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The Case of Grover Underwood from Rick Riordan's the Li Anna Mik* https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6840-6504 https://doi.org/10.32798/dlk.20 Disability, Race, and the Black Satyr of the United States of America: The Case of Grover Underwood from Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief and Its Film Adaptation by Chris Columbus 1 Abstract: This article aims to present the book-to-film metamorphosis of Grover Under- wood from Rick Riordan’s novel The Lightning Thief (2005), adapted in 2010 by Chris Columbus for the screen. This character in both works is presented as an excluded member of the society: in the empirical world, as a disabled person, in the mythological one, as a satyr. What is more, in the motion picture, Grover, played by a Black actor, poses as an even more marginalised character, as a representative of a com munity discriminated in the USA. Therefore, the images of this charac- ter reflect the various levels of exclusion and show the ideological significance of a contemporary adaptation for the young audience. The comparative analysis is performed with the use of reception studies and critical race theory perspectives. Key Words: adaptation, children’s and young adult film, children’s and young adult literature, Chris Columbus, classical mythology, critical race theory, disability, Percy Jackson, race, reception studies, Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief * Anna Mik – MA, prepares a doctoral dissertation at the Faculty of “Artes Libera- les” at the University of Warsaw (Poland) on monsters inspired by Graeco-Roman mythology in contemporary children’s and young adult culture. She works as an assistant in the project Our Mythical Childhood… The Reception of Classical Anti- quity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges led by Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak. Contact: [email protected]. 1 The research results presented in this paper have been obtained within the project Our Mythical Childhood… The Reception of Classical Antiquity in Children’s and Young Adults’ Culture in Response to Regional and Global Challenges led by Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw, with funding from the European Re- search Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme – ERC Consolidator Grant (Grant Agreement No 681202). 130 Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura 1(1) 2019, 130–146 Disability, Race, and the Black Satyr of the United States of America… Niepełnosprawność, rasa i czarnoskóry satyr ze Stanów Zjednoczonych. Przypadek Grovera Underwooda z powieści Ricka Riordana Złodziej pioruna i jej filmowej adaptacji w reżyserii Chrisa Columbusa Abstrakt: Celem artykułu jest zaprezentowanie metamorfozy Grovera Underwooda zacho- dzącej między powieścią Ricka Riordana (2005) Złodziej pioruna i filmową ada- ptacją tego utworu w reżyserii Chrisa Columbusa (2010). Ta postać w obu dziełach zostaje ukazana jako wykluczony członek społeczeństwa: w prawdziwym świecie – jako niepełnosprawny, w mitycznym zaś – jako satyr. Co więcej, w filmie Grover, grany przez czarnoskórego aktora, jest przedstawiony jako jednostka marginali- zowana w jeszcze większym stopniu – jako reprezentant społeczności dyskrymi- nowanej w USA. Tym samym różne wizerunki tego bohatera ujawniają wielopo- ziomowość wykluczenia i ukazują ideologiczne znaczenie współczesnej adaptacji przeznaczonej dla młodych odbiorców. Analiza komparatystyczna została prze- prowadzona z perspektywy studiów nad recepcją oraz teorii krytycznej rasy. Słowa kluczowe: adaptacja, film dziecięcy i młodzieżowy, literatura dziecięca i młodzieżowa, Chris Columbus, mitologia klasyczna, teoria krytyczna rasy, niepełnosprawność, Percy Jackson, rasa, studia nad recepcją, Rick Riordan, Złodziej pioruna Concurrunt satyri, turgentiaque ora parentis [Sileni] rident. – Ovid, Fasti 3, 757–8 2 Storytelling is always the art of repeating stories. – Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator Introduction: The Case of ‘Black Hermione’ arry Potter and the Cursed Child (Rowling, Thorne, & Tiffany, 2016), the H play that is a continuation of the story known from books and films, 3 raised hopes of millions of fans to enter the world of Harry Potter once again. In 2015, the play’s cast has been announced and there was a surprise. Among the actors, most easy to associate with the ‘original’ characters (Jamie Parker, 2 The Satyri come running and laugh at their father’s [Silenus’] bloated face – Ovid, Fasti 3, 757–8 (A. J. Boyle, trans.) 3 The play tells the story of Harry Potter’s son Albus Severus trying to face his own destiny and also – his father’s burden. Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura 1(1) 2019, 130–146 131 Anna Mik playing Harry – with glasses, and Paul Thornley, playing Ron – with red hair), one aroused controversy, especially among the fans of the book series: Noma Dumezweni, as a Black actress playing Hermione, appeared to be an unac- ceptable choice for some representatives of the potential audience (Ratcliffe, 2016). Soon enough, J. K. Rowling (2015) twitted: “Canon: brown eyes, frizzy hair and very clever. White skin was never specified. Rowling loves black Her- mione.” And even though some fans still posted on Twitter paragraphs from the books suggesting that Hermione might be a white-skinned girl (dylinskii, 2015), most recipients accepted the casting of an actress of colour for this role, finding it a reasonable choice because of the muggle upbringing of the books’ Hermione and her relatively bad treatment at school, where she was called a ‘mudblood’ by some (Ratcliffe, 2016). Putting aside other issues concerning the play (Is it a part of the Potter canon? What is its value in comparison to other Potter-related works?), this example shows the ideological aspects of the adaptation process and the res- ult of a decision of the creator of a certain text that can not only change the perspective from which their work is considered, but also upset the members of the audience that already know and love the original and have ‘imprinted’ depictions of their favourite characters. These visual representations are often very important to the audience even if its members prefer books over films – as in the statements suggesting that Emma Watson, a White actress, will always be Hermione, and that this character shall not be Black (Ratcliffe, 2016). This, probably, was one of the reasons for the fandom’s objection to casting a Black actress in this particular role. There is certain risk in adapting (in most cases) literary texts into mo- tion pictures, especially if we acknowledge the verbal-oriented approach to the adaptation, according to which a text is perceived as the ‘original,’ or as the ‘better’ variant of a particular story than its film version (Choczaj, 2011, p. 14). But, as Dorota Michułka and Ryszard Waksmund (2012) highlight: “[…] the new text […] is not a replica of the original but a unique artistic work with its fresh ideological structure [emphasis added]” (p. 16). Małgorzata Choczaj (2011) also underlines that: “[…] a certain creator, in the moment of getting to know the primary material, chooses forms, adjusting the content to his or her needs” (p. 15). 4 Therefore, every time we are dealing with a dif- ferent text, with its own, often new, creators, new ideological context and, frequently, new elements simply adjusted to the new medium. Not necessar- 4 All translations, if not otherwise indicated, are made by the author of the paper – Anna Mik. 132 Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura 1(1) 2019, 130–146 Disability, Race, and the Black Satyr of the United States of America… ily precisely indicated skin colour (in the book) and the necessity of visually specifying it (in the play) certainly would be such a case. The ‘Black Her- mione’ example would be – at least at first glance – the realisation of the mentioned phenomenon: the skin colour of this character was not an issue in Rowling’s books, even though it was never spe cified. On no account should it be an issue (in an ideal and healthily functioning society), and the fact that it was – in the case of the play – certainly reflects the struggle of (predomi- nantly) White people with racial minorities. A similar problem appears in many other adapted works, 5 in which the casting or depictions of the characters differ from the original, like in Walt Disney Productions adaptations of children’s books. Numerous cases of such issues with adaptation show that they concern mainly the most popular texts for children, from Lewis Carroll’s (1865) Alice to the mentioned Harry Potter. The one that I want to focus on in this paper is the adaptation of The Light- ning Thief (the first book of the series Percy Jackson & the Olympians) written by Rick Riordan (2005/2008). The story is about the titular young boy, Percy, living a life of an archetypical outcast, that finds out his father is actually a god, Poseidon. Since that moment, Percy is introduced to various concepts of the mythological world that have been transferred from ancient Greece to the United States of America (Olympus, for example, is on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building). The book has been adapted into a film titled Per- cy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Rosenfelt, Barnathan, Rad- cliffe, & Columbus 2010) 6. The director of this motion picture and the first two Harry Potter films, Chris Columbus (as well as the motion picture’s other creators), adjusted a lot of elements that probably might have functioned bet- ter in the cinematic world than in the novel one – e.g. by making Percy older (from 12 to 16), chan ging several key-locations, etc. (MacNeill, 2018); never- theless, these do not work as intended. In this paper, however, I will not list all things that have been changed – as may be expected. Instead, I would like to focus on the character whose representations in the book and the film – probably for different reasons – are particularly interesting in the context of 5 This phenomenon applies not only to children’s culture and not necessarily only to race.
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