Over at Vox, Aja Romano tells us about the enormous backlash to the casting of non-white actors in a couple of recent high-profile productions:
Detractors of Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings series, which debuted this month, claim that casting Black and Asian actors undermines the show’s faithfulness to Tolkien’s world. Meanwhile, some ostensible fans of Disney’s animated Little Mermaid are rejecting the new live-action version for swapping out the titular mermaid’s famous blue eyes and red hair for the features of Black actress Halle Bailey.
....To anyone who’s paid any attention to geek culture over the past decade or so, these arguments probably feel endless and exhausting....All of this is the stuff of fantasy, so really, who cares whether they’re played by white or Black actors?
As it turns out, the answer is lots and lots of people.
Just for the record, I've watched the first few episodes of Rings of Power, and I can assure you that it has no shortage of white people. There's Galadriel. Elrond. Nori, the woman who leads everyone to safety when the orcs come calling. And her son. And her son's pal. The dwarf king. The dwarf prince. Isildur. The architect guy. Halbrand. Earien. The giant who arrives via meteorite. And a cast of thousands of others. The show is quite safe for white viewing, I'd say.
But that's not why I'm writing about it. The fact that the complaints are both ungrounded and signs of insecurity (or worse) are pretty obvious to everyone. What I really want to know, though, is whether the complaints are widespread. I know there are some complainers. A few thousand at least. But that's a drop in the ocean. Are there more?
That's hard for me to tell, but my sense is no. There's a tiny cadre of shitposters writing about this, an even tinier cadre of committed racists, and a super tiny cadre of people who think they're arguing for being faithful to Tolkien's legacy. But the numbers are so small that it's not clear why anyone is bothering to write about this.
Am I wrong? Are there really hundreds of thousands of these folks around? Where? And if not, why are we bothering to give voice to a minuscule sliver of dickheads who have done nothing except spend ten seconds to write a snarky tweet?
Anyone have any answers?
POSTSCRIPT: And what about Hispanic actors? In big productions like Rings of Power I always see a bunch of Black actors and a few Asian actors, but hardly any Hispanic actors. Why is that?
Maybe there's a shortage of Hispanics in California?
Lord of the Rings new series is filmed in New Zealand. There may be a shortage of Latinos there.
They are moving production from NZ to Ireland for season 2, which kinda angered the Kiwis. Not sure how many Latinos are in Ireland.
According to Wikipedia, Ireland is 92% white/Caucasian, 2% Asian, 1% African and 4% everyone else on earth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland
In 2006, there were only 8,649 people in all of Ireland that were from “rest of America” excluding US, which appears to be Latinos, Mexicans and Canadians.
So it’s entirely possible that there really aren’t many Latinos in Ireland, if their numbers are so low that the Irish census doesn’t bother breaking out their stats into their own category.
Um, the guy who plays the African-looking elf Arondir is actually Puerto Rican.
"why are we bothering to give voice to a minuscule sliver of dickheads who have done nothing except spend ten seconds to write a snarky tweet?"
Because Amazon is copying Disney as a way to generate publicity that may attract more of an audience. Disney pioneered this.
First, there's no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to movies, books, etc.; anything that attracts attention works.
Second, being "politically correct," especially about something as historically white as Tolkien's world, will generate eyeballs from exactly the audience that was previously unlikely to watch it.
Looks like trouble in paradise between Oranqe Qounty pundits Kevin Drum, KKKaitlyn Flanagan, & Conor Friedersdork, as Kevin is breaking from the herd & chastising the default kneejerk of the normative center-right position on arts & culture.
Mistaking volume of noise for size. Ten people saying the objectionable thing and thousands who feel it has to be denounced.
It reminds me of Lenny Bruce's joke about George Lincoln Rockwell's rallies being full of nothing but Jews shaking their fists at him.
Thanks for the reminder.
After having read about Russian troll farms provoking and promoting memes designed to incite division, I wonder how much of this is real human beings acting on their own--and how much is intentional trolling by bots, sometimes picked up and retweeted by a few disgruntled types without giving any of it much thought.
Journalists should be more careful of their own sourcing. Especially if attributing ideas noted on Twitter/Facebook, etc. to "lots of people."
Considering GLR's Jewish ancestry
"There's no such thing as a black mermaid". Can't make this shit up.
I've never seen one.
(｡•̀ᴗ-)
If mermaids aren't Black, then why are manatees so horny/sexually chargedup?
Well, someone could make it up. I mean, who said this stupid thing? One of Kevin's identified "shitposters" (which Kevin shrugs off), or hundreds of thousands of aggrieved white people (which would be a more serious concern)?
In reading Atrios today, what we have here is foreign troll farms feeding a gullible press to amplify their own biases. IOW, it is the commentariat (liberal and conservative), that redoubles a story for their own end (sometimes click bait, sometimes pure owning). We all need to be better to just ignore this kind of nonsense, or if anything, when someone posts about it, simply say to them, “are you out of your mind?” without debating.
Like +25.
It's because while small, they can do organize and do annoying stuff like harassing actors on social media, review-bombing it on IMDB and Amazon, and setting up bots that clog the comment sections of any youtube clips or trailers of the show with repetitive negative remarks. I noticed that when the trailer for Rings of Power dropped, the comment were full of basically the same garbled misquote of Tolkien being used to attack the show.
Don't watch Fox "News", so not sure how widespread the complaints are.
One actor who plays a "black" elf's name is Ismael Cruz Córdova, so he might actually consider himself a Hispanic elf.
He identifies himself as Afro-Latino:
From https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/entertainment/celebrities/2022/09/15/latinx-heritage-month-influential-latinos-entertainment-industry/8031641001/
Ismaël Cruz Córdova isn't here to appease. The Puerto Rican actor, who identifies as Afro-Latino, spoke out at the Emmys in September 2022 about the backlash he's received for playing a Black elf in Amazon's "Lord of the Rings" series "The Ring of Power."
"I took this role specifically. I’m a fan, and for a lot of reasons. One of them was that I knew this was going to happen,” Cruz Córdova told Deadline in an interview about the racist backlash he’s received. "I even got some rejections for the role but I still kept going for it because I knew there was going to be disruption. In my career, my mission has been, to occupy these spaces and put myself on the front lines. I have no problem doing that."
Nori, the woman who leads everyone to safety when the orcs come calling.
Nori's a hobbit (Harfoot), I think. I know the woman Kevin's referring to, but her name's not Nori.
Her name is Bronwyn.
Nor is she, at least in the typical racist's determination (I don't know how she identifies and it doesn't really matter), white. Nazanin Boniadi was born in Iran.
But I do find it interesting that, unless you know who she is, she apparently passes as the same white as the European/American cast members.
The actor who plays her son, Tyro Muhafidin, is Australian and of Indonesian heritage (I think), and yet KD lists him among the white folks, too.
I think they're all doing a great job, but the list of "look at all these white characters!" isn't actually all white characters.
I think they're all doing a great job, but the list of "look at all these white characters!" isn't actually all white characters.
Lol!
That was a comma used as a conjunction, I think.
Good catch!
The people complaining about Black elves and dwarves are losers of the highest order, agreed.
That said, the radical surgery the Amazon production has performed on Tolkien's Second Age timeline is quite striking.
The Jackson LOTR films took a few liberties, but for the most part were quite faithful depictions of the books.
Rings of Power is much more a TV series very loosely based on the books (more specifically, the appendix in book 3) than a faithful dramatization. This is especially the case with the story's timeline. Imagine a story depicting Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc and George Washington all living at the same era—and fighting the Cold War.
My tentative take so far is that, even with the departures from JRRT's legendarium, it's fairly entertaining fare. But it really is quite a departure...
You mean it’s fiction? 🙂🙂
Mythology.
Jasper, after seeing you question his ability to differentiate fact from fiction in the world of JRR Tolkien:
https://youtu.be/Yvd3aEsThbc
You mean it’s fiction? 🙂🙂
The Lord of the Rings is a work of fiction, yes, Surely you knew that?
This dramatization of a part of Lord of the Rings (an appendix from book 3) departs quite radically in plot structure and timeline from the original.
The mere fact that the original work is fiction hardly means it's impossible to adhere closely to the original. Sometimes Hollywood does this. Sometimes not. It's entirely possible that, in the parallel universe where Rings of Power closely followed JRRT's legendarium, the result would be boring as fuck. Which is what I think Amazon feared. So they went off the reservation. The result is a whacky, Hollywoodized butchery of JRRT, but it's arguably more entertaining this way, at least for non Tolkien geeds (AKA the majority of the audience).
This ain't Hollywood though. It's a media company that started as selling books.
Amazon Studios is indeed a Los Angeles-based production company you nattering nabob.
They don't have the rights to The Silmarillion, so they have to go with what can be gleaned from LOTR trilogy and maybe the Hobbit.
Like I said, it's relatively entertaining fare. But the reason for the radical departure from the timeline has nothing to do with lack of rights to the Silmarillion. Tolkien's own timeline for the 2nd Age can be read in Return of the King.
> Imagine a story depicting Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc and George Washington all living at the same era—and fighting the Cold War.
Please please please 🙏 🙏 🙏!
💯 would watch!
Definitely gotta second that!
Like Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires, but with Jesus and Mr. Clean.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was the best Abraham Lincoln biopic of 2012.
I was arguing with a friend about "shoehorning in diversity" in something like Lord of the Rings, and how people would not have evolved in a pre-industrial society with so much diversity. I pointed out that in LotR, evolution isn't a thing.
From LotR wiki:
*Elves: "The Firstborn, the Elder Children of Ilúvatar, were conceived by Eru Ilúvatar alone in the third theme of Ainulindalë."
* Dwarves: The Dwarves were made by Aulë, whom they themselves called Mahal, meaning “maker.”
* Humans: The race of Men were created by the supreme God, Ilúvatar.
So like, gods can create whatever they want, in whatever distributions they want. People need to stop trying to take real world mechanics (especially those that "support" anti-diversity goals) and projecting them into a world of Gods, Magic and Wizards. Pretty sure if Aulë wants there to be black dwarves, there will in fact be black dwarves. End of conversation. Fwiw, my friend conceded the entire conversation.
This is somehow the most pedantic and yet ignorant comment I’ve read on this topic. Thanks for lowering the bar even further on Kevin’s comment wall.
Thanks for confirming that my original assessment of your intelligence was not based upon your politics.
Flawless argument, consistent with Tolkien canon.
Thank you sincerely!
Just ignore the criticisms.
Yeah the timeline is a much bigger issue than the casting. That's awful.
Yeah the timeline is a much bigger issue than the casting. That's awful.
I don't think the casting is an issue at all. It's 2022. Not 1952. The market evolves.
The timeline isn't so much an "issue" as a production choice: bastardized butchery of an author's original work has a long, proud tradition in Hollywood, as the latter is concerned only with profits. And sometimes it works out fine.
It's not how I would've made Rings of Power, but I'm not worth $150 billion. And, as I wrote above, it's reasonably entertaining.
(If you think about the Second Age timeline for a moment, it's obvious why the producers felt it wouldn't work as a TV series without radical surgery: they'd have to completely eschew the "jumping around to different characters/storylines" approach because it would have been far too confusing for general audiences given the fact these various subplots would be separated by many centuries.)
Umm, LOTR + TS is canonical, is it not?
And vampires?-)
There is no real "text" to follow for this story so the creators have done their own version. People complaining that it's taking liberties are blowing smoke.
They already violated the appendices to LotR. That they dumped one of the few hard bits of info we have is not a great look.
>There is no real "text" to follow for this story so the creators have done their own version<
The timeline is crystal clear—with dates and everything!—from the relevant appendix in Return of the King. For which Amazon has rights.
They did it for narrative reasons, not for lack of rights.
Something we can agree upon.
"The giant who arrives via meteorite"
Is probably not a giant. Nori and the Harfoots are a type of hobbit. Meteorite dude is most likely normal human sized.
I figure he’s a wizard.
That was the consensus among our watch party as well. The obvious wizard would be Gandalf, with the story line explaining why he's so fond of hobbits.
My money's on Sharkey.
There shouldn't even be hobbits at all till the 3rd age.
Tolkien doesn't mention Hobbits as being known until third age, but, IIRC there's no mention they were created by one of the Valar at that point, so, stands to reason they were around in the second age, too...
As far as I can imagine, there's no way to know short of someone spending a bunch of money on a real poll, which seems highly unlikely and pretty pointless. But we know from many other polls, election results and the general news that the country is chock full of racists. So my guess is there are quite a few people about this stuff. Probably the relatively small number of trolls posting about it did a lot to generate a backlash that would not otherwise have existed, but that's the whole modus operandi of the rightwing hate machine. Take something silly that most people wouldn't know about and then leverage existing racism/sexism/homophobia/islamophobia etc to make it a controversy.
"Am I wrong? Are there really hundreds of thousands of these folks around? Where?"
While the loudest voices complaining about these are probably smaller than the noise they make, I would put the actual number of people who would have strong opinions along these lines if they were aware of it a lot closer to the number of people who are loyal Trump supporters.
"And what about Hispanic actors? In big productions like Rings of Power I always see a bunch of Black actors and a few Asian actors, but hardly any Hispanic actors. Why is that?"
Well Rings of Power does have one in the actor who plays Arondir, and representation in general for Hispanics has been improving. Pedro Pascal has been very popular lately with major roles or main roles in Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, and the upcoming The Last of US (which will also have Gabriel Luna). There's Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight, Diego Luna has the upcoming Andor series. Westworld had Rodrigo Santoro (not Hispanic since he is from Brazil, but still from Latin America).
Having said this, unfortunately, I think the reason Hispanics/Latin Americans tend to get lesser representation than Blacks or Asians in these big productions is because producers tend to set imaginary caps for non-white actors, where they feel they can't have too much diversity lest they risk even more outrage than what they already get from the loudest bigots, and Hispanics are often the ones left out. As for the why they get the short end of the stick, I think it is because Hispanics can often visually pass for White (depending on the actor), so people looking for diversity might not recognize that and criticize them for a lack of diversity, while the bigots won't count them as White, so they would still complain about "not real enough or faithful to the original ", thus attracting criticism form both sides.
"There's a tiny cadre of shitposters writing about this, an even tinier cadre of committed racists, and a super tiny cadre of people who think they're arguing for being faithful to Tolkien's legacy."
And a very large number of bots that are set up to spread & amplify every right-wing grievance.
I'm sure Russia has nothing to do with that.
Da.
As a Latino I don't care at all about representation where it doesn't fit. In say the walking dead it fits. In a piece like the Tudors t doesn't. I'm more concerned about the writers not getting it but most of the Tolkien people I respect are largely positive. I think Jackson did it better, but he was also not perfect.
As for race, I don't think there were dark slinned eldar (avari maybe!) But I ALSO do not care.
My question is: why are we not talking about the great genocide of Westeros? Since there were people of color throughout Westeros in House of the Dragon and two hundred years later in Game of Thrones there are not, where did they go? Was there a genocide, a forced resettlement, what?
Did House Velaryon even appear in Game of Thrones? I can't recall that it did.
It did not, because they were all killed except two, one of whom is killed in like the first episode.
74 million people voted for Trump in 2020 - that's a lot of people voting for a total incompetent. Some vote Republican for economic reasons, but millions of lower-income people vote for the party and politicians who are the supporters of white Christian dominance. No, they are not motivated by resentment of "coastal elites" - most of the economic elites are Republican and they don't live in small-town America. Anyone who thinks that there are only a few racists in America is delusional. Republican politicians have been encouraging and exploiting them since Goldwater, but the bigotry has always been there.
As the entertainment industry and advertisers have increased the visibility of non-whites resentment among white Christian bigots has increased - this is not likely a matter of fidelity to Tolkien. It is still not acceptable to be openly racist in most parts of the country, so some other reason for a bigoted reaction is given.
Kevin is right that Hispanics, at least those who are recognizably not pure white and don't just have a Spanish surname, are still rare in entertainment. There has been very little discussion of why this is the case that I have seen.
I grew up in a small town and there were always economic elites and they were always Republicans. The family that owned the biggest business, the family is hat were judges and lawyers, etc. You knew who to defer to to make sure your Dad kept his job at the plant or mill.
84 million voted for Biden. Plenty a racist among them that were white. Try harder.
As a former member of the Tolkien Society - I belonged to a small group
of fellow 13 year old's who'd read and reread the sacred texts I will say I am not even a bit upset about the casting of POCs in a Tolkien based tv fantasy. That's a poll of 1 but perhaps I'll write a note in Tengwar to the other members of my "smial" - those whose whereabouts I still know 55 years later - and get their opinions. It might be interesting to see what would happen if a new movie version of that other teen fantasy "Atlas Shrugged" were to cast a trans Latino as John Galt.
This comment from the quoted story (included by Kevin in his blog post) is foolish. And, in my opinion, this sort of condescension certainly contributes to the problem:
“All of this is the stuff of fantasy, so really, who cares whether they’re played by white or Black actors?”
Honestly, I find it hard to wrap my head around this sort of assertion. The fact of the matter is that many of the strongest emotional ties that a lot people form in their lives is with fictional, mythical, fantastical and/or religious material. If we approach this situation by willfully ignoring that fact then we’re just not really addressing the reality of the situation.
And, quite frankly, I tried watching the Rings of Power series, and I can easily spot multiple reasons for people to be upset. For one thing, I found the level of poor writing on display to be insulting (to me, to fans, to Tolkien, etc). Secondly, if you take material that millions of people have invested significant portions of their lives into, and you mangle the timelines, characters, and overall universe almost beyond recognition, you should be prepared for a major backlash. Peter Jackson seems to have understood that. The fact that the creators of this show did not understand that situation indicates to me that they are not right for the job.
Those are the major reasons for an entirely well-deserved backlash. I personally suspect that the racially diverse casting is way down on the list of complaints for many people; nevertheless, that issue also could have been handled better.
And here I’m speaking more generally. While greater racial diversity in casting is a noble goal, we seem to have settled into a pattern of what could perhaps be called diversity for diversity’s sake. In other words, the racial casting is often indiscriminate, even if that approach creates confusion for the audience, plot holes, or other related problems.
Here’s an example: I went to a local production of a famous play least year. A major plot point is supposed to be that the girl in the play turns out to be the daughter of two leading characters. But in that local production, that plot point was obscured beyond recognition by indiscriminate and racially diverse casting. The little girl was played by an Asian and her two “parents” were both of different and non-Asian races. Hence, the big “reveal” was biologically impossible. The Asian child right in front of us on the stage could not be the daughter of those two other characters, no matter how the dialog tried to insist otherwise.
A similar dynamic plays out sometimes in Rings of Power. Why do some characters have parents of different races? How did an insular nomadic tribe, one that apparently makes a point of keeping away from outsiders, achieve a dizzying level of racial diversity and linguistic accents? Are we not allowed to notice or care?
These are, in my opinion, completely legitimate issues. It’s entirely possible to achieve a greater racial diversification in casting without simply tossing the believability or consistency of storylines to the wind. And attacking anyone who raises these perfectly understandable questions, and hurling the worst sort of slurs at them, does not make the Left appear particularly tolerant.
Imagine that play attempted in the Globe with Will at the helm?
Back in Shakespeare's time, all the thespians were trans.
Imagine trying to stage a work of the Bard with period detail, with men playing women. The surly & TERF crew would be livid.
... but would be especially funny if antiwoke comedian John Cleese got on his high horse over theatrical drag, given his Python years.
It's a bit unclear to me what direction these comments are trying to go with the Shakespeare/Globe theater comparisons; but,
to me it seems like at least a somewhat similar problem. In Elizabethan England, Shakespeare's theater company was forced to dress men up as women due to repressively strict social customs that would not accept a woman on the stage.
You'd think maybe we would have evolved a bit over the last 400 years, but have we? Various content producers, such as the creators of the Rings of Power tv/streaming show, apparently face oppressively strict social customs that force them to insert a level of racial (and linguistic) diversity that does not actually make sense in the plots/stories/worlds that they're trying to present.
Each case (Shakespeare's time and ours) shows an entertainment industry forced to accept illogical practices in order to placate some of the most extreme demands from their society.
The point is, the art produced in an era should reflect how that era looked. Or, are you too yung to remember the debate over the absence of Black people on Seinfeld & Friends?
So when Shakespeare cast men in all the roles, even women, it wasn't as bad?
No, it was even more Woke.
The left????? Nothing left about. Dialectical fix that up.
You could also, like, just not watch the show if you disagree that much with the casting (or the dialogue or the settings or whatever). Just read the books and live in the “purer” adaptation that your mind creates, rather than relying on Hollywood to “bring it to life” exactly how you prefer and not, say, like someone else also paying to watch the show might prefer.
Worst person you know makes a good point.
It’s sort of weird to just have random black people knocking about next to pale gingers in isolated societies. Where’s the hobbit Strom Thurmond keeping these different races from hooking up in the last 1000 years? It’s a little silly to portray a Western Euro-inspired medieval society as a demographic mirror image of 21st century America but I digress
But that’s the least of their sins. The real reason the show is horrible is because they couldn’t resist butchering the existing stories into a hodgepodge of fan fiction, then adding a dollop of Marvel quippy dialogue on top (a la “now that was awkward 🤓”). Then doing it 5 times in a row and giving each subplot 10 mins of screentime per episode
And generally the black actors (aside from the dwarf lady) are doing a fairly good job. The white actors are just shitting the bed though. Where’d they find these people?
I wouldn’t mind diverse casting at all if they just picked societies which are non-white and casted them that way. There’s a whole Southern region which could’ve been Asian or African or Middle Eastern but they also inserted a bunch of whites in that group. Why?
Couldn’t get through ep4. Might see it if my girlfriend forces me to push through once she’s back from traveling. Otherwise I’m done with it
In the Lord of the Rings, there are the Haradim, who I think are supposed to be either Arabs or Blacks or perhaps Indians or Turks with the Elephant warriors and scimitars and the like. Since Tolkien generally considered Middle Earth to be Western Eurasia, Asians would be on the other side of the big desert way past Mordor.
It's a little tedious when progressive folks insist on putting POCs in places where they might not really belong and in ways that are seemingly random, apparently to represent. But there are worse things to worry about.
So, just keep reinforcing Tolkein's priors then?
There is nothing racist about that.
If you want a fantasy world where every other character represents a different race, and all societies are racially and linguistically mixed, and none of the characters ever notice or comment upon the race or shifting dialect/accent of anyone else, then by all means go ahead and design that fantasy world. Make as many TV shows as you want about it. I seriously doubt it would elicit more than a few chuckles in response.
But Tolkien was a lot more than his 'priors.' He was a brilliant linguist, professor, translator, scholar, mythologist, and author. He put a level of attention and detail into his world-building that we'll probably never see again. And there are plenty of ways to incorporate societies of different races into that world. But that's not what Rings of Power does;
instead, RoP makes an obvious and clearly incompatible attempt to slap 21st century anti-racist concepts of forced diversity into Tolkien's universe, and the results are comically stupid.
If your mind is fine accepting the existence of elves, dwarves, hobbits, humans with incredibly long lifespans, talking dragons, orcs, goblins, trolls, giant elephants, wizards, ghosts, shapeshifters, rock giants, giant eagles, giant spiders, and on and on, but feels this reality shattered by the appearance of non-white or mixed-race characters, you are simply a POS racist looking for excuses to justify your racism.
It's a little tedious when progressive folks insist on putting POCs in places where they might not really belong...
I doubt it's "progressive folks" doing this. It's the market. Amazon is only every trying to do one thing: add digits to the inheritance of Jeff Bezos's heirs.
What would've worked in 1962 simply doesn't in 2022. It offends the sensibilities of wider society to portray a large cast of only white actors in such a production.
I think you're dodging the real complaint, and that's a very common response: Amazon is essentially doing the same thing.
You quote this statement: "It's a little tedious when progressive folks insist on putting POCs in places where they might not really belong..." But, after quoting this sentence, you misrepresent it.
The point is not that POC don't belong on the show, the problem is that they are inserted into Rings of Power in ways that do not make any logical sense. Children, for example, are different races than their own parents (with no explanation provided); isolated tribes are of mixed race (even though they are shown as shunning all outsiders); and, apparently, none of the characters on the show are allowed to notice or comment on any of these seemingly obvious oddities.
You state: "What would've worked in 1962 simply doesn't in 2022. It offends the sensibilities of wider society to portray a large cast of only white actors in such a production."
But again, you're statement is inaccurate in a number of ways. Very few people, if anyone, is arguing against racial diversity in casting. What people are arguing against, rather, is a 21st century anti-racist notion of checking off racial boxes in ways that offend our logical sensibilities by causing plot holes and contradictions.
Quentin Tarantino stated recently in an interview that all anyone is concerned about now (when making movies) is ideology. He claims the people he works with are now more concerned with being on the right side of (Leftist) ideology than with producing a good product. That's obviously the trap that Amazon fell into, and that's what people are complaining about.
Also, it is not a majority of people (in our year of 2022) who are arguing for this sort of diversity for diversity's sake. It's a very loud minority on a very few platforms such as twitter. We on the Left reveal how much of our own bubble we may be in when we project these extreme ideas of diversity at all cost (even at the expense of narrative consistency) onto a majority of the population. The majority is looking at this Amazon show and laughing at us, and they have good reason to.
I think the aesthetic choices—including the races of the actors—have mostly been fine. I'm on the fence about the (rather huge) plot divergences from the canon, but it's early yet.
As for purported lack of logic: Your "points" about race and Rings of Power seem a little, uh, off. Who knows what kind of DNA was swirling around in a world that also featured dragons, goblins, crystal balls, rings that make you invisible, and hominins that apparently live forever? Not sure "logic" is the key consideration here.
And there's certainly nothing "illogical" about wanting to avoid commercially harmful offenses to audiences.
I'm glad I'm not someone who's triggered by Black elves, truly. But if I were, I think I'd probably just refrain from watching. You can always re-read the appendices!
You could simply not watch the show if it’s so unbearable, and just rely on your imagination to make the books come to life. No individual reader of the books is the center of the universe that Hollywood must cater to, especially if that reader isn’t fronting the money to make the film. To expect Hollywood to always write shows around your expectations, preferences and tastes is the epitome of narcissism.
Yeah agreed, I’m not going to watch it anymore. But don’t act like a diehard fan of [insert work of fiction] isn’t entitled to gripe a little when the sequels (spin-offs I guess) disappoint
The “don’t watch it then” response is a little silly lol
I see no problem putting a dollop of reality into a work of fiction.
If you didn’t object to Hamilton — involving, you know, actual people who actually existed — how can you object to a fantasy, where the characters can be, essentially, anything? If you got a problem with black elves (creatures who don’t exist in any flavor), then don’t watch the show. You could use the time saved to see a therapist.
That's why I never saw Hamilton. I couldn't get over the historical inaccuracy.
Which inaccuracies? The fact that Founders were white? The fact they didn’t rap or dance? That’s like hating “1776” because Ben Franklin didn’t really sing and dance on a Philly staircase. (Maybe he did in Paris) And I doubt Tommy Jefferson’s wife was as much of a babe as Blythe Danner ( hubba hubba).
Expecting to learn accurate details of history by watching Hamilton is like a middle school kid doing a book report on Puerto Rico’s hurricanes by watching “In the Heights.” (Darn that Lin-Manuel Miranda!)
Thankfully, no period piece prior to Hamilton ever took “artistic liberties” with the historical record.
OT: Anybody know where Titanic survivor Rose Dawson is buried? I’ve always wanted to pay my respects to her strength and bravery.
Shut the front door.
We orcs have long taken offense at the casting of non-orcs in the original series. All of the actors mischaracterized us, in particular by failing to demonstrate our renowned sense of humor and our love of family life. Only the real deal should be cast in these situations to avoid such things.
Elfs excepted. Anyone can do them.
Of all of this sort of racist/shitposting, the one I found most exceptional were the complaints on Neil Gaimon's own twitter feed about dishonoring the author's vision of The Sandman by casting a black woman as Death. They do know that Neil created the darn thing and can cast it however he pleases? Running out of facepalm emojis. Suffice to say, Neil was having none of it.
I rather liked the actress they chose for Death. She was even better than the prior versions.
It is entirely pathetic. Besides the pedantry and the racism exhibited, it's a failure of imagination.
To the naysayers in the words of an old sergeant: lighten up Francis.
Hold on, let me dial up Mickey Rourke, he’s gonna wanna use that line
*Mickey Rooney
Shit I messed it up
Really pretty shocking that Antiwokeness Warrior Kevin Drum did not come down on the side of the NO BLACK ELVES complainants, even if it would have just been under the guise that unnecessarily enwokening a fictional space just invites new energy at the polls among the revanchists, much as Virginia public schools not teaching critical race theory did.
It's obvious, isn't it? This and the stupid mermaid are cheap easy ways to be performatively anti-racist. So you have a really dumb backlash and an anti-backlash that drags on forever because it makes everybody feel good about themselves. I can't wait for the next stupid thing to come along.
The anti-anti-racist heterodox thought community has checked in.
I am a huge Tolkien nerd, but this is so stupid. The series is not very faithful to the Tolkien legendarium to begin with. None of the named characters are supposed to be kung fu masters as they are portrayed in the show. Galadriel's persona is all wrong -- she is not supposed to be either a kick-ass warrior nor an impulsive hothead, but a combination of endless ambition and deep wisdom.
So f'-ing what? The show is fun. I see it as an alternative Tolkien universe loosely tied to the canonical characters, and I'm enjoying it.
As for the racial stuff, there is a boiling cauldron of racial animosity involving elves, men, and dwarves; it just happens that skin color and hair texture doesn't factor into those prejudices. They are assumed to be sort of irrelevant, as if these differences appear spontaneously among all of the 'races' represented in the show. It's an intriguing misdirection, and only someone of truly narrow mind could be upset by it.
You're saying Galadriel's personality is off, a thousand years before her persona was written about?
That elves, who fight by dancing, aren't supposed to look like kung-fu?
C'mon, There's very little to be faithful to in the era they've set stories.
The elves don't fight by dancing and Galadriel was EXTENSIVELY written about. Granted there is some space between "ambitious sporty princess" of year 1 and "wise mature queen" 6500 years later. But hotheaded she was not. She WAS perceptive. She'd spent centuries being mentored by fucking Melian. She was not fooled at ALL by Annatar in 1600. She knew Feanor was a fuckhead back in Valinor.
Witchers are the ones who pirouette.
Could’ve gone without the MAGA Numenorean
Which of the talking heads of the Right Wing didn't complain about it?
Like, Kevin...
None of them, Katie.
They all complained.
Fwiw, the hobbits in the proto form were indeed dark skinned, representing the pre indo European eurasians. That was faithful to Tolkien who wrote the hobbits in that way. The reset were box ticking. The Elves are albino looking IE's.
" The giant who arrives via meteorite."
Giant? You mean the normal size guy in the land of proto-Hobbits?
That's Gandalf.