What also baffles me is these activists are trying to "take over" stuff created by white guys (taking great pride in doing so), instead of creating something themselves. They say stuff like "Tolkien was racist for not including PoC", so why even touch his creations? Why not create something that's "better"?
So the racist ignores the question that I asked in return? Unsurprising.
Why does a black person need to justify their presence in a piece of media?
And while I'm asking questions: Why would their skin color need any different explanation than the differences in hair or eye color other members of their race have?
But that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying bad writing is bad writing, and diversity doesn't excuse bad writing; and, in much the same way, good writing is not invalidated by diversity either. And there's no conspiracy actively pushing bad writing, it's just a corollary of people using a cheap cop-out of diversity to cover up shoddy writing jobs.
That says nothing about whether or not there are people actively pushing for diversity - there absolutely are. That's not what I'm talking about, though. I'm only talking about the quality of the writing, and that it should be called out if bad, no matter what else is going on.
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here. I don't care how much people deviate, I only care about the end result - if it's good, then I don't care if it's 5% accurate; and in the same way, if it's bad I don't care if it's 99% accurate either. I want good writing, period. The rest is negotiable. In its entirety.
Now, there does seem to be some CORRELATION between truth to the source and quality of the writing - mostly because if something is worth adapting, chances are it's already fairly good writing (though there are exceptions). The more you deviate the harder it is to get things right; but that's a matter of practice, not principle.
That's mostly a red herring to me. I don't care about the terminological quibbles over what's an "adaptation" and what is merely "inspired". Doesn't matter to me. Doesn't change how I view the result. Good writing is good writing, bad writing is bad writing - whether it's an adaptation or a reimagination or inspiration or whatever else doesn't interest me. Only the quality of it does.
That's also a red herring. ALL adaptions deviate in SOME way. That's not up for discussion, that's pretty much an unavoidable fact borne out of the different mediums and formats.
Even if you care about accuracy (and I explain above why I don't really), it's never about "is this accurate", it's ONLY EVER about "HOW accurate is this".
And yet there's an entire catalog of things he DID change, including an egregious intervention in the plot with the whole Faramir thing. All adaptations change something. Period.
Mostly because black people exist in the world, and saying to someone "sorry, you don't belong here" would need a VERY good reason - and "well it's just always been like this" just isn't one.
Here I can refer back to my Julius Caesar example: you would have the exact same historic right to deny a Germanic-descendent person playing the role of Julius Caesar, because come on the Germanic tribes literally destroyed Rome they can't just suddenly be the most revered politician in Roman history. AND YET nobody ever gives a shit when that happens, and nobody cries about historical accuracy or anything you brought up.
Why? Because somehow, white or black skin is SOMETHING ELSE, and seems to be treated in a special way. And very often there's just as much - or rather, just as LITTLE - reason to exclude them.
Because at the end of the day, accuracy only matters to foster the narrative. And if the narrative doesn't care, we shouldn't either. The only reason it upsets people is preconception and tradition, and it's easy to say "why do we need to change anything, it's not a problem for me" when you're the one who gets to have everything and be everywhere by default.
And who then should be the gatekeeper of adaptational purity? Who gets to decide what can and can't be changed, and by how much?
At the end of the day the audiences are what drives behaviors. Don't reward shit writing with attention (i.e. money). Stop buying bad products. They'll change REAL quick if they realize it's not working. The reason they keep getting away with it is because PEOPLE LET THEM. Be a discerning, critical consumer. That's the only way they'll get your message (whatever that message may be).
I call bullshit on this. What are they "going against" that he wrote? Skin color was never more than a cosmetic detail for Tolkien. He never made it a theme or topic, never used it as anything but ancillary information in very few places. He didn't give a shit about skin color, because to him culture, language, etc. were the ACTUALLLY important things.
You haven't even seen this show, yet somehow the existence of a few black elves or dwarves "goes against what Tolkien wrote"? Please.
Says who? If Frodo was played by a black actor in the original LotR and there were black hobbits around, HOW IN ANY WAY would the narrative change?
You're taking minor cosmetic details and blowing them up to be narrative elements they're simply not.
Was I making that point? Anywhere?
My point is much simpler: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER what color someone is 99.99% of the time. There's a few isolated stories where it's of relevance, and I agree it's different for such cases, but for the vast majority of narratives it just doesn't matter one lick. Historical accuracy in a mythological narrative is worth fuck all, and basically completely irrelevant in almost every case.
And in fact a lot of stories ARE fungible across cultures, as people did when adapting stuff like e.g. the Pañcatantra across cultures for hundreds of years. Or look at stuff like Orpheus and the story of Izanagi and Izanami - completely irrelevant to the story that one is Ancient Greek and the other one is Ancient Japanese, the mythology works basically identically.
Are there some mythological narratives that are easier to adapt and some that are harder? Absolutely. But that doesn't matter - the point is, they're not ALL FIXED, and they CAN be and WERE adapted across cultures for centuries.
The virtue signaling problem is a separate issue. I'm not okay with people mining diversity for profit if it comes at the expense of quality. That's counterproductive and potentially actively harmful to normalizing a more diverse society.
But that's a different debate, and not liking corporations engaging in excessive virtue signaling with badly written content does NOT IN ANY WAY translate to having a problem with diversity in principle.
Afrikaaners are colonizers who've lived in Africa a few hundred years, at most. Most white people in Africa are colonizers - which is why it isn't appropriate for them to play an African Prince of an isolated African country which was never colonized.
Unless you're talking about Egyptians etc, who are more Middle Eastern than white.
As for the Anne Bolyn thing, I didn't see that. What was the context of it? Hamilton as a musical play obviously race-bends the Founding Fathers, but it doesn't pretend to be a historical piece, it's a lens through which the Founding Fathers are reintroduced in a modern way. Yanno, like how Shakespeare plays are modernized into movies like 10 Things I Hate About You, or Romeo Must Die. Is that what the Anne Bolyn thing was? Or was it supposed to be a straight historical piece?
It's not based on ANY century of European history. It draws its inspiration from a variety of sources, but more importantly it's a complete fabrication that was created by a scholar of language and literature in the 1930's who used narrative and framing devices to give the impression of myth and history and as a home for his made up languages. Tolkien's legendarium is NOT "European heritage and history". It's pure fantasy.
Some of the casts in this show are too ugly. No thanks. Not gonna bother.
All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth.
The context of what. Care to point out passages in Tolkien's work where the skin/hair/eye color of an elf/dwarf/man was anything more than a descriptor? To point out where they view themselves and each other differently based on those qualities in the same way that we do in the real world?
Waaaah!!!
Warning: This thread is derailing too far off the beaten path. Discussing how Tolkein may have described his races vs. how this show is portraying them is fine (or depictions of other characters in other media), but walks a line. This thread is not for discussion about social agendas or politics writ large, which is considered off-topic for this particular subforum, you can go to GenOT for that. Get back on track.
Oh cool, so Moses, Genghis Kahn, Jesus Christ, and Ramses II really were all white guys. Cool, cool, cool. Got it.
I mean, white guys played them, and it had absolutely no bearing on the quality (or lack thereof) of their respective movies. Or does that logic only apply when you want it to apply, as I suspect is the case?
And I'm not saying it is. I'm sure there's lots of issues. My point isn't that skin color is the ONLY issue, it's that it's given SPECIAL ATTENTION for no apparent reason considering it's a cosmetic detail like a gazillion others (in most cases) but while all those get handwaved away with not a care in the world, this one does not.
That doesn't mean there aren't other problems, but this debate - as you yourself said - is about this particular one.
And yet I'm sure you have NO PROBLEM with other minor details being not "the way Tolkien describes it". If he describes Erkenbrand's shield as red and it's grey in the movie, does that really bother anyone? If someone's horse is described as piebald but is actually dapple in the movie WHO THE FUCK WOULD CARE?
Clearly it's NOT about perfect accuracy, because some things are more important than others - and I want to question why skin color is suddenly so important, when on a narrative level it's basically as relevant as a horse being dun or bay, and nobody ever cries foul on THAT.
Why is historical accuracy more important in a HISTORICAL setting than in a fictional one?
Tough one.
You do not know anything about Japanese history, do you. The racial makeup of Japanese society was a MAJOR theme all through the Sakoku periods and beyond. It became a national obsession in the Meiji period.
But sure, let's humor the ill-informed take: no, in a narrative that ACTUALLY doesn't involve any of that, I have zero problems with diverse casting. Bring out your black and Asian Romans or whatever. Don't care. A Chinese actor playing Julius Caesar bothers me not one bit more than a German one doing it, unless the narrative makes it matter.
When it comes to the actual structure and dynamics of narratives, yes, absolutely. Most people know fuck all about narratology.
What's wrong with that? You wouldn't trust Johnny Random to explain to you how a nuclear reactor works, yet somehow everyone is equally qualified to dissect the sociocultural complexities of a narrative? Get real.
But that's not what your original response said, at all. NOW you're actually quoting, before you were just making shit up. Also, I did not equate things simply like that; and to portray it as though I did is some serious bad-faith arguing. If you want to quote (which I encourage) do it correctly. I could take some statements you made, too, and just put a = in between to make you sound like a buffoon.
I'm fine with people just admitting they don't like something. I'm all about honesty in that respect - what I have a problem with is people PRETENDING they have good reasons when they don't. If you just want to say "I know it doesn't matter for the story, but it bothers me that there's a black person in there", by all means. You do you.
I'm not the racism police. I'm just pointing out when people portray certain points to be what they don't seem to actually be.
It'd be great to get something more than "it's just jarring, idk man", because that is - again - just saying "I know it doesn't matter, but it's bothering me" which is exactly what I'm getting at: people's biases at work.
I'd suggest you read the sentence again, because that's not what I'm saying.
I'm not saying "no one has a problem WITH ANYTHING BUT skin color", I'm saying "there's a great number of problems nobody has a problem with, but they DO have a problem with skin color". Those are not identical statements, because I in no way exclude OTHER problems also being relevant, like you're trying to make it sound like.
This is the whole Instagram meme where someone goes "nobody has a problem with oranges yet somehow they hate kiwis" and your reply is "SO YOU'RE SAYING PEOPLE ONLY HAVE PROBLEMS WITH KIWIS? WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO HATE LEMONS, YOU IDIOT!".
I have a problem with commercial exploitation of virtue-signaling, too; especially if it's used to gloss over poor quality. But me hating the exploitation of diversity doesn't mean I hate diversity, and I like to be very clear about how those are, indeed, very distinct problems that can't just be conflated.
All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth.
Because if they get the dress right, they'll get the shoes wrong, and so on and so forth - you can ALWAYS find SOMETHING that doesn't match, which is a basic reality of all adaptations. And it's especially egregious when it comes to details wholly irrelevant to anything in the narrative - demanding perfect accuracy is a pipe dream.
Because that's hard work and carries more risk. It's simpler to appropriate the cachet of Tolkien to push your goals and see some degree of success.
How well did Bright do? I imagine there are black elves in Shadowrun so why not base their story in that setting? Simple, it doesn't carry the prestige of Middle Earth.
Remember kids, European culture is the only one that it's ok to appropriate and make your own.
Last edited by VMSmith; 2022-08-06 at 10:39 PM.