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]

I always thought of Hermione as white, but I'm not sure why. Does it say in the first book somewhere that her hair is brown? My mum has stolen my copy, somebody else check.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I never imagined Hermione was black, but I always thought Neville was...it was quite a shock when he wasn't. I'm not sure if it was the description of him, or of his grandmother, who in my mind alway had a Nigerian lilt to her accent.

[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...

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

She's white on the book covers, including some which predate the films, and while there may not be specific contradiction of her being black in the books there are other characters who are quite explicitly not white and JKR generally makes sure we know - it would seem a bit odd to do that but not to mention that one of the principals was black. It's no more sinister than not having cast a black actor as Dumbledore.

I've no objection to a black Doctor as long as the actor is right for the part. Casting someone black just to make a point would be bad, though. Paterson Joseph might have been good (and may yet be), but it would be a great disservice both to him and to Matt Smith to suggest that Smith only got the part because people weren't ready for a black Doctor.

[arosoff.livejournal.com]

Yes - JKR is pretty explicit when characters are not white, which of course leads to the assumption that if she doesn't say, they're not.

There were also people upset that Dean Thomas was black.

Mind you I did read a blog post yesterday from someone upset that non-white actresses were explicitly excluded from the part of Katniss (I have encountered people who thought she might be mixed race but I think it's a reach). They argued that just because a character is portrayed one way in one form doesn't obligate you to maintain that portrayal, but the argument as a whole was a real reach, particularly as it applied to this book and movie. Someone like Jessica Alba maybe, but it had to be plausible that her mother and sister were blonde, unless they wanted to change the entire family. In addition, I am sure the same blogger would've objected to whitewashing Rue and Thresh--so it opens it to accusations that changing race is okay in the service of one goal only, and not as an artistic decision in general.

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

Hermione was white in my head.

I can't quite believe my eyes reading some of those tweets. It's always disconcerting when a character you supposedly 'know'* is portrayed differently but blimey and then some.

I remember being challenged when I saw Denzil Washington cast at the Prince in Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing and I think it taught me something. I think those tweeters who revealed such stupid sentiments need a lot more challenging.

(*which clearly they didn't)

[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.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

It says dark, I think, without actually checking, I will later if I remember.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Now you say that, I can totally imagine it.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Good point about the book covers.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

This is an area where I think I'd need to have read the books to have a reasonable opinion, so I bow to your superior knowledge.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

He was excellent, I remember not having realised that was such an attractive character before, because it's not so much what he says as how he says it.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

I think an argument that non-white actors should be allowed to audition for Katniss who is described as white might not carry a lot of weight. But I think the 'Katniss isn't white' argument has a lot of milage - all we get in the books is "straight black hair" and "olive skin", which fits mediterranean, or perhaps native american - she's not described as white at all. Her mother, yes, is pale and blonde, but that's all.

[arosoff.livejournal.com]

This is really dicey and the comments went into that--despite the whole 'one drop' rule, it's way more complicated than that. One of the commenters argued that a call for Caucasian actresses (how the call was worded, BTW, nto my wording) would exclude people who felt they had "too much" NA blood. I don't know about that. District 12 is pretty clearly characterized as Appalachian--which means predominantly white with maybe some NA blood mixed in. West Virginia is one of the whitest states in the US (Census stats, so self identification). Of course, I'm coming at it from a perspective that would identify those features as "white"--it would describe both of my sisters.

When it comes down to it, though, I think the producers/casting agents landed on Jennifer Lawrence because of Winter's Bone and that's the end of the story. She would have beaten out less identifiably white actresses on that basis alone.

[enismirdal.livejournal.com]

Currently halfway through book 2 of the Hunger Games trilogy (I started the first book...last Thursday. I have been almost totally incapable of putting the books down. Young adult fiction has that addictive quality...). I found I pictured Katliss as sort of Hispanic-looking (and less cute-pretty than the actress they cast, more sort of...harsh-pretty), and Thresh and Rue as more like South Asian than African-American...which I guess is because of my cultural reference points. When someone says "brown skin", I default to Asian rather than African/Caribbean because being British, we see more Asians day-to-day in most areas than African or Caribbean people. I had several Asian friends at school but there were almost no African-Caribbean kids at any of my schools. (Now I work in international development related research, I meet lots more Africans, which is also good!)

As for Cinna...I will admit I pictured him as being endearingly camp as my RP Elf character or Gok or someone like that. Which probably makes me an awful person or something, but that was how I see him and I adore him like that. So my gripe in the movies is not the actor's appearance or ethnic origin but the fact that he's just not pretty or effete enough for my expectations.

Almost as soon as I started reading the books, I admit I thought, "I don't want to see the movie of this in some ways, because I know they'll do things that don't meet my expectations based on the books." So although I've decided I'm too curious not to see the movies, I am expected to be disappointed multiple times. In the end, we all have our own mental images and even leaving out ethnicity, film directors rarely seem to cast characters who look like what my imagination expects!

Black Hermione would be awesome. :D

[absinthecity.livejournal.com]

I thought people were up in arms because there were more black actors cast as characters from the poor districts and that this was being construed as racist. Not that they merely imagined the characters differently.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

That would make more sense. Thse tweets are saying things like 'I don't care she's dead now I know she's black'

[absinthecity.livejournal.com]

Right...that might be coming from a rather different standpoint then! I just thought it was an observation on racial stereotyping - the poorer district 11 (which was where both characters came from if you've not seen the film as yet) seemed to be mostly black, and this was also one of the less wealthy districts where rioting kicks off.

I could kinda see how that might bother people if there was no indication in the book that these were black characters (I haven't read the book)