https://www.tumblr.com/dapiando/806375362655289344/i-know-it-was-not-done-with-that-purpose-but-the?source=share
my ask kind of has to do with that post as well so i'm linking it lol
but i'm curious on what you think of hera's casting specifically. mainly bc i feel like i'm making a big deal out of something that isn't a problem yet. i feel like i'm seeing the red flag on the horizon and turning the entire ship around rather than just proceeding with caution lmao
but like rr loves writing asian women at the scene of the crime from mrs chase to drew tanaka (and others i feel like i'm forgetting, there was this call out post a while ago talking about it but i can't remember everything that was said. maybe you could arguably include ethan nakamura in this category as he was the antagonist even if he wasn't a villain which is also what mrs chase and drew were played as but at least ethan was redeemable while mrs chase and drew were simply mean for the sake of being mean. probably bc they're women and rr hates women anyway-)
MY POINT is i find it a little odd that he chose to cast an asian woman as hera knowing full well how he writes his asian women characters and how he writes hera herself. like it just doesn't sit well with me especially paired with (as the linked post talks about) athena and zeus being black but then being written Like That. all contrasted with gods like poseidon, hades, aphrodite, artemis, and now apollo as being white. like i don't know i feel like i could be making something out of nothing but i also just find it a little...odd. at the very least. and i'm curious what you'd think about that.
like i guess we won't truly know anything until we see hera on screen and see how he choses to write her. it just doesn't bode well with me
So, I'd say primarily that I think it's important to differentiate poc representation in the books and the show.
I agree with everything you said about how rr wrote asian women. His portrayal of people of color, in the rare instances that they happened in the books (I can only speak on pjo and hoo bc I haven't read any others), is usually kinda weird and I've always chalked that up to him being a white middle aged guy from texas. Like, idk, maybe I'm giving him too much grace, but he wrote those books in the mid 2000s, I personally don't expect much from them in terms of representation. Doesn't make it right, of course, and his biases are definitely evident throughout (a boat full of confederate soldiers and all that), but at that time, the books weren't being marketed as a diverse inclusive story, it was a book written by a white guy who didn't really think about poc when creating his characters.
Hoo changes this a little, it's obvious there was the intention of diversifying the cast, and again, giving rr more grace than I probably should, it was somewhat nicely done ? It could definitely have been better, but there was some effort and ig I can commend that. It was again, a product of its time. Early 2010s wokeness, if you will. Every character's ethnicity/race is plot relevant, Hazel's story can’t happen without her being black from new orleans, for instance. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it is the very antithesis of colorblind casting, which is relevant when talking about the show.
I have no issue with the concept of colorblind casting. I think it's a necessary idea because hollywood still very much operates with the mindset "white = neutral" (everyone can relate to this White Character, but only brown people can relate to a brown character), and colorblind casting, as it exists, is a step in the right direction.
Now, the problem is (and this is when we get to pjo tv) conflating colorblind casting with a colorblind society and colorblind audience.
Characters don't exist in a vacuum. Context is important. A diverse cast allows you to make your characters more dimensional, so I don’t really have a problem with an antagonistic character being a person of color in the context of a diverse ensemble like Percy Jackson. IN THEORY. In practice, they fucking suck at it.
Intentionally or not (and like…let’s not be naive), they keep playing into racist stereotypes over and over. It would be fine that Frederick is a god awful father if the other (or ANY) black parents in the show were good. But they all fucking suck as well, so what does that say? Every black dad/father figure (Chiron) is absent, aggressive or a liar and every black mom is dismissive, demanding and cruel (I’m counting Beryl as well as Athena).
I wouldn’t think much of Hera being asian, it could just be that “she is the right person for it”, Ming-Na Wen is a fucking great actress, but considering the show’s history so far, I kinda have to think about it. So I do think about how Hera’s obsession with the perfect family and her overly controlling nature are very much “tiger mom-esque”, so her being portrayed by an asian woman is fully feeding into this stereotype. (and i said i wouldn't take the books into consideration but her being thalia’s evil step mom just like mrs chase is annabeth’s is….ugh).
I don’t think Hera’s casting in isolation is an issue, I think the whole thing is the issue. Having a Pantheon pretty much perfectly split between nice gods (white) and mean gods (non-white) is insane. pjo tv hides behind this facade of “being diverse” while not actually taking into consideration what it’s actually saying with its choices. What does it mean that your Chosen One is a white blond boy with blue eyes. How will season 3, which is all about a black girl decidedly NOT being the chosen one so Percy could be it instead, come across? What does it say about this franchise that all leads/potential future leads are white men, despite the diverse cast?
