Lord of the Rings TV Series Purchased by Amazon

[s_bushido]

Can you explain why it seems that there is only 1 black elf and 1 black female dwarf (and a princess to boot)?

Even assuming that there are only one of each, based on the few minutes of footage that we've actually seen, it could be something as simple as the same reason Drizzt has purple eyes when the rest of his race has red: because the author wanted them to. Or it could be something as simple as why there are white lions: it's simply a rare trait of the species.

Can you explain why a black person needs to justify their presence in a piece of media?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What you said doesn't even make sense, because we are talking about something that has a whole mythology, genealogy, languages, cartography and history written for it well beyond the actual novels. This show is literally supposed to be Tolkien's work that he never wrote, according to the showrunners. This has nothing to do with anything else.

Go re read the first post you quoted and tell me where I was only taking about Tolkiens work.

[Radeghost]

Can you explain why a black person needs to justify their presence in a piece of media?

Because it needs to make sense.

Just like for white people. A white man has to justify his presence in Harad. Why would a white man be native to Harad? Or let's go to Marvel, would it be good for Wakanda to randomly have whites and asians with no explanation?

[SirDjord]

If producers and big corportation are so set on pushing messages and diversity then why don't they make their own fantasy show? Tolkien based his work on Medevial England/Northern Europe naturally the characters and their appearence reflect that. Make your own fantasy based upon the demographics of NY city (who's stopping you?) if thats what want, but don't come and change and force you're politics on someone elses hard work.



I guess everyone knows that Anne Bolyn was secretly of Sub-saharan descent

[Specialka]

The show isn't out yet to give us a wider view on the racial break up and they instead focus on major characters in trailers and promos?

Wanna bet that they will be alone as PoC ? And that why there are PoC in people that were never PoC won't be explained ?

- - - Updated - - -

Even assuming that there are only one of each, based on the few minutes of footage that we've actually seen, it could be something as simple as the same reason Drizzt has purple eyes when the rest of his race has red: because the author wanted them to. Or it could be something as simple as why there are white lions: it's simply a rare trait of the species.

Can you explain why a black person needs to justify their presence in a piece of media?

That is how you would explain that ? What a shitty writer you would be

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Wanna bet that they will be alone as PoC ? And that why there are PoC in people that were never PoC won't be explained ?

Ya Ill absolutely bet that they wont be the only POC and that they got some POC extras/minor characters as well as well.

[Specialka]

Ya Ill absolutely bet that they wont be the only POC and that they got some POC extras/minor characters as well as well.

And a decent explanation why we have PoC in a people that was known to be white ?

[Radeghost]

And a decent explanation why we have PoC in a people that was known to be white ?

They are also race swapping existing characters in other media, such as KOTOR remake, where a white guy was changed to a black woman (according to that big leak that is 90% proven true)

[Triceron]

hans christian andersen?

based on his writing the characters of hansel and gretel are portrayed as being your children, one male, one female, both of them are white, both of them are stereotypical of the region of where the author was from (denmark), meaning that they would have been fairly pale and likely blonde haired with blue or brown eyes.

200 years later, lets take this fairy tale and 'have it depict what our modern day looks like' instead of stereotypically scandinavian children, they have been race swapped into african american children, because we all know that black people outside of the USA wouldn't work, and instead of finding a witches cabin made of sweets, they find a crack house and become mules for the druglord (again taking the example to an extreme), how do you think people would react to this change? do you think people would be justified in their anger at having the original characters race swapped?

Adding druglords to a children's fable knowing that it's for children would be completely different issue from merely race swapping to an african american race.

And if you knew better, there's already a Hansel and Gretel 2021 adaptation that basically has race swapping.

https://www.awn.com/animationworld/h...ale-dark-grimm



It's definitely not as big of a problem as you try and make it be.

[ohwell]

"We've already decided it's garbage because we think it's not normal to have brown people in the show, but we're not racist, guys! We swear!"

Can't wait to see you applaud a series based on Anasi Tales with Christian Bale as the title character. Oh wait it doesn't work that way right?

[Radeghost]

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"?

[s_bushido]

That is how you would explain that ? What a shitty writer you would be

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?

[Biomega]

This isn't about bias in the abstract and doesn't make sense, because this literally isnt 1920 and there are plenty of films and series with diversity in them. So for all these shows to claim that they need to change things for this reason is actually dishonest.

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.

But if you are deviating so far from the source material, especially written source material, that you need to do a lot of writing to justify the changes, then something is wrong.

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.

The need for fidelity is going to be judged differently between the two.

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.

Staying relevant to the source material is all about the characters, their world and the actions taking place in it as defined in the source.

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".

One of the reasons Peter Jackson stayed close to the source is because he felt that was the only way to honor Tolkien and likely to not wind up with something corny, derivative or looking like a parody.

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.

Which often today, is done almost all the time, especially with European fantasy as if somehow black people need to see themselves in fantasy based on European history or mythology? Like why?

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.

This is the problem with Hollywood thinking where they literally believe that "adapting" something gives them license to re-imagine everything about it.

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).

they are literally writing what Tolkien never wrote, while going against what he did write.

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.

Skin color, textures and other features are relevant to defining the characteristics of peoples and creatures in a fantasy world.

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.

And contrary to your point, mythology and folklore have never been "diverse" in the sense of including everybody in them.

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.

And again, the studio themselves are the ones making skin color part of the marketing for the show.

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.

[eschatological]

Also, there are white Africans you know. There are multiracial societies in Africa, in fact. So why is it suddenly a stretch for an African prince to be white when there are white people all over Africa?

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?

[Radeghost]

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?

I've answered you, but you're ignoring that, trying to paint yourself like some kind of a white savior. Yikes.

[Adamas102]

Oh man, it's going to be shocking when you discover that Middle-Earth isn't based on XXI century Europe.

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.

[Specialka]

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?

Because context matters.

And reported for calling others racist. It is pure slandering.

[Radeghost]

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?

Dude, did you really just said that white guy playing African prince in fictional universe is inappropriate, but black gal playing European princess in history-based series is okay?

Talk about double standards.

[RachelMadcow]

Some of the casts in this show are too ugly. No thanks. Not gonna bother.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

And a decent explanation why we have PoC in a people that was known to be white ?

Don't expect one, Don't think its needed.

If it's not core to the story/character I don't think casting needs any explanation and in the case of the dwarfs I believe there skin color is never described by Tolkien at all from what others have said.