The Dark Fantastic: Race and Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

NYU Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1479800650

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

In today’s networked world, much of children’s and young adult literature isn’t limited to one reader’s immersion in the pages of a book. Authors’ worlds are reimagined in other media formats, and re-enacted, discusses, and reinvented in communities of fans of the stories. Yet, even within these imagined worlds, not everyone can find a mirror that reflects their experiences, and characters of color are often stereotyped and marginalized instead of centered. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls this the “imagination gap” and suggests that this may be one reason children of color may choose not to read.  In The Dark Fantastic, Thomas takes an intersectional approach, using”critical race counterstorytelling” to center four girls of color from television and movies based on children’s and young adult fiction that have developed fandoms: Rue, from The Hunger Games, Bonnie, from The Vampire Diaries; Gwen, from Merlin; and Angelina Johnson, from Harry Potter. Thoma uses an autoethnographic approach to explore her perspectives on these as an academic, a participant in fan communities, a reader, a watcher, and a person of color, at a variety of ages.

Thomas explains that the role of darkness in speculative fiction, or the “fantastic” is to disturb and unsettle. Even if initially there was a different reason why darkness represented a frightening or monstrous unknown Other, it’s now inextricably bound up with our thinking about race.  She defines the cycle of the “dark fantastic”, which can always be found in fantastic and horror fiction: spectacle, hesitation, violence, haunting, and, finally, emancipation. It is rare to see a dark-skinned hero, or emancipated character, meaning readers of color looking to identify with characters like themselves get the message, at least on some level, that they are the monster. Centering characters that are the “dark other” in the fantastic and placing them in unexpected roles leads to readers and fans challenging or rejecting the representations, especially once the story has been been reimagined on the screen where everyone can see what before was just in one person’s imagination.

Thomas chose to center her narratives on characters that are not centered in the texts they appear in . She explored the representations of these characters onscreen and in the texts the screen versions were based on, and the reactions of fan communities, like the outrage at the casting of mixed-race actress Amandla Sternberg as Rue in The Hunger Games, despite author Suzanne Collins indicating in the text that Rue had dark skin, or at the casting of mixed-race actress Angel Coulby as Guinivere in Merlin, since according to many, she didn’t have the “legendary beauty” expected of Arthur’s queen.  The “imagination gap” here is pretty clear. Too many people simply weren’t prepared to accept these mixed-race actresses as innocent or beautiful, and missed out on the essential meaning of these characters or enjoyment of the story.  The exploration of the treatment of Bonnie Bennett of The Vampire Diaries is interesting, because in the books, the character is named Bonnie McCullough and is a redheaded Irish witch from a line of druids who has a relationship with a major love interest.  On the television show, her background was completely revised and she ended up as a much less sympathetic character, taking a much smaller role. Even in horror, with vampires as major characters, a girl of color still ended up as the “dark other”.

Thomas argues in favor of consciously intervening to change culture. Publishers, reviewers, booksellers, librarians, educators, and marketers need to recognize the parts they do play and can play in bringing new stories and diverse talents to readers and audiences in order to close the “imagination gap” and open up what Thomas calls “infinite storyworlds”.

The way Thomas linked literature to other media and both individual and networked fandom has given me a new way to think about fantastic literature and media adaptations, and the way fans and fan creators connect with them– or don’t (This essay by Laurie Penny, which I just discovered, gives additional context and dimensionality to Thomas’ ideas). It also provides lot of food for thought as regards centering characters that are usually on the margins, and the way the construction of darkness in fiction may be affecting reading motivation.  As Thomas notes, things in the world of children’s and young adult transmedia are changing faster than they were, in part due to the spread of technology that allows more input from collective audiences and fandoms, and diversity is increasing. I look forward to the time when we will start to see the imagination gap lessen, and more minds open to opportunities for storytelling that reflect multiple representations.

This is essential reading for scholars of children’s and young adult literature and media, but Thomas’ cycle of the dark fantastic applies across all fantastic literature and media, and if you are interested in how race, technology, and imagination are intersecting and playing out in our culture, this does a very good job of providing a framework for understanding.  While she didn’t read it cover-to-cover, my 11 year old daughter is still talking about ideas she encountered in this book, which says a lot about its relevance, originality, and accessibility. Highly recommended.