The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
(Book 13 in The Postmillennial Pop series)
By Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Book Review
In The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas explores the diversity crisis in children’s literature and in their TV/movie adaptations. What follows is a thought-provoking and insightful literary criticism of some beloved works of fiction.
According to Thomas, not only is there a problem with the lack of representation of Black characters, but the manner of representing them often fails as well.
Thomas draws from her own experiences growing up as a Black girl in love with fantasy stories and science fiction. She explains that many African American children grow up believing that speculative fiction is not for them.
Beyond being a genre primarily dominated by White authors, fantasy works generally paint the world in an idealistic light foreign to many Black families in America. Princes may slay dragons and save fair maidens in books, but Thomas was told by her mother that no prince was coming to save her. “In order to survive,” she writes, “I had to face reality.”
In The Dark Fantastic, Thomas focuses on the portrayal of Black girl characters in popular fantasy books and TV shows. She discusses Rue in The Hunger Games, Guinevere in BBC’s Merlin, Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries, and characters Hermione Granger and Angelina Johnson in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Exploring the narratives of these characters and how audiences have reacted to them, Thomas theorizes about the “imagination gap” that leads to a lack of representation and instead promotes the concept of the “Dark Other.”
The Dark Other, like the aforementioned female characters, is always on the margins of the story, the obstacle to be overcome. The Dark Other leads Black female readers to see themselves as the villain of the story. In contrast, she says, “When readers who are White, middle class, cisgender, heterosexual, and able-bodied enter the fantastic dream, they are empowered and afforded a sense of transcendence that can be elusive within the real world.”
Thomas treats each story and character with detailed scholarship, highlighting both the work of scholars and fans. It was incredibly refreshing to see fans’ opinions treated as an important part of the discussion. She covers audience reactions to the casting of Rue, Hermione, and Bonnie, and how these reactions reflect on readers’ perception of Blackness. She touches on the resistance of the public to accept Black characters as innocent and the resistance of producers to allow Black characters to be the moral center of the story, while they instead have them serve as plot devices for White characters’ growth.
My favorite chapters were the ones discussing Bonnie Bennett, despite the fact that The Vampire Diaries was the one series discussed in The Dark Fantastic that I knew nothing about. Thomas delves into the reception of Kat Graham being cast as Bonnie. It was disappointing the ways producers changed the character following this casting. Unlike the Scottish American Bonnie McCullough of the book series, African American Bonnie Bennett is pushed to the shadows. She isn’t made out to be desirable or innocent, while the Bonnie of the books is both of those things. This treatment of Bonnie leads young Black viewers to love and want to identify more with the character of Elena, a White girl who goes to parties and is the center of male attention.
I found this book challenging, especially as someone who holds most of the literary works discussed here close to my heart. (There may or may not be a Hunger Games fanfiction out there under my name...) But it was apparent that Thomas has a lot of love for these stories and characters too. That doesn’t absolve them of criticism, however, and it was easy for me to accept the arguments laid out here.
Children’s and Young Adult Literature, while having made some progress since the advent of these series, still has a long way to go. So do the consumers of the genre, as we are equally indicted for the ways we ourselves push Black girls in fiction to the sidelines.
“When people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, we have often discovered that the doors are barred. Even the very act of dreaming of worlds-that-never-were can be challenging when the known world does not provide many liberating spaces.”
There is still an imagination gap to be filled within fantasy worlds, from District 12 to the Wizarding World. “The fantastic,” after all, is meant to stimulate the imagination, not limit the dreams and self-esteem of so many of its readers.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you are wanting to think critically about race and ethnicity in YA Lit. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas has done an extraordinary thing to make this academic work extremely enjoyable and understandable for the casual reader. As a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Thomas is an expert scholar of literary theory focused on children’s and adolescent texts.
Other Resources
If you’re interested in more reading like this, check out this article by Chanté Griffin, “Blackness on the Margins: What Ann M. Martin Asked of Jessi in the Baby-Sitters Club.” Griffin delves into the treatment of Jessi’s character in the children’s series and highlights the importance of representation of BIPOC characters in fiction.
I also have to point to Porshea’s book review of The Dark Fantastic if you’re interested in hearing even more about this incredible book.
Have you read any literary criticism lately? How about YA Fantasy that’s combatting the imagination gap and putting Black girls at the forefront of the story? Tell me about it in the comments!
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