Colour-blind casting, or integrated and non-traditional casting, is when an actor has been cast without regard for traits such as ethnicity, gender, or age. It is where we find ourselves when watching Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History Of David Copperfield (2019). Having not read Charles Dickens’s novel, I do not know how faithfully Iannucci’s vision conveys the source material. Casting aside however, what I can tell you is I rather adored this film.
Populated like a Hounslow school drama production, where many non-white primary and secondary school children would have experienced colour-blind casting firsthand. Iannucci has inferred he cast the actors who inhabited the spirit of the characters. “You shouldn’t have to bat an eyelid, and you don’t. Because the best people are cast for the parts.” (Iannucci, 2019). But it does prompt the question, what purpose does colour-blind casting serve? Whilst Dev Patel is a phenomenal actor and his portrayal of David Copperfield was a delight in conveying the tragedy through to comedy that is Copperfield’s turbulent life, what I couldn’t help myself from doing whilst watching the film was placing Patel’s South Asian identity onto the character. Mapping onto Patel, or rather Copperfield, how this was a significant part of his identity and experience, and this wasn’t just for one character. From Benedict Wong’s Mr. Wickfield and Rosalind Eleazar’s Agnes Wickfield to Nikki Amuka-Bird’s Mrs. Steerforth or Anthony Welsh’s Ham Peggotty, for me the characters were entwined with their respective cultural identities that would have existed in 1850. Now, this probably says more about me than the intentions of Iannucci’s expectations of his audience but when confronted with challenging the “norm” expected of us as film watchers. Asking me to remove my association of cultural identity from the actors was a hurdle, and it is easy to forget the phenomenon of TV series Bridgerton’s equal colour-blind casting, which now seems better accepted, was a year away.
There is a strangeness to accepting this version of colour-blind casting, where characters of one ethnicity are parents or children of a different ethnicity and, inhabiting the spirit of a character aside, Iannucci has picked to do this only where there is a single parent and no mention of the missing mother or father. Thus, it becomes more orchestrated than one initially expects and again I found myself questioning the point of doing so when this dynamic doesn’t extend beyond the main characters. Fundamentally I had to ask, did this bother me whilst watching the film. Did it detract from the drama? Honestly, not at the time but, like a good film should, I haven’t stopped thinking about and questioning what I watched, reflecting on where I stand and asking what others thought of it. Fundamentally, in 1850, would these non-white people truly be treated in such a way as the film portrays? As an audience member, depending on your own identity, your suspension of disbelief will dictate how you embraced such asking and what impact this had on your film viewing.
For me, there was something more to Copperfield’s experience, his very skin transforming the journey beyond the mistreatment of a character to one of representation and a specific South Asian experience. In this way there are less parallels between Jairaj Varsani’s young David Copperfield and say Mark Lester’s Oliver! (1968), and more with the hardship experienced by the children in Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! (1988). Whilst Patel’s older Copperfield conveys a more frantic journey of self-discovery, leading a distinctly unique path that doesn’t just address classism, but could also be seen to be entwined with the South Asian caste system.
My first film encounter with colour-blind casting was watching Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata (1989) which is a retelling of an epic Hindu text. The film is more abstract in its presentation, offering a shorter version of Brook’s 1985 nine-hour stage production. But never once did the diverse casting detract from the story telling. Maybe this has more to do with its roots in religion, the fantastic or even knowing of its initial theatre presentation, where colour-blind casting is more established. Furthermore, Brook’s filmed version of The Mahabharata takes place on obvious theatre sets whereas in The Personal History Of David Copperfield, for the external shots at least, they are filmed on location. Therefore, as we watch a diverse cast of actors act in a “tangible” England, this challenges our willingness of acceptance when all other elements of the film are designed to be faithful. With the legacy of Empire in full swing at the time of the film’s setting, I found it an interesting choice by Iannucci to completely disregard this element in the film.
What the film asks us to do is suspend our relationship with what our skin tone represents, with the stories we imprint upon actors before anyone has even spoken. Is it a privileged filmmaker who undermines the significance our very bodies can speak silently of? I found The Personal History Of David Copperfield a depiction of a British South Asian experience and a portrayal of our cultural assimilation into England. Though well-intentioned, colour-blind casting is used to heighten a narrative with the realities of the bodies, external to the storytelling, used in place of the normal casting one might expect of a character to add greater depth. Maybe the best example of this I can give goes back to the theatre, in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton musical. There is a line exchanged between Alexander Hamilton and Marquis de Lafayette where they remark, “immigrants, we get the job done”. But we’re not watching Hamilton and Lafayette, where watching the Jewish and African-American Daveed Diggs’s Lafayette and Puerto Rican Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton pause and remark, “immigrants, we get the job done”, after which the audience clap and cheer knowingly. Between Iannucci and Miranda, Iannucci cast the best people for Copperfield, Miranda acknowledged who the actors are in Hamilton.
P.S. No shade on Bridgerton but in series one I will not forget that, beyond background actors, South Asian representation with a speaking part unsurprisingly started with a South Asian doctor. Sighs over stereotype*.
References:
Iannucci, A. (2019), BBC: Iannucci’s Diverse Dickens Film To Open London Film Festival, available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49001496 (accessed: 12 August 2024)
Images:
The Personal History Of David Copperfield (2019), sourced from: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/armando-iannucci-personal-history-david-copperfield-casting-modern-dickens-adaptation (accessed: 14 August 2024)
Original posting 10 November 2020, updated 14 August 2024.
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