Hello you beautiful snakes eagles badgers and lions! Welcome back to my
friendly neighbors Slytherin hangout! I'm Rebecca Felgate and today I'm gonna be
talking about something that's a little bit contentious in the Harry Potter
universe and that is the color of Hermione's Granger's skin. specifically I'm
asking "is Hermione black"? Now the whole conversation got a lot more heated when
Norma Dumezweni was cast as Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the
Cursed Child. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a play which continues 19 years
after the last book set off - basically that whole scene at the train station
where Harry's kids are getting on the train and his son's like "Ooh, will I be in Slytherin?".
In it we see Harry, Ron and Hermione once again but just as grown-ups now
Norma is a black female actress and lot of people were very confused when she was
cast as Hermione Granger, although my question is why not? I suppose when we're
talking about this topic it opens up a wider debate about fiction and our
imagination. Hermione's skin color was once again brought up in national news
publication the BBC as a toronto-based artist shared the level of hate they got
for drawing a picture of a black Hermione. Some people in the Harry Potter fandom
have been very positive about black hermione others have said
they simply could never have imagined her that way.
And others have actually been far more scathing - some online trolls have even
said things like they couldn't imagine Ron marrying a woman of color, which
seems like a very strange comment to me... and there are of course worse comments
which I will not give them the gratification of reading out. JK Rowling
herself said that Norma was the best actress for the job she continued by
saying Hermione Granger can be a black woman with her absolute blessing and
enthusiasm. So, all that aside are there any clues in the source material as to
Hermione Granger's ethnicity? We first meet Hermione aboard the Hogwarts
Express in Chapter six of Harry Potter and the
Philosopher's Stone. This is her introductory sentence. She had a bossy sort of voice
lots of bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth Brown is the second
most common hair color across the world every ethnicity is capable of having
brown hair so Hermione's hair being brown really doesn't shed much light on the
color of her skin. Could Hermione be Asian? Well, maybe.
Hermione's hair is specifically called "bushy". now most common Asian hair is
pretty sleek by the way it doesn't paint Hermione as black or white. As this
series continues we learn a little bit more about her we learn about her eye
color in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and I just want to read you a
sentence here. "Her spirits were greatly improved by the fact that all the hair
had gone from her face and her eyes were turning slowly back to brown."
okay so brown eyes. The plot thickens even further in the Prisoner of Azkaban
when her skin color is directly referenced we read a sentence about Ron
Hermione and Harry meeting up after the summer holidays. It says "there they were
both of them sitting outside Florian fortescuse ice cream parlor,
Ron looking incredibly freckley, Hermione very brown, both frantically waving at
him. Of course "very brown" could be a sentence applied to both a black and a
white person she could have just been very very tanned so this doesn't
necessarily shed any light on her ethnicity. Some fans have countered by
saying there are some sentences that describe her losing the color in her
face or being embarrassed but these are just emotion descriptions. Again, in
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire we find out that Hermione used a sleek easy
hair potion to slick her hair for the Yule Ball. A lot of people have drawn
comparisons between this and afro-caribbean hair relaxing products,
but again none of this is directly indicative to race to be honest by the
fourth book we've all made up our own mind as to what Hermione looks like.
Anyway, and maybe this is the point, we all visualize something but it doesn't
mean we visualize the same thing. Emma Watson was cast as Hermione Granger
consolidating people's idea of Hermione Granger being white. At this point, had
they cast a black child actress would we still be having this conversation.... I'm
not sure but maybe of course it's worth mentioning that Emma Watson herself went
to go see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and loved the show. She was happy
at Norma carrying on her character's legacy. So when it comes to works of
fiction, our imaginations surely has to be king? For me, something translated onto
screen is never gonna live up to how I imagined it in my own mind. If the book
came first then no one can ever represent what I've seen just the way
that I've seen it. For example, to me, Hogwarts was an amalgamation of every
school I'd ever been to coupled with a few castles my parents had taken me to
visit. It was strangely familiar yet unattainably magical at the same
time. I even had my own ideas of what it might smell like and what the Gryffindor
common room might feel like. These are things that no director can translate to
the screen or stage. Of course I enjoy watching the Harry Potter movies that there are
some ways and some things done that I think "Nah, you know what... chocolate frogs
cards didn't look like that in my mind... but I'm happy to enjoy this movie. Seeing
a white Hermione Granger in the movie for me doesn't necessarily make it a
Canon fact. Within the bounds of literature presented, it is very possible
that Hermione could be both black or white but really, does it matter? When I
first started reading Harry Potter I was a young white female living in a
reasonably privileged area of the United Kingdom. I saw Hermione as white because
I saw myself in Hermione. She's a strong forward-thinking
character and I wanted to be like her. Perhaps JK Rowling did initially
envisage Hermione Granger's being white because she wrote part of herself into
that character. JK Rowling identified
as a Gryffindor and we can definitely see some of her traits in Hermione
Granger as well as Harry. Some early illustrations of an artist that JK
Rowling worked with in her philosopher's stone era have been unleashed and they
do seem to present harmonious white but everyone is looking to identify
themselves in fiction we all just want to picture ourselves in some way in
something that we loved. We're all desperately looking to identify. I might
have seen a white Hermione, but I always think that it's amazing that people of
other backgrounds saw themselves in her - Hermione Granger is a muggle born
wizard who is racially profiled by a lot of her peers and she stood up against
that in some ways isn't she the perfect icon for all people that grew up in
ethnic minorities waiting for their voice to be heard. For this reason I
would actually very much celebrate a Black Hermione! In terms of wizarding
standards, Hermione was born from nothing she then attended one of the best
wizarding schools in the whole world and not only that she aced every exam that
she took, she was better than a lot of people who had grown up totally exposed
to the wizarding world. She was an incredible student, she was a great
friend she stood up for what she believed, she stood up for the oppressed,
she stood up for herself, she survived a war she became minister of frigging
magic! For me black, white, gold, silver, or green, Hermione Granger is a queen! And
that is that! Your vision might be different to my vision but I think when
it comes to works of fiction we should celebrate that we have the
luxury of being able to imagine something for ourselves. Hermione Granger
is a fictitious character she's not a historical character so really she can
be whatever we want her to be and that is the beauty. So guys I know that this
is a sensitive topic but I do want to hear from
you please do keep it appropriate in the comment section so we can have a good
adult discussion about Hermione's skin color and whether it even
matters also let me know if you prefer the film's over the books or whether
like me you find imagination to be the ultimate experience thank you guys for
watching this video do let me know if you like this discussion type of video
and if you do then I will certainly make more now is your chance do you hit that
big old thumbs up button do it do it now also why don't you tell your wisdom
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you so much for watching have a lovely week to all of you snakes badgers lions
and eagles and all of you muggles out there too because I love you all! Bye