 
are all outsiders in their own way; they are all smart, and many say 
they are brilliant; there is some sort of dual nature, less obvious 
with Holmes (man outside his time to be simplistic) but very direct 
with Spock (half-Vulcan) and with Snape (DDM & DE; Half-blood); they 
all seem divorced from their feelings most of the time, and with 
Spock it's even cultural; then, there is the mystery as SSSusan said.

Maybe the key isn't whether someone liked Snape before they saw the 
movie, but whether they like other characters who seem* similar to 
Snape (*given that his story arc isn't finished)?

To try and bring it back to canon (it's an interesting topic, I would 
hate to see it disappear to the OT board) each character seems to 
have his or her own individual area.  With Snape, it's the tension, 
the voice and wordplay, the sarcasm, and quite a few other things 
which make him uniquely himself.  He may cross roads with Lupin in 
the heavy baggage department, but Lupin then goes on his own way, in 
his own way.  This is another thing I like about the books - the 
characters are not just carbon copies of each other, they have 
personalities.  Sometimes not the nicest, but aside from Voldemort, I 
don't think there is a single all-good or all-bad character in the 
series.  Which is very much like life.

Ceridwen.