I loved reading science-fiction and fantasy novels when I was younger, and almost all the heroes of those books were Caucasian. I myself am not Caucasian, and didn't mind at all. I don't remember a time when I wasn't able to mentally put myself into the shoes of someone who didn't look like me for the sake of a good story. As I got older, however, I learned that other people couldn't get their heads around it. I read about Ursula LeGuin raging over the book covers of "A Wizard of Earthsea" consistently picturing a pale-skinned Ged instead of a brown-skinned one. I couldn't find any copy of Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" that showed Hiro Protagonist was a BIPOC lead character. The problem seemed to be especially prevalent in the fantasy genre.
And now it's 2022, and the latest skirmish in the Culture Wars is over POC characters in fantasy media like "The Rings of Power," "The House of the Dragon," and Disney's live action "The Little Mermaid." The "The Rings of Power" features POC actors playing elves, dwarves, and harfoots (proto-Hobbits). "The House of the Dragon" has black actors playing characters from House Velaryon, who share ancestry with the Targaryens, a previously ultra-pale family of despots. The "previously" is important here, because these new POC characters represent a change from how these franchises have operated with regard to POC representation up until now. In Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" films, POC actors were limited to playing enemy orcs and barely glimpsed members of foreign armies. The first "Game of Thrones" series had more prominent POC characters, including Khal Drogo, played by Jason Momoa. However, they were mostly cordoned off on their own continent, and limited to a single storyline supporting a "white savior" heroine, Daenerys Targaryen. As for Halle Bailey as the new Ariel, I don't think I need to explain how prevalent the image of the red-haired mermaid has been in pop culture since she made her debut in the 1989 cartoon.
These complaints are nothing new. I've been hearing them for at least a decade, since Hollywood realized that POC led media like "Black Panther," "Aquaman," and "Bridgerton" could mean bigger audiences and more lucrative successes. Whitewashed characters in movies like "The Last Airbender" and "Ghost in the Shell" became a thing of the past. For the first time, POC actors were being considered for roles they'd never been considered for before, even if the character had previously only been portrayed by white actors. More POC representation behind the camera has also helped considerably. As a result, movies like "Prey," with an indigenous lead actress kicking alien butt, are getting made, and Jordan Peele is one of the last auteurs standing, having almost single-handedly kickstarted the recent black horror wave. Of course, this doesn't mean that the transition hasn't been bumpy, or has sometimes resulted in bad casting choices and bad end product. You could argue that the pendulum has swung too far, and Hollywood has overcorrected, but the latest controversy says otherwise.
So back to recent fantasy media. The POC characters in "Rings of Power" and "House of the Dragon" are clearly in the minority on these shows, mostly in supporting roles. A grand total of one major POV character in "Rings of Power," the elf Arondir, played by Ismael Cruz Cordova, is noticeably darker skinned. Ariel represents the first live action Disney princess who wasn't explicitly a POC character to begin with, to be played by a POC actress. Disney has made a dozen of these live action remakes, and this is the first time they've taken this kind of risk. I'd characterize these changes as hardly being risks at all, compared to the leaps and bounds in representation we've seen in other genres and franchises lately. Except, of course, there's been the backlash. The complaints are so rote by this point, all boiling down to taking umbrage with the "agenda" to force a diverse worldview into these fantasy worlds where one didn't exist before. As if that initial, non-diverse worldview wasn't just as much of a construct - one we treated as a default because we had few options otherwise.
The trumped up outrage is being pushed by a clear minority of fans and the usual bad faith actors, who simply don't like seeing POC characters in contexts where we haven't seen them before. They've been getting a lot of attention, because their arguments are frequently ridiculous, and their vitriol is completely out of proportion. And frankly, it's all too familiar. These are the people that the fantasy book publishers were worried about when they kept POC characters off of their book covers. These are my fellow nerds who never learned how to put themselves in somebody else's shoes for the sake of a good story. I've tried to engage with some of them, and it's honestly so sad how they can take such small changes as a deeply personal affront. Any attempts at wider inclusion are seen as exclusion, despite there being plenty of other non-POC characters to follow and root for. And after having their narrow-mindedness enabled for so long, is that any surprise?
My takeaway from all this is that we have to work harder at normalizing POC in fantasy stories to fight this kind of mindset. We need more representation, not less. I wish "Rings of Power" and "House of the Dragon" had been bolder and committed to more POC representation. Other fantasy shows have been more gutsy. I love that "The Sandman'' has half a dozen black actresses playing characters who weren't black women in the source material - including Death, the series' most popular character - and creator Neil Gaiman has been active on Twitter, dressing down any complainers. There's a new "Interview With the Vampire" series on the horizon, with POC actors playing Louis and Claudia - and it makes perfect sense for the New Orleans setting.
I write this as someone who is from an East-Asian background, and still doesn't really exist in any of the franchises I've talked about, except on the margins. Sonoya Mizuno is in "The House of the Dragon," and that's about it. I'm still putting myself in other people's shoes when I watch these shows, though a wider variety of shoes. Frankly, I don't understand how you come to the fantasy genre, full of made-up lands and impossible creatures, and not expect to have to do that anyway.
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