Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

What. The. Hell.

Honestly, I disagree about this whole Nagini thing being a "controversy". A big reason why I disagree is that I see all these people getting upset about this except the actual actress who plays the part, who seems pretty delighted to get a role such as this. She doesn't seem to find this problematic in the least from what I can tell, but yet some people feel the need to say it is so on her behalf. I'm all for calling out something being problematic, but in this case I feel like some people just jumped the gun a little too quick.

If one could criticize troubling film parts only if the actor in the part had a problem with it, there would never be any criticism. In order to get the part, one usually has to be highly supportive with how it's written, and whoever isn't drops out or is dismissed. We can't speak for Kim, but the Internet can speak for the viewing audience. And overall said audiences's responses, from America to Korea, have been mostly negative.

One of the Korean commenters in the thread that was posted earlier mentioned that Claudia Kim, after she makes it big, will probably go on a talkshow someday talking about how she hated the role and just used it as a stepping stone into mainstream movies.

Regardless, this is a problem. It's also a recurring problem with Rowling's work. That's what makes it so hard to give this the benefit of the doubt.

Edited by M84 on Sep 27th 2018 at 2:50:40 AM

Like the Rancor getting his head crushed? Jabba getting strangled? To put shortly, Star Wars is not exactly kid friendly even when focused for kids.

Which makes me wonder, what is the target audience demographic here? Children or young adults? Or maybe even teenagers?

Ah, but those are clearly inhuman creatures being killed. Kid's movies are a bit lighter on gory things happening to humans or even humanoids. Usually.

How exactly would it be invalid? As mentioned before, Rowling has had issues with this sort of thing already. On its own, maybe it could be excused. But it's part of a rather troubling pattern.

And for the record, I'm a person of color too (Asian-American) and I can understand why this is a bad move.

Edited by M84 on Sep 28th 2018 at 3:48:45 AM

And Tommy Wiseau was pretty excited about The Room. So what's your point?

That's without going into the obvious that she's got no choice but to act excited because you don't want to anger Warner Bros by accidently slamming the big blockbuster they just hired you for if you hope to have a career in Hollywood.

This isn't even the first time this new series has been criticized for racism - see the discussions a lot of native groups were having about the online short stories Rowling did about Ilvermory. Essentially, they felt she was appropriating Indigenous mythologies and portraying them as fictional magic instead of the actual cultural traditions that they are(I don't have the time or the energy to outline the controversy in detail, but if anyone wants to look into it this page is a good place to start.)

Also, while this probably isn't as serious, one of Rowling's 'twitter retcons' was that the Goldstein family is Jewish, yet there's absolutely no indication of that with the films. It wouldn't even be that difficult to include, and if you're going for WWII parallels anyway it might be a good idea to have actual Jewish characters.

Edited by Pseudopartition on Sep 27th 2018 at 7:33:49 AM

... I mean, if their name Goldstein, them not being Jewish would be the surprise. Calling that a retcon would be if on Twitter she says that Cho Chang was Asian.

You know I just briefly tried to imagine what if Cho hadn't been Asian after all but still had the Cho Chang name.

It was pretty scary.

Edited by windleopard on Sep 27th 2018 at 5:49:03 AM

Isn’t that one of the gags from A Very Potter Musical?

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Sep 27th 2018 at 6:33:40 AM

The Internet does not speak for the viewing audience. Places like Woke Twitter and this forum are not analogous to the broad viewing audience.

For starters, I'm at a loss to understand why it's so terrible that this actress is Korean. Unless there's some racist stereotype of Korean people being associated with snakes that's been kept well secret. It's a big mistake to conflate Woke Twitter with the real world.

Anyway, the problem with this isn't that Claudia Kim is Korean, and it wouldn't be better if Nagini were being played by a white lady. The problem is Rowling's endless need to retcon in weird and random ways. There's not the tiniest hint in the books that Nagini was ever a person.

Same. I have no idea why this is a controversy. Because people are thinking in terms of negative stereotypes?

I've heard all sorts of other garbage about stuff like this too, like how Harry and Ron wouldn't take the Patel sisters to the Yule Ball as a last resort, but that was because they had other people in mind and otherwise weren't planning to go; the Patel sisters were quite literally their last resort cuz they had dates in mind already and didn't want to go otherwise, it wasn't because they were Indian and ugly.

Not to mention stereotypical names are often used if you can't think of an actual name; I've used the surname "Takahashi" as a name for a Japanese person before, plus I'm sure "Chang" is a very common Chinese surname.

It's not really a controversy, it's just an unfortunate reading the new material brings.

The real controversy remains WB hiring a known domestic abuser as one of their leads and that whoever buys a ticket for this movie gives money to said domestic abuser and validates the decision.

Chang is a common Chinese surname. Cho is not a forename for Chinese people.

The internet and primarily twitter amplify the controversial aspect,and I suspect they knew this was going to be quickly picked up but they don't care when it means people are talking about the film,casting Jony Depp brings further attention to the film,he's a domestic abuser but he still has his fangirls who'll watch whatever film he's in

All in all,they're rubbing their hands together knowing all this attention means it will sell really well

Edited by Ultimatum on Sep 27th 2018 at 7:30:22 AM

There's nothing necessarily wrong with a Korean actress playing a snake women.

But in aggregate? It is, at best remarkably tone-deaf, if not outright offensive.

She's not just a Korean actress playing a snake woman, she's an Asian woman playing a character best known as being a pet. Given the issues with objectification of women, particularly Asian women being subservient to white characters and Asian women being sensual servants to a bad guy, it's questionable.

Then you have Potter's... consistent issues with representation it points to a trend of... at least blindness about non-white characters.

The only defense I've heard mounted for it seems to amount to "well it's not that bad, and the Asian actress should be happy that they threw her a bone" which is also impressively missing every point ever.

Personally, I don't think the choice is that offensive... but it's also a completely unforced error that at kindest is tone-deaf. It points to just plain apathy of whether or not something could be offensive which isn't a great look.

... also it's a stupid retcon, but that's irrelevant to that discussion.

So would it have been better if they had hired a white lady to play the part? And how is it "tone deaf"? What's the association between Korean people and snakes?

As people have pointed out, we even have a trope for Dragon Lady. The association of "exotic Asian women" with reptiles is as old as dirt, and it doesn't help this film's case that the character is effectively a circus performer.

The other side of it is less of a 1:1 "asians and reptiles" and more of a "we have two asian characters in this franchise. One's very secondary and the other is a animal slave to magic Nazis". It's not good optics.

Remember that Nagini's role in the Harry Potter books is basically:

• Being Voldemort's pet
• Being Voldemort's furry mum/wet nurse
• Swallowing people for Voldemort
• Rocking that Bathilda Bagshot chic
• Getting sworded by Neville

It's a pretty awful role to give to anyone. I think that giving it to a white actress wouldn't have made it better, just... less worse, somehow. And giving it to the series' newest minority actress is a dumb move.

Yeah, it's terribly tone-deaf at best and pretty fucking racist at worst.

The Dragon Lady stereotype has nothing to do with snakes or reptiles in general. It has to do with dragons, which is a very different thing than snakes or turtles or alligators, both in Est-Asian spirituality and in Western stereotypes of Asia.

Also, one of the characteristics of dragon ladies, besides their "Asian-ness", is being domineering; whereas Nagini, as people who complained about this casting have pointed out, is someone's pet. So no, she isn't 'literally' a Dragon Lady, and until we know what her personality is we can't say that she is an actual example either.

Edited by Nithael on Sep 27th 2018 at 6:19:41 PM

Dragons are scaled reptiles, but sure, I'm sure all the times exotic Asian Dragon Lady women are seen/associated with snakes in Hollywood is just a complete coincidence, then. Like Anna May Wong, actress sadly used to code all the Dragon Lady stereotypes of classic hollywood, in her entire career. Wearing a snake-themed necklace and dress in Daughter of the Dragon and carrying an actual snake on her in Thief of Bagdad, plus many other roles. To the point writer Matthew Sweet's article about her career is titled "Snakes, slaves and seduction".

Dragons are snakes with wings that spit fire. I'm sure you can work out they're not that far apart.

Edited by Gaon on Sep 27th 2018 at 9:30:10 AM