AIBU to think objections to Snape casting are mostly racist?

Are you saying the white actors don't play originally ethnic figures?

Every white Jesus ever.
Many Asian ones
Ghost in the shell - the lead should be Japanese, was white.

Yes, the American produced/co-produced movies don't go specifically after characters - with their blackface history it is hardly surprising.

Hermione could be mixed race, it never says she’s white in the books. Snape is specifically described as white. It’s like having a non-ginger Weasley family.

I wouldn’t have minded if they made pretty much any other character black (yes even Harry), but Snape being black does change some aspects of the story - the bullying by James Potter and Sirius for example, racist bullying changes the story and it’s much harder to write it off as immature nonsense which is what you’re supposed to do.

Casting a black actor to play Lupin or Sirius for example would have worked much better. I think Dumbledore or McGonagall could have worked too.

Great minds!

Yes as an anime fan I was wtf at scarlet in that role. I like her normally.

I'm happy to wait and see with the new series. The reveal with James being a bully doesn't happen until until the last book? Plenty of time to develop the characters.

The main cast will only looks racist if Snape is the only black character (which I doubt) or they don't successfully justify why Harry hates him. Remember that Snape is pretty awful to the gang so it's fair enough that they don't like him back.

I imagine they will simply change the bullying scene slightly if they think it will be a problem but they have years until.they need to decide.

I do worry that they will make Snape more sympathetic from early on because they know how it ends but its probably inevitable as we will spend more time with ALL the characters. That will be the hard balance.

Agree that he's probably too attractive but that's a general problem in TV/film that ugly characters are never actually ugly.

Tbh. Watching the trailer, I found McGonagall the most jarring. Maggie was so iconic. Dumbledore just looks like a dude in a beard, same with hagrid, not much difference from the original to me.

I don’t think Snape being black will make Harry Ron and Hermione look like racists - they distrust him because he is horrible to them and does suspicious things. Harry doesn’t take against him because of his looks. I feel like Paapa Essiedu isn’t going to be oblivious to the ‘optics’ so I’m interested to see what he does with it.

also don’t understand why people would think Lupin would be a less controversial black character? Black Lupin would be even more problematic as far as seeming racist goes! He is shunned by most of his community, forced into poverty and has his rights systematically taken away by the state. He is the most ‘other’ of the group and so it would be an extremely on the nose metaphor of nothing else.

It seems that, on this thread, the main objection to the casting is it makes James seems racist - but that seems kind of neither here or there to me. I think the legacy of the Marauders bullying Snape is so important to the storyline - the Snape/Sirius dynamic is one of the major drivers of plot in the whole series - so to me there isn’t much of a distinction between James being an awful bully and being an awful racist bully.

I don't think he's ever described as white, only sallow and sometimes pale. The description of his skin colour plus long straight dark hair and black eyes could be various ethnicities. MENA, for example, or American indigenous. Though I agree it still clearly doesn't describe Papa Essiedu, and also making Snape say Arab introduces a potential racial element to the viewer even though it would be as textually accurate as a white actor of that appearance.

I suppose this is where I disagree that we are supposed to write off the bullying as immature nonsense. It’s supposed to be so bad that 20 years later two grown men can’t bear to be in the same room and can barely cooperate in their top secret resistance group.

If realism isn't at least vaguely important why do they bother putting actors in period costumes rather than just wearing jeans? Why use appropriate props and keep plot devices like lost letters rather than them all just texting each other? Why bother filming them in historic locations rather than on the side of the M25?

There are literally hundreds of modern film adaptations of Shakespeare that are set in modern times where they wear jeans, text etc. 10 things I hate about you, She's the Man, Warm Bodies, etc. Even the fucking Lion King!

One of the main problems with HP adaptations and race is that a) they're children's books and b) they have strong themes that are an analogy to racial issues.

In the wizarding world, it appears that there are zero race issues related to skin colour. JK Rowling only specifies someone's skin colour by default if she wants to make it clear that they aren't white British, but that was quite normal at the time. But she chose to use an analogy, and not have Hermione go, "bugger, I thought that I'd leave race issues behind in the muggle world and now I'm getting wizardy racial slurs".

So given a lot of the plot is driven by wizardy racism, when you randomly swap the ethnicity of characters it can add a weird dimension of "wait, was Snape bullied for being black?" or "a black Hermione would have surely mentioned something about Muggle racist bullying when she was bullied for being a muggle?".

Much like Lupin's werewolf stigma was an analogy for AIDs stigma, a kid's book is the wrong place to lay out those issues verbatim.

I would have liked a black McGonagall. Maggie Smith really made it so much her own that I think a huge change would make sense, otherwise everyone will automatically compare. And certainly from the trailer, the new actress seems to just be doing an impersonation of Smith, which already feels a bit jarring to me.

There are also far too few major roles for sympathetic, intelligent, inspirational black women.

What makes you think that a upper middle class business man, of social standing, in Victorian England wasn't white?
He was reportedly a mix of two men and his mame taken from another.

yanbu - I think a lot of people just assume characters are white when they read a book. According to AI, “Sallow is a state of appearance, not a skin color or racial category. Any person of any race—including Caucasian, Asian, or Black—can look sallow if they are unwell, fatigued, or anemic”

So he could be a sickly black guy with a hooked nose after all!

It is primarily a children’s TV show.

Most adults will be familiar with the story.

How many children are honestly going to see the bullying scene as a racist lynching?

Some kids might, but I don’t think that will spring to mind for most children.

So do you think everyone in plays that were written in or about the Victorian era or before should be white characters played by white actors?

If an actual real life historical white person can be cast as black - see eg. Anne Boleyn, a fictional character written as white can also be cast as black. No problemo. The Only problem being of course if a white person was cast as a black person (fictional or not), then we'd have uproar, wouldn't we. I'd love to see a white MLK or Malcolm X, for example. Really challenge the narrative and play with those labels.

Exactly what I said! Wouldn't happen! No way in hell would a white actor or actress be allowed to play a real life black person. The 'we need colourblind casting' people wouldn't be so keen on it then! Colourblind casting is only suitable when it's a black person playing a real life white person. 🙄

.

Are you completely unaware of the long and inglorious tradition of white actors doing blackface? Olivier in Othello? The Black and White Minstrel Show?

I think that it can whitewash history and dilute the struggles of ethnic minorities. If not their slavery, rape, abuse and murder. I'm part Lakota Sioux, I'd object to a film were black men gave out blankets, coated in small pox to white, blond , blue eyed locals.
Could women be cast in a war film and join the troops storming Normandy? It's food for thought. Writers etc need to create roles for everyone.

I have no interest in the skin colour of the new Snape except to say that it’s tough on black actors born and raised in the west who have their roles limited because of their ethnicity. Perhaps we should all relax about colour blind casting. As long as he is a good actor it’s not an issue.

the trouble is that there seems to be a lot of woke casting that places people because of their ethnicity rather than their acting ability

having said this it is rather tiresome that the reason for any criticism of someone from an ethnic minority is, in the minds of so many tedious people, always put down to racism…..

Not relevant now. This was over half a century ago. Whataboutery is not strengthening your (already weak) argument.

Gary Oldman would be a brilliant Snape.
I don’t get HBO, so I won’t be watching it anyway. Still, I agree with the poster who said it is far too soon to be remaking HP.

They looked quite fusty and retro even when they came out IMO. But I sort of got the impression that being fusty and retro is what the fan base liked about them?

She was ten when the first film came out. Not the sort of age when you're likely to be sitting in judgement over the acting ability of the cast members.

So you think that all those tens of millions of fans all round the world who are now adults will also be considered irrelevant by the production company? That's a few billion ££££ in revenue they'll be kissing goodbye to then. 😂

Yeah that is a good point. But the fact remains it's unreasonable for modern day BAME actors to have to face a discriminatory situation whereby they are pretty much barred from being part of plays or works from a certain era.

They are actors. So let them act.

So people of a different race are not allowed to be liked or not liked because of where they are from, so they are all one collective person so if anyone doesn't like them it is racism only

How patronising and insulting

I've not read any of the HP books.
How was the character described in them?
Personally I find it offensive to cast people who don't resemble how the characters are described.
Arrogant to decide that the casting director knows better than the person who actually imagined and wrote the source material.