""The history of fantasy is racialized"" Topic

Introduction of characters of color into Tolkien's fantasy world has some fans complaining but as others point out, it's not less authentic to cast Black actors

The Guardian: link

I'm just waiting for Incelfs and transorcs to appear. Because we can't have alien species who don't suffer from homo sapiens type gender dysphoria or inability to form meaningful relationships.

" The Lord of the Rings is a decidedly non-threatening tale: fundamentally a comforting story of middle-class heroes of multiple races who triumph over enormous odds to save their way of life by working together against a common foe."

??? Did Comrade Sam even read any of the books? Middle class? There are kings, the kings' families and then everyone else. 😉

As far as people getting angry, if you don't like the series, don't watch it. Pretty simple.

As far as people getting angry, if you don't like the series, don't watch it. Pretty simple.

Cardinal, if it were only that simple….. We live in a world now that if I can't have it my way, I will work to destroy yours…

"Evil cannot create anything new, it can only spoil and destroy what good forces have invented and created,"

Dave

2nd PzGeneral

PzG,
I don't disagree with you. You can also buy local and Made in USA whenever possible. If people really feel that strongly about it they can forego their PRIME subscription. It seems a bit extreme but that option is certainly available … for now. I wouldn't put PRIME becoming the new PBS to complement the US version of Pravda aka The Washington Post outside of the realm of possibilities.

If I dedicate the time to watch a movie or TV series I just want to be entertained and escape the challenges of the daily grind. I don't want to be the target of the incessant chirping, preaching and virtue signalling of which at least I get more than enough every day from all sides.

Doesn't matter what colour the actors are, I paint all my elves blue.

Bill, we all understand that the Guardian approves of all-black, all-Hispanic and all-Asian casting, but disapproves of all-white casting even when this would be appropriate to the historical period or the literature being adapted. It isn't necessary to keep sending out notifications every time it reaffirms its position.

Meh. Shan't be watching, and don't read The Guardian. File this under, "I don't care."

I'll read the books. They'll always be better.

noggin2nog.
I will paint my orcs black brown, and not green as the GW way.

+1 Robert
Doing what you deem as the right thing to do should be its own reward.

My thoughts:
(a) don't fix what isn't broken – meaning, Tolkien created a rich world and if you look to the south of Gondor, there are 'peoples of color' that could have been explored if Hollyweird wasn't too damn lazy to explore that part. Nothing, and I mean nothing can beat Sir Peter Jackson's adaptations, so they shouldn't even try. If they wanted to have a new take on Tolkien's world they should have looked south of Gondor, not rehash something that is perfect

(b) I gave up on anything coming out of Hollyweird a long time ago

(c) The Guardian is not worth lining my birds' cages with – it's propaganda, pure and simple

(d) This will flop hard, like the all-female "Ghostbusters" and whatever preachy tripe that Hollyweird decides to throw up and out

If they want 'diversity' – why don't they pick up a book on African mythology and try their hand at that? According to the powers that be, "Black Panther" made more money than was humanly possible, so there must be an audience for 'diversity'-themed movies, etc.

While Hollyweird keeps howling to the heavens like a deranged wolf high on angel dust that whites are all 'racist', it's crap like this new LOTR that will eventually turn many whites racist because they are getting sick and tired of being blamed for every sin since the Fall and I, for one, am getting sick and tired of 'the message' destroying everything that was great

"Did Comrade Sam even read any of the books? Middle class? There are kings, the kings' families and then everyone else."

Frodo and Bilbo are the very epitome of middle class Britain in the early/mid twentieth century. They certainly aren't Kings. 'middle class' means something different over here.

As ever with these things, have half the commentators even bothered to actually reads to article?

I'm more disappointed that the series isn't the Silmarillion. I couldn't give a monkeys about the skin colour of dwarves.

link

This gives an alternate view.

J.R.R Tolkien envisioned a world that had certain logics. In other words, characters, cultures, and events followed in a particular way and order that created the world beloved by so many. Amazon has broken this logic in various ways, and I encourage you to watch Nerdtrotic's video on the subject as he lists various ways Amazon has done this, as well as words from Tolkien himself on the matter of altering his creation.

The logic of any given world is understood best by its fans. When a world as detailed in lore as Tolkien's is has its logics treated as if they don't matter, fans are going to let you know and they will not be happy about it.

Doc adds: I agree that this will flop hard, and deserves to.

This guy said it best of all the videos posted to YouTube regarding the new woke version of Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth that I have watched about why the fans of Tolkien's works are so upset by the Amazon production. YouTube link

Is that the same, by Nerdtrotic?

Living Anachronism

Jackson already had a "culturally diverse" Laketown from what I remember – which would not have been at all a "realistic" potrait of that part of Middle Earth…

Disappointing to see absolutely everything becoming viewed through a modern lens of identity politics, as if that had anything to do with anything before about 5 years ago.

Sadly, Hollywood is now completely a creator of propaganda rather than stories….

As is The Guardian – a UK "newspaper" that isn't even self supporting in terms of sales (making you wonder who is funding it!!)

There's a right way and a wrong way to do diversity. Just taking something that is inherently one race and forcing diversity into isn't the way.

It's really no different than, "Remake Roots, only some of the slaves are white, asian and hispanic." Or remake Shogun with black and white samurai. If you want to confine it to mythic worlds, then fine, remake Black Panther with white, hispanic and asian Wakandans. Or remake Wonder Woman with all men and Diana a trans woman who rebels against her all male tribe. I guarantee this same crowd would freak out over that.

The right way would have been, in this case, to introduce the actual races that Tolkien had into the plotline. There's no reason you can't have a hero Easterling or the folk of Harad. Since it's an earlier era you could have had hero characters trying to stop Sauron's influence on their kingdoms, with us as an audience knowing they would eventually fail, but rooting for them to find some way to preserve their people and culture.

You could have also gone with Dwarves and Elves having very non human characteristics- being more silvery or bluish hued for elves, and, like klingons, a dark but very non human look for dwarves.

I guarantee you the vast majority of fans would have either not cared about that or thought it was cool.

Remember that there is lot of fandom that love diverse shows that do it right. Look at The Expanse, which I and many folks here find to be a fantastic and diverse show. Look at Firefly/Serenity, another fantastic and diverse show, or Game of Thrones, which, until the end, was a fantastic and diverse show. Simply saying, 'fans be racist' is minimalist and lazy.

There is nothing inherently right or wrong with diversity.
But diversity should be natural to a setting and story, not shoved on to it for half-baked political reasons. Fantasy isn't ‘racialized' because the authors wanted to make racial commentaries. In cultures that came from Western Europe, it is quite natural that the heroes would be from Western European ethnic groups, just as it is quite natural for heroes from other cultures to reflect those cultures' ethnic groups. Nobody whines at Bollywood for having movies featuring nothing but Indians, or dresses down Japanese, Korean, or Chinese movie makers for making films featuring their own races and cultural elements. No, the condemnation is solely for Western authors, artists, and dramatists.

Instead of being hung up on whether or not a fantasy setting based on medieval European cultures is "diverse enough" and trying to shoehorn feeble "corrective" nonsense into these settings, perhaps the complainers should instead create new fantasy settings based on other cultural sources. If you don't like what you perceive as a lack of diversity in Middle-Earth, don't create stories for it. Create stories for something else. After all, at one time all the stories and settings of Middle-Earth were just ideas in one man's head. They didn't arise out of an effort to snag onto something popular and trendy. In fact, neither Tolkien or his publishers really knew how much or even whether his books would catch the public interest.
That's how you succeed— not by copying, but by, shock, being original. Readers and viewers in the West are quite happy to accept and be entertained by original ideas, as well as other cultural views. So bring ‘em on.

Hopefully Tolkien's heirs got the IP licensing money up front… ;-)

The Guardian – a UK "newspaper" that isn't even self supporting in terms of sales (making you wonder who is funding it!!)

Why "newspaper" in inverted commas? It certainly is a newspaper, and it's content is trusted by a majority of the UK population. You don't like it because it's not slavishly loyal to a certain political party? Better the Guardian exists than the Daily Fail et al.

As for who funds it, that information is readily available. At least it's not the Barclay brother(s). And which newspapers make a profit solely from their print run anyway?

The author of the article rightly picks up on the the retelling of Scandinavian Myths as the roots of LOTR. And thereby suggests the model of the svartálfar.

Unfortunately in Tolkien's world the svartálfar are already present – only he calls them Orcs.

I don't really care one way or another though – this is no longer The Lord of the Rings, or Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's more MERP. And it has been since the films – the wholesale invention of most of The Two Towers storyline and the shoehorning of the Elf/Dwarf love that crosses boundaries story into The Hobbit are all the evidence one needs for that. The raising of Arwen to a kick-ass elfish swordmistress was also ridiculous – Tolkien quite deliberately set Arwen and Eowyn up to be very different female representations.

One is free, of course, to prefer the films or the books. The way of the future is to turn LOTR into a franchise that can self-perpetuate forever (or until everyone finally gets bored). It's too late to worry about that – more people have seen the films than have the read the books and so the films are "reality" and the books have served their purpose in launching the franchise. And so it goes.

I'm wondering how they're going to get a couple of Chinese characters into the show so it will run in China.

I'm wondering how they're going to get a couple of Chinese characters into the show so it will run in China.

The Variags of Khan and the Wainraiders are loosely enough described to easily be assumed to be "chinese". Also the Corsairs of Umbar are very vague.

With Haradrim and Far Harad as well it is clear that Middle Earth isn't actually a whites-only zone and never was.

+1 deephorse

I don't mind doing some things so more people can feel included. I guess that means so they can imagine being an elf, too (or whatever). I just think there is something confusing about imagining a black human and a black dwarf. What is common between them? Why would non-humans have human racial variations? I admit that the fact that fantasy races seem to be able to breed confuses how different they are.

Does it have to be make sense to me for me to enjoy it? Probably not. But I'm guessing I won't enjoy anyway. I'm not looking for someone else to make up stuff in Tolkien's Middle Earth.

andy

What Parzival said.

I will add that I think a color-blind society is best, and look for the day when skin color is as irrelevant as hair or eye color. And hurrah for intermarriage. Today's insistence on casting black actors everywhere is okay in many circumstances; if we redid LEAVE IT TO BEAVER the next door neighbors could be black or brown -- or vice versa, black family with white neighbors -- and who cares?

However, Anne Bolyn as black is a tart too far.

"The History of Race is Fantasized"

The PR attack by Amazon alleging racism is smokescreen to obscure what's really going on.

The last Vanity Fair article makes it clear that Amazon did not buy the rights to content in the Silmarillion, or Unfinished Tales, or anything substantive about the 2nd Age. Amazon only bought the rights to the appendices in the LOTR books which refer to the 2nd Age.

So they are going to use those thin notes to create their own non-Tolkienian 2nd Age with totally new characters in order to bypass the limitations they placed on themselves and to minimize IP licensing payments/royalties for using existing characters. The more new characters they invent, the less they have to pay.

That's also why they fired Shippey, the leading Tolkine scholar, and hired some pliable nobodies. It's gonna bear little semblance to Middle Earth or the 2nd Age. I don't know why they decided not to get the rights to the vast trove of content Tolkien wrote -- instead of creating expensive Middle Earth fanfic.

Amazon's choice was easy:

1. Do a good faith adaptation of JRRT's works as Peter Jackson did with the highly acclaimed, x435-award winning (including x5 Oscars) box office blow-out "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy that earned 10x production costs

OR

2. Do their own thing using Middle Earth as a background, as Peter Jackson did with the widely-panned Hobbit Trilogy, which did poorly in the box office, only netted 4x over production costs, and won a paltry 43 film awards.

Looks like they went with Option 2…sigh…

" I don't know why they decided not to get the rights to the vast trove of content Tolkien wrote -- instead of creating expensive Middle Earth fanfic."

The Tolkien estate aren't willing to sell the rights to The Silmarillion yet. So I guess they got what they could get.

"The Variags of Khan and the Wainraiders are loosely enough described to easily be assumed to be "chinese". Also the Corsairs of Umbar are very vague."

True enough, but, as I'm sure you're aware, to run in China there has to be a Chinese hero. They can't be a bad guy.

"With Haradrim and Far Harad as well it is clear that Middle Earth isn't actually a whites-only zone and never was."

I don't think any fan of Tolkien ever thought it was.

Since we're going, for this series, back before the Rings of Power there's no problem with having heroes from anywhere. At the time of the Hobbit Saruman was still a "good guy" after all.

I hope only that it won't end as the (in)famous Cursed from Netflix, which I give up seeing after mid 3rd episode.
From the other amenities there was a black(!) young Arthur, a multi racial society in ancient Britainand a total awful rewrite of round table's story.

Umm….ancient Britain was multi-racial.

Britons, Picts, Scottii, Gauls, Romans, Sarmatians, Spanish, Greeks….

….basically anyone from any part of the Roman Empire (and beyond). And their slaves.

There is a credible theory that the original Arthur (if he existed at all) was Sarmatian.

On that note, that does sound horrible, but there were indeed four dark-skinned knights in Arthur's court— King Esclabor of Babylon and his sons Sir Palamedes, also known as Sir Palamedes the Saracen, Safir and Segwarides. The tales don't deal with their race at all, but an Arab or Persian origin is certainly part of the mix, and African is not entirely out. They begin as nobles of "pagan" origin (in the context of the day, Muslims), then convert to Christianity. While I'm certain that latter detail would raise howls among the usual suspects, it's interesting to note that the tales raise no objections to their Middle-Eastern origins, merely their non-Christian status, and even that is not presented as a gross failing. Palamedes is notable as Tristan's chief rival in the pursuit of Iseult (well, setting aside King Mark), and the eventual knight who takes on the unending task of pursuing the Questing Beast from Sir Pellinore. He also appears in the Grail cycle, where his conversion allows him to eventually trap and kill the Questing Beast with the aid of Perceval and Galahad. Later he slays King Mark after the latter kills Tristan with Palamedes's own lance. Gawain subsequently kills Palamedes in revenge, which is all part of the shattering of the Round Table after Guinevere's affair with Lancelot is exposed. Esclabor commits suicide upon hearing of his son's death. Segwarides dies will fighting to prevent Lancelot's rescue of Guinevere (and thus while fighting against his brothers, who are of Lancelot's party). Safir survives the civil war with Mordred— or at least his death is never mentioned, so survival could be assumed.

As one can see, Palamedes and his family are significant figures often overlooked these days, but their tale would make a fantastic, if tragic, film.

The Tolkien estate aren't willing to sell the rights to The Silmarillion yet. So I guess they got what they could get.

They could have shelled out more cash and accepted confines on how much tinkering they could do, and as it is they have tomes of material to draw from -- the Hobbit and all three LOTR books and appendices. What they have chosen to do is use LOTR as a marketing tool to sell their own made up sh1t. That's clearly stated in the 2nd Vanity Fair article.

I think Just Some Guy breaks it down well:

YouTube link

To be fair, would anyone have actually watched The Silmarillion?

I think they should do a movie about Micky Mantle and make him black and do a movie about Willie Mays and make him White.
Then do one about Sandy Koufax and make him black and then one about Bob Gibson and make him white..
Sounds really great !!

Russ Dunaway

To be fair, would anyone have actually watched The Silmarillion?

Yes, I would.

I would watch the Silmarillion.

… I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine."
-- JRR Tolkien
― Letter 29 — Tolkien's German publishers had asked whether he was of Aryan origin

His Letter 30 – the draft response to the proposed German publisher of the translated "The Hobbit" enquiring of his "racial profile" (for context – dated 1938) is an excellent example of "Trolling a Nazi". He was a man who was ahead of his time.

"I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people"

It's a shame that we don't know what was in the version actually sent, but it is believed to have been in a similar vein.

If they wanted a more diverse population and setting then why didn't they set the series in the Third Age dealing with the Blue Wizards combating Sauron's influence in the east. Lots of scope for a new story with a diverse cast without having to change anything in the existing lore.

Good point Earl of the North.