Chels

I want to start out this post by making two things quite clear. First, I am not against colourblind casting or changing the race of fictional characters in adaptations. Sometimes, when you write about these topics, people make one of two assumptions – that you’re wholly against it, and as such, should be cancelled, or that you’re wholly against it and as such you’re anti-woke and align with their views. I am interested in talking about how the choices made in adaptations impact both the adaptation itself, and the original text, retroactively.

The second issue is that of Harry Potter. It’s a franchise that I was very impacted by as a teenager, and in the 2010s it was very meaningful to me. These days, I don’t tend to think about it often. On the back of the author’s horrible takes and openness that she uses profits from the series to fund anti-trans activism in the UK, I don’t engage with any new media. I have not, and ideally, will not watch the trailer for the new TV adaptation, although seeing news, discourse, and promotional images has been inevitable when spending any time online. 

There’s a difference between colourblind casting and deliberately changing the race of a character, whether solely to increase diversity in a previously non-diverse story, or to specifically reframe the narrative. There’s also race-conscious casting, an increasingly common term to describe a sort of middle ground between the two. Race-conscious casting is not totally colourblind; it acknowledges that in some cases, changing the race of a character does impact stories, but that in others, it has no major effect. Race-conscious casting takes into account characteristics of characters that risk becoming a stereotype, and stereotypical views that may impact casting decisions.

In the 2019 adaptation The Personal History of David Copperfield, director Armando Iannucci was praised for the colourblind casting – particularly Dev Patel in the title role. It wasn’t a gritty story tied to realism – it was a fun story which prioritised whimsy, so the fact that parents and children did not look similar at all didn’t really matter.

There’s also Bridgerton, a series which proudly casts diverse families and love interests. While this hasn’t impacted those characters drastically – aside from incorporating elements of cultural clothing and language, it injected a secondary storyline into the series, one which allows for contemporary issues to be explored. Bridgerton is a romance, and race is not a conflict in any of the romantic relationships, but Shonda Rhimes created an avenue for social commentary, particularly in the Queen Charlotte prequel spinoff. A young Violet Bridgerton’s parents sit on opposing sides of the King and Queen’s efforts to integrate nobility, yet their disagreement does not affect the movement – society in the series features nobility of many races.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2015 performance of Othello. I spoke about it a few months ago, but it’s such an interesting adaptation of the story. Race is central to the plot of Othello, and in my opinion, changing Othello’s race is pretty impossible, to keep the story faithful to its meaning. However, the RSC cast black actors as both Othello and Iago, which deliberately shifted the narrative, although in a way that still remains true to the original story. For Iago to also be black, the antagonism between the two characters shifts – it is no longer a case of straightforward racism, it becomes an interrogation of how we respond to our own othering. Iago knows the othering and victimisation that Othello faces, yet he contributes to it. He also, as Iago does in the play, benefits from antagonising Othello. This is a narrative shift that doesn’t retract the original meaning, it expands on it, allowing for wider interpretations and a reexamining of actions and relationships. 

Then, there’s “Wuthering Heights”. Of course, I’m talking about the film again. The whitewashing of Heathcliff removes a great deal of the purpose of the story. Heathcliff is ostracised, othered, and villainised by the other characters because of his race – because of the fact he is visually different to them. Heathcliff faces racial abuse. To remove that aspect of his character takes away one of the main reasons he becomes an antagonistic figure later in his life. While fans of the book are constantly debating what Heathcliff’s ‘real’ race is (it is not clearly stated in the book, and some of the lines have conflicting suggestions, often leading to a consensus that he is multiracial or racially ambiguous), it’s still clear that his race is the reason he is ostracised. Removing the racial abuse Heathcliff faces from his story removes a lot of his motivations as a character. Then again, the film focuses less on the social commentary of the novel and more on making conventionally attractive actors have sex in period costumes. I still think Emerald Fennell would have been better off adapting Lady Chatterley’s Lover this way.

The Harry Potter Problem

The Harry Potter TV series isn’t out yet, but that hasn’t stopped a tsunami of discourse already surrounding the release – namely, surrounding the casting choices. I want to make it clear that I do not share the opinion that just because a character is described as white in the books, that they should be played by white actors. When I talk about the TV adaptation potentially being faithful, I do not mean accuracy to character descriptions. What I am referring to is the consensus prior even to an announcement of the TV adaptation, that a television series would allow for more content from the books to be covered. There are many subplots from the Harry Potter books that were cut from the films to prioritise the main storylines, and the fandom at large often lamented the loss of these plots – things like Peeves the poltergeist, the visit to St Mungo’s hospital, and the wider cast of house elves.

With four times the hours available to tell each book’s story, it would be quite surprising if the missing scenes continue to be missing, especially since a reboot isn’t really necessary so soon after the films. I can only assume the show will involve a lot of fan service, which means filling in some gaps. The problem, then, with being faithful to the books, is how this will sit with contemporary audiences, especially with the casting changes made. In the books, Hermione is bullied for her appearance – mostly her bushy hair and her teeth. Snape, also, is described as ugly, hook-nosed, and greasy. They’re the two characters where their appearance is a real target of ridicule and bullying, and for them to (most likely coincidentally) be the two characters recast as actors of colour isn’t the best look.

In terms of Hermione’s character, she has a storyline in the fourth book, Goblet of Fire, involving S.P.E.W – the Society for the Prevention of Elfish Welfare. If you weren’t ever into the series, house elves are essentially an enslaved species by wizards – some families treat their house elves poorly, some organisations, including Hogwarts school, are presented as treating them well. Hermione, a witch born to non-magic parents, finds the whole thing to be exploitative and creates a society to free house elves from servitude, or at least to improve their working conditions. The problem is that Hermione is mocked for this, and the other characters, including the house elves themselves, insist that house elves actually want to be in servitude. On reflection, it’s a really tasteless subplot that misses the mark on what I will generously assume to be good intentions from the author. However, with modern interpretations frequently casting Hermione as black, and the author at one point stating that she intended for the character to be black all along (though she’s infamous for retconning her stories), the storyline becomes even worse. In her attempt to seem more progressive, the author now has a subplot where a young black girl is seen as pushy and annoying by her peers for attempting to protest the enslavement of a magical race. My personal dislike of the author aside, I can’t see that being her genuine intention for the plot in her children’s book.

A similar problem arises when it comes to Snape. This is a man who is, in the context of wizarding society, mixed race (his mother is a witch, his father was not magic), who gets bullied by a group of ‘pureblood’ teenagers. One of them forms a relationship with his best friend, who, like Hermione, does not have magic parents. In response to this, he calls his best friend a slur and becomes part of the extremist cult that seeks to eradicate witches and wizards who are not ‘pureblood’. He then becomes a teacher who is cruel to students, particularly to Harry, Hermione, and Neville Longbottom, going as far as being Neville’s biggest fear. Again, it’s a plot point that’s on reflection quite uncomfortable (Snape then goes on to get a questionable redemption arc), but becomes even uncomfortable with the new casting. I’m not someone who thinks that all adaptations should be as faithful as possible to the original texts – one of my favourite adaptations of all time is Clueless, which is wildly different to Jane Austen’s Emma. For me, the essential point is evoking the core of the story, which Clueless does – it stays true to Emma Woodhouse’s personality, just that she is also a ditzy rich valley girl. The story is not beat for beat accurate, but the journey of the story remains. My issue with the changes made in “Wuthering Heights” and based on what little we know of the Harry Potter reboot suggest a lack of engagement with the original texts, whether deliberately in the former case, or as an oversight. Yes, in the case of Harry Potter, it’s great to see a more diverse cast, but I think there were several characters who could have been cast race-consciously, or colourblind, in a way that would not affect the story. Unfortunately, the creatives managed to choose two key characters for whom this portrayal could create some really sinister implications, depending on how faithful to the books’ plots they are.