@Courtenay 

I think the term is used overseas to mean someone from UK.  My passport says United Kingdom, not Britain.

Yes, the term for the country before WW1 was simply Great Britain, but on 3rd May in 1921, the Republic of Ireland was born, after Irish resentment over poor treatment of the Irish, throughout the centuries, came to a head, such as in the 1917 Easter Sunday riots in Dublin. "British" applies to the inhabitants of the largest island, actually called Britain (Britannia in Roman Times) as well as Northern Ireland, along with many other islands, which aren't associated with the Republic of Ireland, sharing its Hibernian second largest island of the archipelago called "The British Isles". Even the island of Britain, itself, is divided up into Scotland, Wales & England. If you go to the Hebrides, or Northern Scotland, the location signs are in both English & Scottish Gaelic, and in Wales, such signs might be in both English & Welsh.

Even Cornwall spoke Cornish at one time. The Island of Man also once had its own language called Manx. It is just another fact of history, that England is only part of what is called Britain, even though what is sometimes laughably called English has become the main language of much of UK. It is also true that when we learned about our possibly Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Greek, Jewish, etc & Aboriginal rather than actually English, antecedents in primary school, it was still England's history we heard about most of all, & its impact on Ireland, Scotland & Wales after "1066 and all that" before schools got into the discovery of now Australia.  (Easy to tell that I am a history freak, isn't it? I liked it MUCH more than Maths )

I also have no idea how a person of part-Indian ancestry or other mixed heritage would have identified themselves in late Victorian London. It's just a fact of history, though, that such people did exist at that time, though not in large numbers.

I expect they were called Anglo-Indians, as a group, as a rule of thumb. They brought with them a whole new fashion of diet, in clothes, and a wealth of famed Victorian era stories, for inspired writers like Frances Hodgson Burnett, such as The Secret Garden. That was when India was considered the Jewel of the British Empire.  I assumed that when Digory came to London he must have come from the large house that he ended up owning in LWW. But come to think about it, he & his ill mother could have been returning straight from India, for all we know, to her mother's people, whilst Digory's father was committed to serve out his military post in India. And I thought that eventually having that big house was a natural outcome of Digory's father's Anglo-Indian connections. 

@waggawerewolf27 It's not explained what Mr Kirke is doing in India. More people in India worked in civil jobs, than in the army. If he is Indian, he may be required to complete a certain number of years in his role. He could be running a family business, and unable to return.

Digory's brief description of him does not sound like an Indian man. It entirely sounds like an English man who is working in India in some role that commits him for a few years. 

I'm not content with this casting conundrum, as there is no rational solution.

Posted by: @coracle 

Digory's brief description of him does not sound like an Indian man. It entirely sounds like an English man who is working in India in some role that commits him for a few years. 

Just to be clear, I'm not claiming that there is anything in the book to suggest that Digory's father is ethnically Indian. There isn't. Kirke is a British surname (probably Scottish), and the country house they inherit from Digory's father's uncle at the end — which of course is central to LWW — has obviously come down through a long-standing British family of considerable wealth. 

It's just that, as I'm pretty sure I've already said, those particular details could be handled differently without seriously altering the essentials of the story, if the film-makers have indeed decided to make Digory part-Indian. I certainly don't mind non-canonical changes to a classic story if the heart of it remains the same and the changes make sense and work well with the plot. But as you say about the "casting conundrum", the issue is that no explanation seems to fit so far (as to who the half-Indian boy is, and who "Boy 2" is). We could all end up being totally off the mark with all these different guesses!! We really can only wait to see what actually happens with it all. 

@coracle Digory's brief description of him does not sound like an Indian man. It entirely sounds like an English man who is working in India in some role that commits him for a few years.

No, it doesn't sound like an Indian man, I have to agree. It sounds like a man who may or may not have been born in Britain, himself, but was finding employment in India, whether in a military or civil role. But surely over 300 years, at least some of these men would have found wives in India, and brought them back home to England, when their tour of duty was finished?

I remember the bloke who installed our Hills Hoist, (clothesline) who was distinctly of Chinese heritage. We'd been to China, ourselves, so we asked him if he had ever been to China, as well. He said that he had, being curious about the place, & his own heritage, when his people had been in Australia since before Federation. He said that in China, they couldn't understand why he couldn't speak Chinese, when he had been an English speaker all his life. I'd assume it might be the same for Indians in a similar situation in Britain. And when it was suggested that Digory might be half-Indian, I thought that sort of thing could run in families, sending back sons or grandsons to work in India just as they had done so, themselves. Particularly if they were doing civil jobs, whilst they could still visit kindred overseas at times. 

If Digory is half Indian he would probably be more convincing if he acted like he was British as he is portrayed in the book. We don’t have very many people from India living here in America even though our country has many different races of people.  I guess it was more common during Victorian times to have people from India living in the U.K. I think that character is more important than race in the story. You want to believe that the people actually live in England during that time.  The film has to be realistic according to time and place. If the characters of Digory and Polly are British in the story it would be most accurate to portray them that way in the film.

I'll probably be the first person to say that historical accuracy (as it pertains to the real world) doesn't actually matter all that much in the Narnia books - we've discussed it at length in other topics, but to me at least, the specific details of the real-world setting really aren't that important to the plot of the books, other than the general "vibes" of the story.

Anyway, in terms of the ethnic composition of the UK population throughout history:

• Yes its fair to say that at most stages of UK history there would have been more non-white people that you might have thought, especially during the era of the British Empire for obvious reasons.
• However, at anytime prior to the 1950s, Britain is still going to be overwhelmingly white. There aren't actually any statistics for this, since ethnicity wasn't even included on the Census until 1991 (although that fact tells you everything you need to know about how historically homogenous the population has been - i.e. they didn't even bother asking the question), however the estimates I've seen for the non-white population circa 1900 place it around 0.01%. So not none, but not loads.

Overall then - if you want to go down the route of super historical accuracy, its probably fair game to have anyone you like... though you'd probably have to factor in the rareness and uniqueness of the situation into the plot.

Or.... (and this would be my personal preference)... you just treat the historical setting like the recent Wonka film and just have it be set "whenever". As long as you are capturing that charming "timeless" historical vibe (which Wonka does in spades) the specific minutiae of exactly when it is set aren't really that important to me. Wonka has numerous minority characters, and is set in a quasi 1900-1930 sort of nowhere space, but it never feels incongruous because that is simply the world that the movie presents to you as part of its storytelling premise.

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

No, it doesn't sound like an Indian man, I have to agree. It sounds like a man who may or may not have been born in Britain, himself, but was finding employment in India, whether in a military or civil role. But surely over 300 years, at least some of these men would have found wives in India, and brought them back home to England, when their tour of duty was finished?

True. It's just that "Boy 1" from the recent casting call is described very specifically as having an "Indian father, white mother" — which is why we're speculating that, if it is Digory, it means they've decided his father is not a white British man working in British India, as the book implies, but is ethnically Indian himself, rather than (say) Digory having Indian heritage two or three generations back on one side of his family. Or if Boy 1 is another character entirely, there's something significant about him having an Indian father. But then who is it??

Really, the only explanation that makes sense to me is that the original casting call, for the two equal girl and boy characters of unspecified ethnicity ("Frannie" and "Isadore" in the audition script), is for Polly and Digory, and then the added boy of Indian descent is for a possible re-casting of Digory. It suggests someone got the idea along the way — perhaps after they started holding auditions — that maybe Digory could be cast as half Indian, if they could expand the casting call to include boys of that specific heritage as well. Then once they hit on the one who best fits the overall role, that's the one they'll go with, whether it's one of the white actors or one of the Anglo-Indian ones.

At least, that's what I'm hoping it is, because that possibility completely solves the whole conundrum of "Why are they looking for THREE child actors, including an Anglo-Indian boy as well as another boy and girl, and which one of those two boys is Digory, and who on earth is the other one going to be, and does this mean they must have completely rewritten the plot of The Magician's Nephew to the point where it's beyond all recognition???"    

And if that's not the answer, then I really don't know what to expect.

Posted by: @hiraeth

 

 

1. As mentioned previously by others, having Digory be of mixed descent might intensify the clear loneliness and alienation he feels living in London, away from his previous life.  

 

2. This would mean that Digory has been navigating being part of different cultural worlds from an early age, which would lend further credence to his characterization as a boy comfortable with and eager to explore other worlds. Digory is deeply curious and open to intriguing possibilities about the world around him, and his mixed cultural background could tie directly into that.

 

3. A concept that often comes up for mixed people is "betweenness", or feeling caught between cultural worlds. And of course, betweenness as a human experience is conceptually baked into TMN through the setting of The Wood Between Worlds. [...] you might have a scene where Polly and Digory discuss their experience of being in The Wood Between Worlds, and that discussion might naturally flow into Digory's feelings about being mixed. Of course, this does raise a potential concern that cultural betweenness will be portrayed as place where it isn't healthy place to remain (as you can't stay in The Wood Between Worlds for long) while many mixed people enjoy and are comfortable in their betweenness and prefer this to 'choosing a world' so to speak. [...] Connecting this to Digory's experiences of being mixed and having to live and move between worlds on a regular basis might open the door for some interesting thematic discussions and further exploration of betweenness as a human experience. [...] might help to clarify and enrich their understanding of The Wood Between Worlds and betweenness in TMN.

I don't find your first two points especially compelling, but the third is very interesting. As for your first point, there's all sorts of things that could be done to increase Digory's loneliness. They could give him some sort of disability, make him socially awkward, or make him extraordinarily intelligent. But that doesn't mean they should do any of these things. Anyone, even without having such a clear "problem" we can point to, can experience loneliness. As for your second point, I would say that traveling to new worlds by magic rings is such a remarkable thing that surely anyone would be eager to explore them, or would at least be greatly excited by such happenings. 

But your third point is very interesting. There do seem to be parallels between traveling to different literal worlds and traveling amongst and existing within different cultural worlds. As you yourself saw, the nature of The Wood Between the Worlds, that a person ought not stay there, would have repercussions which many people would not like if applied to mixed-heritage people. We must be very careful with our metaphors, not to misapply them. I am afraid that if The Wood Between the Worlds is related to ethnicity, and if Digory's mixed ethnicity would need to be addressed by other characters, as it would on account of its rarity, if being mixed and traveling between cultural worlds is related to traveling between Charn and Earth and Narnia, I am afraid Digory's ethnicity would become a major part of the story. The whole thing might almost appear an allegory for being mixed. Nevertheless, there does seem to be potential for an interesting story in there somewhere. However, the problem is that The Magician's Nephew, the book, and the magician's nephew, the boy Digory Kirke, already exist, and they are not that story. In adapting a book to a movie, it is not our job to "enrich" the work, as you say, excepting of course whatever virtues are inherent to the medium of film. And when we attempt to "enrich" and "open the door for some interesting thematic discussions" about a topic which the author did not address in the book being adapted, it is entirely possible that we may say or imply things with which the original author would not have agreed. We might end up putting words in Lewis's mouth which he never would have spoken. However interesting a change may seem, I think rather than trying to have Lewis speak for us, we should let him speak for himself. 

Also, it seems my previous post spurred a lot of discourse. Could someone tell me how to quote more than one post at a time? When I try to quote a second post, the first quote disappears from the reply I am working on.

Greta's intention here might not be to make Digory’s ethnicity a narrative centerpiece, but rather to acknowledge that identity shapes experience, even quietly. A mixed-race child doesn’t need to be defined by that identity on screen for it to matter. It can be present in the margins, informing his sense of otherness, his sensitivity to change, his place between worlds, without needing to be over-explained or politicized. Digory’s feelings of loneliness and longing are already central to The Magician’s Nephew. Portraying him as someone who perhaps doesn’t entirely “fit in” could enrich those existing themes without compromising them. It’s not about “giving him a problem,” but allowing his inner world to feel grounded and real to a wider audience. Adding dimension to Digory’s identity in this way isn’t imposing a flaw, but offering texture.

Adaptation is not about perfect fidelity to every surface detail; it’s about being faithful to the heart of the work while recognizing the needs of the moment. I'd imagine Greta Gerwig isn't trying to make Lewis “say something” he never did, she's probably trying to let his stories continue to speak, which they can only do if we allow them to grow. Inclusion is not a distortion of Lewis’s vision. In many ways, it could be seen as a fulfillment of it?