The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Adaptation Do's and Don'ts
g33k:
--- Quote from: Conspiracy Theorist on May 22, 2022, 09:38:18 AM --- ...
The elephant in the room(*) is the lack of significant recurring characters of colour. You have Rawlings, Lamar, Sanya and Martha Liberty and thats about it. Chicago has a significant African American population which is virtually unrepresented.
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I don't really count Lamar, he's a VERY minimal character; in chatter & forum-posts about the TV show, I think the term "token Black" would be used. :-[
Rawlings is pretty minor, too; but there's some history with Murphy & her dad, so we've got a bit more depth & a positive portrayal. The character could be expanded for TV (more lines, more scenes)... but suffers a lot from being a Normal in the supers-setting, which is not the look you want in portraying equality.
Sanya, now, is a solid one! The man kicks ass & takes names... unless he's shooting the ass. Again, though, I think we need to see his role expanded a bit, given more lines & more scenes.
Martha Liberty is a mixed bag, representation-wise. Plenty of magical power, plenty of authority; but very VERY few lines & scenes (bordering again on "tokenism"). I'd like to see more of her, to be honest! And I think there's plenty of scope for that in the TV show (without betraying anything core to the Dresdenverse or the Case Files (but of course we don't know her future arc, maybe she'll become a key character and some bit of TV-canon will be explicitly-contradicted by later novels (Jim's involvement with scripts&c could prevent that!))).
There's Susan, a Latina, but the "girlfriend" & "damsel in distress" frames are really strong around her; and when she turns half-vamp and reframes with power of her own, she moves directly off-stage & mostly stays there (barring Death Masks) until Changes... where Harry kills her. So... a problematic character, on several fronts.
Agreed that there are some characters (lookin at you, Alphas! Also the Wardens, as a group) for whom no race was ever established, or for whom it never seemed like a significant or relevant part of the character. I'd be down with any of them -- several of them, in fact! -- being explicitly non-Anglo.
Wizards, in general -- the world-spanning White Council, in particular -- should be VERY multi-ethnic... but mostly Asian. We presume magic power is largely equal among all groups, and the world is about 60% Asian, 17.5% African, and 17.5% European+North-American. So, equal numbers of black & white, but asian (including Indian) is about double black+white together.
###
footnote-mark from above, added by me:
(*) - There's another elephant, I've gotta say. When you move outside the Dresden fandom, some communities *cough*LGBT*cough*feminists*cough* have a notably less-positive view. Dresden himself is VERY male-gazey, and some of the ways he talks about (or doesn't) gay/etc issues really leave some readerships feeling like Dresden isn't the hero they need to read.
Ed0517:
--- Quote from: g33k on May 29, 2022, 12:41:37 AM ---
Wizards, in general -- the world-spanning White Council, in particular -- should be VERY multi-ethnic... but mostly Asian. We presume magic power is largely equal among all groups, and the world is about 60% Asian, 17.5% African, and 17.5% European+North-American. So, equal numbers of black & white, but asian (including Indian) is about double black+white together.
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Why do we assume magical ability is equally distributed? We know it is inherited - but genes are not equally distributed among all groups. Sickle cell anemia - don't get much of that in Iceland. But they get blue eyes. Red hair? mostly Scandinavian or Celtic - but some in Northern Italy. Migh also be affected by past events - read an article about some people being immune to AIDS - they didn't have the receptors for the virus to attach - and by far the highest percentage was northern Europeans - particularly in areas ravaged by the Black Death. Maybe some areas bloodlines were wiped out in witch hunts?
Of course, outreach may be better in the Western world as well. But we did see Asians besides Mai at Morgan's trial, affirming Mouse as a Foo dog was reliable.
Mira:
--- Quote ---Why do we assume magical ability is equally distributed? We know it is inherited - but genes are not equally distributed among all groups. Sickle cell anemia - don't get much of that in Iceland. But they get blue eyes. Red hair? mostly Scandinavian or Celtic - but some in Northern Italy. Migh also be affected by past events - read an article about some people being immune to AIDS - they didn't have the receptors for the virus to attach - and by far the highest percentage was northern Europeans - particularly in areas ravaged by the Black Death. Maybe some areas bloodlines were wiped out in witch hunts?
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Some of that has to do with environmental influences, most notably Sickle Cell Anemia, it rises in populations where there is a lot of Malaria, the little bugs have a hard time penetrating the misshaped blood cells..
g33k:
--- Quote from: Ed0517 on May 31, 2022, 09:47:02 AM --- Why do we assume magical ability is equally distributed?
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Bluntly: because we have no reason to assume otherwise, and inventing race-based magical affinity smacks an awful lot of real-life racism. I'm pretty sure Jim is too savvy to present any Dresdenverse canon that touches this notion with a 10-foot-pole (except maybe to rebut/debunk it).
Mira:
--- Quote from: g33k on June 01, 2022, 06:54:18 AM --- Bluntly: because we have no reason to assume otherwise, and inventing race-based magical affinity smacks an awful lot of real-life racism. I'm pretty sure Jim is too savvy to present any Dresdenverse canon that touches this notion with a 10-foot-pole (except maybe to rebut/debunk it).
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Agreed..
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