Editorial

Shadow and Bone: The Mishandling of Racism

By Ammy Y. ‘22

As a longtime fan of Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse'' books, I was so excited when I heard Shadow and Bone, the first book in the series, was being developed into a live-action Netflix show. The story follows Alina Starkov, an orphan who finds out she is a rare type of Grisha (a magical practitioner who can manipulate specific types of matter): a Sun Summoner. After waiting for the better part of two years, I was finally able to watch it. For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed. It’s a solid adaptation, with excellent actors that brought to life the characters I loved reading about. Yet, there was one part of the show that made me feel truly uncomfortable: the so-called “diversity” that had been used to market the show to prospective watchers. 

For context, practically everyone in the Shadow and Bone book trilogy is white, including the main character, Alina Starkov. “When [showrunner] Eric [Heisserer] and I first sat down together, one of the first things we decided was that we wanted Alina to be half Shu," Bardugo said. Shu-Han is Bardugo’s fantasy analogue for an amalgam of Asian countries, so making this change meant that in the show, Alina became half-Asian. Accordingly, half-Chinese actress Jessie Mei Li was casted. As a Chinese American, seeing this representation in a character that meant so much to me was particularly exciting. It felt like I would finally be able to see myself on screen when so much of my youth was spent searching for that kind of representation.

However, I was sorely disappointed with the way the show decided to handle this increased diversity. From the moment the show starts, the viewer is practically hit over the head with instances of racism that Alina experiences. Each episode brings a different microaggression or another slur. A cartographer makes snide comments and assumes Alina was born in Shu Han, even though Alina is also a native of Ravka, the country they fight for. Fellow soldiers assume Alina is a spy. Alina is denied food for being half-Shu. Another Grisha calls Alina a half-breed. The palace maids sneer that Alina smells, and advise Genya, a Grisha that can manipulate one’s appearance, to make Alina’s eyes “less Shu,” the most painful and familiar anti-Asian attack. Genya brushes this off with a breezy, “I don’t care that you’re part Shu”, yet does nothing to condemn the maids’ racist remarks. 

The problem with this is that none of the other characters played by actors of color experience any racism. We are told that the racism Alina experiences is justified by the fact that Ravka and Shu Han are at war, but this war is never seen on screen. Its most concrete manifestation is a single background poster that looks like WWII anti-Japanese propaganda. “We only dislike this one race because we’re at war with them” isn’t how racism works in the real world, and this simplification is baffling given that so much of the onscreen discrimination is so clearly and viscerally pulled from life. It would have been better to stress the war's role in those aggressions, rather than invent slurs like “rice-eater” and “half-breed”, as well as make very heavy-handed comments on facial features.

We know nothing of Shu Han, or its culture, and neither does Alina. Her experience of being half-Shu is one of pain and isolation. Though that is the experience of some in the Asian diaspora, it ties into ongoing discussions of how the minority experience in popular media gets boiled down to a narrative of continual suffering. If writers are going to show racism against Asians, it is important to balance it with the beauty of being Asian. Our stories should not only be about the ugliness and trauma of racism. Since Alina was originally white, it leaves one with the disturbing suspicion that the series believes that being a member of the Asian diaspora is defined solely by the racism one encounters.

As an Asian person, I think that in certain instances, it can be cathartic to see the racism you personally experience—often brushed off as “not that bad”—treated as a series of villainous actions to be triumphed over by a heroine who looks like you. However, in the case of Shadow and Bone, it was shockingly painful to have my racial Otherness flung in my face in a fantasy world where I’d hoped for an escape from the ramped up anti-Asian rhetoric of the real world. Shadow and Bone needed a much more complex explanation and a deeper examination of this fantasy world’s racial politics than the one we got, and I hope it’s something that is seriously considered in the show’s second season.