Harry Potter

I guess one should be a bit careful of exams and grades and such stuff..

The Cursed Child previews have started, wonder when/if we'll see any reviews begin to surface?

Haven't read any reviews but plot summaries are appearing online. Spoilers, obviously:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/06/10/harry-potter-and-the-cursed-child-spoilers-here-s-the-plot-of-the-play.html

I wasn't expecting much but ... dear god. Admittedly I was never a big fan of

Spoiler:

anyway, but that that's the only thing giving me pause here...

Hermione. Why? why did they feel the necessity? I would refuse to watch it just because of the pc idiot casting.

What a complete mess of a story. The plots in the books were flawed as well, but this smells of space brownies

sure does.

Mrs Figg wrote:Hermione. Why? why did they feel the necessity? I would refuse to watch it just because of the pc idiot casting.

Color-blind casting seems fairly common in stage plays, at least in the ones I've seen.

I already read the spoilers for Cursed Child yesterday



The Positive:

-Sounds completely bat-crap crazy

The Negative:

-Honestly reminds me of fan fiction

Spoiler:

I actually quite like the snyopsis listed above, but it's not the type of story I was expecting or wanted...

Mrs Figg wrote:Hermione. Why? why did they feel the necessity? I would refuse to watch it just because of the pc idiot casting.

In fairness I don't think there's anything in the books that definitely confirms her as white

its not the fact its a Black actor, its the fact of the pc revisionism that irks me. It just takes me out of the moment if for, you know, 10 years, Hermione has been White with bushy brown hair. You may as well make Harry Potter Chinese. why would you do that?

I understand why people like to interpret Hermione as black and it adds interesting thematic subtext to the book (wizards don't care about the color of your skin but are super bigoted about blood purity and Hermione ends up facing both forms of discrimination, one in each world) that's way more relevant and less hamfisted than the tired (and historically misleading) "aristocrats are Nazis" trope. But I don't think Rowling gets to claim diversity points for herself (prior to the play, anyway) since the only time Hermione is described as brown in the books is when she's coming back from a summer vacation with a tan and she is consistently described as turning pink when embarrassed or out in the cold. While Rowling's own illustrations are not necessarily relevant if you subscribe to the idea of "death of the author", Rowling illustrated most of her characters as white and the few exceptions (including Dean Thomas, who was black) are indicated in the text either through physical description or "foreign" names.

Mrs Figg wrote:its not the fact its a Black actor, its the fact of the pc revisionism that irks me. It just takes me out of the moment if for, you know, 10 years, Hermione has been White with bushy brown hair. You may as well make Harry Potter Chinese. why would you do that?

I do see where you are coming from the argument pretty much boils down to...why not? (which isn't a convincing reason either way...why not keep things the same?), but maybe she was just the best actress to audition? Personally I'm glad they've gone a slightly different route from the movies, as I find it increasingly hard to retain my own imagery of the books which hasn't been influenced by the films, the Cursed Child actor for Ron seems much more like how I imagined him to be than Grint did...

Eldorion wrote:I understand why people like to interpret Hermione as black and it adds interesting thematic subtext to the book (wizards don't care about the color of your skin but are super bigoted about blood purity and Hermione ends up facing both forms of discrimination, one in each world) that's way more relevant and less hamfisted than the tired (and historically misleading) "aristocrats are Nazis" trope. But I don't think Rowling gets to claim diversity points for herself (prior to the play, anyway) since the only time Hermione is described as brown in the books is when she's coming back from a summer vacation with a tan and she is consistently described as turning pink when embarrassed or out in the cold. While Rowling's own illustrations are not necessarily relevant if you subscribe to the idea of "death of the author", Rowling illustrated most of her characters as white and the few exceptions (including Dean Thomas, who was black) are indicated in the text either through physical description or "foreign" names.

That is a good point.

(Then there are simple demographics, the black population of the UK is currently estimated to be less than 3 million, go back 30 years to when Hermione was born in 1980-1 and it would be much smaller statistically and largely 1st or 2nd generation, if the producers were determined to cast a minority actress, it would make more sense to make her Asian, as the Asian-British population is much larger)

I think it's important to remember that this is a stage play and casting without regard to race is an established practice in modern theatre. Maybe casting a black woman as Hermione was a deliberate nod to the fan theorists, but maybe she was simply the actress the producers and director liked best regardless of race.

I'm not entirely over stage!Ron not being a ginger though.

EDIT: simul with Malick (and my previous post was a simul with Figgy).

Eldorion wrote:I understand why people like to interpret Hermione as black and it adds interesting thematic subtext to the book (wizards don't care about the color of your skin but are super bigoted about blood purity and Hermione ends up facing both forms of discrimination, one in each world) that's way more relevant and less hamfisted than the tired (and historically misleading) "aristocrats are Nazis" trope. But I don't think Rowling gets to claim diversity points for herself (prior to the play, anyway) since the only time Hermione is described as brown in the books is when she's coming back from a summer vacation with a tan and she is consistently described as turning pink when embarrassed or out in the cold. While Rowling's own illustrations are not necessarily relevant if you subscribe to the idea of "death of the author", Rowling illustrated most of her characters as white and the few exceptions (including Dean Thomas, who was black) are indicated in the text either through physical description or "foreign" names.

yes that's an interesting point about the blood purity/race thing. But if you make an actor Black its very obvious what the message is and it takes away the impact of the differences between Muggles, who do have racial discrimination and Wizards who don't. It signposts the discrimination, oh theres a Black actor she is obviously fighting the good fight. Whereas Hermione being White and discriminated against made more of a radical impact. it makes you question racism more deeply if Hermione is White because a White kid is never generally, in the UK at least, racially abused or made to feel inferior. anyway that's my take on it.

I think I get what you mean, Mrs Figg. Fantasy fiction tends to be overwhelmingly white though so I can't really complain about greater diversity in adaptations. The broader discussion over Hermione's race resulting from the play touches on the phenomenon of people tending to assume that characters without an obviously-defined race are white* but I don't think it's accurate to say that's the only reason why many readers interpreted Hermione as white.

*This comes up a lot in anime fandom too, which is where I first encountered it. A lot of Western fans think that anime characters look white but Japanese audiences tend to interpret them as looking Japanese. Manga artists trying to draw white/European characters often add racial identifiers such as big noses and prominent facial hair. Interestingly, both Western and Japanese artists tend to fall back on the same racial identifiers for Chinese characters, especially narrow eyes, though Western artists often use these same identifiers for Japanese characters as well. The underlying point is that audiences (who are members of a majority ethnic group in their country) tend to interpret characters who don't have obvious racial identifiers as being the same as them.

EDIT: same thing happens with gender too. Most people will interpret a generic smiley face or stick figure as male unless you add eyelashes or lipstick or something to clearly indicate that it's meant to be female. But of course a basic smiley face/stick figure doesn't actually look like a real person of any gender.

Eldorion wrote:I think I get what you mean, Mrs Figg. Fantasy fiction tends to be overwhelmingly white though so I can't really complain about greater diversity in adaptations. The broader discussion over Hermione's race resulting from the play touches on the phenomenon of people tending to assume that characters without an obviously-defined race are white* but I don't think it's accurate to say that's the only reason why many readers interpreted Hermione as white.

*This comes up a lot in anime fandom too, which is where I first encountered it. A lot of Western fans think that anime characters look white but Japanese audiences tend to interpret them as looking Japanese. Manga artists trying to draw white/European characters often add racial identifiers such as big noses and prominent facial hair. Interestingly, both Western and Japanese artists tend to fall back on the same racial identifiers for Chinese characters, especially narrow eyes, though Western artists often use these same identifiers for Japanese characters as well. The underlying point is that audiences (who are members of a majority ethnic group in their country) tend to interpret characters who don't have obvious racial identifiers as being the same as them.

Good point, and I don't want to generalize your country Eldo, but most of the fanwork I've seen etc that paints Hermione (or even Harry) etc as Black/Ethnic minority seems to come from North America where Race/Diversity seems to be more of a trigger subject for discussion, HP maybe completely British/Irish but it's popular the world over and people do implant their own cultural viewpoint on thing when reading it.

I mainly see black Hermione fanart on tumblr and (based on the Google analytics for my blog) tumblr does seem to be mostly Americans but I can't really say for sure. There's a fair bit of black Noldor fanart in the Silmarillion fandom on tumblr too, actually.

Eldorion wrote: There's a fair bit of black Noldor fanart in the Silmarillion fandom on tumblr too, actually.

Huh, my initial reaction was to go but that goes back to my point above, I don't think there's anything to really say Tolkien's Elves etc were defintely all white, we just assume they all are because of Tolkien's background...

Maybe that would make the basis of another entry on your blog? (though Tolkien and Race is a divisive issue that has been debated to death i.m.o).

To be honest...I try and avoid tumblr if I can

I dunno, I'd have to do a lot more thinking and reading before wanting to weigh in with a blog post. Many of the fan artists and fanfic authors I follow on tumblr acknowledge that the diverge from Tolkien's conceptions (a lot of them are also slash ficcers and it's no secret that Tolkien was a conservative Catholic) but draw and write the characters different anyway. Tolkien did describe a lot of his characters as pale (pale beauty being a longstanding trope in European art*), although the Eldar in Aman and the Númenóreans both lived near the equator for much of their history. On the other hand, some Hobbits, who apparently always lived in the north, are described as brown-skinned; historically the Harfoots but also some later Hobbits including Sam. This is basically never depicted in "official" art but fanart is much more diverse which I tend to think is a good thing.

I was a little surprised at first by the strength of the Lore community on tumblr (much better than Reddit's IMO). It's largely an adjunct to the fanfic community (eg, writing guides about canon for authors who want to remain consistent with Tolkien's works) but there's a lot of smart people and interesting ideas there. Unfortunately many others are inactive but the same is true of forums in this day and age.

*Although, as I have also learned from tumblr (not knowing much about art history myself), there is a very long and broad history of non-white people in European art history as well. http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/

Eldorion wrote:

Mrs Figg wrote:Hermione. Why? why did they feel the necessity? I would refuse to watch it just because of the pc idiot casting.

Color-blind casting seems fairly common in stage plays, at least in the ones I've seen.

I saw a very short Asian Helena once in a production of All's Well That Ends Well. 

But that's Shakespeare. Not J. K. Rowling.

I think there is a definite fashion for mixing things up because its trendy and Post-Post Modern. Its like they are saying oh look how radical chic we are with our cool Black actor playing Queen Elizabeth I. I mean she could have been Black under all that white lead face paint.

I want to see more authentic acting like Luther, where he is his own character and hasn't been co-opted from someone elses culture. He is real.

I hope the Hermione controversy doesn't completely overshadow how bad the story sounds.

I've heard nothing about the story, so I would say it has for me.