I finally (because, you know, it had been days since it came out) went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II last Wednesday. It was a lot of fun, and one of the best of the series. But I still walked away feeling like something big was missing. Like, an enormous hole type of thing. Throughout the series, the focus was never really on Harry for me (or for a lot of people). Not even Equus could steal the focus from Severus Snape. The man whose pauses in his speech could heighten anticipation more than Dr. Frank-N-Furter could ever hope to. The Bad Guy Who Really Wasn’t. Or was, if you think about it, but a really bad guy whose all-consuming weakness for one woman made him good in spite of himself. After he killed Dumbledore at the end of book 6, the whole HP community split into two factions, one side the Snape Is Good people, the other the Snape Is Evil believers (I’m assuming that these were made up of mostly younger fans, who had not yet read enough books and seen enough movies to know that, if a questionable character commits a totally evil act at the end of book 6, and there’s going to be a book 7, that the end of book 6 is way too early for that evil deed to be the Final Word on said character). Of course, book 7 revealed a Snape who was not only on the good side, but filled to bursting with unrequited love. He was not just good, he was downright tragic. I gobbled Deathly Hallows up as soon as it came out, and as the novel wound down, I waited, and waited, and flipped page after page after page, but never got what I was waiting for: official recognition of Snape in the wizarding community. Not a bit. Not a tiny bit.
Okay, yes, Harry names his son after him—Albus Severus, mind you, his middle name—way to broadcast Snape's value to the wizarding world, there, Harold—and as young Albus worries and wonders on the Hogwarts’ Express platform about being put into Slytherin House, well, Harry reassures him that there was one bloody good wizard who came out of Slytherin, so it’s not such a bad place. But be assured, if Albus wants to avoid the “S” house, he can just pick Gryffindor and he’s all set. So not only is this little exchange a private one between father and son, it’s even qualified. For Christ’s sake. This was the same in the book and the movie.
This is all Snape gets? Really!? The man who arguably had the most dangerous role in the entire story??? He played double agent, for roughly 16 years, to the most vicious wizard the world had ever produced. Sixteen years! He put himself in danger day and night, year after year, never betraying his true allegiance to anyone except Dumbledore. The kids hated him. Despised him. He was tolerated by the good people on Hogwarts’ staff, embraced only by anyone who leaned dark. Even those in the Order of the Phoenix didn’t take him at his word; they trusted him only because Dumbledore did. How lonely did that have to make him? Of course, the argument could be made that he chose this life himself, begging Dumbledore to not tell anyone, but honestly, could either of them afford for anyone else to know? Such a confidence to anybody at all could have eventually unraveled the entire plot to defeat Voldemort. Neither of them had any choice. And without Snape’s unfailing courage, over many, many years, that plot would have fallen flat dead, no matter how many shapeshifters, professors, and Boys Who Lived they had on their side.
I think this wouldn’t have bothered me as much if it wasn’t for the fact that the series goes totally overboard for much lesser characters. How about Cedric Diggory, anyone? Well before Robert Pattinson became a pansy-ass sparkly vampire, he had a very minor role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where his only purpose was to cock-block Harry and get killed by the newly-revived Voldemort. He wasn’t killed by standing up to anyone, or by doing anything even remotely courageous. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet, from the reaction in the story, you’d have thought that it was a retelling of Superman is Dead. He was a minor character, for God’s sake! Who cares? And they really went to town in the movie. Cedric’s father gets his Oscar moment, bawling and wailing over his son’s body, stopping just short of gnashing his teeth and tearing his hair out at the root. Yes, he lost his son, but for the sake of the story, it was totally overdone. And hell, I bet Mr. Diggory would have appreciated not having the paparazzi cameras on him while he grieved. In the meantime, we get pans of the audience as everyone reacts to this death that will most certainly rock the wizarding world to its very foundations. Story’s over, folks. Yeah, Harry’s still alive, but who cares? Cho Chang’s date for the Winter Dance is dead. How can we ever go on? Dumbledore underscores this attitude by giving a gravely serious speech in the Great Hall, calling Cedric, among other things, a “fierce, fierce friend.” What the hell did they ever show in the book or the movie for such a small character to garner that accolade? The closest he ever came was telling Harry to take the metal egg into a bathtub with him so he could get the second clue for the Tri-Wizard Tournament, which did snag Harry the clue, but also almost cost him his innocence to Moaning Myrtle. That’s fierce? Seriously? Harry had already told Cedric that the first challenge revolved around dragons. Cedric was just paying back the favor, so that hardly counts. Besides, he didn’t even warn Harry about pervy little Myrtle. What a friend! Was Cedric fierce the night he took Cho to the dance? We’re never told, but we do know in the movie that Snape has great fun busting up makeout sessions between students that night. Let’s hope that’s not what Dumbledore is referring to. Because if he is, how did he know? Gross!
As can be told from the above, the movies do little to remedy the issues I feel the books have regarding treatment of certain characters. But I still thought that Deathly Hallows II, since the endings for some of the others tend to be so overwrought and so melodramatic, would try to rectify this, in the screenwriters’/director’s typical fashion. The storyline lent itself so well to this treatment. After Harry kills Voldemort for reals, and he marches into the school while everyone’s covering the dead and tending to wounds, instead of just looking around and making eye contact with select people, he could have talked with someone, or overheard a group of people observing what had happened to the school, and saying that it was all Snape’s fault for killing Dumbledore and turning Hogwarts over to the Death Eaters. Hearing that, Harry could have spun around on them and filled them in on just how good a person Snape was, that he was vital to Harry’s victory, and that he was the most courageous wizard he ever knew. Cue the shocked faces around the room: we know the filmmakers have that trick up their sleeves; it was exactly what they did to clue us into the Drama That Was Cedric Diggory’s Passing. Pained, lingering shots of one wizard after another wishing that Professor Trewlaney wasn’t the only seer in the bunch. That would have been so easy to inject into the scene, but no. Harry tells his son about Snape, almost as if it’s a secret. Thanks a bunch, dude. And thanks to Steve Klowes, the screenwriter of Deathly Hallows II, for so thoughtfully considering this oversight on Rowling’s part and doing everything he could to fix it.
Or how about this: When the old gang is seeing their children off at the end, the camera pans down from an aerial shot over a big sign or plaque that reads “Severus Snape Memorial Platform”. If Klowes hadn’t wanted to dialogue it up like I suggested above (and admittedly, that might not be a good scene for Harry to show any amount of ire), there are other, more subtle means to get the point across. Not that subtlety has anything to do with the Harry Potter movie franchise.
Just in case anyone would think this: I don’t want to hear, “Harry did save Snape’s reputation, it just wasn’t in the story. But it happened, and everyone knows what a wonderful wizard he was.” Oh, great. Awesome! That solves everything. Except it DOESN’T. If you read a seven book-series and one of the more compelling threads from book 1 is the question of whether the Man in Black is good or bad, and everything basically hinges on this, and only one person in the entire story is ever given insight into this character on the screen or the page, and that insight isn’t made public, that doesn’t cut it. Leaving it out completely, assuming that everyone will just know that Harry did right by Snape, is not storytelling. It just isn’t. There’s no closure for the audience. Those of us who preferred Snape as a character deserved to see him get recognition from the wizarding community. But Klowes decided it wasn’t worth it. Just like J.K. Rowling.
Assholes.
