Casting The Role Of Severus Snape Raises Complicated Questions About Representation
The Harry Potter fandom is voicing concerns over the announcement that British actor Paapa Essiedu has been cast in the role of Hogwarts’ most feared potions professor, Severus Snape. While surface level complaints hinge on accuracy to original descriptions of the character, or the insistence that Adam Driver embodies those very same qualities, fans who are a bit more media literate have raised additional concerns about representation.
Throughout the series, Harry is consistently suspicious of Severus Snape for unnamed reasons that get sized up to ‘intuition’. He repeatedly treats Snape as a suspect despite a clear lack of evidence, only to later discover that Snape’s hostility toward him is in part due to a history of bullying at the hands of Harry’s father while the two were students at Hogwarts. Much of that abuse is directed at Snape’s appearance.
While J.K. Rowling runs into plenty of problematic territory on her own for comments made outside of her books, the stereotyping that takes place within the text itself draws on recycled Dickensian tropes our brains are in some ways pre-wired to respond to: good characters are beautiful, and bad characters are ugly.
While this technique is flawed as it is, both Dickens and Rowling have been accused of letting it slip into antisemitism and beyond, but descriptions of Snape typically avoid heavier scrutiny. Concerned fans instead flag that layering the same plot structure on top of a conventionally handsome actor of color like Essiedu creates a potential for negative racial undertones to seep into the story where they don’t naturally occur.
If HBO doesn’t include any other actors of color in the principal cast or add further substance to Harry’s suspicion of Snape, it could come across as blatant racial profiling. If they don’t adjust the backstory with James Potter, Harry would have to come to terms with a father who appears to be a racist, instead of one who is just a giant asshole.
My takeaway? If the producers are properly aware of these potential pitfalls, there’s still room for them to be gracefully avoided. Layer in enough diversity and character development to remove any implication of racism, and add nuance to Snape’s backstory so it doesn’t rely so heavily on his appearance. Lean into the areas of the story where discrimination is already addressed through magical metaphors and student activism, allowing Essiedu to deliver a performance that isn’t tokenized or exploitative because if audiences are already raising the alarm now, they will definitely make there voices heard over any missteps in the final product.
