A new Annabeth, a new day

Percy Jackson and diversity in American mythology

"She doesn't look like how I imagined Annabeth."

There it is: the typical fan complaint about movies or TV shows made from books.

We adore a certain character in a book. We imagine what that character looks like. Then the character is cast in some visual medium.

And we're disappointed.

It makes sense.

But in this case, the case of Annabeth Chase, that beloved character from Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, there is an added element.

The character cast as Annabeth in the new Disney+ TV series is Black, whereas Annabeth is described as white.

There's that added element: race.

While many of us white folks would like people to stop talking about race, mainly because it makes us feel uncomfortable and ashamed, it is not going away. It has gone away many times in the past, but I think we've reached a tipping point.

We have to continue to address race in America, because we are American and we believe as a nation that all people are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

So, yes, as Rick Riordan says in his recent post concerning casting Leah Sava Jeffries as Annabeth, we cannot as Americans object to this choice solely based on Ms. Jeffries' skin color. That would be racist.

But let's take things in a different direction--the direction that Greek Mythology has always taken us, and will continue to take us. I think the journey will be instructive.

Back in the old days, when the Greeks first told their tales, their skin color was pretty dark. Their hair was mostly brown to black. And they intermarried with people who were also dark-skinned. If you were to look at a Greek person from ancient times, they wouldn't look like a typical person from, say, the United Kingdom. They wouldn't sunburn easily, they wouldn't have light-colored hair, their noses wouldn't necessarily be narrow and pointed.

So in all these stories the Greeks told, they would have imagined their heroes and gods and goddesses as Greek, with dark skin and dark eyes and dark hair.

In fact, the ancient philosopher Xenophanes sort of summed up this idea when he said that each culture imagines its gods as looking like the people in the culture. Even, so he says, if there was a civilization of horses who created their own divinities, the divinities would be imagined as horses.

But as Greek Mythology grew out of the Greek myths--as authors and peoples and cultures appropriated the myths and bent them and blended them with other stories and values--the idea of what the heroes and gods looked like also changed.

And there came a point where it became okay and even expected for characters in movies about Greek Mythology to be white and European, even to have British accents.

Or, to take another very recent example, it became quite okay for the Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger to become Zeus in a commercial about an electric car.

That's not the way I imagined Zeus, you might say. He should be played by a Greek, because he was Greek.

But no one said that. No one I know, anyway.

And isn't that what happened with Annabeth this time? Why should we object to her casting and not to Arnold’s?

But wait a sec.

Some may argue that Greek Mythology is different. It is the property of all people now. It doesn't have to have characters who are faithful to the old stories. It is really only a template for the human spirit.

And yet, that's a bit curious. If Greek Mythology is for everyone, then everyone should have been represented and seen in it.

But for the longest time, I almost never saw anyone Black inhabit the role of any character from Greek Mythology in any story.

There was a movie a long time ago set in Brazil called Black Orpheus that was a notable exception.

The exception that, as we might say, proves the rule.

So if Greek Mythology is a template of the human spirit, where are all the non-white humans who also represent the human spirit?

Greek Mythology and Percy Jackson aren't all that different. They are both sets of excellent stories set in a fictional universe where humans can be demigods and gods and goddesses exist. 

They are both extremely popular, with legions of fans. We could even say they are both templates for the human spirit.

Annabeth Chase started out white in Percy Jackson. Helen of Troy started out Greek in the myths.

In one interpretation of Helen's story, she was played by a beautiful light-skinned woman named Diane Kruger, who is from Germany.

In one interpretation of Annabeth Chase's story, she will be played by a beautiful dark-skinned girl named Leah Sava Jeffries, who is from the United States.

There should be no surprise here.

The fact that there is some surprise and discomfort over Annabeth makes sense, because, again, race.

But it's not at all surprising to me that this controversy arose, because here in America we do want to realize our ideals. We do want to count everyone as equal. 

And I think there are a lot of people out there who want to be free to criticize the casting of Annabeth because, heck, it's just fun to obsess over a beloved character and a beloved story.

But if we do want to be American the way that America should be, we can't blame any "miscasting" of Annabeth on Ms. Jeffries' skin color.

After all, nearly everyone in that first Percy Jackson movie was white and I will tell you that it wasn't that good of a movie (with all due respect to those that thought it was).

So maybe we should give this new TV series a little grace and wait till we see a few episodes before we complain about the casting.

That would be the American thing to do.