Fan Culture’s Fixation on Fictional Gingers

The most common critique I heard of the Netflix adaptation of The Witcher was the hair color of Triss Merigold. I tried to soothe the woes of friends and family by explaining that books describe her with “chestnut hair”. The push back was that Triss’s red hair is “iconic” for the character, and changes who she is; but, as far as I know, hair color doesn’t affect personality. Plus let’s not forget that hair dye and wigs exist. This gripe calls back to the same exact comments circulating when Zendaya was cast and MJ in Spiderman: Homecoming. What I first viewed as fan culture’s fixation on fictional, red headed women, quickly became the realization that it’s actually backlash adaptations for casting a women of color.

Triss Merigold: The Witcher (2019) Left, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) Right

Unfortunately, a life long experience of being a female consumer and creator of pop culture has taught me that I need to show my credentials before being openly critical. For The Witcher, I’ve read the books, played the games, read the comics, watched the various live action adaptations, and even tried to sit through the musical. For Spider-Man, when I was a child, I was interested in the comics and afraid to ask anyone where to start so I started at the 1963 the Amazing Spider-Man #1, and I continue to stay up to date.

This background may seem pedantic, but unfortunately it’s necessary when posting pop culture opinions in a public form. In fact, I could start a whole series of posts with all the stories I have, but I digress. Now that I’ve established that I love these characters, I don’t care about their hair color, and I love the casting of women of color in the roles of MJ and Triss.

MJ Watson: Amazing Spider-Man #601 (October 2009) Left,
Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) Right

The fetishization of women with red hair is nothing new; numerous studies have been done on the biological attraction to the color red. Combine that with the escapism that fiction provides and that both of these ginger women are the love interest, makes (for lack of a better phrase) a fantasy girlfriend. This is the convention of romantic storytelling: the reader follows the protagonist as they fall in love with their love interest, so in a way, the reader does too. But characters change in adaptations all the time, and a quick dive into TVTropes’ Adaptation Dye-Job list will give you tons of examples with every hair color and gender identity. Plus I don’t recall any issue when Triss Marigold went from chestnut to red hair, so really the only conclusion I can draw is that people are upset because woman of color are playing these red headed women.

Jefferey A. Brown takes a deep look at action heroines in his 2011 book Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture. In the chapter on race, he points out that “the persistent fetishization of ethnic women in the media is often presented as a type of celebration of ethnic diversity and appreciation, but in truth it never strays far from the racist and sexist origins of time timeworn stereotypes.” He also points out in contrast white women are given an angelic quality, particularly in comic books. With Brown’s argument, the issue people are taking with the casting of Triss Merigold and MJ Watson is that the ethnic fetishization is getting in the way of their angelic red haired fetishization. Zendaya and Anna Shaffer killed their respective roles, so clearly the casting director chose the best actors for the part. I can only hope that the show-runners of The Witcher (2019) continue to have Anna Shaffer shine as Triss Merigold, and stylize the character however the costume designer sees fit.

Starfire: Titans (2018) Top Left and Bottom Right, The New Teen Titans #10 (August 1981) Top Right,
Starfire #6 (January 2016) Bottom Left

For anyone still wanting to claim the issue is that the “iconic”red hair, Kel, a fellow student in my program, lovingly pointed out to me that people have a similar issue with the show Titans. Despite sporting red/magenta hair and green contacts, Anna Diop’s casting as Starfire is still rejected in the live action adaption. To clarify Starfire is red/magenta haired, orange skin (albeit white-coded in other media) alien who can harness the energy of the sun. The character is not even human, so to be pedantic, do people have issue with the casting of a human actor?

I always want to hear people’s thoughts and feelings on media, but I’m not interested in thinly veiled racism. Especially when the same people who are up in arms about hair color, are silent when it comes to white-washing. Plus there are more important things to critique in The Witcher (2019). Most notably the inaccessibility to people who haven’t read the book, and therefore have no context for the timeline as it constantly jumps back and forth.

Sources:

BROWN, JEFFREY A. ““EXOTIC BEAUTIES”: Ethnicity and Comic Book Superheroines.” In Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture, 168-84. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011. 

CD Projekt Red. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt, 2015. PlayStation 4.

Spiderman: Homecoming. Directed by Jon Watts, Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios, and Pascal Pictures, 2017.

Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, Creator. The Witcher. Sean Daniel Company, Stillking Films, Platige Image, One of Us, and Cinesite, 2019.

Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns, and Greg Berlanti, Creators, Titants, company(s) Weed Road Pictures, Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Television, 2018.

Sapkowski, Andrzej. The Last Wish. Translated by Danusia Stok, Gollancz, 2007.

Sapkowski, Andrzej. Sword of Destiny. Translated by David French, Gollancz, 2015.