The Snape Effect

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve decided to do something that’s a bit different from my normal fare on this blog.

Instead of picking some movie or show or game and share nitpicks and gripes, I instead want to talk about a curious phenomenon seen in various media, regarding certain characters.

It’s a phenomenon I’ve decided to dub

And to explain what this phenomenon is, I think we have to talk about its namesake, Professor Severus Snape, the Potions teacher from Harry Potter.

See, for six books, he was presented as an unpleasant person, and an ongoing antagonist to our main characters. His actions in the books range from petty, to vicious, to outright cruel at times.

And then, in the seventh book, his backstory, until then kept to a handful of passing mentions and one flashback, is shown to us, and it’s revealed he was a childhood friend of Lily Evans, who would grow up to marry James Potter, a man Severus hated deeply. We find out that his unrequited love for Lily is what caused him to betray Voldemort and become a spy for Dumbledore at great risk to his own life, and even decades after the death of Lily, he still loved her.

And with that, Snape’s entire character was put in a new light, becoming regarded as a tragic character and a misunderstood martyr, dying a noble death at the hands of Voldemort.

Except nothing about that backstory changed any of the horrible things he did.

Now, I’m not the first to point this out, obviously, but I need to make it clear: it took YEARS for people to realise just how horrible Snape actually is. 

That is the Snape Effect. When a bad character gets one small bit of redemption, people sometimes decide to let that outshine everything the character has previously done, to the point where they completely forget any prior wrongdoing.

Obviously, Snape is an extreme example, since even the book itself was determined to portray Snape as a good person following his death, with Harry Potter naming his son after him, describing him as “one of the bravest men I ever knew”.

This being the same man who deliberately outed Remus Lupin as a werewolf, losing him his job, simply out of spite after Sirius Black escaped. In turn, Snape knew full well that Sirius was innocent of the crime he was accused of, and still wanted him to be subjected to the Dementors Kiss, because Sirius almost got him killed when they were children. 

And when James Potter found out what Sirius had done, deliberately goading Snape into visiting the Shrieking Shack where Remus was confined during his werewolf transformation, he ran off and saved Snape’s life… and that only made Snape even more resentful towards James. 

The thing that is supposed to make him redeemable, his undying love for Lily… still wasn’t enough for him not to loathe her son Harry. I mentioned it back when I talked about the theory about their first meeting. That entire theory was invented to somehow inject some warmth and meaning between them, when in reality it’s just another petty move by Snape, who KNEW Harry grew up in the muggle world, and therefore wouldn’t have the first idea of anything when it comes to potion making when he first arrived.

And then there’s Neville. And here, I think we need a bit of context. Neville Longbottom’s parents were tortured by Voldemorts followers, including Bellatrix Lestrange. They were tortured to the point of insanity, leading to them being admitted to a mental hospital, barely able to recognise their own son. The people they were are effectively gone forever, and there is no cure.

Neville knows this. More to the point, he knows that the person responsible is still alive. True, she’s currently locked up at Azkaban, but I’ll remind you… We know that Sirius Black, the titular Prisoner of Azkaban, managed to escape the supposedly inescapable prison.

My point is that you would think, given all that, that Neville Longbottom’s greatest fear would be Bellatrix Lestrange, the famously sadistic woman who destroyed his family.

But Neville’s greatest fear, as seen when he faces a boggart… is Snape.

Snape’s behaviour towards Neville is so cruel, so bullying, so vile, that Neville is more afraid of him than the woman who drove his parents to irremediable insanity. 

That takes a very special kind of asshole to accomplish that. 

And of course, speaking of Neville, there’s the rather important detail which, again, others have pointed out before me, but it bears repeating:

Had Voldemort chosen to kill Neville instead of Harry, Snape would still be a death eater. 

We’re never given any indication that Snape has any particular objections towards Voldemort or the Death Eater cause. On the contrary, he willingly joined the Death Eaters while still in school, and worked with them for years.

He ONLY turned traitor once Lily’s life was threatened. And even then, he was initially fully willing to have James and Harry die, only caring about Lily herself. His love for her didn’t prevent him from joining the people who hate muggle borns. People that, if they had their way, would have seen Lily killed or worse, regardless of her being a member of the Order of the Phoenix. 

And Snape KNEW this, and he was still a member. He knew what the Death Eaters wanted. He knew what they did. For all we know, he was there, killing people alongside them!

This is the man who, as a schoolkid, invented a spell that would CUT SOMEONE OPEN, and him describing it as “for enemies”. 

All of this was forgotten and brushed over and ignored following Snape’s “redemption”. Except he never showed any regret or remorse for the things he does, so it’s hard to really call it a redemption at all. And the sad thing is, Snape could have been a truly fantastic character. He didn’t have to be this cruel and vicious and reprehensible. Remember, he was deliberately written like that. So we just get this weird disconnect between the image the book wants us to see… and the image the series has given up until this point.

Now, this article isn’t just about Severus Snape. He’s just one of the most famous cases, but fiction is rife with other examples. I’ve even written about some of them on this blog.

The best example, I think, is the monster from Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus. I won’t go into that in quite as much depth as with Snape, for the simple reason that I’ve already written about it in great detail. But the short version is: people have a tendency to look at the monster in a sympathetic way. Of course, the monster is presented as a tragic figure and a victim of circumstances, so it’s not unreasonable.

But they will also go on to talk about how the monster was innocent. The popular acclamation is some variation of ”The monster wasn’t Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the monster”, which abrogates any wrongdoing of the monster.

To reiterate: the monster is, directly or indirectly, responsible for the death of five people in the story. The first murder at his hands is that of William Frankenstein, an eight-yearold child. The story explains that the monster doesn’t kill for food. When he is attacked, he doesn’t attack in retaliation or self-defence, and he is never shown to kill by accident. The deaths at his hands are all deliberate, conscious acts of murder, with him being fully aware that it is evil.

And his defence is that ”I am malicious because I am miserable”, as if that’s supposed to excuse anything. If you reword it a bit as ”I am alone and unloved, therefore I hurt others”, that’s dangerously close to something you’d hear from an incel blog post, isn’t it?

Has the monster been treated badly? Absolutely. Is it fair? Not in the slightest. Does it in any way, shape or form excuse him murdering innocent people? Absolutely not.

But again, the Snape Effect has him reimagined as a faultless creature. Some versions make him a simple, childlike creature, or has his murder of William be accidental.

And what’s interesting is that, unlike Snape, the book doesn’t bend over backwards to present him as a hero or a brave man. He himself is very open about how his actions are cruel and evil. At the end of the book, after the death of Victor Frankenstein, the monster is so broken and despondent, he leaves to commit suicide, unable to handle the guilt over the crimes he has committed, including driving Frankenstein himself to his death.

In a way, that is another thing that separates him from Snape. He DOES feel remorse… it’s just that his desire to hurt Victor is so much greater.

Another example I think is worth bringing up, which I’ve also talked about before, is Frank N. Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He too is a wanton murderer, in addition to being a manipulative, sociopathic rapist. He genuinly only cares about his own happiness and his own pleasure. He creates Rocky as his own personal sentient sex toy, with Riff-Raff and Magenta praising his success… and he gets offended when Columbia describes Rocky as “okay“. He asks Janet her opinion and is angry when she tells him she’s not all that into “men with too many muscles“. All he wants is for others to praise him for his effort. He has created life, But he doesn’t really care or like or love Rocky. He just loves himself for making him.

He murders Eddie, his former lover, for no other reason than Eddie interrupting him gushing about how excellent he is.

He later attempts to rape, and then seduces both Brad and Janet, but is utterly outraged at Janet sleeping with Rocky.

And still, you get people talking about how sad his death is, all because he sang a sad song just before it. A song that, again, just translates to him talking about how sad he is that he can’t stay. Not a word of remorse or regret, just being sad that his fun is over.

People still admire him! People idolize him, just because he’s fun to watch and played by Tim Curry, who is a ridiculously entertaining actor.

And actually, Frank reminds me, in a way of something I haven’t covered on this blog before. As you know, I have been known to enjoy a bit of Sci-Fi, and I also have a fondness for talking about villains in various media. So it would be remiss of me, I feel, not to talk about what I personally think is one of the best villains in science-fiction.

It’s not Palpatine from Star Wars, or Khan from Star Trek II.

It’s Dukat, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Dukat is a member of an alien race called Cardassians, who’s entire culture is one of highly militarized autocracy. Media is heavily censored, all criminal trials are decided ahead of time, with the verdict always being guilty, and the punishment always being death, in order to propagate the idea that the guilty are always punished and the state does not make mistakes.

Dukat himself is a high ranking officer within the Cardassian military, having been the prefect in charge of the occupation of Bajor, a planet occupied by the Cardassian empire for the last 50 years, which ended shortly before the beginning of Deep Space Nine.

And here’s the thing: Dukat is another great example of the Snape Effect at play.

He remains a recurring antagonist in the series, but over time, his role begins to shift. We see that he can be charming, witty, competent and resourceful. When his daughter Ziyal is introduced, we see that he’s capable of caring for others, having initially sought her out to kill her, but being unable to go through with it.

Halfway through the series, he even becomes something of a grudging ally to the main characters. However, this doesn’t last all that long, before he turns against them again, joining the newly introduced enemy known as the Dominion.

But still, he is considered by a surprising number of people to be an admirable, honorable, even heroic character.

Except again, there is something very important to note about his character.

Not once, throughout the entire series, does he show any genuine remorse for his actions. When he talks about the occupation and the things he did, he never shows regret. In all his interractions with Major Kira Nerys, the Bajoran first officer of DS9, he never seeks forgiveness or to make amends for the things he has done.

He doesn’t regret the occupation or the atrocities he carried out during it. He wasn’t a grudging accomplice, but a willing and eager proponent! He was against the Cardassian withdrawal from Bajor! He spoke against the end of the occupation, which in turn affected his military standing negatively!

In his mind, there was nothing evil about the occupation. It was justified, it was good and it was RIGHT! They, as the ”superior race”, had the right and responsibility to take over Bajor! He doesn’t seek or want forgiveness for his actions from Kira or Captain Sisko, All he wants is validation. He honestly believes, in his heart of hearts, that he is a righteous man, a good Cardassian and that he is deserving of respect, not despite, but BECAUSE of the literal graveyards he has filled.

Of course, Deep Space 9 is replete with characters that one could consider morally grey, who are still enjoyable characters. The Ferengi Quark, the Cardassian tailor Garak. Major Kira is herself a former resistance fighter, who has undoubtedly been responsibly for many deaths in her life.

Even Captain Sisko himself has moments where he has to do unsavory and morally questionable things, as the Utopian ideals of the Federation don’t always reach as far as the space station he’s commanding.

But Dukat stands separate there, since at no point does he actually become a heroic character. He never has any transformative experience that make him reevaluate his views. The only things that affect him to that level only serve to cement his worldview. He never introspects or looks at himself and his own actions, because his arrogance prevents him from ever considering that he might not be a moral person.

And despite all that, you still get people, fans of the show, who praise him as a hero, because they see his admirable qualities (which he does have, let’s not be disingenous here), and they let those overshadow the many horrible things we know he has done.

I’m not blaming the fans, I should clarify. I’m not saying they’re stupid or clueless. It’s honestly difficult at times, given the performance of his actor, Marc Alaimo, to see how someone this charming and, for lack of better words, human, could be such a cruel, vicious, fascist monster. But it is worth noting as another example of the Snape Effect.

And again, this isn’t some isolated incident. It’s the same thing with Maleficent supposedly being justified, or the Joker being a hero. People seem to want to cling on to some small detail to somehow validate these character, and it does make me wonder about the reason it happens.

The initial assumption could be that we just want to believe the best about people. Except I don’t think that’s it either, given that we get something similar with heroic characters.

For example, you have the theory that Captain Hook is the hero in Peter Pan. Unlike other examples, we don’t really get any moment of redemption for Hook, or him even being endowed with admirable and likeable traits. The only thing that seems to justify Hook being the hero is that Peter Pan himself isn’t a straightforwardly heroic character.

But here, and many times when applied to a hero, we get a situation where instead of the bad guy being misunderstood, the hero and villain outright switch places, with Peter now being the villain.

Same thing with Jafar supposedly being the hero in Aladdin. Nothing he does in the movie supports this. But since the Sultan isn’t a pristinely perfect ruler, then Jafar must therefore be the true hero, evidence to the contrary be damned.

So why is this the case? Well, my own theory is that it goes back to the stories we hear as young children. In those stories, the heroes and villains were very unambiguous. You never got a sympathetic backstory for the witch in Hansel and Gretel. There was no part of little red riding hood where we saw the wolf grow up subjected to prejudice and distrust.

So we grow up with clear good guys and clear bad guys. Then, as we grow older, we’re presented with characters that become a bit more multifaceted. Characters that aren’t as clearly black and white. But we’re so used to it being a binary ”good or bad”, that we overcompensate. The bad guy has admirable traits? Then he must be heroic! The Hero isn’t a shining example of morality? Then he must be the villain! And because every story needs a hero and a villain, the villain must be the true hero!

Is this the reason? I honestly don’t know. It’s just a theory, and it can very easily turn out I’m asbolutely wrong. My goal here isn’t really to explain why the Snape Effect exists. I’m just sharing an observation, casting light on a recurring phenomenon I’ve noticed.

I’ve no doubt you can find more examples of this. If there’s any greater point to all this, I suppose it would be to maybe encourage people to be careful with fiction. To look closer at characters one might be tempted to idolize or admire or forgive.

It may seem a silly thing to encourage, but again, this is something that has literally been going on for centuries. Silly or not, you can’t say it’s not necessary.