No, Casting Claudia Kim as Nagini in Fantastic Beasts isn't Racist; Here's Why

Claudia Kim (left) will be playing Nagini in the new Fantastic Beasts film

It’s 2018 so we can’t go a week without a popular film series being called ‘problematic’ for one reason or another. In the hot seat this week, it’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald!

(Image Source: Twitter)

But what is this film guilty of? Well the fuss is all over a trailer for the film that was released on Tuesday which included a major reveal for fans of the Harry Potter series; Nagini (Voldemort’s pet snake and horcrux) was once a woman, and an Asian woman at that.

Why need I mention her race (and gender)? Well that’s what the fuss is about. As far as I can tell, the complaints broadly fall into one of two types: 

1. Rowling is shoehorning diversity into her story in a revisionist manner because the books didn’t feature enough Asian characters.

 2. Nagini goes on to become the pet of Voldemort aka Tom Riddle aka a white man; you can’t cast an Asian woman as a white man’s pet, it’s 2018!

So let’s unpack these criticisms, and we’ll see why they really don’t hold up under scrutiny.

JK Rowling Wants to Revise Her Stories and Shoehorn in Diversity because the Harry Potter Books Weren't Diverse Enough 

Look, this definitely happens a lot. But the same crowd that are criticising this decision normally praise forced diversity in popular film and TV franchises. I do not. I hate it when writers unnaturally alter characters in order to please woke people (see my recent blog arguing against the Doctor becoming female in Doctor Who). But to me this is not what has happened here.

It’s pretty clear that JK Rowling has sown the seeds for this reveal about this character long ago. Throughout the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling borrows creatures, words and concepts from mythologies which is a very common thing for fantasy authors to do. Amongst the creatures she has borrowed from various mythologies there are Hippogriffs, Basilisks, Dragons, Werewolves and Phoenixes to name but a few.

But Nagini never seemed like anything out of the ordinary, Voldemort is evil and a parselmouth, of course his pet is a murdering snake. But when this trailer was released, Rowling was able to reveal a secret about Nagini that she claims she has held close to the chest for 20 years.

Nagini was once a woman, and is a Maledictus. What is a Maledictus? On Twitter, Rowling explained, “The Maledictus carries a blood curse from birth, which is passed down from mother to daughter… The slow transformation into a beast is beyond their control, but they aren't destined to be evil.”

Rowling also revealed that this is why she chose the name Nagini. In another tweet, Rowling said “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.”

(Rowling has since been corrected, and informed that the Naga are originally from Indian mythology.)

It seems that Rowling had this intention for Nagini all along and that the character represents a Wizarding World twist on a creature from Indian mythology, as evidenced by the choice of name.

It is therefore clear to me that this is not revisionist and shoehorned diversity (which I do not approve of), and instead it is an example of good storytelling. Good work JK!

(Source: Twitter)

You can’t cast an Asian woman as a white man’s pet, it’s 2018!

In my opinion this complaint really is laughable. And here's why:

Voldemort is the ultimate villain in the Harry Potter universe. In the books he is defined by his search for power and by his racism against muggles. He wants wizards to have “pure blood” and thinks any wizard that has even a small amount of muggle blood is impure and must be destroyed. 

That is as racist as you can get, in the final book when his regime is in power, many of the symbols used are quite clearly and deliberately borrowed from the Nazis. He is not a good guy and he is very definitely racist.

It therefore makes perfect sense that he would do something as horrible as enslave an Asian woman as his pet (if that is indeed how it unfolds). He’s evil and racist and enslaving an Asian woman is an evil, racist act.

An Evil Man with his Murderous Pet Snake

And yes, I know, he wasn’t racist in a white supremacy sense, rather in a wizard supremacy sense, but the symbolism here is serving that purpose and demonstrating how he sees himself as superior to other people due to incidental facts of biology. And again I repeat, there was a lot of symbols of racism in Harry Potter which deliberately mirrored racist symbols of our own world - this is consistent with that.

When it comes down to it, and I’ve had to think about this point very carefully before I published this to make sure I wasn’t missing something about this complaint, but it seems to me that this latest social media furore over the Fantastic Beasts sequel is because Voldemort, the ultimate embodiment of evil in the Harry Potter universe, isn’t woke enough to know that you can’t oppress Asian women in 2018.

I hate that I have to explain this, but villains are generally considered villains because they do things the audience doesn’t approve of. I can’t just can’t get past this, because it genuinely seems to be the essence of this argument.

It really has to be one of the more riddikulus (please excuse me) complaints that the believers in identity politics have made recently. I had hoped they had peaked with this film when it was suggested that the film copped out by not ever having a scene which explicitly shows us that Dumbledore is gay in February, but they’ve outdone themselves here. Yes, Voldemort isn’t woke, scandalous!

And of course, yes, they could have cast someone white, or male, or both to play Nagini. But if you consider the cultural origins of the Naga, it’s likely that the very same people currently kicking up a fuss would have complained about whitewashing the film had Nagini been cast as anything but an Asian woman. JK you really are damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

(Above) That time Harry Potter went through a phase of identity politics

I for one am really excited about the Crimes of Grindelwald and even more so now knowing that we will be exploring the origins of characters like Nagini. Bring on 16 November.