The Trope of the ‘Good’ Abusive Mentor
The disgruntled wizard with a dark secret. The Kung Fu master with a quick jab. The doctor with a stinging barb. All over media, you find them hurling clever insults and berating the main character in front of the entire class. They operate under the assumption that strict discipline is what’s needed to teach their students. This professor’s words cut to keep the main character in line.
We are at first expected to dislike this teacher, loathe them even. They are the object of the main character’s hatred, and we are there with them hating every minute of this teacher’s “education.” Somewhere in the book or show, however, a turn happens. We learn that this educator was good all along, and the abuse, although not always absolved, is recontextualized in a way that makes us empathize with them more.
This trope of the “good” abusive teacher has been around media for a long time, and it has some pretty unsettling historical roots. As society becomes more tolerant and our understanding of education evolves, we might want to question the application of this trope in media more thoroughly.
The most quintessential example of this trope is of course professor Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series. Severus is a contemptuous man who spends the majority of seven books making the protagonist’s life hell. He gloats over the possibility of Harry Potter being expelled in the second book and assumes Harry is lying about not putting his name in the Goblet of Fire for the attention. There are many more examples of this behavior in the series, and they paint a clear picture of a bitter man willing to abuse his students to satisfy a personal vendetta.
This impression is completely turned on its head in the final book when our protagonist learns that he had been a triple agent for the mentor character Albus Dumbledore the entire time. Harry’s opinion of Snape is changed so dramatically by this information that we learn in the epilogue that he names one of his kids after him (specifically Albus Severus). We walk away feeling better about the character, especially in the movie franchise where Alan Rickman's Severus Snape is portrayed as far less cruel than in the books.
Harry Potter was massively influential. Although this trope existed well before J.K. Rowling (see Miss Hardbroom in The Worst Witch), her work definitely helped inspire characters in the Severus Snape mold. The TV show Shadow and Bone (2021 — present), based on the Grisha novel trilogy, has a character named Baghra (Zoë Wanamaker) who teaches the protagonist magic in a stern and abusive way. She hits her with her cane and berates her abilities. The character Tissaia de Vries in The Witcher TV series (2019 — present) has an undeniably abusive teaching style. She lets her student’s hands become disfigured and for lightning to strike their bodies. Tissaia is so sadistic that she turns her rejects into eels. “Sometimes the best a flower can do for us is die,” Tissaia says of the transmogrified students.
Another great example is the Guardians of The Galaxy (2014) film. The father figure to protagonist Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker), is an alien ravager who raised Quill in a physically demanding environment. “When I picked you up on Terra,” Yondu lectures Quill, “these boys of mine wanted to eat you. They never tasted any Terran before. I stopped them. You’re alive because of me.”
Father of the year, right there.
In the first film, he never shows much kindness towards his adopted son — instead opting to throw a barb or joke his way, which is an upbringing that most likely explains Quill’s own detached outlook.
We see this trope outside of science fiction and fantasy as well, especially in medical and legal procedurals. Professor Loftus (Ernest Clark) in the comedy Doctor in the House (1969–1991) is so intense that he paralyzes a student with fear just so that he will become doctor-worthy. Doctor Cox (John C. McGinley) in the ABC series Scrubs (2001–2010) demeans and berates all of his medical interns to have them be their best. Professor Annalise Keating (Viola Davis), in the law show How To Get Away With Murder (2014–2020), pushes her favorite students into the legal deep-end, having them solve cases as first-year law students. These cases are grueling both because they compromise the students’ ethics and because Annalise is quite demanding.
And of course, there is Dr. Gregory House — the titular character in the FOX show House M.D. (2004–2012). The show is about a genius doctor who is bitter and cruel to all those around him. House is the Head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Although he is not technically a teacher for most of the series, he serves in a mentor role to the other team members. He is undeniably mean to them and his patients, hurling unkind insults to nearly everybody. “How much do you get for a massage now, without the happy ending?,” he asks a colleague in orthopedics. Yet he is kept on as a staff member, despite these abuses, because of his results. When grilled by a board member (Chi McBride) on why they should keep him, Dean of Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) reluctantly informs them that he solves the cases no one else can (see season 1 Episodes 14 & 15).
A component of this trope is often that the teacher’s educational style is proven correct by the narrative. The “tough love” they provide many times helps the protagonist master a vital skill set to overcome a trial or the Big Bad. Baghra in Shadow and Bone is mean to her students, but we have every indication that she gets results. “One time, Baghra released a hive of bees on me,” a character named Marie (Jasmine Blackborow) tells the protagonist. “The worst part is, it worked,” says another named Nadia (Gabrielle Brooks). “It really did,” continues Marie, “I could summon at will after that.”
In another example, Quill in the Guardians of the Galaxy does appear to have learned immensely from his adopted father figure Yondu. He comes into the first movie knowing how to fight and pilot spaceships — skills he undoubtedly learned from Yondu while growing up among his ravagers. “I had a pretty cool dad. What I am trying to say is sometimes that thing you’re searching for your whole life. It’s right there by your side all along. You don’t even know it.” This comment is said during a massive funeral for Yondu, where scores and scores of ravagers launch fireworks to honor his life. We are clearly meant to see him as a hero in this scene and not as an abusive maniac who kept his “son” in a terrible environment rather than placing him somewhere without a galaxy’s worth of trauma.
Even when the abuse of mentors itself does not lead to better outcomes, it’s often hand waved away as justified within the context of the story. Snape’s animosity towards Harry Potter hurts the protagonist academically. In fact, Harry appears to have performed better in his O.W.L.S (a magical standardized test) without Snape there. Yet, the narrative's decision to glorify this vindictive potion master in the epilogue undercuts this point. While Snape was a detriment to Harry Potter’s mental health, we clearly are supposed to set those feelings aside when the book comes to a close.
There is a concept in media analysis called “framing,” which focuses on how elements in the story encourage certain interpretations. The text (shorthand for all works, not just books) may not directly say something, but how characters or objects are positioned in the narrative or scene reinforces various ideas and themes. When a character says, or doesn’t say something, it can be just as important as telling the reader a position directly.
When we look at how these stern and sadistic teachers are framed — often proven “right” or “good” by the narrative — that tells us something about what these authors think about teaching in general. They provide direct examples about how the “tough love” approach is a valid educational style, and that is controversial, to say the least. While an author can merely “decide” that an educational approach works through the act of writing a few words, real life is far more complicated.
The thing about universal education (i.e., the idea that every person in a society should be educated as a matter of right) is that it’s a relatively new experiment. For much of human history, education was an asset in the hands of a select few (e.g., the rich, the religious classes, or, on a limited basis, those pursuing a trade).
Universal education only began in the US in the 19th century (see Horace Mann), and the initial product looked very different from today. Public classrooms could be sparsely furnished with supplies, and teachers did not always have much more education than the students themselves. Public education has evolved over the last two centuries to be more expansive, not just in the US but also in countries worldwide. Yet, historically speaking, we have not been managing this massive system of public education very long, which means that a lot of practices we employ in schools will not survive the test of time, as our understanding of education changes.
Until very recently, the idea that children needed a tough hand to learn was the dominant educational narrative, and it’s one that by no means has been supplanted in its entirety. Corporal punishment, or the idea that guardians, including teachers, can inflict physical pain as a form of discipline, remains quite popular in the United States for minors. There are 19 states where corporal punishment is permitted in both public and private schools, and parents are given a great deal of legal leeway in this matter as well.
The problem is that this “laying down the law” approach seems to go against our evolving understanding of childhood development. Ample evidence indicates that hitting children can lead to many problems ranging from increased aggression to antisocial behavior. It doesn’t appear to be very effective either. As Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor write in a meta-study about the effects of spanking specifically: “Studies continue to find that spanking predicts negative behavior changes — there are no studies showing that kids improve.”
There’s also the grim reality that the use of corporal punishment falls along pre-existing lines of inequity. For example, Black students are singled out for such discipline at higher rates than their white counterparts. A 2016 peer-reviewed paper on corporal punishment in schools by scholars Elizabeth T. Gershoff and Sarah A. Font found this disparity in their findings, most prominently in several states across the South. The paper remarks on the following: “Black children in Alabama and Mississippi are at least 51% more likely to be corporally punished than White children in over half of school districts, while in one-fifth of both states’ districts, Black children are over 5 times (500%) more likely to be corporally punished.”
Despite this new information, some still employ the “tough love” approach and are annoyed by our society's justified skepticism over it. There are hundreds of quora posts, mommy blogs, celebrities, and politicians devoted to a pro-corporal punishment stance. One example is this chilling quora post where an abuse victim seems to be rationalizing their abuse, writing:
“…I would like to say that I have never been beaten and my parents are pretty great, but they did hit me when I was a kid. The kind of hitting where the parent knots their fingers in your hair and yanks you over sideways (and then your swollen scalp hurts like hell) in order to get you to obey, and then they smack your face numb and your face and mouth get all puffy and red. I’d like to make it clear that you can still be a good person and hit your kid — one example being my dad…”
This is the context in which most people still perceive education. Many of our favorite authors grew up during a time where teachers could abuse their power far more directly than today. JK Rowling, for example, modeled Snape after a real teacher, saying in an interview that he was “loosely based on a teacher [she herself] had.” Rowling would have gone to school in the 70s and 80s, and Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo would have done so in the 80s and 90s. These authors are not directly advocating for more lenient corporal punishment policies, but it’s clear that the “trial by fire” stance to education has seeped into their work, even if subconsciously. Whether recreating the trauma they endured as children or just a personally held belief, these writers present a style of education that forces the protagonist to either brave the fire or get burned.
Going back to the example of Harry Potter, consider how the environment was framed: many people longed to go to Hogwarts as children, so much so that “I lost my Hogwarts invitation in the mail” became a meme. Hogwarts, though, would be a terrible place to go to school. Even ignoring Severus Snape for a moment, it was an environment ripe with abuse at every turn: the children served detention in a forest with murderous spiders; took a standardized test so stressful it caused regular breakdowns; dodged harmful poltergeists in the halls; braved creatures and enchantments that caused serious bodily harm. This was all part of the school’s standard curriculum — well before including Dark Lords and escaped trolls that make their way into the school for plot reasons.
Now, Rowling was not telling us directly in the text that this abuse was acceptable. She was bullied as a child. In many ways, she created a franchise about a child persevering against abusive teachers and guardians. She has gone on record saying that no one should date Snape and that he was not a good guy. She still managed to create a story, however, where not only does an abuser end up being lauded as a hero, but where an abusive environment is depicted as enchanting to visit. Headmaster Dumbledore was a terrible administrator, but he sure wasn’t framed that way. There were plenty of characters who sacrificed themselves during the Second Wizarding War that Harry could have named his child after — Cedric Diggory, Tonks, Fred, Dolby — but it was Severus Snape and Albus Dumbledore who ended up being given that particular honor.
Many of these teachers have these warm and fuzzy moments in the narrative where suddenly, all the cruelty they inflicted onto the protagonist and the world is softened by their heroic actions. In another example, not only is the teaching style of Baghra in Shadow & Bones effective, but she ends up being morally aligned against the series’ Big Bad. When we learn that the shadow summoner General Kirigan (Ben Barnes) has really been evil all along (you are shocked, I’m sure), Baghra tries to stop him from getting power at any cost. We, as the viewer, no longer see her as that jerk abusing teens so that they will learn magic, but as a hero, fighting to stop someone who is “really evil.”
When an abusive teacher is framed to be “good” in the narrative, we need to consider what message is being imparted to the viewer, and if we agree with the moral, it's preaching.
You might disagree with my interpretation of several of these texts. The nature of media analysis is that you try to make your information as well-supported as possible, but that there are other valid interpretations out there. I tried including many different texts to show that this is not a problem of one or two works but a trend in media overall. We have too many abusive teachers and mentors in media whose educational styles are proven “right” by the narrative.
We need to question this pervasive narrative that abuse is okay if it gets results. Snape may have secretly devoted the latter half of his life to a good cause, but he was an abusive teacher who emotionally and physically traumatized countless students, and we maybe shouldn’t look at him as a hero. Baghra’s teaching style may have been effective, but it came at the cost of her abusing the students in her charge. Dr. House may have correctly identified countless illnesses and injuries, but he was verbally abusive to coworkers and patients alike.
Abuse is not okay, even if it gets results, and it bears emphasizing that the results they achieve in these narratives are a fabrication of the author's imagination. In reality, the “tough love” approach may work for a minority of students, but statistically, it's a failure in real life. This educational style is not that effective, and it tends to generate a host of separate problems on its own.
It’s not that abuse shouldn’t be shown in media — in fact, it must be shown. Abuse is regrettably a core facet of our society, and we need art that reflects that reality. However, how those stories frame their characters deserves scrutiny. We need to question who a story decides should be the hero and what earns them that moniker.
Otherwise, we will end up allowing the vilest people into our hearts, and there is nothing magical about that.