The Harm of Black Faces in White Fantasy and Fiction: Why We Should Stop Being Written In and Write Our Own
Photos courtesy of Elaine Howlin, Madalyn Cox, and Shayna Douglas
There are few things in life that give me comfort these days. Considering how much doom scrolling I do, how many deaths I wake up to, and how much financial and social anxiety I have, I tend to cling to things that I know and have loved for years…things that I already know will be resolved happily. Like many, reading Tolkien, Jane Austen, and J.K. Rowling were safe havens for me growing up. They were safe passage into worlds where magic gave ordinary people a chance, where love could be played like a game, and where good and evil seemed more black and white.
As I have grown, I find more comfort in the gray of stories I once thought I knew like the back of my hand, but I also have become more observant about who these stories represent.
And it’s not me.
And I don’t have a problem with that now.
Years ago, I would be railing about the lack of representation in my favorite books. I would question why Harry couldn’t be Black. I would draw sketches of what Arwen would look like with long loc’d hair and glowing Black skin. I would imagine myself falling in line when Mr. Darcy got me all the way together. But I have no desire to see that anymore. Life experience has taught me that there’s a lot I wasn’t taught, and that there are far more Black stories to be told than Rosa Parks. I want to see myself reflected on screen in my own stories and in ways that make historical sense and that show my mythology.
I went to a photography lecture in college about the importance of lighting. The lecturer was discussing the importance of undertones in lighting to correctly show deeper skintones accurately and aesthetically. He taught us the racist history of film development on camera and in film, explaining that the quality control card used in early color film development (sometimes called the “Shirley card”) was calibrated for light skin and light hair. This served as the baseline for film development for years, meaning that Black people often appeared gray or green in photographs. He said something I will never forget: “It doesn’t matter what they look like; the right subject without the right light will always look wrong.” It’s a fitting metaphor for the incorrect representation of Black and brown bodies in film. We might have the right intentions and the right actor, but it’s the wrong light.
In an effort to be politically correct, we have sacrificed being historically correct. Instead of force-fixing racism, it has the converse affect because it assumes that we, Black people, of all cultural backgrounds do not have our own stories and rich history that needs to be told and that they are not as engaging as the White ones we see.
The “Rings of Power” don’t need people of color to be powerful.
“The Rings of Power” is a series created by Amazon Prime. It is set during the Second Age of Middle Earth, thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. While most Tolkien lovers were initially excited to hear about this series, it has quickly turned into a controversial lightning rod around the fandom because it is not considered a part of Tolkien canon, but rather loosely inspired by it (for legal reasons). According to a Vanity Fair article, the showrunners stated:
“We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.” That takes a huge chunk of lore off the table and has left Tolkien fans wondering how this duo plans to tell a Second Age story without access to those materials. “There’s a version of everything we need for the Second Age in the books we have the rights to,” McKay says. “As long as we’re painting within those lines and not egregiously contradicting something we don’t have the rights to, there’s a lot of leeway and room to dramatize and tell some of the best stories that [Tolkien] ever came up with.”
So basically, the show can fill in any gaps as long as it does not contradict canon in Tolkien’s works that they do not own the rights to use.
When watching the trailers, I immediately sighed because I knew what was coming. I, along with millions of others, spied a few brown and Black faces. And while I’m always pleased to see my people get a bag and some bankability, I also wondered why we feel the need to be in these spaces that weren’t created for us.
Many Black people would disagree with me. Notably, in “Why Is Society Intent on Erasing Black People in Fantasy and Sci-fi’s Imaginary Worlds?” by Ashley Nkadi, she writes,
“Sometimes the erasure of black people in these genres masquerades under the guise of “historical accuracy.” Fantasy and sci-fi often draw inspiration from ancient Celtic, Norse, Greek and medieval European culture. Therefore, disgruntled white fans often use this knowledge to perpetuate the white nonsense that black people should not exist in these universes.
Such fans cited this notion as evidence in their racist tirades against Idris Elba when he was cast as Heimdall in Marvel’s Thor. “But Thor is based on Norse mythology, so Heimdall can’t be black,” they cried, as hot, salty white tears streamed down their faces. Their imaginations could stretch for alien attacks, a man with a magic hammer and interdimensional travel, yet could not encompass a black man playing a make-believe character.”
She is not wrong, but my argument is not that our imaginations can’t stretch to include Black faces in White stories; it is that we have stories of our own that don’t involve stretching anything but these studios’ pockets. It doesn’t matter that the writers of “The Rings of Power” have more creative license to create a more diverse world. This is not “Game of Thrones” or “The Witcher,” fantasy series that (barely) include Black people/People of Color and contain many of the same tenants of Tolkien’s writing, but without his historical rooting and research. We have Tolkien’s background, and we know the source material of Tolkien’s life’s work. It did not include us and it does not have to.The way to diversify literature, movies, and entertainment in general is to fund Black fantasy…period. Superimposing our way into these very established stories, franchises, and fanbases only:
1) Further incites racist hatred and vitriol targeted at the Black actors that accept these roles, forcing them to endure further trauma and
2) Implies that the only ways that Black people can be worthy of great stories is to show up in theirs, furthering the erroneous beliefs that so many already hold about our inability to create anything of our own.
We know that White supremacy has erased or coopted many of our stories. We know that much of the African mythos is complicated and oral. We know that financially and socially, we have not been in positions of power to pay for publication or promotion. Throwing a few random Black dots that were only meant to be seen peripherally (if at all) on a screen, does not solve the problem of White Supremacy. It only adds salve to our wounds by making us feel as if we have made it when we actually have not.
There really is no excuse for not promoting Black stories in film. Black authors have been putting in WORK in the fantasy genre for years outside of the grandam herself Octavia Butler. Here is just a short list of some of the Black fantasy I have read that is just as powerful as Lord of the Rings Lore.
13 Black Fantasy Authors and Books
There was nothing bridging about “Bridgerton”
Full disclosure: I did not watch all of Bridgerton. As much as I love Regency-era anything, I couldn’t. And I know why. I just could not get down with the historical fiction fantasy of seeing a Black man touted as Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset, the illustrious Duke of Hastings ,portrayed as one of the most eligible bachelors for the Bridgerton family. Were we all happy to see Regé-Jean Page grace our screens? Hell yes! Was I intrigued to learn how they would handle Queen Charlotte, a woman whose African lineage has been debated for centuries? Yes. But did I want it to play out like this? No.
And to my surprise, “Mr. Malcolm’s List,” another book-turned-movie set in 1800’s England, also stars a Black man that is (as you guessed it) the most desirable and eligible bachelor in England.
This is revisionist history.
It does not bridge the gap between history and today by placing Black and brown faces in places they never would have been. It is the same thing as leaving up Confederate statues as bastions of the bastardized “Lost Cause” fallacy of the South; rewriting history more favorably, even if only for entertainment, does nothing for our collective memory and for correcting the future. (As a side note: many of these period pieces created in England promote the false premise that racism is just an American thing; this could not be further from the truth. The Slave Codes that served the basis for the trade in Black Africans originated there, but that’s tea for another party.)
There are counterarguments here as well. Some may wonder if I would be this bothered if it was a Black woman touted as the most desirable Duchess in England. My response would be, yes, however…..
The desirability, or lack thereof, of Black women globally and in media deserves its own space and commentary. So, for now, I will just say, I didn’t like it when Jodie Turner-Smith played Anne Boleyn either.
The second counterargument is that placing Black people in these historical positions where they are wealthy, desired, and giving “main character energy,” is necessary because if we don’t, all we will have are more struggle stories.
My response to that is: do you think our whole lives revolve around trauma? They don’t. Yes, inevitably Black people’s stories will involve issues of race because our survival as a people has hinged on it and been hindered because of it, but there is so much more. And our stories have BEEN giving main character energy! What about Joseph Bologne, a Black/mixed-race virtuoso composer and musician in France who was one of the most popular and enigmatic figures in Parisian society? Yes, his life had trauma and sadness, but that was not all he was. He was a super star!
Why doesn’t someone make a series about Black Wall Street, a thriving Black town in Tulsa, Oklahoma that had its own money, class structures, and stories that we actually have records to support? You can easily showcase Black wealth and hierarchies (like classicsm, colorism, featurism, and texturism) just as social strata existed in England. Why do we only have to focus on what has burned us down? What about what has built us up? What about the things that make us complex as a people?
I recently watched “The Gilded Age” with my mother, and I can appreciate that show because the Black elite has an important story within the series, but honestly, the Black elite in the Gilded Age deserve their own show. Can we have a show following Peggy Scott’s family, their rise to wealth, and the interactions among the Black elite as a whole?
Can we have a show detailing the lives and interactions of WEB Du Boise and Booker T. Washington, two men that were powerful for their time and whose views and procuring wealth and succeeding in White, patriarchal capitalism made for extremely interesting lives. (And don’t even get me started on their messy personal lives). This is possible and can be massively successful. Look at “Self-Made” on Netflix, a show VERY VERY loosely based on the rise of Madame C.J. Walker.
Blackwashing is a thing, but it shouldn’t be.
I don’t want to see historical fiction where I’m Blackwashed in. I don’t want to see fantasy that assumes Black people don’t have mythology and stories of our own. I want to see my own shit on the same level as their own shit. Miss we with the economics of it all. I know that countries like China don’t even want to see Black People on a Star Wars poster in order for them to promote it. (Here’s looking at you Disney…and yes, I’m still waiting for Jannah’s story to unfold.) I know that every major studio claims that Black stories aren’t profitable. But there are a lot of us. And a lot of us are finding our own bags and demanding that studios respond accordingly. At what point are White studios going to acknowledge that we are worth the investment? And at what point are Black people going to decide that we are too? We have the great stories and we have the right actors.
We just need the right light. And this ain’t it.