Casting mis-steps

[Miles]

> Carol earlier:
>>> I think that Frank Dillane is miscast as the teenage Tom
>>> Riddle--not nearly handsome enough.

Lady of Imladris wrote:
> I think it was kind of a mistake for JK To stick with just English
> actors I mean there are tons of good American actors for instance-
> Johnny Depp. I'm sure Johnny Deep would have loved to been in a Harry
> Potter Role.

Miles:
First, I very much doubt that Depp would have wanted to play in movies that 
so obviously have not artistic motivation. But that aside, I want to bring 
back together two discussions, the one about attractiveness of people and 
cultural influence on that, and the other on bad casts concerning the 
Harry-Potter-movies.

Beauty is not so only a cultural, but also a biological phenomenon. It's 
basically an important impulse for recreation (that's the function "nature" 
had to invent beauty) - people perceived as attractive have better chances 
of reproduction. But since humans are not only driven by nature and (sexual) 
instincts, but by cultural environment and intellect as well, we can 
perceive "beauty" on people we are not really interested in (sexually, I 
mean), and can love people whom we would not think of being physically 
attractive in the eye of other people.

But back to beauty: Physical attractiveness is very much a question of 
statistics. That means, in a given country people will think of a person as 
handsome or beautiful, if the person matches the statistical average. With 
computer programmes it's possible to index faces (and bodies) by many 
different dimensions, like distance of the eyes, position of the nose, 
height of the forehead, plus hair and skin colour and so on. The average 
member of a given society will perceive a face as beautiful when it matches 
the statistical average of the people.

In reality this is (fortunately) very much complicated due to 
globalization - migration brings in "foreign looking" people, the movies 
show us people from all over the world, not to speak of multi-ethnical 
nations like the USA - but still there are patterns of beauty that are 
different in the countries all over the world, and that finally brings me 
back to Harry Potter, "miscasts" and British actors.

Harry Potter is English, the students in Hogwarts are British and Irish, 
Rowling herself is English, thus what she describes as "handsome" in her 
books is "handsome" for Britain.
Looking at people from the British Isles, compared to, say, people from 
France, you'll see differences, not in the individual, but "statistically". 
The average Briton (of European heritage) will have brighter skin, more 
commonly reddish or blonde hair, he will have more freckles and so on as the 
average French (of European heritage). So, what people will think of being a 
handsome young man will be different in the UK and in France, and again 
different in Russia, the USA or Germany.

For example, when I first saw Robert Pattinson as Cedric in the GoF film, I 
thought he was not the right man for the job, because I didn't (and don't) 
think of him as being outstanding handsome. But maybe he is in the eyes of 
Harry's and his own people? I felt the same way about Christian Coulson as 
Tom Riddle in CS - he was not only way too old (I HATE it when they cast 
twens for teenage characters), I thought he is, well, not really handsome. 
But maybe he is by British standards?

To have a British cast does not only make Hogwarts *sound* British, it makes 
Hogwarts' students *look* British. And I think this is a right decision. If 
it were for Warner to decide, we would have an O.C. California cast with 
actors fitting US (and maybe international) taste. Maybe many of us would 
consider Tom Riddle and Cedric Diggory more handsome - but we would lose 
much more in terms of atmosphere in the films.

Miles, who thinks Jamie Campbell Bower is is a very good choice for Gellert 
Grindelwald (despite his age), not knowing which country Gellert is supposed 
to come from