They Knew Snape Was Heroic All The Time ~ Yeah, Right
Hindsight is really 20-20.
That goes for Fandom as well. Where Snape is concerned, I've been expecting it for years, but somehow people who always thought Snape was evil slithered out of admitting it.
Now that the final movies are being made, however, it seems that even the big-wigs are getting on the Snape Train all of a sudden. And I guess they miss the irony of the term "hindsight" too (a "hind" is another name for doe, a female deer).
Like Voldemort at Malfoy Manor, all we can say is: "We thought you had lost your way . . . We saved you a seat."
You can read the take of subtle1science's on this matter:
Nice Kid But About As Sharp As a Bowling Ball
Subtle points to this quote from Leaky Mistress Melissa Anelli, touted in the St. Petersberg Times as the "Queen of the Cauldon":
Those audiences are most interested, she says, in the "future of fandom" and enjoying everything related to Harry. The most common subject of debate, Anelli says, is whether Hogwarts professor Severus Snape, Harry's nemesis and protector, is good or evil. "He's a very brave guy," the uberfan says, "but he's not a nice man."
Yeah, that "not nice" thing works for Anelli's UBER-Mama-Mentor JKR too, but I want her to show me one "not nice" thing that Snape does in Deathly Hallows, book or movie. Anything. Page numbers, please. And it doesn't count that he gave Neville, Ginny, and Luna detention with Hagrid. JKR likes Hagrid so be careful what you say. You might need to eat your own opinions again in the future!
Next, my friend stn5 posted a quote on HPN from Steven Kloves, the HP screenwriter interviewed for the NY Times:
After a while, Mr. Kloves said, “I had a remarkable ability to anticipate events, because I swam in the narrative for 10 years.” For example, he said, he always suspected that behind the oily nastiness of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) lurked a man of deep bravery with his own lonely integrity.
“You can never decipher where Jo will take the plot, because she is completely original,” Mr. Kloves said. “But there was no question in my mind that Snape was going to be heroic, and I wrote him that way from the start.”
Similarly, he said, he always suspected that Dumbledore was gay, though this was never stated explicitly in any of the books, and though Ms. Rowling had to point it out to him in the margin of one of his earlier scripts, lest he put in a confusing line implying that Dumbledore was reminiscing about a girl he once knew. (Ms. Rowling publicly announced that Dumbledore was gay at an event in Carnegie Hall in 2007.)
“When you live within a narrative the way I have and you start to feel the DNA of the book, you can tell,” Mr. Kloves said. “There was something about the way she wrote about him. There was a freedom and a quality to his humor that made him someone who was slightly outside, and who was comfortable being outside normal conventions.”
But he admitted to a spectacular misjudgment: He thought that Hermoine would be killed.
“If you read the books, you can argue that Jo’s setting it up,” he said. A dinner party attended by Ms. Rowling - during which he and some other guests began a parlor game of Harry Potter predictions - convinced him further.
“I said, ‘I think Hermione’s going to die,’ and at that point, Jo said, ‘I think we should stop the game now.’ When I read the book, I thought, ‘Bloody hell - how could you do that to me?’ ”
Okey-Dokey Artichokey . . . Here's the problem with Mr. Kloves. As subtle1science points out, JKR wasn't that original since Snape is a Byronic Anti-Hero. And if he knew how unique and special Severus was, then why were the best lines always cut out of the movies? True, Kloves isn't responsible for the debacle of leaving Snape's Worst Memory out of Order of the Phoenix, since he didn't write that screenplay. But he is responsible for leaving out the scene in GoF showing his Dark Mark to Fudge, and for leaving out one of the great lines of all time in HBP: "Don't Call Me Coward!"
But as he says, he was staying "true" to JKR's "vision" anyway, so it's all good. It's just absurd to take credit for a vision that he himself didn't have while writing the movie screenplays. Remember that whole thing about thinking Lupin "had something" with Lily too, and giving him a speech about how kind she was? Lily, who dumped Lupin because she thought he was a spy? Oh, darn - guess you shouldn't have said that in hindsight.