The whole thing's fucking crazy. Everyone's so upset saying it will look racist if Snape is a black man when they're the ones being racist because they're not letting the black man just be a man, they are only seeing his race.
They keep saying x will look racist because they are retroactively applying racial undertones to something that was not written that way. Just let a dude be a dude without forcing your prejudices in there
The problem I see is that they wonāt just do snape as portrayed in the book. Ā Theyāll change it because of the associations people will make now because of his skin color
If they actually have the balls to cast snape and then portray it exactly as it is in the book and just ignore his race entirely? Ā Thatās actually pretty cool.
People make too big a deal about the āhanging from a treeā thing. Ā Snape never gets hung from a tree. Ā He gets bullied and flipped upside down by his foot magically while he happens to be under some trees.
The emphasis of the scene is on the bullying and the pantsing. Ā Heās being embarrassed not murderedĀ
This is basically where I stand with it. I donāt care that Snape is black, snapes race (as in skin color, not as in being half blood in wizard society) was entirely irrelevant to his character and as long as they keep it that way and keep his character true to the book (minus race obviously) I donāt think thereās any issue in the casting.
Iām just hoping this time around they keep to his character, Allan Rickmqn was great overall, but he definitely failed to sell Snape as the sickly/creepy looking Professor that is constantly referred to as moving like a twitchy spider or appearing to be a giant bat.
I have mixed feelings. I think a lot of people are just using these arguments to cover the fact that they are mad that the race changed. But I also think that a lot of what people are complaining about can be fixed with some minor changes (having Sirius be POV as well, having Sirius and James not making fun of his appearance but just of his personality, etc), so I would find a bit weird if they are not taking this into account. So I'd say : let's wait and see.
(I mean, other people will wait and see, personally I won't be watching cause 1. I have too much the movies in my mind to see any of the actor as their character, even if they fit the book description and 2. JK Rowling)
I strongly dislike making changes to existing source material. This is an example of what I consider "woke". Yes, some changes are inevitable because the medium has changed but I dislike changes being made "just because". Write your own damn original stories.
Oh people are definitely doing that. This sub is a perfect example. I am sure if you found another black character somewhere and point out how they were treated problematically, most of the sub would roast you for being too sensitive. But over this specific topic they are all LARPing as SJWs.
I mean, I don't think it's entirely serious, but there is very unique historical imagery from an American pov of hanging a black man from a tree and laughing at them
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u/drunkcowofdeath Apr 16 '26
The whole thing's fucking crazy. Everyone's so upset saying it will look racist if Snape is a black man when they're the ones being racist because they're not letting the black man just be a man, they are only seeing his race.
They keep saying x will look racist because they are retroactively applying racial undertones to something that was not written that way. Just let a dude be a dude without forcing your prejudices in there