not wanting to de-rail the Harry Potter thread
You mean the thread where the OP says this?
And I never accused that OP of accusing JK Rowling of racism. Just asking in general
No.
Short thread. Well done all.
No, of course not.
But it is interesting what happens when a book is turned into a movie and characters don’t look the way readers think they should.
Which looks just like a mirror image of “I’m not a racist, but…”
i’m thinking of the Walking Dead, though i’m also not accusing them of being racist, as it appears to be more of an “issue with the actor whom they couldn’t fire for whatever reason” thing. it is hilarious that they immediately replaced him with another black character when they did finally wrote him off though.
A number of black (and Asian, for that matter) actors appear in the Harry Potter films, so I don’t think it requires any hidden agenda to idly wonder if the race of these characters is specified in the books.
Skald made it quite explicit that he had not seen the movies and was not asking about them, so that wasn’t it.
In fact, as one would expect, on the matter of characters’ races the movies followed the books quite closely (except that they gave a lot more screen time than the text would warrant to the black kid who did the Quidditch commentary).
That doesn’t mean he’s never seen any photo of or reference to any of the non-white actors in the cast of the movies.
Although looking at the thread again, it seems he may have been asking just because he was aware that the books dealt with prejudice regarding the “blood purity” of wizards and was curious as to whether prejudice based on skin color ever came up. I really don’t see anything in the other thread to suggest that he secretly suspects that J.K. Rowling is a racist. He openly acknowledged that his question might be taken as an accusation of racism but stated that this was not his intention, and I don’t see any reason to doubt him.
Well, they were going to give screen time to somebody describing Quidditch, because without the commentary (indeed, even with it) the game makes no sense whatsoever.
Actually I find it worse when they make a point to describe the race of certain characters, as if there is a white default and they must tell us when someone isn’t.
Actually, I can imagine that a book could be racist while not mentioning characters from a racial minority, as long as the race of the characters keeps being mentioned, even if it’s a majority race.
Imagine a German book from the 30’s talking about the hero’s “pure arian blood” or mentioning often, and in a positive way his blond hair and blue eyes.
Is the reader racist for assuming that all characters are white unless stated otherwise?
Heck, what if the hero is repeatedly described as having marble-like alabaster skin that… y’know… sparkles in sunlight?
There you go. Clearly a book doing such a thing must be evil.
You might want to check out Le Guin’s Earthsea books. She doesn’t make a big deal of it, but none of the characters in the first book are white skinned. In the second book a major character is white skinned.
If the racial distribution of characters in a book was noticeably off from the real-life racial distribution in a particular area, that could seem strange to me. For instance, if someone wrote a political thriller taking place in Washington D.C. and every single character was black, it would probably strike me that the author had some kind of agenda he’s trying to push (notwithstanding the demographics of Washington D.C.).
I think that’s an interesting question, because I do USUALLY think of “white” as the default skin color when I’m reading. I’m white, and no, I don’t have any black friends - I do have black co-workers, but there aren’t even many of them.
I read primarily fantasy and science fiction, and what I find interesting is that when an author takes the time to set up a specific ethnic element in their worldbuilding, then I’m more likely to think of the characters as non-white.
Examples where I can’t remember one way or the other, so I’m just going on my mental image:
Zelazny’s Amber Cycle - everyone’s white because there’s not an immediate textual reason for them not to be.
Zelazny’s Lord of Light - everyone’s Indian (not Native American) because they’re on a planet that’s expressly Hindu.
I guess that does make me racist because I default to white, but I’m not too worried about it.