![]() ![]() Wickfield played by Benedict Wong, and – by some miracle of birth – his daughter, Agnes, played by another black actress, Rosalind Eleazar.Īs if this wasn’t sufficient, most of David’s schoolmates seem to be of African or Asian descent. Steerforth played by Nigerian actress, Nikki Amuka-Bird, the bibulous Mr. This is strange enough, but it’s even weirder to find the snobbish Mrs. Perhaps in order to save Dickens from himself Iannucci has given us a thoroughly colourblind David Copperfield, in which the lead role is played by Anglo-Indian, Dev Patel. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857 he thought it would be justified to “exterminate the Race” that perpetrated such an insult on English might and dignity. No-one disputes that the character of Fagin in Oliver Twist, is a notorious anti-Semitic caricature, but Dickens was just as dismissive of blacks, whom he referred to as “primitives” or “savages”, and highly suspicious of the Chinese. ![]() ![]() One wonders what Charles Dickens would have made of Armando Iannucci’s adaptation of The Personal History of David Copperfield? Despite his reputation as a champion of the poor and downtrodden, the famous novelist shared all the popular racial prejudices of his time. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |