Hunger Games/Harry Potter

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Now, I haven't read Hunger Games (although B has and says he thinks I might like it), but I have been reading some of the hype about the movie. This morning's offering, in which so called fans are shocked by the way the casting director chose black actors to play black characters, had me thinking.

It took me an astonishingly long time, as I believe I've mentioned, to work out what was wrong with Emma Watson as Hermione. Her acting's fine, she fits theoretically, but in my head Hermione was black. There's nothing in the books to contradict that impression (I went back and checked).

Do you think it was anticipation of the same sort of outburst that led to Watson, rather than a black actor, being cast? Or do you think the casting director merely had a different mental image? I'm hoping the latter, but even that's a problem, when the immediate mental image of a hero is white.

Oh, and just to make Martha relevant, I'd just like to say, I'm still hoping for a non-white Doctor. It could happen, we've been told it could.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I read that article yesterday and it baffled me somewhat - Rue in the book is very definitely not white, ditto Thresh, so anyone raising an outcry over those two might as well write "I did not pay any attention to the words in the book" 100 times instead of commenting; Cinna is so vaguely described that it seemed perfectly plausible for him to be black, or anything else. One of his colleagues is blue IIRC (bodypaint, but it's obvious in the text that skin colour doesn't matter at all in the Capitol).

Hermione, though, was born in 1979 to two dentists who named her Hermione Jean, significantly reducing the likelihood of her being anything other than white and middle-class. She's attending school in a country where 90%* of people are white, and we know for sure that some of her fellow pupils are not white and are represented in the films, although the recasting of Lavender was bizarre. Given the amount of mudblood-hate shown towards Hermione in the scripts, from the ultra-white Draco, I can't imagine they'd have wished to cast a non-white actress. That would be one heck of a publicity row. (And I think that tension isn't something you could just drop from the plots, it's too pervasive.)

* 2001 census. I can't find the 1991 figures, which would be more relevant in this case, but it won't be significantly different.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ah yes - and one of Draco's gang does have a mildly racist go at Angelica later saying her hair looks like worms.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Equally the effort Hermione goes to in the books to straighten/calm her bushy hair could be seen differently if she's black...

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Aha! That's why I thought she was white. Because I've never seen the term "bushy" used in reference to Afro hair, it's always been a description of the way white people's hair looks when it's curly.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I suspect the fact that I also believed her to be from a reasonably nice area of Birmingham, which on further investigation I seem to have made up, might have had something to do with it. Growing up in the midlands, I think 90% white is slightly odd.

I take your point about the mudblood hate though.