Sadly, No! roasts some douchebag pontificating about the death of integrity in casting, or the death of racism in Dickens, or some such, over at Breitbart’s Hollywood site. The complaint? Masterpiece Theater’s Classic’s new production of Oliver Twist cast a black woman as Nancy!
No, really:
The story and characterizations, unfortunately, don’t match the faithful and evocative visuals. One of the first and most jarring notes is the appearance of actress Sophie Okonedo as Nancy, Oliver’s protector in Fagin’s den of thieves. Okonedo was born of a Jewish mother and black father and looks very African in descent.
Now, it’s just plausible that Twist’s villain, the violent and vulgar Bill Sykes, would have an African-English girlfriend, but there’s not a hint of that in Dickens’s novel. Clearly the producers are imposing an ideal of a colorblind society on a story where it adds nothing, is unnecessary, and is quite a distraction for those who know the original novel. The character, however, is as complex and benevolent as in the original story, which is all to the good.
Thus, while being somewhat distracting, the transformation of Nancy into a black woman does no major damage to the story. Other changes, however, do, and some are really contemptible, all pushing in the same direction.
No word on whether it’s a travesty to cast a bunch of tall, fit celebrities with working teeth as Dickensian Londoners, or to cast that guy from Harry Potter as Fagin, or to cast Alec Guinness as Fagin, but then, Alec Guinness was an actor, and that’s what actors do and…wait, where was I? Oh, right: actors should only play parts originally written for people exactly like them. And when we as a society stop being racist, then our creative entertainment will stop being racist, and we’ll have a canon where everybody can come play, and then puppies will play puppies and rainbows will play rainbows and it won’t matter that Billie Piper should never, ever, ever have been allowed off of the TARDIS.
But there’s another thing.
Sophie Okonedo.
Not that the selection of an unknown would have made the complaint any less racist, but this isn’t just any actor he’s complaining about. It’s Sophie Okonedo. Dirty Pretty Things Sophie Okonedo. Hotel Rwanda Sophie Okonedo. Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo!
This is not a problem for Masterpiece. This is a coup. It’s like if they’d gotten Emma Thompson for their version of Sense and Sensibility.
So it’s super-racism! Her skin color is not only more important than her ability to act Nancy, her career is beneath his notice because she’s a black woman.
Dickens was a social reformer; hypocrisy for the sake of moral comfort is a thread running through all of his books. If he saw injustice, he probably wouldn’t insist that it be preserved for its own sake. I don’t know whether Dickens had any awareness of racism on this level; I suppose I would assume not. But we are reading and performing his works in a different era, and with decades of history between us. With Sophie Okonedo’s career between us.
There is nothing special, either in terms of fidelity or artistry, in an all-white Dickens adaptation. There’s no preservation ethos here. There never has been an audience whose agreement was based on the actual face of history, and there haven’t been many writers whose work reflected it. Accuracy is objective; belief is not. Acting is about belief, and belief is the story you tell. Belief is Nancy waking up in London. Belief is performance, and we know the woman can handle that, because we’re a film critic.
Performance is adaptation: the new use of older material for the sake of a new audience. Trojan women in America. King Lear in Bosnia. (Yes, and it was awesome.) A Merchant of Venice reference in Oliver Twist! Even if racism weren’t hateful, even if it could be seen as a simple aesthetic, it’s a dull, unfeasible, and sterile aesthetic. It’s an aesthetic that just happens to limit a multitude of actors to a tiny number of roles–and stories, therefore, to a tiny set of readings.
I want to see Chiwetel Ejiofor as Andrew Clennam. And I am overjoyed that Sophie Okonedo is playing opposite Bill Sykes.