When
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,
directed by Harald Zwart, was released in 2013, it opened to lackluster reviews
and disappointing box-office numbers—it only earned about $31 million
domestically to date. Based on the bestselling young adult urban fantasy novels
by Cassandra Clare, the story follows the heroine Clary Fray as she stumbles
into what most teenagers would want to discover: she’s not entirely human, and
she’s an important player in the race to save the world—and not just the human
world. The Shadowhunter world and its occupants are also in danger from a
purist Shadowhunter bent on purifying their race. (Not quite the whole
wipe-out-the-world ploy but close. Really close.)
Shadowhunters the television show is
the second adaption of the novel series and premiered on Freeform on January
12, 2016; it has since been renewed for a second season run of 20 episodes. And
being a fan of anything fantasy (and having seen/read both the movie and the
novels), I had to take it upon myself to watch this particular adaption as
well.
Now,
the thing about Shadowhunters isn’t
that it’s the Best Show on TelevisionTM, because it’s bad. Truly,
honestly, undeniably bad in the way that most shows aimed at young adult
audiences are. The acting goes from good to terrible in the span of a scene;
the cinematography is mediocre; the dialogue is awful; the special effects are
cringe-worthy.
However, though the show is
objectively Bad TelevisionTM and was probably made on a budget of
two cents, a bent paper clip, and a crinkled candy wrapper, what the show does well is a number of more nuanced narrative and
directive choices. Arguably, Shadowhunters
is the best portrayal of fictional oppression as a metaphor for racial
oppression I’ve seen on genre TV lately, as the casting director cast actors of
color in a multitude of roles that were originally white. It has real, visible diversity that are present not only in the extras
but, perhaps most importantly, in the characters that actually move the plot
forward (namely the main cast). Most of these characters were white or “up to
interpretation” in the original text material, and most were portrayed as white
in the 2013 movie adaption.
While not an exhaustive list by any means, here are 8 characters of color in the show:
- Emaraude Toubia, as Isabelle Lightwood (Mexican-Lebanese)
- Harry Shum Jr., as Magnus Bane (Costa-Rican Chinese)
- Kaitlyn Leeb, as Camille Belcourt (Chinese-Canadian)
- Jade Hassouné, as Meliorn (Lebanese-Canadian)
- David Castro, as Raphael Santiago (Puerto-Rican, Jewish)
- Alberto Rosende, as Simon Lewis (Cuban-Colombian)
- Isaiah Mustafa, as Luke Garroway (African American)
- Shailene Garnett, as Maureen Brown (African-Canadian, Creole)
Shadowhunters, then, is a turning
point in representation in TV shows, as a means to critique Hollywood’s toxic history of whitewashing everyone under the sun in the name of
profit and audience turn-out for big-name actors.
More often than not, people of color are regulated to stereotypical roles: the sidekick, the comedic extra, the villain, the sexualized subject, and so on ad nauseam. These particular images get repeated often enough that they assume a reality of their own. Postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, professor of English and American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University, has offered perhaps the most challenging and innovative engagement with the issues of racial/cultural otherness and the colonial stereotype. In his book, The Location of Culture, Bhabha asserts that the colonizer is able to produce images and remark upon things that are then reiterated and reified, especially in the case of the racialized Other. Skin color provides a convenient strategy for that signification; if the Other has a particular skin pigment, they can be known and exoticized as something dangerous that society cannot contain. The purpose of this, as Bhabha writes, is to shore up the identity of the colonizer by molding the colonized subject into a more palatable form—someone who is like the colonizer themselves. Critically pressuring this goal, however, reveals that the (white/hegemonic/heteropatriarchal) identity being protected is not as stable or secure as the colonizer might wish to believe.
More often than not, people of color are regulated to stereotypical roles: the sidekick, the comedic extra, the villain, the sexualized subject, and so on ad nauseam. These particular images get repeated often enough that they assume a reality of their own. Postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, professor of English and American Literature and Language, and the Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University, has offered perhaps the most challenging and innovative engagement with the issues of racial/cultural otherness and the colonial stereotype. In his book, The Location of Culture, Bhabha asserts that the colonizer is able to produce images and remark upon things that are then reiterated and reified, especially in the case of the racialized Other. Skin color provides a convenient strategy for that signification; if the Other has a particular skin pigment, they can be known and exoticized as something dangerous that society cannot contain. The purpose of this, as Bhabha writes, is to shore up the identity of the colonizer by molding the colonized subject into a more palatable form—someone who is like the colonizer themselves. Critically pressuring this goal, however, reveals that the (white/hegemonic/heteropatriarchal) identity being protected is not as stable or secure as the colonizer might wish to believe.
Because
the Downworlders (beings like werewolves, vampires, and faeries who are half
demon) are portrayed by people of color in Shadowhunters
when they once were white, the narrative makes room for a postcolonial reading
about the fragility of the Shadowhunter’s dominant, hegemonic society.
 |
| Meliorn |
Despite the increased diversity in the show and allowance for these types of dialogues are a positive step in the right direction, it does not pardon the show from breaking down under critical analysis. While
the handling of racism in the show is a little more nuanced than what we would
normally see, I can’t help but raise my eyebrows to my hairline with the way
the show handles it. Shadowhunters is so specifically focused
on these conversations about race that it lacks the specific context of that
racism.
In the show, the Downworlders exist in an uneasy alliance with the Shadowhunters, but the Shadowhunters seem to find ever-increasing ways of being verbally offensive about them. For example, Alec (one of the protagonists) insists that Downworlders are ruled by impulse while Shadowhunters are not, which repeats the racist, colonialist discourse of civilized versus non-civilized people. Even Isabelle (played by Mexican-Lebanese actress Toubia) informs Meliorn that “some of us [Shadowhunters] enjoy a little spice” when referring to his part-demon blood and also in reference to her relationship with him, contributing to the hypersexualization of people of color in media, and thus reduces Meliorn to that one aspect of his identity rather than a coherent whole.
In the show, the Downworlders exist in an uneasy alliance with the Shadowhunters, but the Shadowhunters seem to find ever-increasing ways of being verbally offensive about them. For example, Alec (one of the protagonists) insists that Downworlders are ruled by impulse while Shadowhunters are not, which repeats the racist, colonialist discourse of civilized versus non-civilized people. Even Isabelle (played by Mexican-Lebanese actress Toubia) informs Meliorn that “some of us [Shadowhunters] enjoy a little spice” when referring to his part-demon blood and also in reference to her relationship with him, contributing to the hypersexualization of people of color in media, and thus reduces Meliorn to that one aspect of his identity rather than a coherent whole.
 |
| Isabelle Lightwood |
At
the same time, it’s hard not to see the show succeeding in smalls ways despite
itself. Shadowhunters engages in
depictions of POC (people of color) on POC racism, and that is unexpected but welcome,
because it does address internalized racism and adds complexity to the fairly
straightforward fantasy.
If
a “silly fantasy” young adult genre dramedy can do this, why can’t HBO do it with their high-budget shows?
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