Law #38 - Writers and characters
It may have escaped your notice, but life isn’t fair.
If you usually read books, you are probably familiar by now with a book series named “Harry Potter”.
Readers have recently learned that HBO plans to create a new, more faithful Harry Potter TV series by adapting each book into its own season.
John Lithgow was the first cast member to be confirmed, and he is playing Albus Dumbledore. Even though he is 79, and, if the show runs for at least 7 seasons, let’s hope he’ll be in good health.
Fun fact: I love John Lithgow ever since 3rd Rock from The Sun, not to mention his run on Dexter as the Trinity Killer. He’s such a complex actor that it’s fantastic to see him on the screen, in roles that range from Barney Stinson’s dad in How I Met Your Mother, up to the psychopath Eric Qualen in Cliffhanger. The only thing is: he’s not British.
Ah, he’s going to have to work on that accent. But I digress.
The next cast member that is rumored is Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall. I love that they have similar names. This sounds like a great fit! And hopefully it is, but as far as I can tell, it’s not confirmed yet.
Finally, a third cast member confirmation ensued: Paapa Essiedu as Snape. This article breaks down a few of the issues with casting Paapa as Snape. My favorite is the “James Potter bullying a black kid in the 70s” one - they will probably change the narrative on this one, therefore losing the faithfulness - not that there was much left.
Because yes, Paapa is black, and Snape isn’t.
This triggered all kinds of outrage on social media, and while I don’t really care (we’ll always have the original movie adaptation, which turns out is more faithful than the so-called faithful TV series HBO are aiming to make), there is an interesting aspect I want to point out in relation to a character’s… characteristics.
This is in response to people saying that when the author doesn’t mention the character’s race, the movie adaptation can choose freely. I do not aim to evaluate one specific casting and have no beef with the Snape casting specifically (other than disagreeing with it); my analysis has to do with the phenomenon.
Fun fact: When a character’s skin/race/gender and so on is missing from a book (not the case here, as it is), it’s the same as the author’s. Authors and writers omit describing something that reflects themselves because in our writing we mirror ourselves - we only feel the need to explain it when it represents something outside our own persona, something distinct.
It will never occur to me to write that my character is white because it goes without saying - I am white, ergo my character is white as well - and any writer, according to William Strunk Jr., the author of The Elements of Style (and not only him) writes for an audience of one: himself. So when writing for myself, I already know the character is white, it’s implied.
When I want to write a character of a different race, then yes, I need to specify that - because it’s an entity that has characteristics which are distinct from my own. I need to tell myself: This guy differs from you.
It’s also the reason all the above pronouns were masculine. I am a man, it’s easier for me to use masculine pronouns when reflecting hypothetical characters that in the end relate to myself (a supposed author and a character that relates to him, subsequently to me, since that author basically becomes my character in this article).
If you read Ben Okri (nigerian author, winner of the Man Booker prize in 1991), he only explicitly mentions the race/skin color of his less than 1% white characters, never the rest of the bunch (who are obviously black, because he's Nigerian). Never once it has occurred to me that a character that Ben Okri doesn’t physically describe is something other than black. It wouldn’t make any sense.
Yes, he often describes people having darker skin than other people, or smooth, or other particularities, but never feels the need to say “this person is black”.
So the argument "his skin color is not specified in the books" is never a solid one. It's specified every time, through the author's own image, once you understand how the writing process works.
“It may have escaped your notice, but life isn’t fair.” - Severus Snape