but I don't think that was intentional openness so much as treating whiteness as default.
Yup, I agree that Hermione was implicitly white in the books & implicit whiteness is... whiteness. I guess I meant, more, like -- JKR didn't write black Hermione, but her tweet points out that, well, she could have; she could have made a different choice wrt race & the core of the character would have been the same if she had. I definitely don't think that JKR should get any kind of special credit / brownie points for saying that she's cool with black Hermione, because frankly, what else could she have said???? "I'm outraged & actually very racist"??? Like. There was only one response she could have made. But I'm glad at least she said something pithy to silence any haters who want to hide behind "but JKR imagined/wrote Hermione as white!!1" because.... in the end.... so what??? So what if a character is originally imagined as white? That doesn't mean a character can't be RE-imagined, you know?? A character can be changed in certain ways and still be true to the essential core traits of that character! So the way I'm reading JKR's tweet is more like, even if book!Hermione is written as white, the core of Hermione's character is not tied to whiteness at all, and if ~20 years ago JKR had made a different choice, had imagined Hermione as black from the beginning -- obviously some parts of the book would probably be different, because being black would change Hermione's experiences, but the essential Hermione-y parts of her character? Would still be there. Obviously.
But the tweet is easier for me to read graciously because I'm reading it as a response to people being aggressively awful and asking JKR to justify it, not JKR looking for representation points. She doesn't get 'em.
but I'm less convinced that she'll be given room to express or enact those thoughts, vs being limited to what she can convey through action or expression
We'll just have to see, I guess. I'm hopeful because I feel like plays (good ones at least?) tend to leave a lot of room for the actors to make choices and interpretations, but obviously it will really depends on the script.
You raise interesting questions re: what's explicit enough. I simply meant: Dumezweni's race is explicit, because we can see her, and no one can see her and say, "Well, we just don't know if she's black or not," lol (compared to much of JKR's "representation" which is only implied... and can therefore be disputed). But your question is complicated and also gets into territory that I can't really speak to (I'm white). I just frankly don't know. I also have a feeling that the role is written as colorblind--the lines as JKR wrote them probably could support a white actress--but that doesn't mean that Dumezweni performing the role won't feel different than a white actress performing it. Part of me feels like... just having a black actress in the role is something, because a lot of the need for representation comes from a need for people to see themselves in media. But part of me also feels like, if you're starving, you're going to take what you can get, right? It'd be better to have a black actress who talks about her blackness on stage, but if you can't get that, a black actress talking about ANYTHING on stage is better than nothing. So. There are shades of good representation, always.
Ugh ugh ugh. And I'm still going to go see Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and it'll still probably be awesome, and IN MY HEART OF HEARTS I will still feel sad about what could have been. And you just KNOW fandom is going to totally ignore the few poc we actually do get in the movie anyway, but they'll spend six thousand years developing the personality of some hot white guy who makes eye contact with Eddie Redmayne for .2 seconds and doesn't even speak lol jesus.
Yes, I am excited too! I mean, if I wasn't excited, I wouldn't have any interest in analyzing the situation critically lol. My criticism is a sign of loooove and interest lololololol.
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Yup, I agree that Hermione was implicitly white in the books & implicit whiteness is... whiteness. I guess I meant, more, like -- JKR didn't write black Hermione, but her tweet points out that, well, she could have; she could have made a different choice wrt race & the core of the character would have been the same if she had. I definitely don't think that JKR should get any kind of special credit / brownie points for saying that she's cool with black Hermione, because frankly, what else could she have said???? "I'm outraged & actually very racist"??? Like. There was only one response she could have made. But I'm glad at least she said something pithy to silence any haters who want to hide behind "but JKR imagined/wrote Hermione as white!!1" because.... in the end.... so what??? So what if a character is originally imagined as white? That doesn't mean a character can't be RE-imagined, you know?? A character can be changed in certain ways and still be true to the essential core traits of that character! So the way I'm reading JKR's tweet is more like, even if book!Hermione is written as white, the core of Hermione's character is not tied to whiteness at all, and if ~20 years ago JKR had made a different choice, had imagined Hermione as black from the beginning -- obviously some parts of the book would probably be different, because being black would change Hermione's experiences, but the essential Hermione-y parts of her character? Would still be there. Obviously.
But the tweet is easier for me to read graciously because I'm reading it as a response to people being aggressively awful and asking JKR to justify it, not JKR looking for representation points. She doesn't get 'em.
but I'm less convinced that she'll be given room to express or enact those thoughts, vs being limited to what she can convey through action or expression
We'll just have to see, I guess. I'm hopeful because I feel like plays (good ones at least?) tend to leave a lot of room for the actors to make choices and interpretations, but obviously it will really depends on the script.
You raise interesting questions re: what's explicit enough. I simply meant: Dumezweni's race is explicit, because we can see her, and no one can see her and say, "Well, we just don't know if she's black or not," lol (compared to much of JKR's "representation" which is only implied... and can therefore be disputed). But your question is complicated and also gets into territory that I can't really speak to (I'm white). I just frankly don't know. I also have a feeling that the role is written as colorblind--the lines as JKR wrote them probably could support a white actress--but that doesn't mean that Dumezweni performing the role won't feel different than a white actress performing it. Part of me feels like... just having a black actress in the role is something, because a lot of the need for representation comes from a need for people to see themselves in media. But part of me also feels like, if you're starving, you're going to take what you can get, right? It'd be better to have a black actress who talks about her blackness on stage, but if you can't get that, a black actress talking about ANYTHING on stage is better than nothing. So. There are shades of good representation, always.
Ugh ugh ugh. And I'm still going to go see Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and it'll still probably be awesome, and IN MY HEART OF HEARTS I will still feel sad about what could have been. And you just KNOW fandom is going to totally ignore the few poc we actually do get in the movie anyway, but they'll spend six thousand years developing the personality of some hot white guy who makes eye contact with Eddie Redmayne for .2 seconds and doesn't even speak lol jesus.
Yes, I am excited too! I mean, if I wasn't excited, I wouldn't have any interest in analyzing the situation critically lol. My criticism is a sign of loooove and interest lololololol.