HP ranting
Jul. 3rd, 2007 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmSo a whole lot of people have been on about this still from an OotP trailer (see pic and sentiments I agree with here: http://mysduende.livejournal.com/121708.html).
SNAPE DOESN'T TOUCH PEOPLE.
I mean the still is hillarious and echoes, in a certain way, the one of the Snape/Harry interactions in the book, (which is to say "OMG, JKR is so fucking with fandom here") and probably had to be done this way to echo it, because JKR's mischief in those scenes in teh book were not in dialogue or even action, butin her descriptive non-action word choices.
So I get why this is there.
But...
SEVERUS SNAPE DOESN'T FUCKING TOUCH PEOPLE.
And certainly not his cretinous students, his so-called colleagues, or really anyone else (assuming there is anyone he has contact with that can't be placed into one of those two categories, since Death Eaters and Hogwarts staff are both his colleagues of a sort). Snape doesn't like poeple. Snape is _afraid_ of people, and Snape doesn't do what he doesn't have to do. We know about the duelling, we know about the occulemency -- Snape is more than capable of getting at people without resorting to petty, childish, meaningless acts of small physical violence. He's petty and childish in _other_ ways, bless his horoable but black little heart.
This problem, of course, goes back to the fourth movie when he whaps Ron and Harry on the head when they're not studying.
This shouldn't be rocket science, people. It's very clear in the books that Snape's physical menace comes from the fact he doesn't need to touch someone to make them cower into a wall. He's learned to terrorize people with spoken and unspoken possibility possibility
Note the matter of Snape's worst memory. Note where it cuts off -- there are a lot of theories about that scene, including that it's not Snape's worst memory, which is valid. Another is that we don't know what happens next. It might get worse and less the thing of just unpleasant teens. The third possibility, however, is that the worst memory is that segment of the event because that's when he was the most scared thinking of what else the Marauders might do to him -- even if they didn't do it (which they probably didn't, sorry fandom) -- and this is the moment wherein he learns the power of using other people's imaginations against them).
All of this is (or was, until they threw it out the window with the scriptings) subsequently echoed in the original costume choices that were made for Snape -- not just so covering and with harder lines than most other wizarding clothes we see (not counting the fiasco of the Armani suit on Draco which is a PROBLEM for me), but evocative of religious garb, of a puritanical world view, of a man removing himself from the world -- for his own sake or everyone else's is largely unclear.
Of course, we never see Snape's Mark in GoF (I still think because they couldn't get the sleaves to roll up on the costume, for real), so in the realm of movies we get that Snape's a nasty person, but we don't get any sense of _reasons_, as either villain or hero, for his having such a wall betwen himself and other people -- "he's morally ambiguous and unpleasant!" as opposed to "Does/how how the Mark communicate back to its master?" or, for that matter, any sense of Snape's burden which is surely one regardless of whose side he's on and which we get repeatedly in the GoF book, most especially in the PIVOTAL fucking Dumbledore scene at the end that was cut for film. It was the entire set up for the rest of the movies.
Yes, I'm a Snape fan. Yes, these books have become about his plot arc for me (and finally, apparently for most other peopel too), but seriously, the stuff they've done to this character in the movies, especially with the cut Dumbledore scene in GoF -- it's just structurally stupid.
SNAPE DOESN'T TOUCH PEOPLE.
I mean the still is hillarious and echoes, in a certain way, the one of the Snape/Harry interactions in the book, (which is to say "OMG, JKR is so fucking with fandom here") and probably had to be done this way to echo it, because JKR's mischief in those scenes in teh book were not in dialogue or even action, butin her descriptive non-action word choices.
So I get why this is there.
But...
SEVERUS SNAPE DOESN'T FUCKING TOUCH PEOPLE.
And certainly not his cretinous students, his so-called colleagues, or really anyone else (assuming there is anyone he has contact with that can't be placed into one of those two categories, since Death Eaters and Hogwarts staff are both his colleagues of a sort). Snape doesn't like poeple. Snape is _afraid_ of people, and Snape doesn't do what he doesn't have to do. We know about the duelling, we know about the occulemency -- Snape is more than capable of getting at people without resorting to petty, childish, meaningless acts of small physical violence. He's petty and childish in _other_ ways, bless his horoable but black little heart.
This problem, of course, goes back to the fourth movie when he whaps Ron and Harry on the head when they're not studying.
This shouldn't be rocket science, people. It's very clear in the books that Snape's physical menace comes from the fact he doesn't need to touch someone to make them cower into a wall. He's learned to terrorize people with spoken and unspoken possibility possibility
Note the matter of Snape's worst memory. Note where it cuts off -- there are a lot of theories about that scene, including that it's not Snape's worst memory, which is valid. Another is that we don't know what happens next. It might get worse and less the thing of just unpleasant teens. The third possibility, however, is that the worst memory is that segment of the event because that's when he was the most scared thinking of what else the Marauders might do to him -- even if they didn't do it (which they probably didn't, sorry fandom) -- and this is the moment wherein he learns the power of using other people's imaginations against them).
All of this is (or was, until they threw it out the window with the scriptings) subsequently echoed in the original costume choices that were made for Snape -- not just so covering and with harder lines than most other wizarding clothes we see (not counting the fiasco of the Armani suit on Draco which is a PROBLEM for me), but evocative of religious garb, of a puritanical world view, of a man removing himself from the world -- for his own sake or everyone else's is largely unclear.
Of course, we never see Snape's Mark in GoF (I still think because they couldn't get the sleaves to roll up on the costume, for real), so in the realm of movies we get that Snape's a nasty person, but we don't get any sense of _reasons_, as either villain or hero, for his having such a wall betwen himself and other people -- "he's morally ambiguous and unpleasant!" as opposed to "Does/how how the Mark communicate back to its master?" or, for that matter, any sense of Snape's burden which is surely one regardless of whose side he's on and which we get repeatedly in the GoF book, most especially in the PIVOTAL fucking Dumbledore scene at the end that was cut for film. It was the entire set up for the rest of the movies.
Yes, I'm a Snape fan. Yes, these books have become about his plot arc for me (and finally, apparently for most other peopel too), but seriously, the stuff they've done to this character in the movies, especially with the cut Dumbledore scene in GoF -- it's just structurally stupid.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 02:00 pm (UTC)but yeah Voldemort doesn't wear muggle clothes.
And Lucius Malfoy would not let his son wear a muggle suit to sit in a box with the fucking Minister of Magic.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 02:23 pm (UTC)When I first saw this pic I said to my husband "OMG Snape is finally touching someone and it's Harry!"
He looks really bored and replies "He touched him in GOF when he whacked him on the head."
So yeah...I have issues with the way Snape is portrayed in the movies, but at the moment I am setting them aside. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 03:27 pm (UTC)I have kept myself away from the HP books in no small part because I wanted to be able to like the movies. But I did want to say that I do think we get at least a partial picture of Snape's issues in the GoF movie.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 04:53 pm (UTC)My theory is that in the end, which is everyone's theory it seems, Snape will of course show himself to be good, so the movies have simply chosen to ignore his darker actions since the end will not necessitate the means by which he got there being included. It is a travesty of gigantic proportions because, my goodness, is there anything else in the books so completely entrancing and worthy of being given its proper place in the time-line? Snape is most assuredly the most intriguing character, and anyone who has not read the books will never know just how much they are missing out on.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-03 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 02:46 pm (UTC)