ink-phoenix:

You know what I’m going to say more about that.

I like Eddie Redmayne. I think his most honest, interesting performance was in My Week With Marilyn. He’s a gifted actor. He won an Academy Award for his role as Stephen Hawking and while you may or may not like the fact that most able bodied actors are cast to portray disabled icons - it’s part of the reality of the business, and he did a great job.

Newt Scamander isn’t really described as a character. He’s a name on the cover of a book- like many others in the Harry Potter world, he’s like Nicolas Flamel, or the Prewett Brothers - another one of the characters who made the background rich and imaginative and made it feel /real/.

The Harry Potter books are set in the UK, which is still to this day extremely diverse. Yet, largely the books and the Golden Trio (and the Big Seven) have been cast and portrayed as white. There are only three major black characters (Dean Thomas, Lee Jordan and Angelina Johnson) during Harry’s stay at Hogwarts. The Patil Twins and Cho Chang are the only other characters who are non-white.

The only other non-white character is Blaise Zabini (and by the way when he was described as black in HBP there was an uproar in fandom that he wasn’t, in fact, a white hot Italian boyl) - who is only introduced in later books and is clearly one of the ‘bad guys’. 

So a series of books and movies that shaped two to three generations and will remain a milestone in our cultural memories has no real prominent non-white heroes, no queer representation (despite appropriating queer struggle and making a character with an HIV allegory journey canonically straight) (dumbledore doesn’t fucking count) and no actual representation of any religious or cultural influence other than Christian-Judaism. No mention of Jewish students in any relevant roles or any effort made to include them in the narrative (how do they feel about Christmas being such a huge prominent deal and no mention of Hanukkah?) let alone any attempt to include Islam or Hinduism or Sikhism or a number of other significantly cultural differences that would have meant the WORLD to a kid reading about these wonderful heroes and wizards and witches and their adventures and finding someone just like them in universe.

And now, now that we have the opportunity to start again, to tackle a character that has virtually no backstory and can be re-imagined to start yet another magical adventure - Newt Scamander, a Brit in New York City in the jazz era, facing very different social structures  than the ones he’s used to, looking after and chasing after magical creatures and getting into shenanigans and maybe - maybe even grapple with the beginnings of the depression and the rise of Grindewald - or other evil wizards on this side of the Ocean? New York, a city of immigrants, a melting pot of cultures and languages and traditions – you have this amazing, incredibly inspiring and creative setting -

And you cast yet another plain, traditionally good looking white British actor. For a character that will potentially start yet another massive franchise which will expand the Harry Potter universe beyond the borders of the seven books - that will maybe give us hope for a First War series, for a BBC miniseries about the Marauders Era - you have literally no limits because you know this movie will bring  in millions of dollars you could literally cast someone off the street and still  the Harry Potter fandom would come out in droves -

YOU HAVE NO CONSTRICTIONS OF FINANCING OR BUDGET OR FOREIGN MARKETS, YOU ARE WORKING WITH A GOLD MINE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

and this is what you do with it.

It makes me so fucking sad. Because I’m not even surprised. 

But representation matters, and this was a huge opportunity to actually become bigger and better than where we started out as, and it was so very epically missed.