Harry potter British preference=discrimination?

I fear that your definition of "deviating from source material" here is "is not the character himself."

What? I am simply asking what instance has there been of an adaptation using only people of nationalities that are the same as the characters' and then got flak for being racist.

Harry Potter?

When did that get flak for being racist?

Read OP... (Since "racist" and "discriminatory based on nationality" is semantics to you...)

Isn't that just semantics really?

edited 7th Dec '11 11:39:15 PM by Swish

I was kinda referring to an actual media shitstorm, rather than one guy online. Any nutjob with a kneejerk reaction can write pointless whinge posts online.

I'm with Bro to be honest.

I'm sure that plenty of productions have limited the acting roles to actors of the same nationality, whether it's been common knowledge or not. And I really doubt many people give a shit about it.

"But I do find weird that a book series that is strongly against racism had a British exclusivity regarding the movies and the lack of non British characters on the books for that matter. "

The characters are British because it is set in Britain. The actors are British because...um...it's filmed in Britain. That and American actors can't seem to do any British accent for toffee.

edited 8th Dec '11 1:57:00 AM by InverurieJones

When casting actors, they were well within their rights to say, "You have to seem convincingly British" (which British actors would naturally have an advantage at). It's denying foreign actors the opportunity to show they can be convincingly British that people are crying foul at.

Well, to be fair, they did include several Irish actors in the films, so obviously they were giving foreign actors a chance to play British parts; but I do recall that Rowling demanded that the actors should be British if the roles are. I would've done the same out of convenience, had I been in charge of casting: it's relatively rare that foreign actors manage a convincing British accent, compared to British actors playing foreign parts (or that's how it looks to me.)

If they can cast a Serb as a Bulgarian, they can cast a non-Brit as a Brit, no?

Well, the Bulgarian character primarily spoke broken, heavily accented English; but were I in charge, I would've had someone make sure that the accent was believably Bulgarian and not Serbian.

I'm pretty sure that they didn't bother, though; "vaguely Eastern European" was probably the accent they wanted.

And as I said, some Irish actors were cast as British characters, so presumably they were able to replicate the accent convincingly. (Personally, I never spotted a fake-sounding accent in the films.)

edited 8th Dec '11 8:07:16 AM by BestOf

The Harry Potter books are pretty confusing to me. I mean the closest political Wizard country it seems in the books is Bulgaria... for some unexplained reason? I mean there's Fleur but they're never mentioned again, and it seems like central Europe, most of the Mediterranean, and Iberia just kind of fell off the map. Nobody seems to care that Britain is being taken over by Wizard Nazis for the second time. What the hell, Europe?

It's really no big deal at the end of the day.

If you can get an American actor who can convincingly play a British person I'm sure there's no problem. The same is true of the reverse situation; Hugh Laurie is skilled enough at playing an American to be mistaken for an American actor. Same with Christian Bale, from what I've heard.

As it was, I think the films were produced mostly in Britain. In that case, the acting companies you're going to be recruiting from are largely going to be British.

I, personally, do find it kind of weird that a book with a clear anti-racism aesop includes a character named Cho Chang...

In the international school where I studied for a year, we had a Chinese transfer student named Ming Yang Wang. Sometimes people just have really stereotypical names.

Or is Cho Chang an impossible name? (I don't know a whole lot about Chinese names.)

I might be highlighting my ignorance of Chinese (That was the character's nation of origin, yeah?) nomenclature, but I would not have thought that that would be an odd name for a Chinese person. It would be a bit like having a Scottish character named Robert Mc Cloud, somewhat stereotypical, but not racist or unusual in any way.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Cho is actually a Chinese name.

Cho Chang is, indeed, linguistically impossible - it's two family names, one Korean, one Chinese. It'd be like calling your token French character Smith de Gaulle.

edited 8th Dec '11 8:30:06 AM by Iaculus

Ah, so that was my Western ignorance (And presumably Rowling's also) shining through. It more seems like a problem with a failure to do research, rather than any malicious intent. Now if Rowling had called her Asian female character "Fu Mancu", then there might be a bit more grounds for criticism.

Word, but poor research in the field you're going for a specific aesop about is less forgiveable. And now we've pointed out that it's an impossible name, it is rather unfortunate that it sounds like 'chingchong'.

Also, it should be pointed out that racism is seldom triggered by malice as much as intellectual laziness, so intent isn't as important as it might be to racefail.

edited 8th Dec '11 8:37:04 AM by Iaculus

Perhaps her mother was Korean and they were doing the Southern thing, as in giving a girl a last name as her first name.

That seems like a bit of a stretch, though.

... I kind of want to name a character Smith De Gaulle, now.

I had not noticed that it sounded like Chingchong until you mentioned it. Maybe it was irresponsible of Rowling not to do a bit of research, but most likely she wrote a name which rolled off the tongue and sounded right, not really expecting anyone to sperg over something as minor as that. It certainly just seems like you're reaching to find something even vaguely racist about innocent children's books. Let's try avoiding jumping at innocent mistakes, huh.

edited 8th Dec '11 8:40:12 AM by YeahBro

Well, if the name is impossible, there's really no excuse.

A writer is supposed to read up on their subject matter and look up important details (and most really good writers go to elaborate lengths to look up less important ones, too,) so if she wanted to include a character from another culture, she should've looked up how names work in that culture.

edited 8th Dec '11 8:43:12 AM by BestOf

It certainly just seems like you're reaching to find something even vaguely racist about innocent children's books

But... but innocent children's books are where you find all the good racism!

Not that I believe Harry Potter is anywhere near that league. I was just making a point.