Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a new film for the Harry Potter franchise that takes place in 1926 New York City. I saw the movie recently with a friend and family, and I walked out from the movie kind of annoyed with how they tried to portray New York. The film had been made with an almost completely white cast, both for the main group of characters and the background characters.
Hollywood is known for whitewashing their movies and keeping people of color out of major roles. However, people will of course argue about the film and that it is their choice to hire who they want to hire, the movie is horribly historically inaccurate because of this.
By 1926 the Harlem Renaissance was alive and well in New York, with a large population of African Americans. Immigrants from around the world would come in as well, creating a large population of people of color. But when you look at the movie and watch the background characters you don’t see any of that at all. In both the rich and poor districts in the movie, we only see white people. A graph shown below is from a study called Inequality in 700 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race, & LGBT Status from 2007 to 2014 shows the amount of representation in the film industry from from 2014.
You would think that considering the diverse population of America today that they would be able to have picked a more diverse cast at least for background characters. It begs us to question if the directors of these movies are intentionally choosing white actors over actors of color.
We have so many photos of Harlem in New York that show the diversity of the city, to portray New York differently than a cultural hub and mixing pot of different people is blatantly historically inaccurate. This was one of the largest American cities that is celebrated for its diversity and the unique culture that it created.
The movie erased the Harlem Renaissance from the narrative of history in this story, when other recent movies kept it. The Great Gatsby for example (shown below) had a diverse cast full of people of color in the background. The creators of Fantastic Beasts made this movie with the intent of casting white actors over everyone else.
Even the main actress of color in the movie is downplayed in the movie. Carmen Ejogo plays as the president of the magical world, and appears frequently. In the film though, her character is given almost no screen time and very few lines. She is cast in the film to try and appease this demographic for people of color, but her role has no major part of the plot and is barely in the movie at all.
It is important to recognize how Hollywood lacks recognition for people of color, casting white actors for all the major roles and other parts that would normally go to people of color. We see this in movies all the time like Nickelodeon's movie The Last Airbender, a movie where roles for people of Asian descent were given to white actors. Another example of a movie like that today is the upcoming Ghost in the Shell, a remake of a Japanese animation movie where the lead is played by Scarlett Johansson instead of an Asian american actress.
