Part of whose world? The Little Mermaid, fantasy media, and casting backlashes as racial projects for social studies classrooms

Afro-futurist, filmmaker, producer, and writer dream hampton said, “All social justice work is science fiction. We are imagining a world free of injustice, a world that doesn't yet exist” (Smith, 2021). With this in mind, conversations around diversity, race and fantasy films and television have overtaken media coverage as of late, sparked in particular by the recent storytelling and casting decisions made in Disney's live-action film remake of The Little Mermaid (TLM) (2023) and in the latest television series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series (LOTR) (2022) and Star Wars' Obi-Wan Kenobi (OWK) series (2022) (see  Appendix for full media and character list) (Deggans, 2022a, b; Romano, 2022). Especially in social media, racist responses and online abuse have run rampant, targeting the franchises in general and actors of Color specifically who have been cast in storylines that exclusively happen in realms of science fiction (sci-fi) and fantasy. It is known that films and television shows have a deep impact on how young people learn society and its culture, on how they take up certain narratives and forget others, and on how they understand history altogether, including racial histories (Batt and Joseph, 2022; Bondy and Pennington, 2016; Hawkman and Shear, 2017; Pimentel and Busey, 2018; Stoddard and Marcus, 2006; Stoddard et al., 2014). It is also known that when it comes to sci-fi and fantasy, certain representations of race within film and television mediums empower mirroring, belonging and representation for some audiences, and have caused other fanbases to aggregate into politically motivated organizing (Baker, 2017; Chávez and Leon-Boys, 2022; Lopez, 2011; Patterson, 2022; Thielman, 2022).

In this paper, we argue that these current-day racial issues around sci-fi and fantasy films and shows are racial projects, and that there is great potential in using them in classrooms to explore racialized geographical and cultural histories with students (Omi and Winant, 2014). We then share ideas of what this can look like in social studies classes via resources and lesson plan starting points for US and World history classes. Such endeavors are chances for students to both understand complex racial histories and break down how such histories blend into our current-day cultural media landscape. Most of all, these cultural moments are opportunities to practice critical comparative analysis of real-life racial histories and richly-imagined sci-fi and fantasy worlds, noticing how and why the two often collide when it comes to race.

Thus, this study firstly analyzes the sociocultural contexts of racist casting attacks in a world where racial projects speak loudly both in real life and in sci-fi and fantasy films, and ends with history-forward teaching ideas for unpacking such contexts with students in social studies classes via critical sci-fi and fantasy film and television series analysis. Sci-fi and fantasy films and shows are fruitful spaces for social justice imaginings with young people, and provide a curricular chance to ask questions such as: why are certain races and ethnicities of people imagined in particular spaces and storylines without question, while others are met with vitriol? What is the intersection between various geographical spaces in fantasy film, cultural memory around who belongs where, and the real-life histories of groups of people (Assmann, 2011)? For if a truly socially-just society is science fiction, then what better place to examine its possibilities with students than through sci-fi and fantasy works such as TLM, LOTR and Star Wars' OWK to get to the roots of racism in film, and what a more equitable society that challenges whiteness as the norm has, and can, look like?

This paper uses the theoretical frame of racial projects (Omi and Winant, 2014) to understand how racial power and myth anchor both individual and collective memory in media such as film and television. Trouillot (1995) explains that the role public powers play in shaping renditions of history is indelible, as well as enormously underestimated by academia. We see these dual ideations of racial projects and history production as linked, and take them further in arguing that public powers play the same role in shaping racial issues around film and television, which in turn act as historically influential media that dictates how much of history concerning race is colloquially remembered. Thus, issues around race and media are unique racial projects that straddle realms of popular culture and history-making concerning how issues of race and even how racial groups themselves are remembered. These issues also have an enormous impact on how cultural memory is maintained when it comes to race. These racial projects in media, such as racially motivated casting backlashes, shape the way history is conceptualized in society, enshrined in cultural memory, and taught in K-12 school settings.

This also operates in conjunction with how specific historical narratives, particularly the ones taught in schools, not only deliberately edit out and silence certain voices and historical renditions while playing others widely and loudly, but also emerge from the complex process and locations by which public memory and story rub up against academic historical theory and ‘formally’ recorded history. Omi and Winant (2014) support this understanding of overlap in their argument that race is endlessly in formation, operating “in the space of intersections, at the crossroads where social structure and experience meet … socially constructed and historically fluid … continuingly being made and remade in everyday life” (p. 10).

This is true concerning film and television's cultural power over memory and history itself, even and especially when it comes to the fantasy genre. American onscreen media and the public reactions to it have not only shaped generations of US citizens' concepts of history, race, and racism into what Omi and Winant (2014) would call “racial projects”, but also continue to do so in their use as educational aides in social studies classrooms (Garrett and Kerr, 2016; King and Woodson, 2017). These racial projects in film and television and how they reverberate outwards into public spaces have found their way into genres of sci-fi and fantasy as well, creating and then reinforcing well-worn and often whitewashed narratives that tell a certain story about who belongs where in worlds of fantasy.

However, just because certain racial projects have become embedded over time in society's imagination does not mean they are accurate historical representations of the pasts tied to these fantasy worlds, nor are authorities on the look, feel, characters and contexts that are possible in sci-fi and fantasy film and television. How society remembers these films, television shows and their castings is neither necessarily how it was in the past, nor how it should be moving forward.

Using a qualitative textual analysis method (Peräkylä, 2005), we initiated this project by utilizing the internet for news articles discussing the race of fantasy characters within the remake of TLM, the LOTR series, and OWK, and the subsequent backlash by fandoms and other entities related to those pieces. These three particular pieces were chosen because of their extensive fandoms, the exorbitant financial costs their production studios expended in order to create them, their cultural reverberations that overlapped in both the time they were released, and the significant news coverage and social media attention their production and casting garnered. To narrow our internet search, we focused on articles produced by major online news outlets such as USA Today, Vox, National Public Radio (NPR), etc. during 2022 and 2023. We chose not to delve into social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter (now X), Reddit, etc. due to the overwhelming number of voices/profiles present and the fact that many news outlets already synthesized and selected posts from these platforms for their own publications. Instead, we examined these social media posts from the online news outlet. For example, Kelly Lawler's September 2022 online article for USA Today included screenshots and links from Twitter (X) highlighting the supportive and uplifting tweets of LOTR film cast members Elijah Wood and Sean Astin and the hashtag #YouAreAllWelcomeHere. Using Google as our search engine, keywords such as “racist backlash” and “racist threats” in conjunction with the aforementioned television series and film were explored. Examining the articles, outlets that republished/reposted pieces from larger platforms (ex: a local news source reposting an article from The Associated Press) were not included in our online database. Our database of over twenty articles was then subject to an in-depth media analysis, noting particular discussions of race in relation to the fantasy characters and public reactions. Individually, we manually coded data for themes and patterns, and then we came back together to compare and contrast our analyses. Finally, we determined conceptual explanations of the case and formed a joint conclusion when results differed (Merriam and Tisdell, 2016).

We conducted this study as a white cis female and an Arab/white cis male, understanding that our own lenses shaped the search inquiries and analyses. Expounding further, both of us have multiple years of experience teaching high school social studies subjects such as US History and World History in the states of New York and Texas, respectively. In addition, we have worked extensively with undergraduate preservice teachers as field supervisors and university methods course instructors to prepare a new generation for the profession. Interactions with students within these educational spaces have not only impacted our own teaching practices in relation to media, but also influenced us to further examine how media can and does affect one's historical and contemporary racial perceptions. We both recognize and believe that critical media analysis, as well as public interpretations of and interactions with media, must continuously be elements incorporated into social studies curricula.

A textual analysis of articles related to race and casting in TLM, LOTR series, and OWK revealed two distinct themes: racism in defense of perceived ideas of the way things ‘used to be’, and racism attacking casting as ‘woke’ political decisions meant to protect filmmaker profits.

A clear theme emerging from our media analysis was that many fans, viewers and online ‘trolls’ took at times violent issue with the fact that more diverse casting in these films and series had changed ‘the way things were’. In effect, it had challenged a fantasy space that in their minds was white, and most of all, challenged their perceived memory of the way things ‘used to be’: a white-dominated sci-fi and fantasy ideation frozen in the amber of their collective cultural memory.

Online comments underneath articles covering the films and series' releases, in response to corporate and studio tweets and Instagram posts, and most nefariously, direct messages to actors of Color, revealed this finding throughout. In response to the first unveiling of TLM trailer, a #notmyAriel hashtag went viral, inspiring comments from trailer viewers about how they wanted an Ariel “similar to the one they grew up watching”, and that the new Ariel played by Halle Bailey, a Black woman, does not look like the animated version (Willingham, 2022). Right behind #notmyAriel was the tagline “Justice for Ariel” that took up defensive positions upon being called racist, and avowed themes of colorblindness while attacking Bailey. In a February 2023 interview with The Face, Bailey stated, “As a Black person, you just expect it and it's not really a shock anymore” (Pometsey, 2023).

Afro-Puerto Rican Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays Elven warrior Arondir in LOTR, shared that he received “pure and vicious hate speech” in his social media direct messages almost every day for the past two years based on the idea that he had no place playing an elf because elves were and always had been white (Valdivia, 2022). Alongside this, another “Tolkien would never want this” thread that exploded was in response to the casting of African-Iranian actor Sophia Nomvete as the dwarf princess, Princess Disa. Some fans, once again disputing racism as their reasoning, went to great lengths to argue for ‘logic’-based pushback on why a Black actor could not be the princess of Khazad-dûm, with one theory stating there would not be enough melanin in the underground kingdom as Tolkien designed it (similar to another theory saying TLM's Ariel cannot be Black because she lives underwater) (Rushforth, 2022).

As The Lord of the Rings fans have with Tolkien, some Star Wars fans' disputes lean on the same arguments, channeling a purity about what creator George Lucas originally intended and a nostalgia for the way things ‘were’ in a fictitious time when the cast was depicted as all-white. Documented online retaliation specifically targeted Reva, OWK's primary antagonist played by Black actress Moses Ingram. Attacks went beyond claims of how no one who ever looked like her existed in the galaxy (with the character of Lando Calrissian, played by Black actors Billy Dee Williams in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and Donald Glover in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story, as a clear rebuttal), and entered into racist hate speech (McMillan, 2022; Ross, 2022). The franchise responded with reminders of their diversity in two successive tweets on May 31, 2022. The first commented: “We are proud to welcome Moses Ingram to the Star Wars family and excited for Reva's story to unfold. If anyone intends to make her feel in any way unwelcome, we have only one thing to say: we resist”, while the second stated: “There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don't choose to be a racist” (Jones, 2022). As journalist and period drama expert Julia Prescott stated, “Racists weaponize childhood nostalgia to oppose diverse casting in these sci-fi/fantasy series because they cannot rely on whitewashed history to oppose diverse casting” (Romano, 2022).

The second theme that emerged from a textual analysis of articles was racism cloaked in the guise of fans' concern about future versions of their favorite narratives becoming too ‘woke’, too progressive, with diverse casting decisions only made to either: (1) chase more money by cashing in on diversity as a ‘fad’, or (2) to preempt and excuse future low earnings not on the quality of the film or show, but shift blame onto racism as to escape accountability. Articles on LOTR received comments such as “Imagine spending millions of dollars to promote your woke social justice warrior garbage of a film. Way to tarnish a good franchise” (Thielman, 2022). TLM has been accused of a ploy by Disney to “disingenuously milk given demographics for their money and attention with low-quality products as well as head off any criticisms the public may level towards them for doing so” (Baculi, 2023). OWK, with the most diverse Star Wars cast to date, has had fans range from calling actors of Color “diversity hires”, and go much further with deluges of messages of one thing: vitriolic hate (Rosenblatt, 2022).

This is, as Deggans (2022a) contends, a move by Disney and other franchises to indeed respond to ‘wokeness’--if wokeness is defined here as casting “non-white stars, moving away from the franchise's white-centered narratives in a way which makes the new stories more appealing to young audiences raised in a more multicultural society”. But in review-bombing, comment flooding and release boycotting, fans with racist responses to casting are in fact trying to influence the very thing they are accusing filmmakers and producers of: trying to affect the amount of money made based on the racial properties of the film and series' cast. In a September 2022 online article for USA Today, a huge discrepancy of nearly forty-five percentage points existed between critics and audience scores of LOTR on the popular Rotten Tomatoes review website due to review-bombing by unhappy, abusive viewers (Lawler, 2022). Review-bombing of TLM became such an issue that the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website, known for their extensive critic and public ratings, had to revamp their evaluation system and release a public statement that the “rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied” (Murphy, 2023). While claiming creators are making these casting calls to hedge against money lost later and crying “racism”, some fans are doing their best to ensure that this happens by rejecting the media based on the race of who is in it, before it even comes out.

Thus, in conclusion, one theme creates a racial project that uses the past and nostalgia to argue for whitestreamed (Grande, 2015) fantasy worlds, while the other does the same by taking target at the future where change is supposedly being forced by filmmakers out for politically correct profits. Yet neither claim is true. As the next section with suggestions for educators reveals, sci-fi has never been an all-white genre and media verse. Furthermore, when white actors are portrayed in other sci-fi and fantasy genres where white people have never existed, criticisms of racially-motivated ‘purely for profit’ casting curiously go silent from groups who lead the #notmyAriel and other online campaigns.

Now that these racial backlashes have been categorized as racial projects and their analysis has produced the aforementioned themes, this section takes that a step further by exploring what this means for the classroom. It asks, how can these racial projects of fantasy media casting be used to teach social studies?

We offer up a two-part plan for how to engage in fantasy media racial projects with students in social studies contexts when it comes to media history and regional/folktale history: (1) grapple with historical existence of the longstanding presence of race and diversity in sci-fi media and literature, and (2) discover the multiple rich regional traditions and historic folktales that connect to race, sci-fi, and fantasy.

The following lesson ideas and prompts work best in middle or high school US history, global or world history classes. For US history classes, the sections on race and diversity in sci-fi media and literature (Part 1) tie well to content chapters on the Cold War, 1950's and ‘60's culture and television, The Civil Rights Movements of the 1950's-present, and any discussions of race, society and change over time. In global or world history contexts, Part 2 ties well to topics of Caribbean, Asian, and African and Indigenous histories and migrations, especially concerning colonization, as well as greater discussions of geography and race. While social studies contexts fit best, these ideas can also come alive in lessons in interdisciplinary contexts within any history, media/art studies, and language arts classes. The aim is to have students understand how the sociocultural backlash to actors of Color cast in fantasy films and television are racial projects: phenomena tied to a greater cultural memory and nostalgia steeped in whiteness, rather than to actual histories of sci-fi media and global folktales and narratives. If racial projects take on a life of their own in cultural memory, and in fact are rarely historically accurate (Omi and Winant, 2014), then having students dig into the history of this context helps them to ‘pull back the curtain’ by looking at the perspectives and evidence of other historical sources and stories. Through this type of historicization connected to contemporary racial issues, students will learn how to assess multiple primary and secondary sources, critically querying these casting criticisms as the contemporary racial projects they are as they do so.

Towards this goal, the first step is to engage students with materials and resources to help them analyze and then discuss the history of multiracial sci-fi casting that has always existed in film and television, as well as other media mediums. The second step is a dive into historical accounts of global folktales, narratives, and even the geography of the subjects – such as mermaids, elves, and extraterrestrials – that are featured in TLM, LOTR, and OWK, and that significantly predate the current moment of each's casting backlash. With this in mind, we suggest offering up screenshots of tweets and popular news articles for students to explore on the casting backlash topics (being sensitive with which examples are chosen so as not to retraumatize students of Color already subject to racially violent school spaces); digging into the activities below; and finally ending with students revisiting the claims made by casting protestors to assess them for historical veracity. While the flowchart shares general lesson plan flow, the text afterward details what these discussions can entail in detailed action.

Sci-fi, both on television, in films, and in literature, graphic novels and other media mediums, has a rich history of breaking down racial barriers and of engaging in racial diversity. Exposing students to these histories will help them reframe and historically contextualize the current casting backlashes, as well as fact-check online claims that such casting decisions are new, chasing ‘woke' faddishness or are disrupting an all-white sci-fi past in film and television.

A powerful place to start is by examining the casting and plot choices of one of the most significant sci-fi television series to date: Star Trek. Star Trek's original cast included a Black woman and an Asian-American man, and today tackles issues such as nonbinary characters coming out, LGBTQ2IA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Two-Spirited, Intersexual, Asexual and other Queer identities) relationships, and holds a casting history of being 28% nonwhite and 33% female (Adherents.com, 2017). More than this, less than a year after the Supreme Court declared interracial marriage legal in Loving vs Virginia, Star Trek filmed and aired the first interracial television kiss in 1968, between William Shatner, a white man, and Nichelle Nichols, a Black woman. While the plot line was that the two were ‘forced’ to kiss by telekinetic aliens, the television event still carries enormous historic significance as a moment that broke down interracial barriers on-and-off screen. Furthermore, it was not met with much backlash. In fact, Paramount received the most fan mail they had ever gotten for one single Star Trek episode (Associated Press, 2018). Consider historically contextualizing the moment for students by gallery walking photo stills of the original cast and the interracial kiss, or group-watching excerpts of the first episode and the “Plato's Stepchildren” interracial kiss episode, and then following up with the inquiries below:

1. Why do you think Star Trek and NBC (National Broadcasting Company) made the casting decisions it did starting in 1966?

2. Consider why Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was a self-proclaimed fan of Star Trek, even commenting to Black actor Nichelle Nichols that she must stay on the show, saying “This is an important role. This is why we are marching. We never thought we'd see this on TV” (Poe, 2016)

3. Why do you think there was arguably less backlash for Star Treks' casting, especially in the interracial kiss episode, than there is today for Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings franchise casting? What do you think has changed, and what has stayed the same, that might explain these different public reactions?

4. Do you think reactions would have been the same if a white woman was kissing a Black man instead?

5. What role do you think Star Trek's starting with racially diverse casting has in the lack of online backlash against their current episodes and series, which cover many diverse topics such as sexuality, race, and gender?

Another place to mine the racial history of sci-fi and fantasy with students is through a guided tour that samples the works of sci-fi authors and creators who are Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), Black, Indigenous and Latine. Having students read and share these works, perhaps in a jigsaw-type activity where each group gets a different set of authors, will help them understand the longstanding and prolific traditions of authors of Color in sci-fi and fantasy, revealing how BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and other groups have always existed in and even commanded sci-fi spaces.

Short stories listed above by authors of Color such as Octavia Butler's Bloodchild, Rudy Ruiz's The Limes, Vandana Singh's Delhi, Fonda Lee's Old Souls, Marjorie Liu's Monstress comic series, Cynthia Leitich Smith's Tantalize, Nnedi Okorafor's Binti, or anything from Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown's anthology Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, which connects sci-fi short stories with movements for social change, are powerful places to begin. It is also worth highlighting Marie Lu's work on Batman: Nightwalker, Daniel José Older's work on the Star Wars novel Last Shot, Kat Zhang's The Memory of Forgotten Things, Eric Garcia's screenwriting on Repo Men, Catherine Asaro's The Saga of the Skolian Empire, and Marlon James's growing trilogy that started with Black Leopard, Red Wolf.

After students take time to share part or all of these short stories, as well as some biographical information about the race and ethnicities of their authors, consider engaging with them in the following questions:

1. What do the identities of these authors tell you about the history of science fiction and fantasy writing overall?

2. What major themes do you find these authors writing about? Why do you think they have chosen to discuss these themes in their work?

3. Why do you think these authors of Color's works are so accepted and celebrated, but casting of actors of Color in TV and film in the same genre is met with such backlash?

4. Why do you think white is seen as a ‘neutral’ or ‘the norm’ for viewers as a racial category in science fiction and fantasy, when so many authors of Color are the creators behind the stories themselves?

As previously mentioned, one of the key elements of online backlash to casting actors of Color in TLM, LOTR and OWK is the argument that people of Color have never existed in these worlds at all, and especially not as Black mermaids, Afro-Latino elves, and other fantastical beings. These social media backlashes have positioned filmmakers and producers as making casting decisions incongruent with the ‘real' history of such stories in hopes of cashing in on capitalist perks of ‘wokeness', essentially trading a story's integrity for money. Putting aside for the moment that each show and film's genre is sci-fi and fantasy, therefore anything is possible – as actress Moses Ingram commented, the absurdity in accepting talking droids and aliens, but not BIPOC in the Star Wars multiverse is glaringly inherent (Chilton, 2022)– this is fundamentally untrue. There are robust historical traditions in many parts of the world showing the opposite: there has always been much racial diversity in the depictions of fantastical beings and mythical worlds. The evidence of such goes back centuries, and is also still very much alive and well through art, storytelling and oral tradition in multiple corners of the globe today. Exposing students to such historical accounts of global folktales, narratives, and even doing close examinations of the geography of subjects such as mermaids, elves and extraterrestrials gives students more historical counter-evidence to analyze the racial projects that are these pop culture backlashes, and to differentiate them from multi-sourced global histories.

Starting with TLM, from the Caribbean to Asia to Africa, mermaids of Color have always abundantly existed in multiple myth and folktale traditions (Baptiste, 2019; Paquette, 2019; Trammell, 2019). While Hans Christian Andersen's version may have been white, Danish, and popularized (and edited heftily) by the 1989 Disney animated version, it is not the origin story (Brown, 2021; Dickson, 2022). Various mermaid and female water entities have always been depicted as Black, Brown, Asian or Indigenous, predate Andersen's story by centuries, and are still shared and passed down in global stories and beliefs today. They include: Yemaya, a Yoruba Orisha (goddess) who was known to protect enslaved West Africans from Spanish colonizers; La Sirène, an Iwa of Haitian Vodou; Mami Wata, or Mother Water, a collective of water spirits still worshiped across Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas; Iara, of Brazil and appearing in Tupi and Guaraní mythology; Marakihau, sea monster-esque taniwha of New Zealand's Maori folklore; the mermaid of Karoo, of the Indigenous Khoisan people in what is now South Africa; Japanese ningyo, or human fish; Sedna, a sea goddess of Inuit myths; Yawkyawks, of aboriginal Australia; and Benton, a Japanese water deity derived from the Hindu goddess Saraswati (American Museum of Natural History, n.d; Dorsey, 2019; Han, 2022; Headlee and Saxena, 2022). Evie Muir (2022) describes dislodging a Eurocentric positioning of mermaids as “decolonizing the imagination”, and authors such as Natasha Bowen and Tracy Baptiste have done just that by bringing entities such as Caribbean jumbies and Mami Wata to life in their young adult fiction Skin of the Sea and The Jumbies series, respectively.

Discussing the existence of these myths with students is powerful. Consider activities such as examining photos of art and artifacts found online representing the various mermaid entities across the globe (like a reverse-gallery wall where students see unlabeled images of these entities and have to research their origins), reading excerpts from the folktales and contemporary young adult versions of them, and questioning the persistence of Eurocentric standards of beauty and sexuality that have shaped pop culture imaginations to a place where online misogynoir reactions to the 2023 TLM trailer said “As far as I knew, mermaids were white” (Bowen, 2021). These classroom practices can help students unbraid just how much of pop culture reactions are founded on actual history versus racism and colonized imaginations.

The same goes for digging behind the history of what was always a racialized Middle Earth and Star Wars galaxy. Race, especially in the elf/orc divide of Tolkien's world, has always been woven into the fabric of his books, and the world of Star Wars has always held themes of colonization, race, migration, and borderlands.

When it comes to Tolkien's Middle Earth, from The Hobbit to the whole The Lord of the Rings trilogy, racial reads are abundant. Tolkien wrote that the orc characters he created are “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types” (Berlatsky, 2022). Their counterpart and largest enemies are elves, who are described throughout the series – and were until recently depicted as such on screen – as white, fair, and blonde-haired. Having students contend with the anti-fascist themes of the novel and its postwar history, as they also examine the dangers in a storyline that perpetually seeks to wipe out an entire race of creatures (orcs) from the earth, leads to complex discussions on race, genocide, and who has what power to destroy what evil. Questioning dichotomies of light and darkness and their racial undertones, and why so many fantasy films adopt British accents as the norm, will add even more layers.

Concerning Star Wars, asking students to measure the historical origins of the 1977 series, and if it has lived up to its anti-colonial premise in the current-day both in casting and narrative building, is an excellent way to get them to measure change over time, challenge presentism, and contextualize the US in the ‘70's with the country today. As Chávez and Leon-Boys (2022) explain,

Furthermore (similar to Star Trek), consider having students analyze what happens when a film series does not necessarily start out diverse in its casting, but then aims to become more diverse in recent years. When that commitment has not been steadily contributed to over time – as writer Devan Coggan tweeted, “It's not a Star Wars movie until there's a spunky white space brunette”--is the backlash different in its quantity, shape and presence (Florio, 2018)?

This paper highlights the need for more complex understandings of how race shows up in both the histories we think we know, and the current cultural moments we are immersed in. Having students contend with the significance of these contemporary casting backlashes as racial projects, and engaging them with histories of sci-fi in film and television and with global folktales and myths that can connect to these present-day racial projects, reveals so much. It reveals not only that diverse races and ethnicities have always existed in both spaces, but also that there is a chasm between cultural memory and history, and that whiteness has historically been all too ready to weaponize the former to silence the latter, and in doing so, attempt to silence, stop or bully change from happening.

Discussions around this cultural moment, and utilization of sci-fi and fantasy histories in conjunction with global folktale histories, forces educators and students to critically examine what society thinks it knows historically versus biased assumptions based on a cultural memory that has chosen whiteness as a presumed and exclusive category, even in imagined spaces. By digging into the sociocultural contexts of such racial projects, students can come to understand why they exist/happen, and even troubleshoot where else this is happening, and what they as consumers of media who drive the narratives we see on screen can do about it.

We want to also note that like most sci-fi and fantasy stories, this paper highlights a racial project that has its fair share of heroes and villains, but mostly has a cast of characters in the middle. Disney, Lucasfilm and Amazon Prime have both been accused of including historically marginalized actors superficially and failing to protect such actors against online hate and trolling, and have refused to back down from their casting choices and stood up for their actors who have been attacked. Something this paper has not attended to and that deserves more attention is how women and nonbinary actors, particularly ones of Color, have been intersectional targets in these backlashes as well, often in ways male-identifying actors have not had to deal with.

Finally, we want to end by mentioning the deeply significant fact that alongside racist backlashes, there have been online deluges of articles and comments on the joy, hope, and radical transformations that have come with more diverse representation in these films and series. From viral videos of the moment children realize someone who looks like them plays Ariel, to The Rings of Power star Córdova saying “it's about becoming unmissable, undeniable, irrevocably present and rooted, as a people, as beings, as individuals. A huge ‘we are here’. And we have been here” (Valdivia, 2022), to Star Wars replying simply with “we resist”, the imaginings of people of Color in sci-fi and fantasy spaces does more than imagine a world that does not yet exist. It calls into power the one that already does.

Table A1