Pinkening Jaskier: Disrespecting source material

I enjoyed the first season of The Witcher; Henry Cavil was perfect casting, the action was awesome, and it was sticking reasonably well to the source material. Sure, there was some of the Netflix nonsense, but it was a decent adaption, a good starting block for a larger series like Castlevania.

However, there were warning signs from the beginning, such as the casting of Triss Merigold, a woman who is supposed to look like an extremely beautiful redhead, is instead a brown-haired woman who looks like someone’s mother. Or how Geralt and Jaskier’s friendship, which in the books is strong and mutual, such as Jaskier (Daniloin in the books) threatens to summon an army to kill elves if the elves even hurt Geralt, or when Geralt kills people who were hurting Daniloin, none of which is shown. We can also talk about how Geralt was monosyllabic and revealed the destruction of Cintra way too early in the show. Or the eels at the sorceress academy, or how lacking in emotion Gerlt’s reunion with Ciri was compared to the books. One can go on and on.

Then recently, we got the surprise announcement that in season 3 of The Witcher, Jaskier, the womanizing bard who, despite his foppish ways and general flamboyancy, but very straight, was now Bi.

And not bisexual for any random person, but the genocidal tyrant King Radvoid for some reason. For those who fail to see why this is a problem, we first need to talk about why it is backward for The Witcher tv show writers to depict gay/bisexual men as flamboyant and foppish. Considering he is the only man in The Witcher who behaves like this and is outed as such, it leans into the stereotype that non-heterosexual men are always as flamboyant as Jaskier. By contrast, the books and the games are more progressive by allowing Dandiloin (game and book name for Jaskier) to be in touch with his emotions and be flamboyant while still being straight. It is also important to note that Jaskier being in love with the genocidal Radvoid is completely at odds with Jaskier’s character. He should be against hurting people without reason or seeing people suffer. There is no reason for Jaskier to fall for a tyrant suddenly.

The Witcher books and games are rather progressive for Polish fiction, with strong female characters, human depictions of homosexuals with flaws and ambitions, and acknowledging that people can come in many forms (literally and figuratively). Dandelion is one such example of the diversity of human expression.

In The Witcher tv show, we don’t get that. We get the occasional black person in the background; sometimes, a character's race or sex is swapped. But with Jaskier, there is the deliberate desire by the writers to twist a character into ticking diversity boxes.

The problem with Hollywood is that to appear good for shareholders and Twitter followers to show how progressive they are, they are incentivized to place people into roles that they might not be fit for (Anna Shaffer for Triss Merigold, for example) or twist and break character’s personality into meeting those. They hire writers who would fulfill the relevant requirements for Netflix regardless of their skill or quality. It is not the quality of the writing but the ability to appeal to the demands of the approval charts.

It is well known Hollywood doesn’t like to take risks; we can see it in the glut of remakes/adaptations/ sequels. This aversion to risk-taking is not always unfounded. Sometimes when new ideas get tried and fail to take off, this discourages producers and studios from greenlighting new projects. This happened rather recently with Disney and Strange World/Lightyear. People tend to watch stuff that they recognize as opposed to something new and scary, despite popular claims to the contrary.

Unfortunately, this results in companies like Netflix shoehorning in shallow representation into established works. This isn’t anything sinister; it's just to look good on social media and appease the shareholders. It is why previously white characters become race-swapped, and straight characters like Jaskier get a genocidal boyfriend. Companies like Disney try the gay-baiting stuff, from the Beauty and the Beast remake to Jungle Cruse to Lightyear to Strange World. All have disposable, shallow characters that tick the boxes designed for Western audiences before cutting said characters from the middle eastern and Chinese releases.

Companies like Netflix and Disney do not care about good writing or good characters; they will want to sell a product if that means disrespecting the source material to fulfill diversity quotas. Sometimes something good will come, like Netflix’s Arcane, but that is the expectation of the rule. It is easier to create something shallow that gives the illusion of progressiveness while not doing anything meaningful. Sometimes like by turning a flamboyant heterosexual, comfortable with his emotions, into another stereotypical bisexual man.

Diversity quotas in Hollywood tend to flatten characters into broad, bland archetypes. They are designed to provide the shallow appearance of diversity but ultimately lead to flat, uninteresting characters and stories. Anything unique is stamped out ironically in the name of pseudo-diversity. Men are either Geralt: uber-masculine and straight, or Jaskier: flamboyant and not straight, identical to the hundreds of gay and bisexual men in Hollywood movies.

What is the point of this article? I wanted to talk about how shallow progressivism and corporate pandering to demographics don’t help humanize the minorities that they claim to champion. They show how little they care in both the IPs they use to meet the mandated boxes by disregarding established characters. Jaskier becoming pink is the symptom of a much larger problem within Hollywood, that good stories and writing is secondary to appealing to as many vocal idiots as possible. Pinkening Jaskier is the latest in a long line of Hollywood failures to care past the short-term profits and fads it hopes to exploit.

Please consider reading Black Masquerade: and Where Dreams are Lost both of which are 0.99$ each for Pride month at selected retailers.

Acknowledgments

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