I pointed out somewhere else on the Internet that I think it would be interesting if Felicity Smoak got reimagined as a brown desi woman, let alone someone who works in the garment industry. I feel this is a character type that’s rarely if ever seen in media outside of those from South Asia, a number of Bollywood productions might already have fictionalised portrayals of seamstresses. But I don’t think and can’t think of a single American production where there’s a South Asian seamstress, which kind of plays into stereotypes about South Asians in the west.
It wouldn’t be any better if this was an East Asian production, well we East Asians have our stereotypes about South Asians. One notable Philippine stereotype about Indians is that they’re smelly, that’s something I know from personal experience whenever Indians are brought up at all. It seems in western productions, from what I can gleam and recall, South Asians were almost always portrayed as having accents. They were almost always perpetual foreigners or outsiders, regardless of how westernised second generation Desi westerners are.
The one South Asian character in western media that I can think of who doesn’t speak in a Desi accent is Priya from Turning Red, it’s kind of unfortunate how and why it’s hard coming up with a counterexample when there are so few to begin with. It wouldn’t be any better if Felicity was reimainged as an Anglo-Desi seamstress, but it does make you wonder why it takes Western media so long to come up with a Desi character who works in the garment industry herself. While racebending characters is kind of in vogue these days, not all can be racebent without backlash or knowing something.
I feel Felicity Smoak is one of those DC characters that are rarely racebent, perhaps because a lot of white fangirls project a lot onto her the way they wouldn’t with others. Jason Todd gets reimagined as being of Latin American descent, Tim Drake is portrayed as East Asian American and Stephanie Brown has been reimagined as black. But there’s not a lot of racebent portrayals of Felicity Smoak in fandom, in part because I feel a lot of white fangirls identify with her in a way they wouldn’t with other DC characters. It kind of answers the question really.
But I think it would be interesting if somebody at DC were to have the audacity to racebend her in a DC production, say Felicity gets played by an Indian Bollywood actress that it would be the first time she ever got racebent. It would also be the first time DC gets a prominent Desi character at all because Felicity’s already well-known by then, other characters like Jinx and Celsius are too obscure to gain this much traction and notoriety that she has. An Indian Felicity might even appear in a DCEU Supergirl feature, which would be interesting if she did.
A racebent Felicity Smoak would also be rather controversial but also because this is a character a number of white women live vicariously through that this would be like replacing her with somebody else, even if this is nominally the same character but portrayed and depicted differently. Far more than what Stephanie Brown gets, which is saying. Supposing if Felicity Smoak ever gets portrayed by somebody like Kareena Kapoor that it’s going to be controversial, but also something about the way people expect Felicity Smoak to be. Well not in a way they expect.
But it would be interesting if they have the audacity to racebend Felicity at all.