🦋 Butterfly in the Sky ... as Long as You Are the "Right" Color

What fights about purity in fantasy and science fiction tell us about America

Why do people only care about realism in fantasy when it comes to people of color?

The vast majority of the popular works of science fiction and fantasy include characters who are white, and inspired by topics and locations that are western, medieval European or classical Greece in character. Newer works carry over these themes, but include main characters who are blue aliens, courageous hairballs, or mermaids.

Very few center on characters that resemble the United States today. As a fan of science fiction, I grew up reading about and always imagining the characters in these books as white. For most of my life, science fiction was a story I read about “others”, not one I ever read about myself, and certainly never a story I could relate to at a fundamental level.

To overcome this gap in representation, a new generation of science fiction and fantasy writers, many of them of color, have started writing stories about or inspired by diverse characters.

Some of the new crop of science-fiction books by Asian authors.

Despite this new trend, the vast majority of stories out there, especially those that could be adapted to other works, like TV shows and movies, remain overwhelmingly homogenous. In order to overcome this lack of diversity, when movies are now made based on older books, such as those written by J.R.R. Tolkien, writers and producers modernize the texts by casting diverse actors to play white characters from the books.

But increasingly, as soon as some fans learn that the casting includes characters who are Black, or Asian - the furor erupts. Blue skin? A-OK. Black skin? Oh no you didn’t.

Just look at the “controversies” from the past few months alone:

• Fans got butthurt when a Black actress got cast in the television adaption of the Percy Jackson series of fantasy novels.

• In May, Moses Ingram, the Black star of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi, revealed the abusive direct messages she received on social media - thousands of them. And she was a brand new character, not even a recast.

• Ncuti Gatwa was cast as the 14th Doctor Who - it took less than 20 minutes for thousands of reactions against his casting to crop up on Twitter.

• Amazon had to turn off reviews and comments when thousands of toxic fans review-bombed its new Rings of Power over the casting of a Black man as an elf (read that sentence out loud to drive home the inanity of this situation).

• And most recently, #NotMyAriel was trending #1 for several days after Halle Bailey, a young Black actress, was cast as Ariel in Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid.

Frequently, the complaints center on two issues:

• The fantasy character in the original source material was white, or male - and and their whiteness or gender is a central part of their character. Casting a woman to play a character who was written as male, for instance, is tantamount to changing the character entirely and a betrayal of the original writer and story; and

• The diverse actor assigned to the role is untalented.

This second category of complaints come from people trying really hard not to sound racist. What’s interesting is that if a dude was cast in the same role, then the question of their fitness for the position never even comes up - it is a courtesy not extended to women, especially those of color, who are cast in the same role.

Its fantasy … so you know, its being made up all the time.

And as for that first category of complaints, here’s the thing: if you’re really going to be what Trevor Noah calls a “Little Mermaid Purist” and demand that casting choices always mimic the fantasy source material, then we just need to go a bit deeper to see the quicksand upon which these fallacious arguments stand.

For instance, Hans Christian Anderson wrote the Little Mermaid in response to his unrequited love for another man who was in love with and married a woman. The three of them remained friends for years, but Anderson was heartbroken. In the original, Ariel trades her voice for the ability to walk; however, her every step is agony. When her 'true love' falls for someone else, she returns to the sea and dies - whereupon her body becomes seafoam.

Let's see what purists say when Disney makes that movie.

Here’s another example, again relating to The Little Mermaid: there have already been characters introduced that were diverse and different. Years ago, Disney even created a cartoon about a deaf-mute mermaid named Gabriella (based on a real fan of the show who died of leukemia during the cartoon’s first season).

Fantasy is quitoxic, ever-changing and bound only to the imagination of its writers … and yes, it’s readers - that’s what makes fantasy and science fiction so fun. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that merely changing the race of an actor is about the least imaginative alteration that can be made to a story meant to be bold, imaginative and fantastical.

The actual audience doesn’t care

Eight year-olds watching the Little Mermaid or Percy Jackson could care less about the color of a character’s skin. It is the adults who aren’t the movie’s target audience, who make a fuss about these issues. By engaging in these tropes and “controversies”, they are the ones introducing tribalism and racism to children at an early age.

What we can do:

• Those who have created these worlds need to speak up and stand by competent actors cast to retell their stories. As the creators of these imaginary worlds, their word is often “law” to their fans, toxic or otherwise. George Lucas borrowed heavily from Japanese samurai films and other diverse sources to create Star Wars - but said nary a word when Rose Tico was attacked for being cast as an Asian-American in the recent sequels. Imagine the power of his voice to quell that toxicity.

• Support the continued casting of diverse actors. Fantasy and science fiction stretch the bounds of imagination and allow us to tell stories about social issues often considered off limits. Literally the least we can do is represent the diversity of this country in the casting choices for art meant to push boundaries.

• Encourage the creation of more representative source material. Support authors who write good books about all kinds of people. A good place to start is a personal favorite, The Expanse - a series of books, written by two white men, that recognize the mish-mash of backgrounds we will become two hundred years from now. The resulting TV adaptation, therefore was able to cast a diverse cast without much controversy.

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