If you have not read The Half Blood Prince through to the end, this post will have some spoilers. Also, if you are frum, this post does not pass basic standards for modesty, I'm linking to some sexy stuff so...if that would damage your good opinion of me or constitute a waste of time for you, don't read this. (Also, also, I am not a literary critic, I've totally forgotten how to even talk about reading.)
I know that the canon of English literature is full of anti-Semitic stereotyping. I have a variety of ways to respond to this. I have engaged The Merchant of Venice with Jewish teachers in secular classrooms who provided us with apologetic readings of Shylock. I have winced at Dickens, at Trollope, at Thackeray, at Henry James. I have read redemptive literary criticism of T. S. Eliot which didn't really redeem anything.
It has finally dawned on me that I am annoyed by J.K. Rowling's characterization of Severus Snape.
In Snape, Rowling has created a angry villain who has a hooked nose, greasy dark hair, sallow skin and glittering dark eyes, an inscrutable, sneering, untrustworthy double agent -- who hisses. I don't think Rowling was intentionally trading in anti-Semitic stereotyping. Does that sound funny after my litany of stereotypical adjectives? But I don't! I think those are general negative physical characteristics in Western culture, and that a person could use them without intending anything racist. It's just kind of pervasive. After all, Rowling does have at least two very minor characters among the student who actually have Jewish names (Anthony Goldstein in Ravenclaw house, Harry's acquaintance in the DA club, and possibly also Rose Zeller). At least one reader has pointed out that this is part of a concerted effort on JKR's part to show the diversity of present-day Britain. (Though hello, do you see a single Muslim name here? Are there no Pakistani immigrant wizards at Hogwarts?) Her intentions aside, Rowling's Snape does bum me out. What's with the languid movements and the hairy eyebrows and the general ickiness of her Snape? In the Half Blood Prince he's practically Judas ferchrissakes. (Or you could read it that way. At least you could at the end of book six, book seven might turn the whole thing on its head.)
This is only one of the many reasons that I have become infatuated with the incredible profusion of Harry Potter fan fiction. The internet is full of young women (and even some women my age) who are writing erotic stories about Severus Snape. Rowling may have written Snape to be unattractive, but there are a lot of fangirls out there who think a lanky, sneering, dark haired, sardonic, goth-looking man (with, thanks to the movies, Alan Rickman's incredible voice) is the most attractive thing ever.
I love reading erotic stories (this is the not tznius part) and in particular I enjoy the slash, which are stories about male/male character relationships. When I was the same age as most of the fangirls (late teens early 20s) I also loved gay male porn, but I thought I was a pervert, exploitative, sick, and on top of that, a bad feminist for liking it. These young women have formed a lightly teasing, silly and mutually supportive community of women who like to read and write about gay male sex. They even have a whole erotic vocabulary that I lacked. Like, I knew the word "angst" at 16 (as in "existential nausea") but did I know what "angsty" meant? No, because it didn't mean that in 1982 or whenever. Also "guh", I never had access to the word "guh."
Let me natter on a bit about the mutually supportive thing before I come back to Severus Snape. Much of the fan fiction is really truly crap, but I have found a lot of stories with literary merit. (Because I have been reading obsessively, frankly.) Sometimes these are very clever stories by young women who are just finishing high school or in college, or just after, and I figure "Oh, she's just getting started, this is going to be the beginning of a lot of good work for her." But I look at some of these stories and think, "Wow, she's my age and such a good writer, how can she waste her time creating these wonderful freebies for me out of someone else's characters?" I found a good answer here:
I've always been a writer.
Really. My first story, about an elf and a lost bear cub, was written when I was seven. My first attempt at a novel was written when I was sixteen. My first published work (The Thieves of Tharbad game supplement from Iron Crown Enterprises) came out when I was twenty-six, and one of my other game modules, The Scarlet Pimpernel, was in production when Steve Jackson Games was raided by the Secret Service in the early 1990s,* which means that there's probably a government file on me somewhere (and if they really want to spy on a divorced fortysomething, I hope they let me know so I can invite them in for tea and polite conversation).
Regardless…I stopped writing fiction about ten years ago for a variety of reasons: job loss, a relationship gone south, all the usual melodramatic, soul-sapping things that can happen on one's journey through life. I began writing fan fiction as a way to prime the creative pump, discovered LJ and the joys of Potterfic, and, well, people seem to like what I write.
(Well they should, because she is in fangirl parlance, "teh awesome." You know that I use the word parlance in everyday speech and that if I wrote fan fiction I would NOT have any trouble with the Snape diction issue, whereas I have to put "teh" in scare quotes.)
All these writers have created a giant creative writing workshop in which they support one another in discovering the elements of fiction, with a particular emphasis on characterization. They create writing assignments: whole websites devoted to one-hundred word pieces, or challenges based on a particular aspect of character. (Okay, sometimes a silly or smutty challenge, but still.) Unlike any college writing workshop I attended, the feedback somehow manages to be remarkably positive. Perhaps I am having one of those mistaken maternalist-feminist moments because I only read comments on stories that were actually good? In any case writers have "betas" who are essentially editors, who help with consistency and grammar and general readability. It's also incredibly cool that the internet is working this way, as my friend ASL said it would: providing a conduit through which the supposedly passive audience talks back to the providers of mass culture. The supposedly passive, almost entirely female audience made up of smart, somewhat isolated girls who like books.
Now to Snape: I am definitely in the camp of those who find him an attractive and multilayered character. Hey, I've had a thing for many a dark haired, bushy-eyebrowed, olive-skinned, big-nosed man. Even some who shared Snape's mean mouthiness and deep insecurity. It's true that I'm married now and my husband's nose and eyebrows are teh sexy and his personality is closer to the polite and solicitous Remus Lupin than to Snape's, but still.
I have seen many attempts to deal with Snape's ethnicity in the fan fic, since Rowling herself doesn't deal with it. One author decided Snape was Welsh. Another thought he must have a Bengali grandmother. (Snape makes Lupin Indian food, Balabusta is intrigued.) But several fan fiction writers have made Snape Jewish. I can't go back and link them all, oh my gosh, it's been weeks of cramming my head full of narishkeit. In one story I recall that the author had Snape reading the Mishnah while he waits, in BED, for Voldemort. Eww and eww and yucky feh. Another created a bizarre stereotypical Hanukah vacation for Snape during his years as a student at Hogwarts. The most positive and I think redemptive use of Snape's Jewishness is in these stories by ElliD, in which Snape is the son of a German Jewish refugee. She also has a longer sequence of stories in which Snape and Lupin have an affair with a backstory and every Hogwarts teacher has both religious and ethnic background.
In sum, and I have to stop writing this and go to bed already, Snape is a problem. He's less of a problem than he would be if Rowling had made him Jewish, but still, the more I think about it, the more I worry. Fan fiction provides a solution to some of this. It does even better at providing a solution to the problem of mass culture in general. It's a way for the readers to write back and engage the overwhelming popularity of these books.
I am glad to have a better understanding of this obsesssion for which I have been teasing you. Still, I have to confess that I couldn't tell the slang from a typo to know for sure that you were complimenting my nose and eyebrows. (Lucky for me you came through the KITCHEN where I was reading your post on my laptop, so I could ask...)
May I be so bold as to offer a very brief deconstructive reading of your post? Actually, I think the reading I have in mind is sort of anti-deconstructive. Classical de Manian deconstructive reading would involve analysis of the rhetorical structure of your post in order to find meanings in your writing that you didn't consciously intend. But to be anti-de Manian (which feels good, since there are some serious questions about De Man's past anti-semitic writing*), I'm going to ignore the rhetorical structure of your post and just focus in on one line, which to me, is its finest, wonderfully Jewish moment:
"[T]he more I think about it, the more I worry."
If you ever start another blog, please consider using that for its title.
Love,
Mr. Balabusta
*your comments field doesn't seem to accept my html tags, so here's what I tried to add as a hyper link, above:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_deMan#Wartime_journalism.2C_his_influence_and_legacy
Posted by: Mr. Balabusta | August 22, 2005 at 08:22 AM
Thanks for both the link and the warning about spoilers -- this was a good post to not read. But I did skip down to the link. Are you sure there aren't Muslims? We've just started the 4th book (in Hebrew, oy), and there's some guy name Ali involved with flying carpets. Anyway, take care and regards to all.
Posted by: kaspit | August 23, 2005 at 02:34 PM
Yes, there is a Turkish (or maybe Bulgarian?) announcer in the Quidditch World Cup, right? But that's not a student. I forgot about the World Cup scene. Is the plural of "veela", "veelot" in Hebrew?
Posted by: balabusta | August 24, 2005 at 03:03 AM
You're being waaaaay oversensitive, and not in a sweet way either. You say yourself that among facfic writers, people have been assigning him all sorts of ethnicities. I would have guessed India or Bangledesh myself (greasy hair isn't all that Jewish, and dark skin tone is not exactly a Jewish universal outside of Nazi propaganda either). The only thing that is certain is that he doesn't sound WASPy.
This isn't the sort of thing that anyone recognizes as antisemitic IOW if they only know jews but aren't otherwise antisemitic or overexposed to antisemitic stereotypes. Who's to say he is Jewish - only people who've seen stereotypes in *other* works of fiction and are on the lookout for anything vaguely reminiscent of literary stereotypes past. This isn't a work that creates antisemitism.
If you are looking for antisemitism, it's out there...but you are looking in a pretty harmless place. You sound like the nutters who complained that the gnomes in the bank in the Horry Potter movie looked too Jewish.
It's just ....well, frankly it makes me wonder if you know what antisemitism IS. This post comes across as the ranting of a person who identifies with historic antisemitism as a way of solidifying ethnic identity, and is busy being oversensitive because things in the West have sufficiently progressed that there isn't all that much to be regularly - sensitive about.
Though that's changing. Why not keep an eye out for the real antisemitism, instead of identifying a fictional character of dubious ethnicity as Jewish based on your own (pretty antisemitic) equation of "Dark skin, greasy hair" with Jewish? This kind of precious oversensitivity doesn't accomplish anything except to deflect attention from real concerns with antisemitism.
Posted by: prettydisgusted | August 26, 2005 at 05:46 AM
I'm not offended that you disagree with my thinking on the Snape thing. I mean, it's pretty tenuous, and Rowling is obviously sensitive to Jewish issues. I didn't perform a close reading of the text. (I certainly am not up to critiques of the Gringotts goblins in the film, I saw each movie only once.) I think you are precisely right that Rowling's characterization is resonant with past anti-Semitic caricatures in Western literature, especially 19th century English literature. That's pretty much what I was saying.
I am a bit annoyed that you think I'm digging around for anti-Semitism in order to solidify my ethnic identity. For goodness sake, this is a blog about my Shabbat meals, mainly discussing my ethnic identity! Did you even notice that? The title is at the top of the page! I also write here a bit about Jewish religion and spirituality, Jewish languages, and parenting as a Jew. I have mentioned anti-Semitism on this blog at least twice in the past--I edited a book on the history of Polish anti-Semitism in the spring, for example, and I've said in passing that my community has been targeted with white supremacist anti-Semitic fliers. I don't expect you to read every word I've written before you comment, but it does seem a bit "oversensitive and not in a sweet way" for you to make such assumptions about me.
Posted by: balabusta | August 26, 2005 at 03:54 PM
I love the Harry Potter books, but one of the things that I have not liked about them for a long time is the way that she uses certain physical characteristics as code for "dislike this character!" It's true of Snape, as you have said, but she also often uses fatness as code for "this is an evil character!" This is certainly true of the Dursley men, both of whom are described as fat in disgusting ways, and shows up for other characters as well.
On the other hand, she does give the headmistress of Beauxbatons a wonderful line in Goblet of Fire - "I have big bones!" And she is also described as dark with a beaky nose. Not all hooked noses in the HP books mark evil or badness.
Posted by: Rebecca | August 27, 2005 at 10:20 PM
Hi Rebecca! I should have written you to ask if you read fan fiction, because I recall that you were at one time a totally enthusiastic science fiction person. I think you were at one time or another a totally enthusiastic everything person!
Yes! I am glad you pointed out the fat thing, it has bothered me since the first book. Though our Neville is also fat. (I love Neville Longbottom, don't you? He was wonderful at the end of book 5.) But the "Duddley is fat" thing is disturbing.
Also, pursuant to the Muslim names thing, the announcer at the Quidditch World Cup was Hassan Mustafa and was Egyptian, not Turkish. I looked it up earlier today.
Posted by: balabusta | August 27, 2005 at 10:31 PM
"I think you are precisely right that Rowling's characterization is resonant with past anti-Semitic caricatures in Western literature, especially 19th century English literature. That's pretty much what I was saying."
Not at all. What you were saying is that the characterization is a *problem* for this reason. What I was saying is you imposed the antisemitic overtones on the Snapes character out of outsize identification with fiction and insufficient connection to reality.
"For goodness sake, this is a blog about my Shabbat meals, mainly discussing my ethnic identity! "
Yes, that's of a piece with it.
"I also write here a bit about Jewish religion and spirituality, Jewish languages, and parenting as a Jew"
I have seen all this. I believe I've read every single post on this blog; I've been reading it for months. I like your blog well enough. But it's a self-conscious attempt to solidify ethnic/religious identity, and you habitually associate Judaism and Jewish values with all things the smart set consider "progressive". So when you free-associate to fictional characters who in some vague way remind you of overtly antisemitic fictional characters in past works, and consider yourself to have been "sensitive" (as a Jew) and to have detected some pernicious new fictional example of antisemitism, forgive me for pointing out that this demonstrates authentic Jewish identity and sensitivity to antisemitism in about the same way and to the same degree that Afro-Americans whose families have been living in the US for a few centuries and celebrate Kwanza demonstrate authentic connection to their African roots and sensitivity to oppression.
"I have mentioned anti-Semitism on this blog at least twice in the past--I edited a book on the history of Polish anti-Semitism in the spring, for example, and I've said in passing that my community has been targeted with white supremacist anti-Semitic fliers."
And this is supposed to REFUTE what I wrote? You respond to the charge that you solidify ethnic identity by imagining yourself on the receiving end of antisemitism by reminding me that you demonstrated sensitivity to antisemitism in the past?! Editing a work on Polish antisemitism is not an act that solidifies ethnic identity through identification with second-hand accounts of historic antisemitism?!
Antisemitism is not prevented or remedied by having authors avoid writing anything that a paranoid person can read as a hint of a hint of a hint of an antisemitic stereotype. It's prevented by enforcing civil rights. Including the right to write books at which spoiled Americans who've never experienced antisemitism in their lives (flyers from white supremacists in your neighborhood OMG!!!! notwithstanding, and your history, to the extent it's been described in the past on this blog, in mind) might object to because ....hey, they're sensitive to antisemitism!
"I don't expect you to read every word I've written before you comment, but it does seem a bit "oversensitive and not in a sweet way" for you to make such assumptions about me."
Talk about assumptions. The ONLY reason you can think I'd come to this conclusion is that I didn't read your blog?
Posted by: pd | August 28, 2005 at 12:50 AM
"Though our Neville is also fat. (I love Neville Longbottom, don't you? He was wonderful at the end of book 5.) But the "Duddley is fat" thing is disturbing."
No, see, fat people are NOT immune to being villains. They are just also sometimes good guys too. Just about every last one of her physical stereotypes is carefully balanced with a counterexample. What you'd like is a whitewashed picture in which all physical features that have ever been associated with villains are only associated with positive characteristics.
That's a prescription for a work of propoganda, and maybe, just maybe, one of the reasons the books is popular is that our culture is already oversaturated with this kind of progaganda disguised as fiction (when it's not disguised as "Science"), and there's a hankering for something more genuine.
Posted by: pd | August 28, 2005 at 01:00 AM
All right, pd. I am glad you have enjoyed...no, enjoyed is clearly the wrong word, and glad is not right either. I am satisfied that you have subjected yourself to the unpleasant experience of reading so many blog posts that you found culturally inauthentic and politically unsatisfying. Too bad for you. I presume you come here for the recipes, then.
I am not sure what group of people exists that likes to see bias, even in a mild form, directed against them. I have defintely heard the core of your argument in the Jewish community in the past. Essentially you are saying "If it's not violent, and not directed against you personally (and not as bad as the Shoah) you are being hypersensitive."
I am very vulnerable to that argument. I've never been the target of physical violence for being Jewish, I've experienced only mild discrimination in employment. I've heard my share of anti-Semitic remarks, but you know those aren't especially pernicious. People my age (30s) who grew up in the former Soviet Union were regularly targets for violence, attacks on the street, discrimination at school, all of that stuff. Things that aren't a part of life for most Jews who live in the largest Jewish community in the world, in the US.
Still, I think it's worthwhile to admit to feelings of fear when you think the white racists are recruiting young people in your neighborhood. It's at least honest. Is that not something you would find a little scary? (I am assuming that you are Jewish, is that right?) I mean, it's not a direct threat of physical violence, it's just something that has the potential to become that.
I am intrigued and annoyed by what you have to say about cultural authenticity and the character of what is genuine in literature. This is a lot of comment space though, so perhaps I'll write a post about it.
Posted by: balabusta | August 28, 2005 at 03:02 AM
PD, I'm wondering why it's such a bad thing to solidify one's ethnic/religious identity. That seems to be what you're really objecting to. Is writing about one's Shabbat meals (and, even more, cooking and eating them) really such a bad thing? Or does it have to have the "correct" motivation for you? What would be the correct motivation? I think there are lots of possible reasons for enjoying keeping Shabbat and cooking meals for it, including doing it to obey the mitzvah of celebrating Shabbat.
Also, I think you're engaging in a serious misreading of Balabusta's remark that she edited a book on Polish antisemitism. You seem to be assuming that you know why she did this - in your words because it "solidifies ethnic identity through identification with second-hand accounts of historic antisemitism." How do you know that this is why she did it?
Posted by: Rebecca | August 28, 2005 at 01:05 PM
Rebecca, I'll answer you first since I can do that briefly, and then get back to balabusta.
I don't think it's bad to solidify ethnic identity - I think it's great. I summarized "You respond to the charge that you solidify ethnic identity by imagining yourself on the receiving end of antisemitism" That's a comment about method, not the goal.
Solid identity requires dealing with the contrast between historical memory and present reality; confusion of the two isn't an indication of sensitivity and it's a cheap way to treat both history and the present.
"You seem to be assuming that you know why she did this - in your words because it "solidifies ethnic identity through identification with second-hand accounts of historic antisemitism."
I haven't a clue why she did it, and dont think I do. I said that it's an act that has this effect (nothing wrong with that either). The comment was about the context in which she brought up the point. Editing this book doesn't demonstrate awareness of the difference between Poland and the US, but failing to see that editing this book bears no relation to ability to assess Harry Potter levelheadedly (except perhaps to argue that one is not so doing) confirms the charge.
Posted by: pd | August 28, 2005 at 02:57 PM
I edited the book for money, though I admit that I really enjoyed getting to know the author and the book. Since you seem to be my only really faithful reader, pd, you probably remember my mentioning that. One of the members of my dissertation committee from nine years ago hooked me up with the editing job. My work was on Western rather than Eastern Europe, I don't read or speak Polish or anything, but I'm good at helping writers in English as a second language make their ideas clear.
I brought up the book and the fliers in the spirit of admitting to past mentions of anti-Semitism. I think these were the two other occasions in the whole of the blog on which I've mentioned anti-Semitism, so I cited them, not because they give me some special insight into Harry Potter. I was trying to make the case that I have only rarely dealt with anti-Semitism on the blog, even though I have posted a lot on other aspects of Jewish life. My ideas about Harry Potter are from reading 19th and 20th century British fiction, some Sandor Gilman (though that was awhile ago, don't know what he's writing these days), the Harry Potter books, and of course, a hefty chunk of the extensive fan fiction.
Posted by: balabusta | August 28, 2005 at 03:50 PM
"I also write here a bit about Jewish religion and spirituality, Jewish languages, and parenting as a Jew. I have mentioned anti-Semitism on this blog at least twice in the past--I edited a book on the history of Polish anti-Semitism in the spring, for example, and I've said in passing that my community has been targeted with white supremacist anti-Semitic fliers."
AT least twice - that was to mention how sparing you've been with such mentions in the past?
Teh interesting thing is that I doubt this revisionism is intentional; you have rewritten my points to you and reframed them so that they say the opposite of what I wrote several times in succession (more when I get back later), and I think you do that sort of reframing as a matter of course. A useful standpoint for fiction, a very un-useful one for social commentary.
Posted by: pd | August 28, 2005 at 04:12 PM
"At least twice" and "in the spirit of admitting past mentions" kind of fit together, don't they?
If I'm getting what you are trying to say wrong, feel free to clarify. I appreciate your civility.
Posted by: balabusta | August 28, 2005 at 05:24 PM
pd,
I keep meaning to ask you:
You are so authoritative about what things are not authentic expressions of Jewish identity and what things are not notable expressions of antisemitism.
Could you please give all of us here some postive examples of authentic Jewish identity and bona fide antisemtism? The fact that you have not volunteered any such information for all to evaluate makes your attacks over here read as nothing better than, well, nasty attacks.
And while you're at it, since you brought it up, could you please fill us in on how to have authentic African American identities?
Posted by: red diaper baby | August 29, 2005 at 09:38 AM
"At least twice" and "in the spirit of admitting past mentions" kind of fit together, don't they?"
Usually, when people try to convey rarity, they say "at most" not "at least."
Posted by: pd | August 29, 2005 at 03:11 PM
The family of the Patil twins, Parvati and Padma (the girls Harry and Ron took to the banquet or ball or whatever it was in Book 4) must have hailed originally from somewhere on the Indian sub-continent. So although it's not much, it isn't true that Rowling has completely ignored the immigrants from former colonial possessions.
I have a bit more to say about the exchanges above, but I tried posting something last week, and it failed... so I don't want to type for an hour and then find out it won't work. If this works, I'll try again later with more comments.
Posted by: Barbara Kimmelman | October 10, 2005 at 03:56 PM
Well, it worked, so I may as well try again. I was first of all very interested in what balabusta had to say about the fanfiction of young women on the web, and how some of it was quite good. I had not really done much web-surfing with regard to the Potter books, but I finished the sixth one very quickly and wanted to share some of my ideas about it with people, and no one around me, including my own kids, had finished it. So after a few weeks, I went on-line to see what folks were thinking, and maybe to share what I was thinking, and there were all these incredible sites, some of them x-rated. I was astonished at my own astonishment... How could I have not known this was happening? I was especially intrigued by the fanfiction, although I did not read any of it--I do most of my webstuff from work, and I had not time really to be sitting around reading this stuff, nor did I think it was an appropriate use of my work time--figured my employer would agree with me. But the reason I'm so interested is that I too create a good deal of fan fiction, certainly of late concerning the Potter books, but based on other literature in the past. The difference is that I act it out, I do not write them down. I do it when driving in the car, and sometimes just to unwind on the porch at home. I'm sure when I do it in the car folks pull up along side and think I'm some loon talking to myself. Which I am, I suppose. When I actually did start to write a novel with characters Ihad created myself (never finished it) I "wrote" most scenes as I've described, acting them out in the car. When I finally put them on paper and shared them with a friend., he noted that there was no description of setting, of the furniture, etc., just the dialogue, a result, I expect of creating the story out loud while driving.
The other aspect of your posting that interested me was the stuff about racism and anti-Semitism. I had never thought about Snape as Jewish--seems to me only the hooked nose puts him in league with the Nazi propaganda pictures. Many Jews are dark, but Snape is hardly the only black-haired man in the books--Harry has black har, as did Sirius. But I do agree that anti-racists need to be vigilant in their anti-racism, and examining an enormously popular and potentially influential series of books for these kinds of messages seem to me entirely appropriate. Saying to Jews "Oh, you're too sensitive" is an age-old form of Jew-baiting. If it has its intended effect, it will result in the suppression of justified exposure of anti-Semitism. What I saw here was an invitation to discuss, to ask others how they felt about it, hardly an unjustified and sefl-serving rant.
I was a bit more sensitive to the fatness issue. She seems not to much like fat people--she shared that with Roald Dahl and any number of other English writers. But I think we just have to accept the fact that as creative and wonderful as are Rowling's books, one reason they are enormously successful is that they fit the formulae for fiction best-sellers for kids; the main character is male, not female, and even within the central group of three friends, two are male, only one is female. James's group of friends was all male. Although there are some other strong female characters, it is true that McGonagall has receded, Tonks did not take central stage,and the male professors moved to the center. This last book was essentially about the relationships among Harry, Snape, and Dumbledore. The rest was gravy. (I had to make at least one mention of food, given what the blog is about.) As I said, doesn't mean the books aren't great; but we know they're great precisely because in some really key ways, they fit a mold.
Posted by: Barbara Kimmelman | October 10, 2005 at 04:53 PM
Hi Barbara, I am sorry I didn't see your comment until now. I don't know if you have ever read the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey-Maturin novels. I recall a scene in which Maturin stumbles on a writer acting out scenes from one of his own gothic novels. It is hilarious, but I also wondered whether that was what O'Brian did himself. Your story reminds me of that.
I think you have it right about Rowling. Anti-Semitism is not her issue. She tends to trade in visual shorthand with the characters. What you said about fitting a mold is right on. I *was* inviting discussion as you thought and I'm glad you jumped into it!
The X-rated fan fiction that I like the best is written by women, for women, almost entirely about male characters. I think there is something quite weird about it. I wonder why we as women can project ourselves into men's heads. Or is it that straight women like men's bodies, and it's just about that? I've really been enjoying the fan fiction phenomenon though. I like all the ways that people can speculate through narrative.
Posted by: balabusta | October 16, 2005 at 11:10 PM
Hi. Oh my goodness. Another Balabusta slash fiction fan with a Snape fixation! Are we one another? Or is this just a coincidence?
Anyway.
Hadn't considered Snape being Jewish before, but it does make a certain amount of sense. Of course, there actually are Anglican English types aplenty who look like that...
Rowling is sometimes good with ethnicity, sometimes kind of off. Like most fantasy writers she projects a lot of racial issues onto nonhuman creatures. The thing she's probably done I was most impressed by was the backstory development in Order of the Phoenix--I'll be if Sirius' relatives don't have a distinct ring of upper-crust English pro-fascists from before the war!
Anyway, greatly enjoyed this...
Posted by: balabusta in blue jeans | October 30, 2005 at 09:41 PM
I liked your comments on Snape. He is just one in a long line of racial stereotypes: Shakespeare's Shylock and Dickens' Scrooge
Posted by: Ian Harkness | November 22, 2005 at 07:11 PM
Professor Snape is a racial stereotype. His sallow skin and hooked nose place him amongst the ‘inferior evil races’ of Jews, Arabs and Eastern Europeans, and other stereotype bogey men in the prejudiced unconscious of the Northern European mind. It is not unusual to find this kind of character in literature which was written at the height of Empire (1600-1920) when racism was at its zenith, but more surprising in what is supposed to be a ‘politically correct age’ – and especially in a children’s book. But this regression to the infamous past is perhaps one of the reasons why the novel is popular. This type of racial stereotype can be find in Shakespeare, Dickens and Conan Doyle; for instance Shylock and Scrooge.
Posted by: Ian Harkness | November 22, 2005 at 07:14 PM
Interesting but I don't see this at all. Snape grew up very poor and underprivileged, as indicated by his Spinner's End home in the slums. His skinny/lanky physique is a result of not having the privilege of pigging out on food, and as an adult he still eats lightly. He didn't grow up in high class society, so taking care of his hair was never a necessity. Or if you want to point to modern times, look at "nerds", who have the stereotype of not showering enough (and I think Snape's intelligence puts him the geek or nerd category). He's angry for many reasons, including being beaten up the Mauraders and having to babysit wizarding children who don't take the art of Potion-making as seriously as him. The hooked nose is something that has been prevalent for wizards in many fantasy stories - in The Hobbit, Tolkien wrote Gandalf had a sharp nose and bushy eyebrows. His skin is that color due to living and working down in dungeons - even Harry pointed out in OOTP that young Severus looked like a wilted plant that didn't get enough sunlight. So I hope you can go back to reading the Harry Potter series and take it for what it's worth rather than being annoyed by a characterization that has little to do with religion.
Posted by: Pudella | December 03, 2006 at 01:34 PM
I came across this by chance. Fascinating! Rowling may not *literally* have made Snape Jewish (he's a working-class Yorkshire lad with a VERY English surname, though his mother's name could be Jewish); however, he is indeed given an overload of stereotypical attributes of the literary Jewish villain. The most charitable reading of this is that JKR knows exactly what she's doing if a) she is going to reveal that Snape was on the side of the Light after all in book 7 and b) she therefore used the anti-semitic signifiers *deliberately* to underline her point that prejudice is deep-rooted and the noble golden Gryffindors are far from immune to it.
I do hope this is what she's been up to. If not, we not only get an anti-semitic stereotype but a deeply reactionary contrast between our one major Working Class character and Hagrid the happy peasant who has no ideas above his station and is True to Hisself. I hate the idea that her main villain after Voldemort would be a working class intellectual who looks like a Jew.
You might be interested in a few of my fics - and I'd certainly be intrigued to know what you think of them.
1) An update of Chaucer's 'Prioress's Tale' (the anti-semitic blood-libel story he gives his none-too-admirable Prioress) which is at fanfiction.net. 2) 'Letter from Exile one Merciful Morning' is the oldest Snape-Hermione story on the net. It wasn't the very first (the girl who wrote that has deleted her story as unworthy juvenilia) but LFE was the first to take a feminist line on Snape-Hermione. That's at Ashwinder, Sycophant Hex. 3) Also at SH, in 'Occulumency', 'To Sever the Lining from a Cloud' - which is all about Beauty and Ugliness and their surprising mutual dependency.
Posted by: Textualsphinx | March 16, 2007 at 10:48 PM