As it approached the end of its most recent season, HBO’s Game of Thrones began to attract more vociferous criticism for its lack of non-white actors. The series’ main characters are overwhelmingly presented as pale-skinned, a casting choice which has often led to accusations of orientalism, and one which has also characterised (to varying degrees) other genre fare in recent years, such as the resurrected Doctor Who and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. A number of arguments have been advanced to defend such monochromatic casting, not all of which are without merit, but all of which are ultimately based on flawed assumptions about the supposed limits of representation in onscreen fiction. In this piece, I shall argue that it is foolhardy to strive for verisimilitude in productions of fictional works set in other times and on other worlds, and in doing so demonstrate that producers’ misguided attempts at “realism” should not limit the demographic of actors cast in shows such as Game of Thrones.
Every main character from the first three seasons of Game of Thrones has been white, with the sole exception of Khal Drogo (played by Jason Momoa, who is of Native Hawaiian descent). Why should this be? The argument usually made is that, as the world of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books (upon which the series is based) is modelled on medieval Eurasia, this is a time of very little intercontinental migration, and that as most of the story’s action takes place in a land which is an analogue of northwest Europe, the vast majority of characters would be racially homogeneous (assuming a process of evolution similar to our own). A similar argument is often made to justify the all-white casting in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and while it is not completely without merit (the harsh realities of long-distance travel in such a time would indeed render instances of intercontinental migration rare), it should not completely preclude the appearance of non-white faces among the cast. After all, just because a fantastical land is based upon medieval Europe, that doesn’t mean it is medieval Europe, and assumptions about evolutionary biology and historical immigration patterns need not automatically apply. But such a response meets the ‘historical accuracy’ argument head-on, rather than recognising that the real problem with the argument is the assumption about fictional representation upon which it rests. In other words, it doesn’t take account of the fact that what we see when we watch Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings is a representation of a story, not an historical document. It is not what is really happening in the world of the story.
Rather than arguing about historical precedent, evolutionary biology or intercontinental migration, we should focus on the fact that what we’re seeing is a representation of a story that is happening in a place which is entirely other, even if this place exists only in the mind of the author (and subsequently their readers/viewers). Striving for verisimilitude – that is, semblance to reality – for the sake of preserving an audience’s suspension of disbelief is often a necessary endeavour, but it can also unnecessarily constrain producers and casting directors in their selection of actors. This is a problem which most frequently plagues productions of an historical or fantastical nature, as these are the ones whose content is most removed from contemporary reality.
Let me explain using the example of language and dialogue. Tom Cruise attracted criticism for retaining his natural American accent when he played a German army officer in the 2008 (English-language) film Valkyrie. Critics who felt this impaired the film’s verisimilitude seem to have assumed that if Cruise had spoken his English dialogue with a German accent the film would have somehow been a more ‘authentic’ portrayal of the setting and characters. This is obviously nonsense; in real life, German characters (in Germany) would be speaking the German language to each other, and having English-speaking actors adopt a false German accent is no more authentic than having them simply speak the English dialogue with their native accents. Of course, what is really happening is that in the world of the film, the characters are in fact speaking German to each other, but it is represented to us – the audience – in a language we can understand. This is the key distinction; on the one hand we have the actual world of the story, and on the other we have the way in which that world and the events within it are represented to us in an intelligible fashion.
Valkyrie works well as an example of this distinction, because it is set in a specific time and place that actually existed, and so more easily allows us to understand that when he hear characters speak English in the film, they are actually – within the world of the story – speaking German. But consider how this distinction applies to imaginary worlds like those of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. When Gandalf address Frodo in the films (and the books), or when Tyrion speaks to Bronn in the TV series (and the books), the dialogue is rendered (by the script and the actors) in English, or alternatively in any number of contemporary languages by dubbing/subtitles. But does the language spoken by the characters within the world of the story actually sound like English? Probably not. Certainly, Tolkien and Martin may have it otherwise, but it would stretch credulity to breaking point to suggest that a language identical to modern English coincidentally existed on fantastical worlds completely removed from our own (even if, as was Tolkien’s conceit, the events of The Lord of the Rings actually take place in Earth’s distant past). These books and films could go down the route of inventing completely original languages for the characters to speak, just as the actors in Valkyrie could have spoken in German instead of English. Two of Mel Gibson’s films, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, strove for linguistic verisimilitude through the use of Aramaic and Mayan dialogue respectively, but there are numerous commercial and creative reasons for authors and film-makers to forego such an arduous endeavour in the context of fantasy fiction. It is far simpler therefore to represent the language(s) of the story-world in a way more readily accessible to contemporary, monoglot audiences. Crucially, this model of representation also extends to characteristics other than language, and has major implications for the supposed limitations on casting actors for any fantastical film or TV series.
This brings us to the issue of an actor’s skin colour, and how essential it might be to their portrayal of a character. Simply put, unless the colour of a character’s skin is to have some significance to the plot, it needn’t have any bearing on considerations of casting when an actor is selected to play the part. In this situation, it is simply the best actor who should be chosen, irrespective of ethnicity. Those who advance the cause of verisimilitude will insist that having non-white actors play characters who are, say, native to north European climates will hinder the audience’s suspension of disbelief, to which I would say two things. Firstly, if a viewer has suspended their disbelief for dragons and magic, it seems hard to believe that they could not do so for what appears – for all intents and purposes – to be a dark-skinned character living in medieval Scandinavia. Secondly, and far more importantly, we must remember the distinction between the story-world (which we cannot truly see) and its representation (which we do see). It has already been established that the likelihood of characters in these films, books and TV shows actually speaking the language in which they are presented is slim, and the same can go for these characters’ appearance, too. Unless part of the story’s plot hinges upon a character’s specific ethnicity, this characteristic has no special significance, and thus an actor of any racial background can be selected to play them. They are, after all, only ever playing a representation of the character, whose true skin colour in the world of the story might not even be a colour which is recognisable to we of the mundane, real world.
There will always be issues of supply and demand in TV and film casting, and it might be that an apparently colourblind approach could still lead to an overwhelmingly white cast in a series like Game of Thrones anyway. Whether this would be due to the inherent prejudices of casting directors or an actual lack of depth in the talent pool of ethnic minority actors would be up for debate (and would ask questions about deeper problems within the industry), but what is certain is that concerns over a fantasy series’ verisimilitude need not impose racial limitations on producers and casting directors when they audition actors for such a project. They are, after all, only creating a representation of a fictional time and place, for the true world of the story will always remain beyond their reach.
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