Snape's Backsid-- er, BacksLide

[Nora Renka]

One exam down--it's time to decompress...with literary theory...

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Judy" <judy at j...> wrote:
 
> Hmmm.... if Snape turns out to be ESE, I will just have to sadly 
> conclude that JKR failed to understand him.  (How's that for 
> subverting the canon?) 

Since I know you didn't *actually* mean that, I'll spare everyone the 
comments about how new canon has to be read backwards to reinterpret 
old canon, the game she's playing is like revealing bits of a picture 
to deliberately confuse us when she has the whole visible to her, and 
that everyone's fundamental actions and characters have been largely 
settled from the beginning, even though we don't know them yet... :)

> I'm not sure that JKR's comments mean that Snape is ESE.  I do 
> think she intended him to be an unlikable person -- bitter, 
> vindictive, and so forth -- and that she's perplexed by his many 
> fans. She doesn't understand that we want to *save* him!  Snape 
> clearly just needs my -- er, I mean, *some* good woman's love.  
> (BTW, I'm not attracted to Alan Rickman, although he is a good 
> actor. Too old to play Snape, though, I'd say.) 

I actually think that she does understand that--but she knows him, 
what he is, how he thinks, and I don't think that Snape such as he 
actually is, when we find out what makes his little head tick, is 
going to be the 'saved by the love of a good woman' type.  I don't 
think he's ESE, but I also think she's a little boggled and mayhap 
even frustrated by the level of apologia that goes on--I'm faintly 
remembering the comment about how children know an unfair teacher for 
what he is and don't try to make excuses (of course, I could be 
remembering completely wrongly).

The sheer level of fandom for Snape has always confused me just a 
little bit for one reason--none of ya'll know who he is, really, and 
I don't either.  There's an amazing amount of sheer projection that 
goes on in any Snapediscussion, far more than literature tends to 
provoke in general.  This is, of course, fine for everyone's own 
personal reading and chatting (I am not an enforcer of orthodoxy by 
any means!), but it's more than a lil' frustrating when trying to 
argue more analytically, or solidly support an argument.

<snippity>

> The thing is, one can interpret a fictional character as one 
> pleases.  The amount of information in the books about Lucius, 
> Draco, or even Snape is miniscule compared to the information one 
> would quickly acquire when dating an actual human. So, one can 
> believe that Draco really was trying to save Hermione at the 
> Quidditch World Cup, or that Snape only torments Neville in order 
> to put on a good front for the DE's children, etc. When JKR 
> provides incontrovertible evidence that a particular character is 
> evil, then that character gets few fans -- I haven't come across 
> many Voldemort fans, for example.  

You haven't been lookin' in the right places...

But the thing is, if you have any concern about the supportability of 
your interpretation, it's definitely *not* an anything goes world.  
In both of the examples above, it's always seemed to me that both 
were resting upon some sort of hope for future validation.  The Draco 
one got pretty sporked by, ummm, his general behavior in OotP, 
largely because it was pretty odd to start with.  If you want to run 
a subversive reading, a lot of the time it ends up rather like 
rolling Sisyphus' rock up the hill because of the amount of 
explaining away that you have to do--Draco's consistently negative 
attitude towards Hermione, for example.  The second example has been 
pretty wounded in the interviews (which there's a cottage industry of 
saying 'oh, she didn't really mean that' on), and I suspect is going 
to die a solid canonical death one of these days.

Interpretation, with any rigor behind it, is all about trying to make 
as many things as possible hang together.  JKR's mysteries tend to be 
mysteries largely because we don't have complete information--when we 
do, everything falls together so cleanly.  Like the prophecy...it's 
impossible to accurately predict forward *from* it, but the solution 
is going to rebound very nicely backwards *onto* it.

> If I ever get organized and actually *write* all these psychology 
> books that are floating around in my head, I may someday write a 
> book about sexual motivation.  Maybe I can have a chapter about 
> Snapefans!  (I'd definitely want to speculate on why so many women 
> are into Male/Male ships.) 

I'll admit to hating shipping with a passion, but there's one easy 
answer to that question that works across fandoms: the male 
characters are more interesting, or there's more of them.  Combine 
that with the unfortunate tendency to think of everything in terms of 
pairings, and why not?  There's always the other easy answer: because 
they like reading it...

-Nora gets ready for even more exam fun tomorrow