Sincerely, Saskia

Buckle up, kids: we have a lot to unpack.

Protective fans are the lifeblood of entertainment, but they’re also simultaneously the biggest enemies of progress and the ones who make the internet a very unpleasant place to be.

The attachment people have to fictional characters is again, simultaneously flattering to the creator that they’ve made a character people care so much about, but also most definitely slightly delusional. The word fiction tends to go over people’s heads and when said fiction gets brought to the big screen from originally being a book or video game, the discourse that comes from that is often very loud, damaging and misplaced.

Whether it be the confirmation of a Black Professor Snape or the rumblings of a Black James Bond – the latter making sense and the former turning all the characters of Harry Potter into racists, iykyk – it’s never welcomed news.

Most recently, Pappa Essiedu, is the latest actor to fall victim to the online barrage of hate from angry fans who don’t want to see him play an originally white character. Idris Elba suffered the same fate when it was rumoured he could be the next James Bond, Cynthia Erivo got a double dose of bigotry when it was announced she would be next to play Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar – for being Black and a woman – not to mention the fan reaction she received for playing Elphaba with the role being made popular by Indina Menzel.

And, in the case of a Black Snape, I actually understand why this was the wrong character to race swap. Snape is bullied in the book for being pale, so unless they’re going to turn all the characters into racists, or adopt a Bridgerton-style attitude towards race, this could be a problem. However, let’s be real, even if Snape wasn’t bullied for being pale, going from Alan Rickman to Essiedu still would not have gone down well.

Throwing Black people a bone in a big franchise that has already left us out of the narrative by not including us in the first place, doesn’t incite gratitude in me.

Having been privy to numerous outcry’s over numerous TV shows and films, I’ve broken those protesting the loudest down into three camps.

Camp 1: The racists

Now, these ol’ faithfuls are always the first to pipe up. Their comments are on the nose and predictable, screaming about how they can’t enjoy anything these days without the inclusion of woke, PC bullsh*t, writing the project off before they’ve even seen a trailer. Because, well, having one brain cell makes it harder to comprehend that everyone deserves to be represented in film and TV. But, it’s fine because these people exposing themselves in such a way helps other people know who to stay away from.

Camp 2: The loyalists

These are the people who have read the book, played the game, watched the series before it turns into a film, a million times over. They know every detail about every character and they have built an image in their heads about what they expect them all to look and act like. These people don’t just query over the race of a character but they will get on you if a hair colour isn’t as written, a mannerism isn’t performed correctly or if the story of a character deviates from what they expected, changing the outcome of the story altogether. These people aren’t so much racist as they are rigid with their own experience of the characters before some director came along and experienced them differently.

Camp 3: The Black people who don’t need a Black so and so to feel represented

This is the camp I fall into – only when it comes to already established characters. Thank you for your offer to make Bond Black, Snape Black or whoever else is due for a glow up, but no thank you. I don’t want hand me down characters that I’m now supposed to re-associate in my mind as products of progress in the fight for inclusivity and representation in Hollywood. Frankly, race swapping characters (based on books specifically) is lazy f**king work. Throwing Black people a bone in a big franchise that has already left us out of the narrative by not including us in the first place, doesn’t incite gratitude in me, or anything else for that matter. I want iconic characters that are ORIGINALLY BLACK. Luther – iconic and Black. Annalise Keating – iconic and Black. Nick Fury, Black (don’t chat to me about universes, there’s always been a Black Nick Fury in the comic books) and iconic.  

All the industry does when they go down this path is give the racists a reason to tweet that day. There are plenty of characters whose race has not already been predetermined, and in those cases, go nuts. But at times, it feels like the industry is feigning progress by giving Black people roles that have already been done as a means to not create or promote more Black characters and stories, independent of those that already exist. It’s as if to say, why fight for your own legacy, we can give you someone else’s? The industry still doesn’t do enough to invest in Black voices, and I’d rather see more of their stories then have to see good, respectable actors reduced to the hate they get for taking the role.