ALL ABOARD THE POLEMIC TRAIN!!!
As many Harry Potter fans (such as myself) are pretty aware by now, our dreams have come true and the supreme goddess J.K. Rowling has presented us with another Harry Potter story! The 8th book entitled "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" will happen right after the epilogue scene we've seen, with tears in our eyes, at the end of "Deathly Hallows". Harry is now an auror at the Ministery of Magic and has 3 kids do deal with, and one of them, Albus, feels the pressure of having to carry on the family's name. The story will first be converted into a stage play that will debut on July 30th on London and into a book the day after (which is also Harry's birthday!)
When the play was first announced, it was revealed that the actress who was going to play Hermione (as well as her daughter with Ron) was going to be a black person, and now we finally got a first look at the characters:
The Potters
The Weasleys
The Malfoys
By taking a look at these pictures, you instantly have that feeling of "Wait, there's something wrong there", because for the first time, you're seeing your favourite characters from the little wizard's world played by different people. That's NORMAL. It is natural to the human body to resist to changes (especially if you're a fan. Fans HATE changes).
A clear example of that is currently taking place in China, where after the announcement of a Chinese Mandarin version of the upcoming games "Pokémon Sun & Moon", it was also announced that all the Pokémons would have their names changed (including the iconic Pikachu) to fit the language. That made fans freak out, leading to parades in the streets, claiming the old Pokémon's names back, only because they already had a story with those names, and all of their memories contained those names and they didn't wanted that to change.
Angry fans protesting against Pokémon's names changing, in Hong Kong
Amongst all the hate and love for the new "faces" of the characters, Hermione and her daughter Rose are the most discussed, after all, they changed not only their actresses, but their race too. Even though J.K. Rowling never specified anything in the books regarding Hermione's actual race, we all got used to her Emma Watson look from the movies. Rowling says that her being black, is a reflection of her position as a minority in the wizard world: a mudblood (someone who has magical powers but whose parents don't). Since in today's world everything is considered "offensive", most people have associated the Hermione polemic with racism issues (but of course, I am fully aware that in some cases, that is INDEED the problem) but what they have to understand is that some fans just don't like major changes in their favourite characters, which means, it doesn't matter, they could have make Hermione blonde, redhead, asian or whatever, the problem would be only the change.
Similiar cases have been also happening in the comic book world, where Captain America has now been revealed to be a double agent working in cooperation with Hydra (the nazi organization he had fought his entire life with) and the Joker's identity to be finally revealed, actually, sorta of: DC comics announced that there have been actually three different Jokers.
The Three Jokers
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~Coutinho
