In this week’s Harry Potter episode, we analyze the series through the theme of shame. We look at how several beloved Harry Potter characters interact with shame very differently - from Neville Longbottom to Severus Snape, Ron Weasley, Book 5 caps lock Harry, and the most admirable Luna Lovegood.
We also look at the function of shame in House Elf culture and wish an element of shame had been integrated into the concept of Dementors.
We start this week’s episode with a conversation between Neville and his grandmother, and ultimately back Neville’s claim of not being ashamed (it’s the others who should be ashamed!).
Listen to the episode here:
Below are a couple of our episode segments that we wanted to dive into a little more with some resources.
Character:
I decided to choose Severus Snape for our Character Segment this week because he is just so shrouded in shame. Since he harbors shame from being bullied, how he treated Lily, and his Death Eater past, I wanted to think on what it would be like to see the face of Harry - someone who makes the things he's most ashamed of come flooding back - every single day.
I wonder what Professor Snape was like before Harry came to Hogwarts. Was he less abusive? Or has his intense shame always felt acute and always led him to hatred?
Chris brought up a fan base that reads Snape as a transgender woman, and how that reading could deepen Severus’ feeling of shame extending back to childhood.
Here are some great points made in The Shockingly Convincing Argument That Severus Snape Is Transgender:
"Snape is a character who inhabits a fluid, ambiguous position for most of the narrative—always between two worlds, and often quite literally lurking in the shadows of a room, outside looking in. Snape reads as someone in the closet, and tragically so." - Ensnapingthesenses
"When Snape was coming of age, she was the outcast while her male peers—Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter—banded together as a gang of Gryffindor goofs. In Chapter 28 of The Order of the Phoenix, the Marauders, as they called their clique, publicly disgrace Snape by levitating her into the air, causing her underwear to be exposed." - Diana Tourjee
These were parallels I had never thought of until Chris showed me this article. If you haven't heard of this reading of Snape before, we definitely recommend reading the whole article here!
Compelling Question:
This week, I brought the question, "How do you see shame influence House Elves?". Upon thinking about the question myself, I saw the anthropological idea of high-shame cultures and possible parallels with seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) from my own Japanese cultural background. If you aren't very familiar with seppuku, here is a sliver of info:
“From the Kamakura period (1192-1333), seppuku was established as a method of suicide. Seppuku is described as a method to expiate guilt, to apologize for mistakes, to avoid stigma, to atone for friends, and to prove... honesty.”
You can also see the intro for Suicide and Culture in Japan: A Study of Seppuku as an Institutionalized Form of Suicide by Toyomasa Fusé.
Another thing we mentioned in the episode was this amazing fan art of the Chinese Noble and Most Ancient House of Black!
This fan art is one of the best I've seen and now both Chris and I want to read the Black family through this lens in the future.
Were any of these ideas new to you? Let us know what you think and where you see shame in HP.
...and until next week - GEEK OUT!
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