The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Published: May 21st, 2019 by New York University Press

Genre: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

Format: Hardcover, 340 Pages, Library

Rating: 5 stars

Publisher's Summary:

Reveals the diversity crisis in children's and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter.

The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world.

In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have re-envisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”

My Thoughts:

I was blown away by this in-depth and down-to-earth criticism of the "fantastic" genres that feature Black characters. Her description of the dark fantastic is  "...the role that racial difference plays in our fantastically storied imaginations...the fantastic...includes fantasy fiction but goes beyond it to include all stories-about-worlds-that-never-were, whether they are marketed, shelved, or classified as fairy tales, horror, superhero comics, "soft" science fiction, alternate histories, or otherwise." And she is specifically not talking about Black fantastic. I would say she is dissecting White authors and their worlds which feature Black characters in some way. "...the fact remains that the vast majority of speculative narratives read and viewed in the United States are still written by White authors and screenwriters and consumed by mass audiences."

What Thomas sets out to do is critically analyze Black characters and their voices within these texts. "...shifting focus away from White heroic protagonists and illuminating the imaginary stories of people of color at the margins can reveal much..." Who and what has traditionally been othered? Who are the monsters in these traditionally Anglo tales? Thomas asks what happens to Black readers when all they see is the Others, dark monsters are villains? What happens to readers who are White and never read anything different about who can the hero and who are the villains and monsters? "For many readers, viewers, and fans of color, I suspect that, at the level of consciousness, to participate in the fantastic is to watch yourself be slain--and justificable so, as the story recounts. After all, in fairy tales, it was you who terrorized the hapless villagers, who kidnapped the fair princess, who dared wage war against the dashing hero."

Thomas lays out her theory of how the dark fantastic cycle works and she then uses that theory to critique and analyze characters and their texts from Rue in The Hunger Games, Bonnie Bennett in The Vampire Diaries, Gwen in Merlin, and finally race in the Harry Potter series.

Her analysis of Rue and her role to play for Katniss and the rebellion was brilliant. New insight flooded in from all angles. She continues this insight into each and every one. I never watched The Vampire Diaries or Merlin but reading her analysis was chilling. Knowing how the characters are ultimately tossed aside. 

I remember when The Hunger Games came out and so many people were angry that Rue was cast with a Black actress. They read the story, and even though Collins specifically talks about Rue being a person of color, they could not accept and see in their reading that Rue could be an innocent Black little girl.

I could go on. There are so many aspects to this book. I got it from the library but I need to buy it and reread. I love fantasy and sci-fi and I think this is a critical literary analysis going forward in reading any classic fantasy and reading any present and future fantasy by White authors. How do we subconsciously bring our biases to our worlds in writing?

Thomas' Dark Fantastic theory is one to keep at the forefront as we read anything really but especially in the fantastic genres. While some parts were a bit academic for me overall, I feel it's very readable for non-English majors like me.