Half-arsed job
As Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile is released to cinemas, David Jesudason addresses racism in her work. I cannot pretend that I read the whole article; I only got as far as the incongruity in Branagh's casting compared to setting.
Yet adapting Agatha Christie as mass 21st-Century entertainment is not without its complications: they are products of the time they were written in, the mid-20th Century, and arguably reflect some unsavoury attitudes not least when it comes to racism, xenophobia and colonialism. The question is therefore: how do you translate and update Agatha Christie – or not – for the modern age?
David Jesudason, Death on the Nile and addressing racism in Agatha Christie, BBC Culture
Death on the Nile was published in 1937, which I suppose counts asmid-20th Century, if you cast your net wide enough. Mostly, it has a definite pre-war sensibility. At least as written. And therein lies the rub.
Because Branagh's simply race-swapped a few of the characters, seemingly without consideration as to whether that makes sense in terms of the period setting. Certainly, the characters that Leslie Odom Jr's Dr Arbuthnot is based on, in his adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, were white
(ish). The question in my mind is how likely could they, or an amalgam, have been black?
Tokenism is easy to do, but it can ruin the feel of a period piece. That might not matter to people who just want to tick the mo'rep
boxes. But it matters to me, because it takes me out of the immersive experience, just as it would if Poirot consulted his Apple smartwatch. If it's deemed necessary
to de-white the cast, then what's wrong with actually changing the setting, in place or time, accordingly? Or is putting in the work to make it work expecting too much of Hollywoke?
Either don't do it, or do it properly. Anything else is just lazy and insulting, to the author and the audience. (pipe)