Hah! I should have known that would pique your interest. *g*
Honestly, the threat of your talk in any way resembling this debacle is pretty much nil. I won't name names, and I'm reluctant to give too much detail here (though I'd be happy to elaborate in an e-mail to you, if you'd like), but one of the biggest problems in that they just didn't critically engage or analyze anything. It was a very shallow surface reading, they didn't interrogate the text, they didn't unpack any embedded ideas or base their suppositions on a realistic understand of psychology or human emotion. The basic stance was that "everything good about Snape comes from Lily." When asked how Snape could produce a Patronus--particularly a uniquely beautiful and docile and corporeal patronus--without being fundamentally good, the one panelist said, "Uh, I don't know. I guess I thought that was just from Lily or something. That's my opinion."
I think you begin to see my objections.
Also, they asserted that Snape obviously didn't mean to give those memories to Harry; they just kind of flowed out because he was, like, dying and stuff. ~headdesk~ Oh yes, and they also have some bizarre idea that redemption is external. As in, Harry redeems Snape, Lily redeems Snape, etc. They never examined the idea that redemption is in fact an internal process, and therefore only Snape could redeem himself through his choices and actions.
Your plans for your own panel sound good, and no, I don't think you need to necessarily have page-by-page verbatim citations. What you need to have--and what you already do--is to have drawn your conclusions based on textual evidence. It's not just "I feel" statements or random pointless speculation, or even an acceptance of surface explanation or authorial interviews, it's going to the text, unpacking its ideas and using it to build a hypothesis. The people on this panel didn't do any of that, but I know that you will.
Whether they saw him as Really Really Good or Really Really Bad, by and large the fans and foes of Snape were expecting the True Severus to be something big and dramatic and larger than life; imposing, impressive! And instead, in the Prince's Tale, what he turns out to be is, so to speak, just a guy from Kansas who took a few wrong turns along the way. You like?
Yes, I like! Striving for a realistic and grounded understanding of Snape as a character is a very good thing.
lest I sound totally shallowly Snape-centric, I am relieved that the timing worked out to get medical attention for that girl. A stroke in her teens! I suppose the advantage is the resiliency of youth, at least. I wish her well.
I agree 100%. It was frightening, and I wish it hadn't happened at all, but in terms of timing, it was a help that we hadn't taken off yet. I have my fingers crossed that she'll make a full recovery. I know that strokes can rarely happen to young people (I have a cousin who had a stroke at age 16, and one of my younger brother's friends was severely handicapped by a sudden stroke at 18), but I do hope that her youth and relative health (she'd just come back from hiking through Yosemite) will help her heal quickly and completely.
Honestly, the threat of your talk in any way resembling this debacle is pretty much nil. I won't name names, and I'm reluctant to give too much detail here (though I'd be happy to elaborate in an e-mail to you, if you'd like), but one of the biggest problems in that they just didn't critically engage or analyze anything. It was a very shallow surface reading, they didn't interrogate the text, they didn't unpack any embedded ideas or base their suppositions on a realistic understand of psychology or human emotion. The basic stance was that "everything good about Snape comes from Lily." When asked how Snape could produce a Patronus--particularly a uniquely beautiful and docile and corporeal patronus--without being fundamentally good, the one panelist said, "Uh, I don't know. I guess I thought that was just from Lily or something. That's my opinion."
I think you begin to see my objections.
Also, they asserted that Snape obviously didn't mean to give those memories to Harry; they just kind of flowed out because he was, like, dying and stuff. ~headdesk~ Oh yes, and they also have some bizarre idea that redemption is external. As in, Harry redeems Snape, Lily redeems Snape, etc. They never examined the idea that redemption is in fact an internal process, and therefore only Snape could redeem himself through his choices and actions.
Your plans for your own panel sound good, and no, I don't think you need to necessarily have page-by-page verbatim citations. What you need to have--and what you already do--is to have drawn your conclusions based on textual evidence. It's not just "I feel" statements or random pointless speculation, or even an acceptance of surface explanation or authorial interviews, it's going to the text, unpacking its ideas and using it to build a hypothesis. The people on this panel didn't do any of that, but I know that you will.
Whether they saw him as Really Really Good or Really Really Bad, by and large the fans and foes of Snape were expecting the True Severus to be something big and dramatic and larger than life; imposing, impressive! And instead, in the Prince's Tale, what he turns out to be is, so to speak, just a guy from Kansas who took a few wrong turns along the way. You like?
Yes, I like! Striving for a realistic and grounded understanding of Snape as a character is a very good thing.
lest I sound totally shallowly Snape-centric, I am relieved that the timing worked out to get medical attention for that girl. A stroke in her teens! I suppose the advantage is the resiliency of youth, at least. I wish her well.
I agree 100%. It was frightening, and I wish it hadn't happened at all, but in terms of timing, it was a help that we hadn't taken off yet. I have my fingers crossed that she'll make a full recovery. I know that strokes can rarely happen to young people (I have a cousin who had a stroke at age 16, and one of my younger brother's friends was severely handicapped by a sudden stroke at 18), but I do hope that her youth and relative health (she'd just come back from hiking through Yosemite) will help her heal quickly and completely.
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