Fowl play: why colour-blind casting can also reinforce weary tropes
Mainstream family entertainment has made progress when it comes to representation of non-white people, and Disney+’s lavish new fantasy Artemis Fowl ticks a lot of the right boxes, at least on paper. But some conversations still need to be had. Especially when it comes to taking white-centric stories and simply swapping out a few supporting characters while preserving the white, usually male, leader at the centre.
Artemis Fowl is a sort of hightech Harry Potter, adapted from the bestselling books by Irish author Eoin Colfer and directed by Kenneth Branagh. Its hero is a boy genius (newcomer Ferdia Shaw) with inherited wealth and a smug sense of superiority. Assisting Fowl on his adventure to find his missing father is his “friend, mentor and bodyguard” Domovoi Butler. In the books, Butler is a hulking Eurasian figure; in the movie, he’s played by Nonso Anozie, a British actor of Nigerian descent. Even with Anozie in white hair and blue contact lenses, it’s not a great look casting the guy whose family has served the white Fowl dynasty for generations as a black man. Meanwhile the more central character of Holly Short, who is described in the books as having “nut-brown skin”, is played by white actor Lara McDonell. Again, not a great look.
Branagh is often credited for bringing colourblind casting from the stage to Hollywood, having cast Denzel Washington in his Much Ado About Nothing back in 1993. But frequently his films slip actors of colour into secondary roles. In 2011, Idris Elba appeared as Heimdall, supporting Norse god to Marvel’s Thor in Branagh’s bigscreen adaptation. His 2015 Cinderella remake cast Anozie as level-headed friend to Richard Madden’s Prince Charming. And his recent Murder on the Orient Express had Leslie Odom Jr as one of the passengers, thus avoiding an all-white cast (as Agatha Christie originally wrote it).
It’s not just Branagh or Disney. We thought we had retired these weary tropes – the black best friend, the token non-white underling – but all manner of archaically white-centric stories are still being diversified at the edges. It’s difficult to find a white Marvel superhero who doesn’t have a sidekick of colour.
Alternative options are available. Disney has also put out Ava DuVernay’s lavish fantasy A Wrinkle in Time, which had – gasp! – an African-American girl as its hero (she was originally written as white). Elsewhere, the likes of SpiderMan: Into the Spider-Verse or Pokémon Detective Pikachu have proven you don’t need a white lead for mass appeal. The problem doesn’t solely lie with the film-makers. It is also a symptom of the often blithely white-centric texts on which these films are based. If the story needs “diversifying up” with a few switcharounds, then maybe it wasn’t fit for today’s audiences in the first place.