I’ve not read Wuthering Heights and, for some reason, possibly the terrible sadness of its storyline, I’ve tried to avoid filmed versions too. But Andrea Arnold’s retelling of Emily Brontë’s story has me intrigued. Casting a black Heathcliff seems to have divided critics down the middle: some say it is an accurate and justifiable reading of the story of the “dark outsider”; others dismiss it as a bit of modern, multicultural nonsense.
One critic wrote that far from Arnold’s description of the actor James Howson as a “young Jimi Hendrix”, they found him more like “a young Rio Ferdinand”. So a British film director decides to cast the best actor she can find regardless of colour, and a critic chooses to mock her choice by comparing the artist with a footballer with the same colour skin. Boring, predictable and sad.
Yet, inadvertently, this shines a spotlight on an age-old phenomenon: the habitual colour-blindness that the British film and television industry suffers from so much. I mean colour-blindness in the negative sense of ignoring black faces in the line-up for classic roles.
I expect most actors would admit to a touch of jealousy, or healthy envy, when they see fellow actors in an excellent piece of work on TV or in the theatre. But the green-eyed monster is further fed when, as a black actor watching all the costume dramas Britain is so masterful at producing, you realise that neither you nor any of your black contemporaries has been on any such exalted cast list. Why can I not get seen for parts in Emma, Great Expectations or Downton Abbey? Is it because I’m not “the right kind of actor”? Or the wrong colour of actor?
Aside from a couple of recent exceptions (such as the BBC’s Servants and Small Island), it seems we have settled on the non-inclusion of black faces in our costume dramas as a norm. “Fair enough,” you might say. “There weren’t many black people in Britain before 1948 anyway, were there?” In truth, you wouldn’t be alone in thinking that. Ten years ago I would have said the same thing.
What changed my mind was a selfless act of research on my part. Or rather, I really wanted to be in a costume drama, so I looked up black people in British history who would make good subjects for a screenplay. I thought the historical pickings would be slim but found, to my astonishment, that I couldn’t get to the end of all the hilarious, heart-breaking and rousing tales from our rich and varied British story.
Gretchen Gerzina’s book Black England was my starting point. Here was rich fare for many a costume epic: the black centurion on Hadrian’s Wall shouting abuse and defiance at the marauding Picts below; Queen Bess riding through London in her carriage and, seeing so many black faces cluttering up the place, chartering a boat to ship them all off to Spain and Portugal to be sold as slaves. (On the day of departure not one black person showed up, so the plan was shelved.) These brief examples are just the showier pictures of a hidden past. The black presence in British history has sometimes wilfully, sometimes neglectfully, been whitewashed out of our national tale.
This is not only deeply hurtful and enraging, but also foolish. As an actor, I want to be in works that reflect black presence in the United Kingdom throughout the nation’s history. But, if I am to do that, then playwrights must get researching to broaden their palate and programme-makers must look away from their mirrors and see the darker shades around both them and their ancestors. In the meantime, I applaud Arnold’s intelligence and openness in casting whom she liked, regardless of their ethnicity. —