Snapedom

The same thing happened about 150 years later in England when the Beatles became famous. They grew up in Spinner’s End-style working class row houses and had the accents and behavior to prove it. They refused all attempts by record company executives and other “experts” to make them over by adopting upper-class accents, acting more refined and less smart-alecky, or taking fancier stage names such as “Rory Storm” or “Tommy Steele” (except for Ringo, who had already changed his name before joining the band). They never covered up or apologized for their backgrounds. In fact, they sometimes exaggerated their Scouse accents to sound more working class and Northern. (People from Northern England were considered “hicks from the sticks” at that time.) When United Artists wanted to have their voices dubbed by professional actors in A Hard Day’s Night, they flatly refused. They were so effective at forcing people to accept them as they were that when Yellow Submarine was made a few years later and their characters were voiced by professional actors, the actors had to emulate the Beatles’ Liverpool accents.

Like Beethoven before them, the Beatles’ demand for respect caused a permanent change in English society. Never again did working class rock musicians try to hide their origins.

Mind you, I’m not saying all five of these men were not still subjected to classism. They were. But the treatment they received was vastly superior to what they would have gotten if they’d accepted the valuations of their “betters” and gone around cringing and apologizing for their existences.

One major reason Our Own Dear Severus got pushed around as if he had wheels was because he bought the lie that he was inferior for being working class and a half-blood. I want to make it clear I’m not blaming the victim for his own mistreatment here. Bigots and bullies are responsible for their own bad behavior. That’s no reason to make their job easier by going along with their disparaging valuation of you.

One of the reasons these books are so screwed up is because there isn’t anybody of great talent and lower status who has the guts to spit on the wizarding world’s prejudices and demand equal treatment regardless of their blood status or class. Hermione and/or Severus could have taken on that role, but they sold out instead and became co-opted by the very system that oppressed them, as dreamingjewel pointed out above. To paraphrase Abraham Maslow, Hermione may be a happy, smiling, contented slave, while Severus is an angry, bitter, resentful slave, but they’re still both slaves.

BTW, has it occurred to anyone else that James’ and Sirius’ bullying of Severus was a campaign of hate crimes? It qualifies because he was a different class, blood status, and House from them. I realize the concept of “hate crimes” didn’t exist in the 1970s, but just because something doesn’t have a name doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.