J.K. Rowling shuts down anyone who thinks Noma Dumezweni can't play Hermione.
Recent announcements from the Potterverse
Those who thought Harry Potter would end after "The Deathly Hallows" have been thrilled by recent announcements from the Potterverse.
Author J.K. Rowling at the launch of the website Pottermore.
These developments include not only a Harry Potter theme park and the movie version of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" but also a continuation of Harry Potter's story following the boy-wizard as an all-grown-up and stressed out Ministry of Magic employee and his middle child, Albus Severus Potter, in a stage play called "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child."
The latest news about the "Cursed Child" made waves over the weekend when it was announced that Hermione will be played by a black woman.
Unfortunately, some people are less than pleased about this.
Actress Noma Dumezweni is a London stage veteran who won a Laurence Olivier Award for best performance in a supporting role for 2005's "A Raisin in the Sun," and she will play Hermione opposite Jamie Parker as Harry and Paul Thornley as Ron.
Noma Dumezweni holding her Olivier Award.
The funny (sad-funny, not haha-funny) thing is though, film adaptations of stories that originally starred actors of color are routinely white-washed. Just look at "21," which was about Asian-American MIT students gaming Las Vegas casinos but was adapted to star a white actor in the main role. Or "The Last Samurai," in which Tom Cruise played a samurai.
This practice goes back to Hollywood's golden age and continues even today, with Johnny Depp playing a Native American in a "Lone Ranger" adaptation and Emma Stone being cast as a part-Asian character in "Aloha."
When characters who are meant to be black or brown are played by white actors, the defense is usually that Hollywood is a meritocracy and casting directors simply pick the best actor for the role regardless of skin color. But when an actor of color is cast in a role that many assume to be white, people are suddenly concerned about authenticity.
Even when a character in a book who is described as a person of color is played by a person of color, people are upset because they assumed the character was white (see the casting of Amandla Stenberg as Rue in "The Hunger Games").
People criticized Amandla Stenberg's casting as Rue in "The Hunger Games" because of her race.
In a world where characters can do magic and mail is delivered by owl or where governments force children to fight to the death each year, is it really so unbelievable and inauthentic to think that a character could be anything other than white?
When the news of Hermione's casting broke, some fans couched their displeasure as concern for J.K. Rowling, who they thought might be upset by the casting decision.
They could not have been more wrong. Rowling responded like the class act that she is:
Boom. Mic drop. Hermione's race was never stated in the books.
The Potter movies chose to portray Hermione as a white woman. Hermione appears on the cover of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" with white skin as well.
And that's fine! That's a choice the casting director for the films made. That's a choice the book artist made. Those are choices made not based on descriptions of Hermione in the text but on assumptions made in a world that assumes that, unless otherwise specified, people and characters are white.
The casting director for "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" has chosen to portray Hermione as a black woman.
And both portrayals are acceptable, and J.K. Rowling approved interpretations of the character.
Though Emma Watson as Hermione in the Harry Potter movies is iconic, it's a sign of progress to have a woman of color inhabiting this role.
One of the critiques that the Potter series has faced since its release is that Rowling didn't seem to write a lot of main roles for people of color in the Harry Potter series. The only explicit diversity in the movies were in background roles, such as the Indian Patil sisters, Potter classmate Dean Thomas, Quidditch captain Angelina Johnson, and love interest Cho Chang (aka The One Before Ginny).
What we can learn from this conversation is how we all need to be more open-minded about diversity in pop culture. Perhaps this is something J.K. Rowling has realized after the fact. Perhaps this is something she wished she had made explicitly clear in the books, or perhaps she enjoys people interpreting her work in new and different ways.
It's great that such a beloved piece of pop culture is moving into the 21st century.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.