Something has been bugging me as of late, and it has everything to do with the new Percy Jackson TV series that has the whole YA Fantasy community abuzz. In May of last year, Rick Riordan, the author of the Percy Jackson books, announced that in his new TV show based off of his books, the character Annabeth Chase would be played by the actress Leah Jeffries. According to him, the initial reception to this choice was positive, but I’ve seen and heard of a lot more vitriol aimed at the actress for this choice. Why? Because Leah Jeffries is Black, and Annabeth Chase is “White” (we’ll circle back to this later).
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of outcry and backlash due to the casting choices of popular book turned movie or TV franchises. The one I was most dialed into was The Hunger Games casting war over the character Rue, a young girl who is also forced to participate in the hunger games. In the movie, Rue was played by the actress Amandla Steinberg, a biracial Blasian girl, much to chagrin of some of the fanbase of the series. According to them, Rue being Black made her feel “less innocent”, her death “less sad”, and her casting “less accurate to the book”.
Another example of public backlash because of casting is in the franchise Mortal Instruments. The character Magnus Bane, who helps the main character Clary be hidden from her evil father, was played by Godfrey Gao in the movie, RIP, and Harry Shum Jr. in the Freeform series. The choice to cast an Asian man in the role for the movie caused an outcry by some fans, who wanted the role to be taken by Adam Lambert, a White man.
These are only a few examples from recent history, but you know what they all have in common? The characters in the book are either explicitly described as non-white, or could easily be interpreted as such. Magnus is clearly depicted and described as an East Asian man in the books, which the author confirms, and yet still fans were outraged. Rue is described in the books as having “dark-skin” several times, once even likening her skin tone to that of another character, Thresh, who is played by the dark-skinned Dayo Okeniyi — which fans took no issue with. The fan outcry was clearly based in misogynoir, which says black women and girls are “less innocent” and older than they are through adultification (we'll touch back on this later!).
Then we come to Annabeth, the love interest and secondary character in Percy Jackson. Annabeth is described as having “curly blonde hair”, “stormy grey eyes”, and “tan skin”. Now, while this description could easily fit a White girl, it could also fit a Black girl. There are Black people that have naturally blonde curly hair, tan skin (or light-skin as those in the Black community would say), and grey eyes. Therefore, casting a Black actress as Annabeth is not straying from the material much at all. And yes, before you comment: Annabeth is the daughter of Athena, a Greek goddess, which would make her at least half-white; BUT her father, Frederick Chase, is not described with any skin color, just hair and eyes — so he could easily be of any race and therefore could make Annabeth Biracial; and many Biracial Black/White people have...tan skin.
The attitude of misogynoir previously discussed may even extend to why some fans seem to be taking offense to Leah Jeffries casting as Annabeth, since even though the character Grover gets a similarly vague description and has been casted as a POC in both popular adaptations of the novel, the decision to cast him this way garners very little visible outrage, while Annabeth is seen as strictly White. Not to mention, while debatably not a book adaptation, the casting of Halle Bailey as The Little Mermaid cause an uproar of epic proportions. Why the double standard when it comes to black women and girls being cast in roles that are perceived to be white? And how does the casting of Godfrey Gao factor in? The answer is desirability. In one way or another we are meant to desire these characters or understand why others desire them. When characters at the forefront of our empathy, desire, or main character's desire are POC, it is generally taken to be "unrealistic" or otherwise wrong by the audience. When supporting characters that have nothing to do with desirability (not a love interest or someone finding love) or the forefront of our empathy (a particularly harrowing death or upsetting life circumstance that we are meant to feel the impact of) they often get a pass on whatever race they are cast as (like Grover or Thresh).
So why does any of this happen? Why are characters presumed white when they expressly aren't? Why does outrage peak when characters of desirability aren't cast as White? That’s easy: we are used to seeing Whiteness as the default in media. When a character’s skin isn’t described, we are conditioned to think: White. The same can even happen when characters are described as “tan”, “brown”, or even “dark-skinned” as we saw with Rue, since some fans claimed they interpreted that as “olive-skinned” and therefore still White (despite the author clearly stating Rue was always meant to be Black!).
Whiteness is not only seen as the default in general, but also the default of desire. Whiteness in many ways is still seen as the beauty standard, for men and women, by society — which media has heavily influenced. So featuring desirability from anything other than a White lens can still throw people off to this day. It doesn't help that Black women and Asian men are consistently seen as the least desirable in society when looking through studies and polls of people's general interests in America; hence why the recent examples we can find of vitriol about POC casting decisions fall directly on characters that 1) we are meant to understand desire for and 2) are cast as Black women/girls and Asian men
This idea of whiteness being the default is rampant, and that’s because publishing (and media) has historically been, and still continues to be, a White dominated space. There was no questioning a character’s ethnicity or race, the absence of clarity was always meant to be White, what else would it be? Why would a desirable character be anything but White? But this is not the mindset we should continue to have today. The world is so vast, with so many different people, through looks, culture, and more. We shouldn’t just assume a character is White because there’s not much to go on, or brush past an author’s attempt to write clearly non-white characters in favor of our own personal biases.
There are some that are less concerned with her race and more concerned that Annabeth in the TV series is depicted with dark hair and brown eyes, when they would have preferred the book’s description of blonde hair and grey eyes. This was the same argument for recasting Daniel Radcliffe because he didn’t have Harry’s green eyes, or people asserting Jennifer Lawrence was “too fat” to play Katniss even though she was average sized, or saying Emma Watson was “too pretty” and didn’t have “curly enough hair” to play Hermione, this list could go on forever.
While there is some validity to wanting descriptions to match, you won’t always be able to find an actor who fits that description to a tee AND is also best for the part. Casting directors, when faced with this dilemma, often choose to pick the latter and work backwards from there. Not to mention, these details just might not be important enough to the director for them to justify adding thousands of dollars to the production in hair, makeup, and CGI to be book accurate. Clearly Rick Riordan didn’t think these changes to Leah Jeffries appearance were needed for the role.
This belief that casting should be "just right" down to the hair and eyes can also be traced back to Whiteness being considered the default in books. Because White people, as a race just like any other, have similar phenotypes, these distinctions become more important to the identity of the character. "All of the characters are White, but this one has RED hair! Who would she be if she have any other hair color? How would she stand out or be different?". When that identity is tampered with, the essence of the character starts to feels lost with some of the audience — which is why I advocate for dynamic character descriptions.
Characters are more than just hair and eye color, so give them better, more in-depth descriptions. Describe eyes shapes, nose shapes, skin colors of all characters, skin blemishes, scars, freckles, dimples, mouths, how they walk, how tall they are, body shapes, how their personality reflects in the way they dress or how they gesture/hold themselves, anything! The possibilities are endless, and making this small change to how you write your characters will not only do wonders for representation in publishing and media (yes, even if your characters are White), but it will also help you get to know more about your characters, and that's always a good thing.
All of this to say, let’s be more open minded and kind when faced with things that challenge our world view and ideas about pieces of media. It’s all for your entertainment! And for the writers and aspiring authors, dynamic descriptions may just make publishing, and your writing, better! A win/win for us all.
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