Has Fantastic Beasts had a 'woke-over' and has it backfired?

If there is one thing that viewers will be looking forward to as Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald hits the big screens today, it is how it addressing the countless controversies that have loomed over the movie since word of its release.

From the ambiguity of how Dumbledore’s sexuality will be handled, after the film’s director David Yates said the character's sexuality would "not explicitly" be referred to in the new film, to the casting of Johnny Depp as villain Grindelwald after he was accused of physical and emotional abuse by ex-wife Amber Heard, contentions have been rife.

But the latest controversy that she is facing is over her tendency to give her existing narratives an 'inclusivity and progressive makeover'. For example, the casting of South Korean actress Claudia Kim as Nagini. Retroactive continuity - or retcon as it is known - is not entirely new to Rowling.

In 2015, the JK Rowling tweeted: “Canon: Brown eyes, frizzy hair, very clever. White skin was never specified”, while referring to debates surrounding the original way in which she imagined Hermione, after it was announced that South-African born black actress Noma Dumezweni had been cast as the novel’s female lead in the stage production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  

With the release of the latest film in the Harry Potter series, Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, it is Nagini that is now at the centre of Rowling’s propensity to revise her old works to the tune of inclusivity. However, this may have now backfired for her.

In the film’s final trailer it is revealed that Voldemort’s snake Nagini— the vessel of one of his final horcruxes— is in fact an East Asian Maledictus; a woman who is cursed to permanently take on the form of a beast.

In playing Nagini, Claudia Kim takes on the role of a reptile enslaved by a villain which has lead to some commentators noting that while, yes this actress of Asian decent has a major role in the production, it is somewhat problematic that the film’s only Asian actor is placed in the position of ultimate submission.

Taking to Twitter to air frustrations, one user said: “listen Joanne, we get it, you didn't include enough representation when you wrote the books. But suddenly making Nagini into a Korean woman is garbage. Representation as an afterthought for more woke points is not good representation.”

Rowling has since tweeted in her defence, claiming: “The Naga are snake-like mythical creatures of Indonesian mythology, hence the name ‘Nagini.’ They are sometimes depicted as winged, sometimes as half-human, half-snake. Indonesia comprises a few hundred ethnic groups, including Javanese, Chinese and Betawi.”

Other users however, noted the flaw in Rowling’s knowledge of ancient mythology by pointing out: "jk rowling: wow im so liberal for having nagini actually be an enslaved asian woman who has a curse that can only be passed to women!! also, even though nagini is stolen from south asian mythology, we cast an east asian woman!! ha ha hashtag progress :^)))))"

Rowling’s explanation was also challenged by the author Amish Tripathi, who tweeted in response: “Actually @jk_rowling the Naga mythology emerged from India. It travelled to Indonesia with the Indic/Hindu empires that emerged there in the early Common Era, with the influence of Indian traders and Rishis/Rishikas who travelled there. Nagin is a Sanskrit language word.”

Despite such criticism, Rowling, who is a producer of the film, intimated the casting had not been an afterthought at all. She stated that she had been keeping the fact that Nagini was really a Maledictus a secret for twenty years.

Nonetheless, the trailer itself could be seen as perpetuating a number of other harmful stereotypes about Asian women. For example, Nagini, played by Kim, is seen in a cage while an audience watches her transform into a snake, echoing historical strains of the sexy, but dangerous “dragon lady”.

Nagini also quite literally houses a piece of Voldemort’s soul and acts as a guarantor of his immortality, thus cementing the trope of Asian women as submissive. This image is made doubly problematic when we consider that Nagini will be the second character of significance in the Harry Potter franchise to be of East Asian heritage, following Cho Chang who appeared to be nothing more than Harry’s early love interest.

Though Rowling seems to harbour a genuine desire to diversify and feature marginalised groups, it is the way that she does it that is being hotly debated now.  For example, while on one hand she publicly insisted that Hermione isn’t necessarily white, Rowling also oversaw the casting of Emma Watson for an eight-movie run and wrote passages in her books that included phrases like, “Hermione’s white face”, contradicting her claims suggesting that the lead female character was created to be anything other than white.

Descriptions of Hermione in this case become worryingly problematic when we note, in the fourth novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hermione uses magic to shrink her teeth and straighten her hair in order to become ‘beautiful’.

With this in mind, it suggests that it will take more than a magic wand to wish the latest controversy away.