I think this conversation has gone in several interesting places and demonstrated (among other things) that even when there is disagreement on the part of Honorverse fans it is normally
honest disagreement and (more often than not; not always) based on reason as much as on emotion. By and large, I think we also behave ourselves pretty well . . . always with the Duckk Hammer™ looming in the background, of course!
Let me say a few words about the "ethnicity" of the Honorverse before we get into any actual casting decisions.
By and large, there is less likely to be a connection between an Honorverse character's name and his/her genotype than is the case in any present day Earth society. In fact, there is a far greater chance of such a connection for a character living in the Sol System than anywhere else, because the reservoirs of geographically concentrated genotypes are so much deeper there, despite the inroads the Final War made upon them. Even for a Solly from Sol, however, the connection would be significantly more tenuous than for today. That doesn't mean that there aren't specific, discernible "planetary ethnicities," if you will, in the Honorverse, particularly in the case of planets which have been settled for hundreds and hundreds of years. Thandi Palane, for example, represents a very specific phenotype because of the extreme environment in which she and her ancestors were born. San Martinos would be another example, and I'm sure that most readers could think of many another example from the books. The situation is complicated still further by the fact that, Beowulf Code notwithstanding, genetic manipulation/editing is common throughout the Honorverse. I rather hope (although my experience with human nature means that it remains a hope rather than an expectation) that by the time that capability's been around for a thousand years or so, potential parents, by and large, will have gotten over the temptation to genetically tailor their offspring's physical appearances to fit some ideal of physical beauty. But one can take it for granted that not
all parents will have done so and that the available technology will also permit individuals to alter their appearances after birth in any way that strikes their fancy. And, of course, none of the above includes the "trickle down" effect from genetic slaves who had no choice in alterations made to their physical appearance who — after being liberated and manumitted by someone like the Manties or the Beowulfers — have mingled their altered/designed genetic code with the population around them.
What this means is that no one really needs to be thinking about casting a specific character to match a given present-day ethnic/racial appearance unless the character is
specifically described as belonging to that ethnicity. For example, Raoul Courvoisier is described as having gray eyes, yet I've always thought of him as being more African than Caucasian in appearance. That's not a combination you're very likely to find running around the street of a 21st-century city, but it wouldn't attract a second thought in the Honorverse. Personally, I think it might be interesting to cast a black actor in that role and then give him the gray eyes, although I have absolutely no reason to believe that Evergreen might be thinking in that direction. Allison Harrington, obviously, ought to be played by an Asian actress; Honor is described as having a very pale complexion, brown hair, and almond-shaped eyes, however. I think of her as Eurasian, with a strong genetic component from her father's side of the family. I wouldn't be
upset if she was played by a "pure strain" Asian actress (assuming the actress in question can act and portray both Honor's command style and the physicality of the role), but neither would I
demand that she be portrayed by an Asian actress. I know the example of Elizabeth and Michelle Henke have been used as cases in which the roles simply can't be cast as any other ethnicity, and I agree in those cases because I
did assign a specific physical appearance to the characters in the books. Honor, however, is definitely not
primarily Asian in appearance, so I believe that there is room for the argument that other considerations of talent and suitability might —
might — be allowed to trump the Asian component of her genetic makeup.
I strongly suspect that Evergreen will try very, very hard to find an Asian or Eurasian actress suitable for the role, for several reasons. One is that Honor is, in fact, Eurasian, however strongly that has or has not been emphasized in physical descriptions of her in the books. (By the way, allow me to interject a purely personal note here and say that physical beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and that my own eye has a rather . . . broad "beauty setting" in that regard. As the father of two Cambodian daughters, and someone one of whose best friends in school was the son of a Norwegian father and a Taiwanese mother, I have a well-developed appreciation for Asian and Eurasian comeliness. I'm also — as anyone who's ever met Sharon will understand — drawn to redheads with blue eyes. I think of Honor as fusing two very different genetic heritages into her own, unique amalgam of distinctive physical attractiveness.) Another reason for Evergreen to go with an Asian or Eurasian actress, frankly, is the fear of being whacked for having cast a minority character as Caucasian. I don't know if there would be as much blowback if they cast, say, a Hispanic actress in the same role, and I have to wonder what would happen if they found someone who was an almost perfect match for the role — I can think of at least two Native American women I know who could fit the bill, although one of them would be about six inches too short — but who was not, in fact, Asian or Eurasian herself. Would people say "Ah! A perfect match!" or would people say "Why couldn't they cast an Asian actress for an Asian role?"
In an odd sort of way, "racial diversity" is both far more prevalent in the Honorverse and simultaneously far less
relevant. People tend to make assumptions about your genetic makeup based upon the planet from which you come rather than any expectations of inferiority/superiority in the genes themselves. Racial prejudice — indeed, racial
differentiation — in the sense in which it has bedeviled and dominated 20th and 21st-century thought is a total nonstarter in the Honorverse. Indeed, that was one of the points of the scene at Catherine Montaigne's cocktail party when Web Du Havel explains the underlying structure of African slavery to a shocked and uncomprehending Manticoran audience. And one of the reasons Beowulf is so unalterably opposed to the Mesan Alignment's approach to improvement of the human genotype is that Beowulf is determined that the
equivalent of racial prejudice and racism will not reemerge on its watch.
In terms of casting the movie, this means that Evergreen
ought to have an extremely free hand in selecting actors and actresses on the basis of talent and suitability to the role
without being hogtied by considerations of race or ethnicity except in those very specific cases I mentioned above. In fact, that almost certainly won't be the case because we live in a world in which, rightly or wrongly (or
both rightly
and wrongly) an awareness of "editing people out" is central to so much of our thinking. In creating the Honorverse, I can take the disappearance of prejudice and the acceptance of diversity as a given and thereby make my own statement about how stupid I think racism and sexism are; in making a movie which will be seen by a 21st-century audience, the extent to which the disappearance of racism and sexism can be taken for granted as a
positive thing can too easily be lost because of a perception that the casting director simply
didn't care about racism or sexism. I'm not sure I'm expressing myself as clearly here as I would like, because I'm not arguing that avoiding the perception of racism or sexism is something that should be done only to satisfy the Thought Police on either side of the question. I'm saying that the constraints of the two media — the printed word and the cinema — are sufficiently different, especially in the nuances they can portray, that we ought to go the extra mile to avoid the appearance of a racist or sexist disregard for the dignity and respect — and
self-respect — of both the characters
and the audience.
In general, I'm not a big fan of changing the specified backgrounds — whether those be social, political, ethnic, or genetic — of characters on the basis of "political correctness." In fact, in general I'm
opposed to that sort of thing, just as I'm opposed to bowdlerization of 19th-century literature to suit 21st-century taste and modes of thought. There are instances where a degree of bowdlerizing is necessary or even essential, however, because the 21st-century reader's personal context is so different from the context of the author that the author's meaning is significantly
changed when it goes through the filters of the reader's experience and society. To take one example from science fiction, H. Beam Piper was actually well ahead of the curve in placing women in military service, yet there is a line from one of his novels (
The Uller Uprising) which sticks sideways in the craw of military women of my acquaintance simply because the conceptual language of the time in which he wrote hadn't caught up with the
implications of genuine female equality. The line I'm thinking of is the one in which the author refers to "the girl sergeant." The instant you read that line, teeth get set on edge, but if it was edited to read "the female sergeant" or "the woman sergeant" or even simply "the sergeant," with no gender label at all, the fact that this is a woman who
is a sergeant trumps his choice of adjective and brings the reader far closer to what he intended to say in the first place. So while I have been upset upon occasion with what seemed to me to be gratuitous or egregious "de-Caucasianization" (if I may coin a phrase) of a literary character in a cinematic or stage adaptation, I can handle the distribution of "Caucasian roles" to "minority actors" much more readily than I can handle the reverse, and I think the majority of movie viewers probably would agree with that. Again, just as I would not cast a Caucasian actor for a character who was specifically described in the book as Asian or Hispanic or African, I would not cast a non-Caucasian actor for a character who was specifically described as Caucasian, but let's face it guys. In the Honorverse, the neat classification systems we've adopted to describe ourselves and "the other" simply aren't applicable across the enormous human population which has spread out from our parochial little star system. I don't see any reason why that shouldn't be reflected in the casting of the movie.
Of course, there's always the Andermani . . . .
, but remember in "Space Seed" and "The Wrath of Khan" he was played by Ricardo Montalbon, Spanish, not Indian. Whats your take on that?
