.Why Don’t You Stay.

after seeing The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes last night, honestly what has been on my mind a lot was if the love between lucy gray and snow was real, and from that it felt it could only be answered by whether snow was inherently evil or he became evil.

the easiest answer feels to be that he was always purely selfish and lacked a great deal of empathy. all things seemed to point to that, but one thing that always threw a wrench in that idea for me was the scene where snow breaks down crying after looking in sejanus' storage. i think this scene is particularly important because by panem standards he did the correct thing. his friend was a rebel and he reported it. by panem's standards, he shouldn't feel guilty, and yet he still does. this seems to indicate some sort of moral compass in him.

i think then the question leads to why snow became so evil. i think it is a combination of inherent self-serving traits and the environment he was raised in. i think a key concept here is "explanation, not excuse", which i learned from a video essay by Trope Anatomy in regards to Cassie Howard (link below). experiencing war and hardship at such a young age and later growing up around negative influences, such as Dr. Gaul and really all of the capitol itself, shaped his worldview and are direct factors that lead him to make the decisions he does. it doesn't excuse them though. his upbringing didn't force him to make these terrible choices, they only gave him more reason to. yet he still could've chosen to be good, as people like sejanus did.

him becoming pure evil in the end felt like a defense mechanism to cope with his own guilt. an incredibly messed up and extreme one at that. i think in the end his distain for the districts and their people doesn't come solely from them being "district" (although that definitely has something to do with his hatred) but rather them being people. dr. gaul taught him humans are all destined to show their true, evil nature, and this snow did. i think continuing the games was a way of proving to himself again and again that it was not just him that was evil, but all humans. it probably soothed the guilt within him.

while he may not have began as pure evil, he did become it. he's evil, full stop. he can't be redeemed. but i think TBOSAS gives us reason as to why he is like this. and while it may have been easy to view snow as forever and always evil, i believe in a way snow having this agency and development into cruelty just makes him all the more evil because it shows he DID have a choice, and chose evil. a great Screen Rant quote that really made me start thinking about this is "the overarching antagonist of the Hunger Games [is] Panem, not Snow" (link below).

SOURCES:

Trope Anatomy: Freudian Casse: How Far an Excuse Can Go

Screen Rant: Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes Changes How You See Snow (But He’s Still Evil) https://screenrant.com/ballad-songbirds-snakes-president-snow-changes-evil/#:~:text=Still%2C%20the%20purpose%20behind%20Suzanne,Games%20as%20Panem%2C%20not%20Snow.

he's high middle class, he faces eviction, hunger, starvation. he knows what sound the bombs make when landing on buildings filled with people and how to hide in bunkers. he knows disease and fear. sone of these things are extremely relatable to most people, some less so, but still there are people, plenty, who aren't strangers to these situations.

he is us. every single one of us who can afford to sit in our homes and scroll our tiny phones and eat at least once a day, dress appropiately for the weather, even if the clothes don't fit or are old.

he is (we are) shaped by the enviorment. he simply chooses to navigate it, instead of changing the course. unlike sejeanus, who is in the same position, but, aware of his privilage, tries to use it to do good, Snow wants more and more and more. safety over what's right. comfort (or, at least the ilusion of it, because there's nothing truly confortable in his life and the path he chooses except familiarity, a road walked before and laid before him more evenly than the alternative) over morality.

Graham Hamilton as Luke Skywalker BTS Shots of The Book of Boba Fett

RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE ↳book > screen

“I’m not like you. I can’t afford to be reckless. I don’t have a family who will support me. I don’t go about shoving who I am in everyone’s faces and dreaming about a career in fucking politics, so I can be more scrutinized and picked apart by the entire godforsaken world. I can love you and want you and still not want that life.

I’m allowed, all right, and it doesn’t make me a liar; it makes me a man with some infinitesimal shred of self-preservation, unlike you, and you don’t get to come here and call me a coward for it.” 

Love isn’t complicated. But what’s complicated is you. Let your heart fly. You’ve caged it for too long.