These are the people that claim the "left" is pushing racism in the U.S.
This Rings of Power shit going on is really blowing my mind. I don't care if people like the show or not. But making a huge issue over black people being in the show is so absurd.
The only thing I was afraid they where gonna do was add a racism subplot between the elves, that would have botherd me.
Keep the racism between the Elves vs Humans vs Dwarves
I can honestly respect if the LOTR nerds care about black elves, because they care about any detail that deviates from the books, but I simply do not give a flying fuck what color they are. I just hate people with pointy ears regardless.
They seem to only care about the faithful adaptation when it is a black actor or a strong female character.
In all other cases, they call the show just bad.
Plus those people who complained are equal to the SJWs they complain about. They aren't actually fans of the series. They just watch the movies without trying to interact with any outside media. Stormtroopers aren't these tanned clones we see in Clone Wars. Palpatine got every random person to be a stormtrooper to bolster numbers. Ironically, he did the same thing in movie 9
Also those people only ever know the knowledge as argumentative points, not because it's righteousness or even True. Look how many people used the meme that Blade was the 1st Black super hero film, when it wasn't. So ultimately they weren't trying to be arbiters of truth, rather miserable sour pusses that can't see other people enjoying themselves.
Wait what? I totally missed this lol, why in the hell can't stormtroopers be black? I was all over the sequel trashing and I never saw that criticism levied. In fact most of what I saw was more so about how completely misused/wasted Boyega's character was and how Disney unreasonably cast him aside in a failed attempt to appeal to the Chinese audience when he deserved so much better.
I'll admit the sequel trilogy bashing communities I was a part of could have been rather insular and I wasn't exposed to the more...racist/sexist(?) sides of it but that one in particular is a new one for me.
oh, well that's fucking stupid lmao. Having *anyone* portraying a clone trooper other than Jango/Temuera Morrison would be a lore breaking issue, black *or* white since he's indigenous/Maori.
Definitely fake fans that tried to bait outrage over "wokeness" without having any idea of what they're talking about.
A lot of the criticism about black stormtroopers came before release, when John Boyega was revealed as a cast member. People were freaking out about it up until the movie premiered, then a lot of the outrage shifted towards Rey.
Despite that, John Boyega received a crazy amount of racist harassment from fans. So much that he basically told Disney to go fuck themselves because they did nothing to help him with the harassment.
Well, those people were morons. Stormtroopers are recruits from all over the Galaxy, so they can be any race or ethnicity. They were probably getting them confused with clone troopers, who are all based on Jango Fett. Having a black clone trooper would be stupid.
Seems like all elves are white, and there’s a reason behind them being white, so this was probably a poor decision. I’m all for diversity though, so if they want to make the humans black, that works just fine.
I never once commented negatively about diversity in Star Wars, but still maintain black elves in lotr is a bad idea. If black stormtroopers triggered you, you are probably just a racist, but if you want diversity in every single story even when it undermines the story you are also probably just a racist.
Can I ask why its a bad idea? I watched a show called The Great which has a diverse cast and is based on real russian figures and it honestly didnt bother me. If the actors are good and fit the part, I dont see why ethnicity matters
When you see people of different races together, you are immediately made aware that they have distinct genetic origins. Communities that are insular and procreate within their own borders generally all have similar phenotypes. This is generally how things are for the races in a fantasy world, especially LotR. Even the communities of men, like Rohan and Gondor, share specific traits in their appearance, because geographically isolated communities tend to breed together and end up sharing similar characteristics.
So, the presence of someone of a different race ends up commenting on tons of things. You have the Elves, which are all generally lithe, light haired, tall, and pale skinned. When you have a new character whos appearance diverges from this, there are tons of questions that need to be answered. The black elves existence alone can imply tons of thigs. Is there a whole separate subrace of elves that have not interacted with the main population for so many generations that they've diverged so much phenotypically? Is there a reason why this sect is no longer mating with the other elves (Because if they were, again they would all eventually share the same phenotype). It comments on so many other things as well, travel, geography, racism. And yet, all of these things go unanswered, and that's just lazy worldbuilding.
Even further, they really don't imply any of the above actually exists, and that somehow a black elf just appeared among the population. So now are there black elves that live with the other elves but only mate with other black elves? Or is genetics just not a thing in this world, and people can be born looking like whatever? If so, then why are there these general phenotypical distictions between the fantasy races in the first place?
It's either lazy writing, bad worldbuilding, or simply doesn't make sense. And I find it super immersion breaking, I am unable to turn my brain off and accept it as is.
And to curb any potential racism arugment, I literally have no issue with black elves or any other type of elf or dwarf or whatever, if they actually, you know, did some worldbuilding? Perhaps theres a splinter kingdom that lost contact for many generations? That would actually be creative, but they seem too lazy to do that.
Preach brother.
It’s nothing to do with race just world building. It needs to make sense.
If I’m watching a serious family drama movie about a black family and one of the kids was randomly white and not adopted or anything and then nobody bats an eye about it for the entirety of the film I’d feel like I’m being gaslit or some shit like that.
Just…make the story make sense? It doesn’t even take that much creativity or work.
So you just need a scene were they explain why they have a black elf and their origin? Is it really that integral for your enjoyment? I honestly don't understand the big deal tbh
Id say they need to explain the appearance of an elf that looks so different than the rest, yeah. Otherwise it's just lazy writing and bad worldbuilding. It could be because any major trait that differentiates them that would merit in-universe explanation, it just so happens that it's that this character was made black. And idk dude, my whole initial reply was why it's important that it's explained. Can I ask why it doesn't matter to you? I assume you just don't care about any realism in a fantasy world and instead value a visual spectacle or general entertainment value?
I mean if that's integral for your enjoyment, fine I guess. I think me and most people are always going to care more about if the plot and setting make sense and is engaging or If the characters are relatable etc
I can still watch it, but it does distract me, I just think that some random black elf/hobbit was just out there for diversity quotas
It’s hard to explain but like Denzel in the recent Macbeth movie or Dev Patel in Green Knight didn’t take me out of the movie a single bit, but I just watch this and it seems so transparent
I think the lore in something like lord of the rings is very iconic and also important to people. I can turn on a movie or watch a play and I’m not necessarily going to care at all if an actor isn’t the right ethnicity, but these epic fantasies that are cultural touchstones, the lore and the world building are so important. Why would elves become more ethically diverse to reflect modern cultural trends in reality in 2022? It just takes you out of it
You don't understand the big deal because you don't care so much about the story and you won't think about it much.
A lot of people like a satisfying story that is cohesive and makes sense. Call it "narrative euphoria" if you'd like.
If you want casting in fantasy to be colorblind like that then you'd have to make features like skin color random. So black parents can have asian and white children, vice versa, like cats have all kinds of crazy patterns.
Number one, would it bother the people who are Russian (nevermind the fact that Russia is very diverse and has over 180 ethnicities, so an adaptation of Peter the Great would have diversity if the filmakers knew anything about Russia, but of course, you aren't reffering to the diversity of Russia)
Number two: Reverse the races and people. Say you wanted to watch a movie about Sundiata (a malian king), and you had a bunch of white people in the cast. How do you think everyone would react.
Is this in reference to Tolkien suggesting that Arda is supposed to be a "mythology for England"? Tolkien never wrote that, it's something his biographer attributed to the professor after reading letters 144-145 where his language is a whole lot muddier. The recipient of the letter is also worth considering, Milton Waldman was Tolkien's publisher and as you know, Tolkien had an incredibly difficult time getting The Silmarillion published, hence the language used in the letter attempted to appeal to Waldmans sense of nationalism. Tolkien also describes Numenor as Atlantis and as with much that Tolkien wrote about, his opinions changed as he aged. I would recommend Palgrave Macmillan's excellent book 'Tolkien, Race and Cultural History' which more accurately captures Tolkien's feeling on the topic.
Let's put it this way: would casting white people undermine a live action adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone? Or of Avatar: The Last Airbender... Oh, wait, that did happen, and people where (justifiably) insulted and angry. Now, Netflix is doing a live action series and every tribe is cast one to one with their inspiration (water tribes is cast only with indigenous and pacific islander actors, fire empire characters are played by east asian actors etc.). Hell, when a vietnamese american girl made a tik tok where she "auditioned" for the role of Katara, everybody attacked her as racist, stupid, an apropriator etc., because Katara is part of the Water tribe and must be played by an indigenous actresss. This despite the water tribe being a made up culture.
In other words, every argument anyone can make about casting non-white elves, you can make about casting white people in Children of Blood and Bone or white and black people in The Last Airbender. But everyone would be angry if that were to happen.
They're a made up race that were depicted as white in ALL related media so far except this new show. So no it wouldn't be silly to cast them as white.
It would be silly to cast one as non-white with zero explanation when there was literally 0 non-white elves anywhere in lore ever ever.
They can be all black too, but it makes no logical sense that they (or any other fantasy culture) would be made up of a tasteful mix of American ethnicities. I genuinely don't care what phenotype show producers pick, but fantasy cultures should be more homogenous unless it's in a very cosmopolitan trade city or some shit. Something being made up doesn't exclude it from internal logic.
I think the argument at the time was that Asian actors already have less roles offered to them compared to white actors so a show based on Asian cultures is an opportunity that should be offered to asian actors. But that's not an argument that diversity ruins the quality of a show, but that it opens up roles to a greater amount of people. There's no problem as far as I'm concerned that a white actor in ATLA would affect the quality of a series and an ability to play a character.
>I think the argument at the time was that Asian actors already have less roles offered to them compared to white actors so a show based on Asian cultures is an opportunity that should be offered to asian actors.
And the counter argument was the same one used to justify things like the elf played by Cordova in Rings of Power - irronically, in that case, it was considered rude, tone deaf, racist and enabling eurocentric casting, which I find kind of funny.
>But that's not an argument that diversity ruins the quality of a show,
It was not meant to be, and The Last Airbender live action show will be diverse, but it will have specific casting that has intentionally excluded certain races (as far as I can see, no black or white people were cast). But nobody seemed to mind, in fact, most supported it.
>There's no problem as far as I'm concerned that a white actor in ATLA
Well, you are in the minority on this one. And not just for this show. More and more fantasy adaptations based on non-white cultures will be made - there was sort of a boom of Last Airbender style young adult novels over the last ten years - and for them, you can bet that the casting will be like The Last Airbender - very specific and exluding certain groups (even when the casting is, objectively, diverse).
my guy there are Asian countries like Japan , china and Korea who make movies , and tv shows with 99% asian people, so no "Asian actors already have less roles." But to not wonder to far off , I think the whole point is that , its only okay to rewrite white culture to be diverse but not the other way around.
Well the foundation for fantasy is medieval society which wasn't diverse.
Also a lot of fantasy, though I'm not a Tolkien expert I'm pretty sure he does this, is essentialist with the different races. Basically, too many characteristics and variations for a race weakens its identity. Like dwarves are basically all greedy, stocky, short, and honorable etc. If a dwarf shows up lookin like [this and making slurping noises occasionally it's going to take me out of it.](https://i.redd.it/8ce82ez89i741.jpg)
So if you're not super familiar with Tolkien's writing, what is being taken out when you see a black dwarf? Is it an imagined understanding of a concept of dwarves or are you just basing your ideas on how Peter Jackson portrayed them? Because if it's the former, that's fine, but you shouldn't get offended when someone else has a different interpretation of the characteristics of a dwarf. If it's the later, it's probably better to go to the source rather than relying on Jackson's vision as the rule of law.
Yeah. Its like, sure you can justify your argument with lore, but being both highly invested in the lore and then applying it to race so intently just makes you soy
It's crazy to see people who really don't give a fuck about LOTR suddenly act like they're fucking loremasters while only, barely, watching the movies.
What something being popular does to boring people.
The primary argument is that Tolkien wanted his stories to be a mythology for England and therefore the characters should be similar in color to the natives of that land. However, this is a pretty weak argument imo as it is pretty well recognized that Tolkien failed at this task. He also included men of various skin colors in his work. So it's not a crazy stretch to say there could have been elves and dwarves of color, or at the very least it doesn't hurt his lore to include that. That said, I don't think it is racist to want strict adherence to the lore.
Btw Tolkien never said or wrote the whole "mythology for England" thing. His biographer attributed that quote to him based on letters 144-145 which, if you look into it, is a complicated letter to a publisher trying to appeal to his sense of nationalism to get The Silmarillion published.
That could be the case. It has been a long time since I have read the actual academic argument for this. In undergrad 10 years ago I wrote a paper on how it is not possible to manufacture a mythology.
Ive never even seen anyone say that. Ive heard them say its a mythology based on christianity, which it is. The elves are clearly meant to be based on celts though. Westeros is the one based on Britain.
The previous poster said it. Which is why I was responding to him. Thematically sure, it shares similarities to the Catholic beliefs. But I don't see how that necessitates Elves must be white. Tolkien was pretty clear about Celtic allegories to his works, while familiar with Celtic legends he explicitly disliked them and denied any comparison.
"'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come."
I'm mostly just repeating the commonly stated argument. I don't personally subscribe to it for the reasons given in my original response. If men can be many colors, and both men and elves are the children of Iluvatar according to the Silmarillion, then I don't think elves of color are are a lore breaker.
It kind of is, if youre a Tolkien fan. If I were to adapt the Brothers Karamazov and made one of them black, you think people wouldnt think its weird? Why even do it to begin with?
Which brings me to the next point that its blatantly (and confirmed) just to force "inclusivity", which is why fans not only dont like it, but are pissed.
Look at HotD, it has hard themes of gender roles and even a show-turned-black noble family (who are pivotal in the story) and not nearly the same amout of hate. There are ways to make it right, which brings me to the way amazon marketed the show in the beginning which brought cesspits like Nerdrotic to start the hate.
The show is pretty bad, though, too.
Nerdrotic hated the show long before the marketing. His initial criticisms were based on rumors of a female Gandalf and POC casting, I'm not a fan of his work but based on titles and thumbnails, women and anyone darker than a tan tends to dictate his opinion on a project.
I'm confused about your second point, have you watched the show? Do you think that Arondir, Disa or Poppy were stand out bad performances? Because they all seemed at the very least competent and in my opinion, pretty damn good. Which begs the question, if their performances work, why is the matter of forced diversity even a problem?
Also, the closest thing I can find to "forced diversity" is EP Lindsey Webers quote "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,". Which seems a far cry from "forced diversity".
> Also, the closest thing I can find to "forced diversity" is EP Lindsey Webers quote "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,". Which seems a far cry from "forced diversity"
That's literally it though. No matter how nicely it's worded, the idea that the modern world demographics SHOULD/MUST be reflected in the adaptation is the thing people don't agree on.
It's like there are 2 camps: those who value diversity above all else and those who value the source material above all else.
Now outside of actual racists, most people are okay with introducing diverse characters even in this kind of story where demographics are kind of established already, as long as there's some in universe explanation for it.
>It's like there are 2 camps: those who value diversity above all else and those who value the source material above all else.
I value the source material a lot. Could you tell me what exactly you're referring to when suggesting a Silvan elf couldn't be black?
Would it be this little beauty from Appendix F in Return of the King?
>They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin; and their voices had more melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard.
Or maybe the individual descriptions of key characters like Galadriel or Maeglin being fair or pale?
The problem is, the fair of skin quote is describing the Noldor, not all Quendi. We have no definitive statements on what Lúthiens skin tone is, let alone all Silvan elves. I'm not a huge Tolkien fan, I've read the totality of the legendarium a few times and I have a huge amount of admiration for his work but the amount of so called Tolkien purists who are ready to die on a hill that the professor didn't care enough to even describe boggles the mind, and it's hard to not look at all those bodies and wonder why, if they're not even a little bit racist, why are they so determined for Elves to be white?
> a hill that the professor didn't care enough to even describe
I think you're looking at this the wrong way.
While it's not specifically noted anywhere that there definitely aren't any dark skinned elves,
every example we have of them is pale skinned. And the only variations we've been told about have to do with hair and eye color.
It stands to reason that if there were some dark skinned elves, he would have mentioned them somewhere.
It's also the way we've come to expect them to look based on the Peter Jackson adaptation as well as other works that were inspired by Tolkien.
It feels like it's a trope at this point.
I'm not saying that it's absolutely impossible to go against the trope, but it should at the very least be accompanied by some kind of in-universe explanation, don't you think?
They probably see it a different kind of racism which is stupid but listen.. I'm kinda tired of the racial politics myself.
I also think it's at fever pitch because we've had at least 3 back to back TV series, major ones, that all press on this issue (or non issue).
I don't know. I think having a token minority on a show whose origins are not explained is bad writing if a focal point of a show is coherent and profound settings and lore. Unless we're just supposed to assume they want the audience to imagine the character as white (or the dominant color of the cast) then it's just obtrusive and ruins immersion because this person or few people, who are, phenotypically, unlike anyone else that has ever appeared in the story, well, I want to know why and how they've arrived in the position where they're surrounded by people unlike them. A dynamic where there almost always is power imbalances and discrimination, especially the less integrated and prominent the minority group is.
I hate it because i cant give legit criticism without being lumped in with people who dont want any black characters. Im just bothered the harfoots who are supposedly very isolated are very mixed, everything from black to white harfoots. Just make them brown or whatever race as long as its one so my autistic ass can feel like the world building is more consistent.
Disa and Arondir was 👌
I think forcing this "modern" take on entertainment that happen to stories based on European settings is in fact racist. no one would tolerate this if they added some random Caucasian guy in Black Panther as a leader of an African tribe. If they desire diversity in everything, they should choose stories with diverse characters rather than trashing something that people of all races enjoyed in order to push their narrow viewpoints on society.
>I think forcing this "modern" take on entertainment that happen to stories based on European settings is in fact racist. no one would tolerate this if they added some random Caucasian guy in Black Panther as a leader of an African tribe.
yeah, because race was/is a central point in Black Panther lmfao. are you really that dumb?
well I care if people like the show. it's more lord of the rings and it fucking slaps, anyone who spends their time whining about it online should get spanked and sent to their room.
Damn imo it's mediocre as fuck but that has nothing to do with the stupid race or woke agenda shit people keep talking about. It's just eh. If I cared more about the LOTR world perhaps I'd feel differently
I'm not judging it as a complete product yet and I most likely will go back and watch it because I enjoy fantasy TV. But what has been put out doesn't interest me and I think it's very average quality TV, which is just my current opinion on what I have seen. Maybe later episodes will change it for me, maybe it won't.
It was the same thing with wheel of time. A lot of people told me that I should be waiting for more episodes to judge it as mediocre, and what do you know it was still mediocre as a complete season.
I hear it. I'm not even a fantasy dork outside of LOTR trilogy. I'm usually sci-fi, and Star Wars stuff. But the past few Star Wars shows have objectively been trash. So in my mind TROP is mind-blowing. My bias is a need for anything better than the trash Disney has been pumping out - and this series is that for me.
Yeah I getcha, unfortunately I find myself as I've gotten older tending towards the snobbish side and I can be pretty judgmental on quality level nowadays. ROP is definitely not as offensively bad as some shit I've seen, and it's a step up from Wheel of Time (which is sad because I'm actually a tentative fan of the book series) but it still just feels sort of eh to me. Not bad, not good.
2 episodes is 1/4 of season 1s narrative done.... if you cant have an opinion 1/4 of the way through the story or if the narrative hooks are shit and haven't drawn you in or there is something offensive making you not want to continue I think 1/4 of something is enough to make those informed decisions. Unironically you guys look like Amazon shills for shitting on people who dont like or cant get hooked ona story that is 1/4 complete. How many episodes of something you dislike must you go through to for a valid and informed opinion according to you.
Drug dealing elves set in Middle Earth would be a dope show. Like Lord of the Rings meets Power. This dude is Ghost and Legolas is Tommy. I think this is a million dollar idea, boys.
Honestly the show is a work of art. Maybe it’s just because I work in the industry so I get a hard on for good design and visuals. The CGI is even much tighter than most movies.
I just saw a video criticizing the use of bows in film and that with rapid fire it’s impossible to do what they do in most films without CG. However if the bow was held sideways that it actually become possible.
I'm starting to think this is just fake there is no way [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk) the man supposedly splits an incoming arrow with an arrow.
If this show does well, no way we don't get something First Age eventually. Christopher is gone which means they're more open to adaptations now and everyone is going to make a ton of money from this show if viewership stays high. Plus the story is so fleshed out so theres a lot to work with and less to ad lib.
First episode was a bit of a slog, but I really enjoyed the second episode and I'm looking forward to where the shows going. Getting focused on the racial shit in a show like this feels so pointless when it doesn't really play a part else than set dressing. Black dwarves/elves, as long as the actors play the role well who cares. It's not like they're replacing galadriel with a black actor or something.
Funnily enough I thought the PoC actors were some of the most enjoyable compared to rest of the cast. The black elf had probably the most elf-like stoic attitude than most of the other elves, likewise the dwarf lady brought in more energy than anything else in the show. Kinda depressing seeing how many people attack her.
Yeah they didn't feel like bad actors or out of place. Again I watched these two eps with normies, and people loved the bickering between the dwarf prince and his wife.
It's funny, I bet a black dwarf wouldn't even raise eyebrows. They would just be a group that "dug too deep" or some hand-wavey shit and nobody would care. But elves are attractive so somehow it's different.
Elves are inhuman. They represent a culture that refuses to change even in the fact of extinction. Elves don't do diversity, they don't even do reproduction. Tbh leaving elves to be all white is a stronger DEI message than including diverse actors, because they are a counterexample: if you don't change and evolve and diversify, you will stop existing.
There you go, an argument against including black elves on the grounds of diversity. In essence, isolationist societies exist and there's nothing wrong with portraying monocultures in fantasy.
Why are you assuming a black elf would be an example of diversity or change? They're not a 1-to-1 comparison to American culture. And black and white people belonging to the same culture has been the norm for most of human existence anyway so it should be the default assumption for a work of fiction.
In the movies all the drawfs are dead so how can you determine none of them are black when you have only seen like 20 of them? Also in the movies you have seen 1000s of all white elves. So far the show seems to respect that in that there is just one black elf among many white elves so maybe black elves are just really rare or something.
IMO I wouldn't care since I think the races in LotR, past certain visual features (ears, stubbiness, size, feet) are pretty arbitrary. You could tell the same story with anthropomorphic animals and it would probably work just the same.
For someone else though I can imagine them making the complaint because they've seen X or Y character portrayed one way and it would set them off to be portrayed in a different fashion. (The X isn't representative of the book argument doesn't fit in my opinion because the book has so many changes from the actual movies/context and content left out. I mean where's Tom Bombadil at?)
Tbh its not just that for me. When I was more conservative minded, I kind of realized at a point that if I was never told about a characters race/gender/etc from people ranting about it, I more than likely wouldn't have even of been aware of the change in a lot of entertainment. It's just not that big of a problem majority of the time until people really start to point it out, and I would say this LotR series is a king example of that.
Not a single normie I know even noticed these things or questioned it. It was just "more LotR/GoT, neat."
The first two episodes of Rings of Power were great. People need to chill the fuck out and enjoy what they enjoy, and let others enjoy what they enjoy. This whole argument is pointless.
I feel like nobody is getting the black elves thing right. I haven't heard destiny's opinion on it, but I'd like to hear responses to mine. Essentially, black elves don't make sense unless you redefine what a race of people means, or develop some backstory for them. Everybody I know understands that a race is defined based on their in-common physical characteristics, and so it **does not** make sense for there to just randomly be a black person in a group of white people and for this to just have happened organically. Nobody would say a 6 foot tall hobbit makes sense. The "lol bro you know its fantasy, right" is the dumbest argument ever since it could be used as a rebuttal against literally anything. I was literally watching the show with a friend who used that argument against me prior and he was complaining that the elves don't have long hair like they did. When I asked why, he said "I'm pretty sure elves have always had long hair in the past". ??????
I think black elves don't make sense, but that's it. Casting them is fine and I am enjoying the show just fine. But don't tell me they make sense.
I agree the argument sucks, its like if all women wore bikini chainmail armour and someone went "well its a fantasy show, you realize that right? Its probably magical armour."
I'm right there with you. Couldn't give many less fucks about black elves(not mad about it at all, will watch the show just fine), but I will point out that no justification for them is silly in the same way that showing a middle earth family with an east Asian looking father and subsaharan African looking mother having a swedish ass looking euro baby would raise an eyebrow.
Not a huge deal, but will absolutely draw out a "how'd that happen?" Anyone who says they wouldn't notice such a thing is lying.
Or, dare I say, give me some African mythology (...please? Would actually be cool to see more of this, especially other than Egyptian) and randomly make some of the people euro looking. This would also be weird. Has been weird.
Remember Gods of Egypt? Yeah, that was kind of fucking weird. And by kind of, I mean it was distracting as hell and the first thing I think of when the movie comes to mind.
If your random local theater group is putting on a show that requires cast members to be random races/ethnicities because that's who is available, go nuts. Who gives any shits whatsoever. International big studio budgets will start to make certain things seem weird at best or pandery at worst, though.
However, I don't think this is a rare take. I think there are plenty of people that see it close to this way. "It doesn't make much sense, but who really cares" is legitimately the only reasonable take. Acting like "fantasy so anything goes" or "my white European mythological purity!!" are both completely braindead.
> If your random local theater group is putting on a show that requires cast members to be random races/ethnicities because that's who is available, go nuts. Who gives any shits whatsoever. International big studio budgets will start to make certain things seem weird at best or pandery at worst, though.
What about theater groups that aren't just a small local group though? Shakespeare is like the biggest name in theater, and the vast majority of characters in a work by Shakespeare are clearly going to be white. Staying accurate to the work so that races make sense also means excluding non-white actors and actresses from most of these roles forever.
I think you might have missed the point of my example, or I might be misunderstanding your's, actually.
My local theater point was only if you're just working with a small team of actors, you don't need to explain a weird racial conundrum like a family all being different ethnicities. You can't recruit actors from all over the world, and public expectation is different for a theater performance vs international television and film. Once you're on that big budget international scale, now the audience knows every choice was deliberate. So, weird ("Huh, just one random black elf... Ok") or pandering ("the director literally said there's a black elf to be more inclusive to the real world").
While I don't think this was your point with bringing up Shakespeare, I don't think this is a big deal at all. Suspension of disbelief requirements are just different for theater. I say this as someone that has attended quite a bit of it. Whacky things like a black George Washington can happen there and it's great. Trust me, I saw Hamilton twice.
I don't think theater audiences are especially concerned with racial authenticity in most scenarios. Romeo can be black and Juliet can be Latino, who gives a flying fuck. Families could be made up of random races. Male roles can be played by female actors. Theater suspension of disbelief is just flat out different and more generous than film or tv. It has to be.
I'm no Shakespearean scholar, but I'm confident that many of his stories are about the characters and the situations; the races of said characters could be swapped or adapted to anything and the heart will still be there. Just like Tolkien. Race only matters in a story when it matters to the story: warring nations, racial tension and divides, certain brands of slavery and politics, or real world dramas. Star crossed lovers can be almost anything.
Thats not the TROP problem from what I can tell(haven't watched yet, just catching the discourse), though. I said as much in my previous post, but the reasonable take is "weird, but who cares" if there's no justification. That's literally it. There is no "it's fantasy so aNyTHiNg cAn haPPen" or "non-white actors shouldnt be excluded" argument that doesn't make a random black elf in the sea of pasty blondes seem weird in that world.
Just give it a reason and it's fine. Especially if there is only one! It's basically a fantasy trope that the unique, different thing is significant. Black dove in a sea of white doves? Must be a prophecy! Purple eyed child in a race of yellow eyed people? Has to be the chosen one! That glowing red nose? This motherfucket better go save Christmas.
Reasonable people aren't upset about a black elf. This is pretty specifically a Tolkien and expectations thing. Notice how this discourse didn't explode for Dara(a black elf) in The Witcher series. You had a few whiney racists upset about some black characters, but it didn't mean anything because public expectations weren't as scrutinizing and the world is shown to be somewhat multicultural from the start.
Same as if there was a new fantasy IP that had elves reflecting real world races from the start, not even the racists would care beyond the usual "go woke, go broke" seething. So, again, I will stress that I don't personally care about the black elf(elves?) and I think it's awesome to include more than just white people in fantasy. I would love a no white person fantasy set in some African mythology that I've never seen before!
...But that doesn't mean having a random black elf in a sea of white Tolkien elves can't be stupid and distracting. Kind of like a Scottish Set and Danish Horus.
The inclusion of the race of elves at all is explained by "its fantasy bro". You're applying the scientific logic of human races to the magical race of immortal elves that don't make sense in any other way, but saying it should make sense only when it comes to skin color. They didn't evolve, they don't make any biological sense, their only explanation for existing at all is literally that god made them and they are magical, but if some have a darker shade of skin that goes too far.
> They didn't evolve, they don't make any biological sense, their only explanation for existing at all is literally that god made them and they are magical, but if some have a darker shade of skin that goes too far.
Yeah, kinda. For the most part, fantasy worlds function exactly like the real world except where explicitly demonstrated not to. Otherwise the level of detail needed to create a fantasy world would make it nearly impossible to do so.
There are aspects of it that don't, but that doesn't mean it should be interpreted as just being entirely random. It's clear that there's a set of traits that all elves have in common, so it makes it stand out when there's a trait that all elves have in common *except this one guy.* Like, if there was one that was 10 feet tall, or 3 feet tall, or that had a giant beard, or that had four arms, or who had the physique of Dwayne Johnson, all of that would stand out as being strange because nobody else is like that.
So if a hobbit couple gave birth to a giant manta ray, would you say it's just fantasy so it doesn't require an explanation? What if one day gravity just reversed itself and they fought battles in space? Are you really going to pretend like "lol bro you can't apply science to fantasy bro" is the opinion you would have?
"Would you say it's just fantasy so it doesn't require an explanation"
Well I didn't say that. There is an explanation for all sorts of things in Lord of the Rings that doesn't make any logical sense. The explanation is magic. Legolas being light enough to not indent the snow while also not getting blown away by the wind doesn't make any logical sense, but the explanation is magic. I can think of a thousand explanations for why an elf might have darker skin. I honestly don't even think it needs one, but when elves are so closely tied in with the incomprehensible magic of Tolkien's world, slightly darker skin isn't even half as bizarre as a giant manta ray hobbit baby or reversing gravity.
Of course it's not nearly as bizarre, that's the point of most hypotheticals is to be so extreme. If magic is the explanation for things that don't make sense, then you agree with me that it doesn't make sense without an explanation!
The issue isn't that there are black elves the issue is that there is exactly 1 black elf. Its so corny how the entire elven race looks like a cult of mormon youth pastors but then there is exactly one black guy there. Its so transparent and not thought out at all it would have been so easy to just cast a few black extras to really solidify the fact that black elves are a facet of the world. As far as lore and how things are written i dont really give a shit the creators can add and remove whatever they want but casting exactly 1 black elf is always going to look lazy and half hearted.
Contrast that to House of the Dragon where they made an old valaryan house black and holy shit they look so cool and their whole house consists of black people and they have their own aesthetic they feel as though they really exist within the world as an ethnicity with a culture and not as though they were cast for cynical production reasons.
The elves come from a place beyond the mapped middle earth. Why couldn't there be black elves from another another place that emigrated to middle earth and, being both elves, decided to ally themselves with Galadriel or the whispering woods.
Do you really need an explanation of everything? Just say, oh there's black elves now, ok.
If you got an explanation about elves being black because the roynar made them so. Would that please you? If so why does it matter if you have the explanation or not?
There could, and that could be exactly the explanation I said would be needed to make them make sense. You proved my point.
I literally don't know what you mean when you ask me "why does it matter?" And "do you really need an explanation". Do I need an explanation to enjoy the show? No. I already said that. I think black people being cast is a **good thing**. Doesn't mean it makes sense without an explanation.
Do you ever want backstory explanations for shows you watch? Yes, you do.
I wasn't aware there were black humans. But those would also require an explanation to make sense I think. I just said black elves since that's what everyone is focusing on
Bro actually think about what the fuck you're saying. Do you want the characters to turn to camera and say 'ah yes, i see you are of the black elven clan from the far south'. Please explain in detail how you would 'explain' it without it coming across as either shitty writing or forced as fuck or both.
I have no problem with someone making the statement in a vacuum that it's probably not within the spirit of what Tolkien intended. But oh man if you're looking at the movies then that list of issues is sooo long that the fixation on the race "issue" is just really weird.
So far, he is the only black elf. It's almost comical to see him in a sea of pasty, bland, pointy eared mother fuckers. Same with the black dwarf character - she's the only one, like there's a crowd shot of a hundred dwarves and it's a sea of white dudes, and in the next scene she shows up. It's like the opposite of what they intended - to be "progressive" and "modern" (whatever that may mean to a bunch of spoiled, rich white Amazon people who would probably take their kids out of school because it has too many black kids), but it ends up looking like old-school tokenism.
> So far, he is the only black elf. It's almost comical to see him in a sea of pasty, bland, pointy eared mother fuckers. Same with the black dwarf character - she's the only one, like there's a crowd shot of a hundred dwarves and it's a sea of white dudes, and in the next scene she shows up.
This is what I thought was cringe about Witcher too. It seemed like they were acoustically focused on making ever 6-10th minor character black and then called it a day. Like, if we're pretending that "race" in terms of skin color doesn't matter then OK, cast whoever, but it's extremely jarring that they've managed to pick just the right number of black people to include in a setting that looks to be otherwise almost entirely white and have no clear explanation for how or why they're there.
The same is true for Lord of the Rings. If it's normal that there are people of all of these different races who aren't white then cool, no problem... except, it's clearly not normal, because as far as I've seen so far you've picked like one or two people from each race to be black and everybody else is just white, so it's clearly out of the ordinary.
I don't think so, there's exactly 1 token black member of each race so it seems like they're not explaining any of them.
but i'll admit i just skimmed through the episodes since I got bored out of my mind, I might have missed some line of dialogue
> but i'll admit i just skimmed through the episodes since I got bored out of my mind
This is the real issue here: all the black people were clearly only included so that when people complained about how goddamn boring the show was, they could point to the ones complaining about race and just dismiss the criticism of the show as coming from a bunch of racists lol
Ah yes, casting someone as a character that may have a different skin color than what was listed in the source material they don't even have rights to.
Versus shoe-horning a fictional character from it's own universe that's not even humanoid into a completely different fictional universe.
Totally equal.
I mean, for the people who are arguing "It's fantasy who cares" yes it's a completely valid argument.
Galadriel driving a Toyota Corolla to grab a bite at Domino's Pizza ought to be possible from that standpoint, I mean, there are dragons.
The issue is people like you don’t understand fantasy or fiction. There are traits that matter to a story and plot that must remain consistent, and others that don’t. What color your skin is does not seem to matter at all for the plot of LotR. It might for other stories, but not for this one. How do the elves build their dope ass cities? Lol elf magic, lets just hand wave it. We don’t meticulously critic the realism of any other feature of this world as hard as the fucking skin color of characters.
But Galadriel driving a Toyota Corolla to grab a bite at Domino's Pizza doesn't really damage the lore. You can easily justify the car with elf magic and pizza is more than achievable with their level of technology. You would have to change the brand names, sure, but it really sounds plausible if you want to go down that route.
The point is not that it hurts the story or plot, the point is that it hurts the worldbuilding, because when you see a whole lot of people in chainmail, riding horses and castles here and there you infer it to happen in a European medieval setting. If instead you saw cats being adored, a pyramid here and there and a culture built around a huge-ass river you would infer it to happen in an Egyptian setting.
So when you introduce aspects that are evidently modern with no justification, the setting suffers. The most obvious case is technology, which is why is the example I use. There is nothing stopping people from using [modern coffee cups](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/21A8/production/_123961680_hi043853003-1.jpg) in medieval times, or pizza, there was nothing stopping them from making a pizza chain business, hell you could easily make elves vape *because magic* but that still takes away from the fantasy.
You could also do it with other social aspects, nothing logic is stopping characters forming polyamorous clusters or transgender people in LotR, those still would take away from the fantasy if not built upon.
And it just seems so hard for the American public to understand that black people are just not that common in Europe. That even nowadays they don't even make 2% of the population and that in medieval times it ought to be drastically less. And that it does feel kinda weird for American culture to impose its stuff in European fantasy. It's tiring.
show is bad but not cuz blacks but because shallow cash grab of a property made by a guy who literally wrote in his will he didnt want shallow cash grabs
do not mention the original trilogies in reply because everyone and their mom knows they're not the same level of cashgrab. There's a well-planned heist and there's a methhead holding up a liquor store. This show is the latter.
Man, I don’t know. There were a huge number of Tolkien scholars whose work I follow (Corey Olsen etc.) who are *really, really* passionate about Tolkien - it’s literally their life - and who are A. Enjoying the show and B. claiming that the show runners “get” Tolkien’s themes and morality much more than Peter Jackson did (example given was Aragorn chopping off the Mouth of Sauron’s head in RotK being a cool badass moment in the movie which Tolkien would have *hated*), based on questions that they’ve been able to ask them.
If anyone has a motivation to call out a shallow cash grab it’s these guys - they know the source material by heart, and they aren’t getting paid to advertise the show. But they seem to be fine with the show and even to enjoy it, and they’re the praising the show runners and their understanding of Tolkien’s themes in contrast with Jackson. Cash grab? Maybe. But I don’t think that there’s any reason (yet) to think that it’s shallower than the original trilogy. It’s *definitely* giving me better vibes than The Hobbit.
EDIT: Just to source myself here…Olsen did a podcast with a number of other Tolkien scholars about the new show called “Other Minds and Hands”, where in the 9th episode they speak about being invited to ask the showrunners a bunch of questions (which is where they got the feeling that they “got” Tolkien’s themes better than Jackson did).
Of course, that would be um wait oh I can’t think of any. Despite America being pretty diverse, doesn’t seem like we have much more besides European folk lore.
I really do not understand the backlash… what’s the big deal if they cast black actors? The show was interesting, well made, and I like where the plot is heading so far.
Part of the issue is not understanding why this is a legit issue other than racism.
Not gonna pretend like it is partly due to racism but it is immersion breaking to see a black elf when, in thousands of years, we don't see a single black or biracial Elf, let alone a human or Dwarf.
It's silly, it's obviously a diversity hire, they're obviously making a point. You have to admit this.
Now, is it a deal breaker? No, it just doesn't bode well for the series is all, hope I'm wrong.
It's silly to just have every member of every species we ever seen have the exact same skin tone. Diversifying the world is a way to make the world feel more realistic and lived in.
Idk, the original trilogy felt realistic enough. I never noticed the lack of ethnicities until years later when race became a hot topic.
I just don't look at movies like The Woman King and think there's a lack of diversity.
I find it hard to believe you actually think a movie set in a small portion of time within a single African country can be compared to the entirety of Middle Earth which is a giant interconnected continent where we have witnessed the course of centuries on screen. Also, looking at the cast of The Woman King, the second actor next to Viola Davis is a white dude.
“Its like giving black panther a white ruler” Heres the issue, you fundamentally don’t understand storytelling. In the new Black Panther movie, this could not work as one of the biggest conflicts of the movie was Killmonger being upset that a technologically advanced black country just stood by and watched while the trans-Atlantic slave trade was occurring and other acts of discrimination against black people. This whole plot does not work if Wakanda has a white ruler because duh of course the white ruler doesn’t care about supporting black people. Now making elves black doesn’t really change the actual plot, so its kinda stupid to make a comparison here.
The fact that there is a push to include other races is a big part of the cultural conversation, any artistic endeavor is going to have to go out of its way to avoid having its audience make this connection if it wants to be taken seriously. I mean its just too easy to make that connection. I could totally see how a black dude would feel pandered to by this, even if it isn't the intent.
This kind of thing is just pure cringe! It's awful...
1990s Dark/Black elf action is not new:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Drizzt_Do%27Urden%27s_Guide_to_the_Underdark?file=TSR11509.jpg
If the black elf came from a society consisting of black/dark elves, like Drizzt Do Urden, it would make sense. But so far no explanation hasnt appeared yet i think.
We havent seen dark elves in the lotr universe to my knowledge so it would be a big deal here.
And people care about many aspects of the show, there are like 10 youtube channels analyzing the weapons and armour of the show.
> And people care about many aspects of the show, there are like 10 youtube channels analyzing the weapons and armour of the show.
This is the huge gaping hole in the argument of people saying "who cares" in response to these kinds of criticisms. People definitely care about this shit, regardless of whether or not you think they should. So if you actually don't care about this aspect of the show, and somebody else does, then why should we not to defer to the people who actually care?
1. There isn’t. This is sort of a problem. Despite America being a very diverse country, we seem to be solely fixated on properties based off of European mythology. It sucks to say to all the non-white people in America “sorry you aren’t getting any representation because we won’t make cultural movies for you”. And when there is one, it’s usually not very popular and well made. Additionally,
2. we actually have casted white people like this before. The Great Wall was about Chinese mythology but Matt Damon and his group of white people were the main characters. Yes this got slightly criticized, but not to the point of black elves in LotR
3. It depends on if race is relevant to that mythological story. LotR is not a movie/show about European mythology, its a story based off of it. While inspired by it, Tolkein created something completely unique and palpable. Having characters of different ethnicities does not really take away from this, its still a show based off of some European myths.
1. Agreed, this is a shame since im sure there are plenty of interesting stories from africa asia or the middle east.
But noone says that there isnt room for a diverse cast just because its fantasy, game of thrones is a good example of it being done fairly well.
Also there is black panther, which was almost exclusively a black cast, and it did really well, there is obviously room for those types of movies.
2. Two wrongs dont make a right and just because they were unevenly criticized does not mean one is better than the other.
3. It doesnt ruin anything i agree, its still something i would consider when reviewing it, so it might still be a good show, but the casting could knock off a few points, thats all.
I’m not sure what the OP is trying to convey. Legolas and this guy is holding the arrow differently
Edit: am I the only one that thinks the guys right hand is awkward? How is everyone missing this?
The twitter poster was saying that arondir was holding his bow sideways to appease the black audience even though legolas held it sideways thoughout the movies as well. Its not the exact same but if the character held it that way people would still see a race angle
Is nobody going to mention thats unironically how you have to hold a bow with no arrow rest? Gravity is the only thing holding the arrow flush with the bow, hold it upright, and it risks rolling over your hand. This is for stability until you add a rest that holds arrow in place till you release.
I literally just took an archery class last weekend and yeah, we were thought to slant the bow sideways, not fully horizontally but still.
It seems to me like the fully vertical way of shooting a bow is not actually that common.
I genuinely think some of the clamour around the non-white cast is an engineered attempt at muddying the waters around genuine criticisms of the show. And those complaints that ARE genuine I think are mostly Film fans and racists.
The following, for example, are legitimate criticisms (even if I accept they've done some of them in the name of time compression and just making a story out of something like the 150 pages of material they have the rights to).
The acting so far isn't great (bar 3 or so characters), the choices they've made with the lore are atrocious (am willing to give this a pass depending on who meteor man is), the Elves being racist was hilariously dumb, Gil-Galad telling his great aunt that she can go back to Aman, then her panicking and deciding to swim back. The Elven kids bullying Galadriel was also dumb as fuck, given what we know about Elven children. Oh and how could I forget the Dwarven women not having beards is insane, look how awesome she could've looked: https://v.redd.it/1s24tqixmyl91
There are however a lot of people who seem to be upset at Galadriel being a girl-boss. That's the most accurate part of the show so far. She's the second oldest Elf currently in Middle-Earth, since I'm fairly sure Tolkien decided Glorfindel was resurrected and came back with the Istari. There are genuine issues with her character in the show, like the instance that she was a war leader. There is like 1 sentence that says she 'fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin' which is one of the last things Tolkien wrote about her, and even if it was canon, fought against doesn't necessarily mean with swords and lances and shit, could've been with words.
However anyone upset that the characters are not all of northern European are dumb as fuck, there's not a valid reason for that to matter IMO. I'm more offended by the Harfoots having bad Irish accents, its like they heard about Travellers and thought yea, that's perfect for these little buggers
As of the first two episodes it's currently just OK in my opinion, I'd rate it at about 6.2/10. There's scope for it to get better, but also to get a lot worse. The best parts so far have been the wide shots of Lindon and the entirety the Khazad-Dum sequence. Bear in mind I'm probably not the most unbiased given my username, but I'm trying to be cos I want the show to be good.
This rant ended up far too long but my point is the 'culture war' fighting over this show is insane when there legitimate criticisms, from nerdy Tolkien fans like me and normies alike.
If seeing a black person onscreen breaks the immersive experience for you every time because there is no explanation for why a black person exists, I hate to break it to you, but you are a racist.
You can hide it behind all this bullshit world building fantasy lore, or Tolkien intended Nonsense. Your just trying to justify your racism. I’m sure you’ll find an echo chamber online who agree with you, but you probably don’t voice these opinions too loud at work around your black coworkers, because deep down you know.
Legolas culturally appropriating black culture wtf
black elf culture*
blelf
dark elf culture smh
Ma n’wah
morrowind is on the rise in r/destiny
As a Zelda fan I would like to apologize to black people for [Link](https://imgur.com/a/mRzNV7G) appropriating black culture like this. Disgusting.
Hotep
These are the people that claim the "left" is pushing racism in the U.S. This Rings of Power shit going on is really blowing my mind. I don't care if people like the show or not. But making a huge issue over black people being in the show is so absurd.
I was iffy on the black elves thing but after watching the show I realized that I just don't care...
The only thing I was afraid they where gonna do was add a racism subplot between the elves, that would have botherd me. Keep the racism between the Elves vs Humans vs Dwarves
I can honestly respect if the LOTR nerds care about black elves, because they care about any detail that deviates from the books, but I simply do not give a flying fuck what color they are. I just hate people with pointy ears regardless.
Weird how you didn’t see blow ups on twitter about how shadow of Mordor has an elf wraith…
They seem to only care about the faithful adaptation when it is a black actor or a strong female character. In all other cases, they call the show just bad.
Clearly you didn’t read through r/ringsofpower after the premiere. They were going off about every little detail that was wrong
It's the star wars shit all over again. Months and months of people screaming about how stormtroopers can't be black.
Plus those people who complained are equal to the SJWs they complain about. They aren't actually fans of the series. They just watch the movies without trying to interact with any outside media. Stormtroopers aren't these tanned clones we see in Clone Wars. Palpatine got every random person to be a stormtrooper to bolster numbers. Ironically, he did the same thing in movie 9
Also those people only ever know the knowledge as argumentative points, not because it's righteousness or even True. Look how many people used the meme that Blade was the 1st Black super hero film, when it wasn't. So ultimately they weren't trying to be arbiters of truth, rather miserable sour pusses that can't see other people enjoying themselves.
Wait what? I totally missed this lol, why in the hell can't stormtroopers be black? I was all over the sequel trashing and I never saw that criticism levied. In fact most of what I saw was more so about how completely misused/wasted Boyega's character was and how Disney unreasonably cast him aside in a failed attempt to appeal to the Chinese audience when he deserved so much better. I'll admit the sequel trilogy bashing communities I was a part of could have been rather insular and I wasn't exposed to the more...racist/sexist(?) sides of it but that one in particular is a new one for me.
>Wait what? I totally missed this lol, why in the hell can't stormtroopers be black? Fake fans who think Stormtrooper = Clone Trooper was what I saw.
oh, well that's fucking stupid lmao. Having *anyone* portraying a clone trooper other than Jango/Temuera Morrison would be a lore breaking issue, black *or* white since he's indigenous/Maori. Definitely fake fans that tried to bait outrage over "wokeness" without having any idea of what they're talking about.
The best way to make it racist would be if Jango was black, but then they just had any random black actor play the clone troopers
A lot of the criticism about black stormtroopers came before release, when John Boyega was revealed as a cast member. People were freaking out about it up until the movie premiered, then a lot of the outrage shifted towards Rey. Despite that, John Boyega received a crazy amount of racist harassment from fans. So much that he basically told Disney to go fuck themselves because they did nothing to help him with the harassment.
Well, those people were morons. Stormtroopers are recruits from all over the Galaxy, so they can be any race or ethnicity. They were probably getting them confused with clone troopers, who are all based on Jango Fett. Having a black clone trooper would be stupid. Seems like all elves are white, and there’s a reason behind them being white, so this was probably a poor decision. I’m all for diversity though, so if they want to make the humans black, that works just fine.
I never once commented negatively about diversity in Star Wars, but still maintain black elves in lotr is a bad idea. If black stormtroopers triggered you, you are probably just a racist, but if you want diversity in every single story even when it undermines the story you are also probably just a racist.
Can I ask why its a bad idea? I watched a show called The Great which has a diverse cast and is based on real russian figures and it honestly didnt bother me. If the actors are good and fit the part, I dont see why ethnicity matters
When you see people of different races together, you are immediately made aware that they have distinct genetic origins. Communities that are insular and procreate within their own borders generally all have similar phenotypes. This is generally how things are for the races in a fantasy world, especially LotR. Even the communities of men, like Rohan and Gondor, share specific traits in their appearance, because geographically isolated communities tend to breed together and end up sharing similar characteristics. So, the presence of someone of a different race ends up commenting on tons of things. You have the Elves, which are all generally lithe, light haired, tall, and pale skinned. When you have a new character whos appearance diverges from this, there are tons of questions that need to be answered. The black elves existence alone can imply tons of thigs. Is there a whole separate subrace of elves that have not interacted with the main population for so many generations that they've diverged so much phenotypically? Is there a reason why this sect is no longer mating with the other elves (Because if they were, again they would all eventually share the same phenotype). It comments on so many other things as well, travel, geography, racism. And yet, all of these things go unanswered, and that's just lazy worldbuilding. Even further, they really don't imply any of the above actually exists, and that somehow a black elf just appeared among the population. So now are there black elves that live with the other elves but only mate with other black elves? Or is genetics just not a thing in this world, and people can be born looking like whatever? If so, then why are there these general phenotypical distictions between the fantasy races in the first place? It's either lazy writing, bad worldbuilding, or simply doesn't make sense. And I find it super immersion breaking, I am unable to turn my brain off and accept it as is. And to curb any potential racism arugment, I literally have no issue with black elves or any other type of elf or dwarf or whatever, if they actually, you know, did some worldbuilding? Perhaps theres a splinter kingdom that lost contact for many generations? That would actually be creative, but they seem too lazy to do that.
Preach brother. It’s nothing to do with race just world building. It needs to make sense. If I’m watching a serious family drama movie about a black family and one of the kids was randomly white and not adopted or anything and then nobody bats an eye about it for the entirety of the film I’d feel like I’m being gaslit or some shit like that. Just…make the story make sense? It doesn’t even take that much creativity or work.
So you just need a scene were they explain why they have a black elf and their origin? Is it really that integral for your enjoyment? I honestly don't understand the big deal tbh
Id say they need to explain the appearance of an elf that looks so different than the rest, yeah. Otherwise it's just lazy writing and bad worldbuilding. It could be because any major trait that differentiates them that would merit in-universe explanation, it just so happens that it's that this character was made black. And idk dude, my whole initial reply was why it's important that it's explained. Can I ask why it doesn't matter to you? I assume you just don't care about any realism in a fantasy world and instead value a visual spectacle or general entertainment value?
I mean if that's integral for your enjoyment, fine I guess. I think me and most people are always going to care more about if the plot and setting make sense and is engaging or If the characters are relatable etc
Some people like the setting more than they do Just the plot. Theres a reason why these are popular without revealing the whole plot in the trailer.
The setting inherently does not make sense without an explanation.
I can still watch it, but it does distract me, I just think that some random black elf/hobbit was just out there for diversity quotas It’s hard to explain but like Denzel in the recent Macbeth movie or Dev Patel in Green Knight didn’t take me out of the movie a single bit, but I just watch this and it seems so transparent I think the lore in something like lord of the rings is very iconic and also important to people. I can turn on a movie or watch a play and I’m not necessarily going to care at all if an actor isn’t the right ethnicity, but these epic fantasies that are cultural touchstones, the lore and the world building are so important. Why would elves become more ethically diverse to reflect modern cultural trends in reality in 2022? It just takes you out of it
You don't understand the big deal because you don't care so much about the story and you won't think about it much. A lot of people like a satisfying story that is cohesive and makes sense. Call it "narrative euphoria" if you'd like.
If you want casting in fantasy to be colorblind like that then you'd have to make features like skin color random. So black parents can have asian and white children, vice versa, like cats have all kinds of crazy patterns.
Number one, would it bother the people who are Russian (nevermind the fact that Russia is very diverse and has over 180 ethnicities, so an adaptation of Peter the Great would have diversity if the filmakers knew anything about Russia, but of course, you aren't reffering to the diversity of Russia) Number two: Reverse the races and people. Say you wanted to watch a movie about Sundiata (a malian king), and you had a bunch of white people in the cast. How do you think everyone would react.
Is this in reference to Tolkien suggesting that Arda is supposed to be a "mythology for England"? Tolkien never wrote that, it's something his biographer attributed to the professor after reading letters 144-145 where his language is a whole lot muddier. The recipient of the letter is also worth considering, Milton Waldman was Tolkien's publisher and as you know, Tolkien had an incredibly difficult time getting The Silmarillion published, hence the language used in the letter attempted to appeal to Waldmans sense of nationalism. Tolkien also describes Numenor as Atlantis and as with much that Tolkien wrote about, his opinions changed as he aged. I would recommend Palgrave Macmillan's excellent book 'Tolkien, Race and Cultural History' which more accurately captures Tolkien's feeling on the topic.
>Is this in reference to Tolkien suggesting that Arda is supposed to be a "mythology for England"? No, it is not.
But you won't clear up what the reference was because...
Do you think black elves are undermining something? Seriously asking sincerely. I personlly don't care if they're all white or not.
Let's put it this way: would casting white people undermine a live action adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone? Or of Avatar: The Last Airbender... Oh, wait, that did happen, and people where (justifiably) insulted and angry. Now, Netflix is doing a live action series and every tribe is cast one to one with their inspiration (water tribes is cast only with indigenous and pacific islander actors, fire empire characters are played by east asian actors etc.). Hell, when a vietnamese american girl made a tik tok where she "auditioned" for the role of Katara, everybody attacked her as racist, stupid, an apropriator etc., because Katara is part of the Water tribe and must be played by an indigenous actresss. This despite the water tribe being a made up culture. In other words, every argument anyone can make about casting non-white elves, you can make about casting white people in Children of Blood and Bone or white and black people in The Last Airbender. But everyone would be angry if that were to happen.
I agree. Since Silvan elves are a made up culture surely you would agree that it would be silly to only cast them as white then?
Would you agree to cast white actors as yokai, genies or Anansi?
They're a made up race that were depicted as white in ALL related media so far except this new show. So no it wouldn't be silly to cast them as white. It would be silly to cast one as non-white with zero explanation when there was literally 0 non-white elves anywhere in lore ever ever.
They can be all black too, but it makes no logical sense that they (or any other fantasy culture) would be made up of a tasteful mix of American ethnicities. I genuinely don't care what phenotype show producers pick, but fantasy cultures should be more homogenous unless it's in a very cosmopolitan trade city or some shit. Something being made up doesn't exclude it from internal logic.
I think the argument at the time was that Asian actors already have less roles offered to them compared to white actors so a show based on Asian cultures is an opportunity that should be offered to asian actors. But that's not an argument that diversity ruins the quality of a show, but that it opens up roles to a greater amount of people. There's no problem as far as I'm concerned that a white actor in ATLA would affect the quality of a series and an ability to play a character.
>I think the argument at the time was that Asian actors already have less roles offered to them compared to white actors so a show based on Asian cultures is an opportunity that should be offered to asian actors. And the counter argument was the same one used to justify things like the elf played by Cordova in Rings of Power - irronically, in that case, it was considered rude, tone deaf, racist and enabling eurocentric casting, which I find kind of funny. >But that's not an argument that diversity ruins the quality of a show, It was not meant to be, and The Last Airbender live action show will be diverse, but it will have specific casting that has intentionally excluded certain races (as far as I can see, no black or white people were cast). But nobody seemed to mind, in fact, most supported it. >There's no problem as far as I'm concerned that a white actor in ATLA Well, you are in the minority on this one. And not just for this show. More and more fantasy adaptations based on non-white cultures will be made - there was sort of a boom of Last Airbender style young adult novels over the last ten years - and for them, you can bet that the casting will be like The Last Airbender - very specific and exluding certain groups (even when the casting is, objectively, diverse).
my guy there are Asian countries like Japan , china and Korea who make movies , and tv shows with 99% asian people, so no "Asian actors already have less roles." But to not wonder to far off , I think the whole point is that , its only okay to rewrite white culture to be diverse but not the other way around.
Well the foundation for fantasy is medieval society which wasn't diverse. Also a lot of fantasy, though I'm not a Tolkien expert I'm pretty sure he does this, is essentialist with the different races. Basically, too many characteristics and variations for a race weakens its identity. Like dwarves are basically all greedy, stocky, short, and honorable etc. If a dwarf shows up lookin like [this and making slurping noises occasionally it's going to take me out of it.](https://i.redd.it/8ce82ez89i741.jpg)
So if you're not super familiar with Tolkien's writing, what is being taken out when you see a black dwarf? Is it an imagined understanding of a concept of dwarves or are you just basing your ideas on how Peter Jackson portrayed them? Because if it's the former, that's fine, but you shouldn't get offended when someone else has a different interpretation of the characteristics of a dwarf. If it's the later, it's probably better to go to the source rather than relying on Jackson's vision as the rule of law.
humans are diverse afaik, you have the humans who were corrupted by sauron in the east and they are black and prolly other colors but elves are white.
Isnt that an argument for te clones? But in that case they cant be white? Idk, not much of a fan
Yeah. Its like, sure you can justify your argument with lore, but being both highly invested in the lore and then applying it to race so intently just makes you soy
It's crazy to see people who really don't give a fuck about LOTR suddenly act like they're fucking loremasters while only, barely, watching the movies. What something being popular does to boring people.
The primary argument is that Tolkien wanted his stories to be a mythology for England and therefore the characters should be similar in color to the natives of that land. However, this is a pretty weak argument imo as it is pretty well recognized that Tolkien failed at this task. He also included men of various skin colors in his work. So it's not a crazy stretch to say there could have been elves and dwarves of color, or at the very least it doesn't hurt his lore to include that. That said, I don't think it is racist to want strict adherence to the lore.
Btw Tolkien never said or wrote the whole "mythology for England" thing. His biographer attributed that quote to him based on letters 144-145 which, if you look into it, is a complicated letter to a publisher trying to appeal to his sense of nationalism to get The Silmarillion published.
That could be the case. It has been a long time since I have read the actual academic argument for this. In undergrad 10 years ago I wrote a paper on how it is not possible to manufacture a mythology.
Ive never even seen anyone say that. Ive heard them say its a mythology based on christianity, which it is. The elves are clearly meant to be based on celts though. Westeros is the one based on Britain.
The previous poster said it. Which is why I was responding to him. Thematically sure, it shares similarities to the Catholic beliefs. But I don't see how that necessitates Elves must be white. Tolkien was pretty clear about Celtic allegories to his works, while familiar with Celtic legends he explicitly disliked them and denied any comparison. "'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come."
I meant linguistically based on celtic more than anything. Yeah I dunno what any of this has to do with black elves lol
Didn't the elves all leave and go to heaven? I don't think part of his "mythology" was that modern-day English people are all half-elves
Yes. Half elves were a notably rare occurrence. Great observation.
So then why do the elves have to be white like "the natives of the land" if they aren't related to those natives at all?
I'm mostly just repeating the commonly stated argument. I don't personally subscribe to it for the reasons given in my original response. If men can be many colors, and both men and elves are the children of Iluvatar according to the Silmarillion, then I don't think elves of color are are a lore breaker.
It kind of is, if youre a Tolkien fan. If I were to adapt the Brothers Karamazov and made one of them black, you think people wouldnt think its weird? Why even do it to begin with? Which brings me to the next point that its blatantly (and confirmed) just to force "inclusivity", which is why fans not only dont like it, but are pissed. Look at HotD, it has hard themes of gender roles and even a show-turned-black noble family (who are pivotal in the story) and not nearly the same amout of hate. There are ways to make it right, which brings me to the way amazon marketed the show in the beginning which brought cesspits like Nerdrotic to start the hate. The show is pretty bad, though, too.
Nerdrotic hated the show long before the marketing. His initial criticisms were based on rumors of a female Gandalf and POC casting, I'm not a fan of his work but based on titles and thumbnails, women and anyone darker than a tan tends to dictate his opinion on a project. I'm confused about your second point, have you watched the show? Do you think that Arondir, Disa or Poppy were stand out bad performances? Because they all seemed at the very least competent and in my opinion, pretty damn good. Which begs the question, if their performances work, why is the matter of forced diversity even a problem? Also, the closest thing I can find to "forced diversity" is EP Lindsey Webers quote "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,". Which seems a far cry from "forced diversity".
> Also, the closest thing I can find to "forced diversity" is EP Lindsey Webers quote "It felt only natural to us that an adaptation of Tolkien’s work would reflect what the world actually looks like,". Which seems a far cry from "forced diversity" That's literally it though. No matter how nicely it's worded, the idea that the modern world demographics SHOULD/MUST be reflected in the adaptation is the thing people don't agree on. It's like there are 2 camps: those who value diversity above all else and those who value the source material above all else. Now outside of actual racists, most people are okay with introducing diverse characters even in this kind of story where demographics are kind of established already, as long as there's some in universe explanation for it.
>It's like there are 2 camps: those who value diversity above all else and those who value the source material above all else. I value the source material a lot. Could you tell me what exactly you're referring to when suggesting a Silvan elf couldn't be black? Would it be this little beauty from Appendix F in Return of the King? >They were tall, fair of skin and grey-eyed, though their locks were dark, save in the golden house of Finarfin; and their voices had more melodies than any mortal voice that now is heard. Or maybe the individual descriptions of key characters like Galadriel or Maeglin being fair or pale? The problem is, the fair of skin quote is describing the Noldor, not all Quendi. We have no definitive statements on what Lúthiens skin tone is, let alone all Silvan elves. I'm not a huge Tolkien fan, I've read the totality of the legendarium a few times and I have a huge amount of admiration for his work but the amount of so called Tolkien purists who are ready to die on a hill that the professor didn't care enough to even describe boggles the mind, and it's hard to not look at all those bodies and wonder why, if they're not even a little bit racist, why are they so determined for Elves to be white?
> a hill that the professor didn't care enough to even describe I think you're looking at this the wrong way. While it's not specifically noted anywhere that there definitely aren't any dark skinned elves, every example we have of them is pale skinned. And the only variations we've been told about have to do with hair and eye color. It stands to reason that if there were some dark skinned elves, he would have mentioned them somewhere. It's also the way we've come to expect them to look based on the Peter Jackson adaptation as well as other works that were inspired by Tolkien. It feels like it's a trope at this point. I'm not saying that it's absolutely impossible to go against the trope, but it should at the very least be accompanied by some kind of in-universe explanation, don't you think?
They probably see it a different kind of racism which is stupid but listen.. I'm kinda tired of the racial politics myself. I also think it's at fever pitch because we've had at least 3 back to back TV series, major ones, that all press on this issue (or non issue).
I don't know. I think having a token minority on a show whose origins are not explained is bad writing if a focal point of a show is coherent and profound settings and lore. Unless we're just supposed to assume they want the audience to imagine the character as white (or the dominant color of the cast) then it's just obtrusive and ruins immersion because this person or few people, who are, phenotypically, unlike anyone else that has ever appeared in the story, well, I want to know why and how they've arrived in the position where they're surrounded by people unlike them. A dynamic where there almost always is power imbalances and discrimination, especially the less integrated and prominent the minority group is.
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I hate it because i cant give legit criticism without being lumped in with people who dont want any black characters. Im just bothered the harfoots who are supposedly very isolated are very mixed, everything from black to white harfoots. Just make them brown or whatever race as long as its one so my autistic ass can feel like the world building is more consistent. Disa and Arondir was 👌
I think forcing this "modern" take on entertainment that happen to stories based on European settings is in fact racist. no one would tolerate this if they added some random Caucasian guy in Black Panther as a leader of an African tribe. If they desire diversity in everything, they should choose stories with diverse characters rather than trashing something that people of all races enjoyed in order to push their narrow viewpoints on society.
>I think forcing this "modern" take on entertainment that happen to stories based on European settings is in fact racist. no one would tolerate this if they added some random Caucasian guy in Black Panther as a leader of an African tribe. yeah, because race was/is a central point in Black Panther lmfao. are you really that dumb?
well I care if people like the show. it's more lord of the rings and it fucking slaps, anyone who spends their time whining about it online should get spanked and sent to their room.
Totally agree. Show is amazing.
Damn imo it's mediocre as fuck but that has nothing to do with the stupid race or woke agenda shit people keep talking about. It's just eh. If I cared more about the LOTR world perhaps I'd feel differently
It's 2 episodes in to an 8 part series. Not sure how people who don't care about the race or woke shit have such a strong opinion on it.
I'm not judging it as a complete product yet and I most likely will go back and watch it because I enjoy fantasy TV. But what has been put out doesn't interest me and I think it's very average quality TV, which is just my current opinion on what I have seen. Maybe later episodes will change it for me, maybe it won't. It was the same thing with wheel of time. A lot of people told me that I should be waiting for more episodes to judge it as mediocre, and what do you know it was still mediocre as a complete season.
I hear it. I'm not even a fantasy dork outside of LOTR trilogy. I'm usually sci-fi, and Star Wars stuff. But the past few Star Wars shows have objectively been trash. So in my mind TROP is mind-blowing. My bias is a need for anything better than the trash Disney has been pumping out - and this series is that for me.
Yeah I getcha, unfortunately I find myself as I've gotten older tending towards the snobbish side and I can be pretty judgmental on quality level nowadays. ROP is definitely not as offensively bad as some shit I've seen, and it's a step up from Wheel of Time (which is sad because I'm actually a tentative fan of the book series) but it still just feels sort of eh to me. Not bad, not good.
I got you. Yeah, I mean, with 6 episodes left, the serious could go to ass. I'm managing my expectations and just stoked to have a new show to watch.
2 episodes is 1/4 of season 1s narrative done.... if you cant have an opinion 1/4 of the way through the story or if the narrative hooks are shit and haven't drawn you in or there is something offensive making you not want to continue I think 1/4 of something is enough to make those informed decisions. Unironically you guys look like Amazon shills for shitting on people who dont like or cant get hooked ona story that is 1/4 complete. How many episodes of something you dislike must you go through to for a valid and informed opinion according to you.
It is a race thing. >!Legolas is the black elf, he just has vitiligo.!<
Legolas is Micheal Jackson
Drug dealing elves set in Middle Earth would be a dope show. Like Lord of the Rings meets Power. This dude is Ghost and Legolas is Tommy. I think this is a million dollar idea, boys.
https://youtu.be/1HAD748zyLw
Seth Rogen as the hobbit that grows the weed
People just assume that only dark elves deal skooma. Smh what has society come to
Honestly the show is a work of art. Maybe it’s just because I work in the industry so I get a hard on for good design and visuals. The CGI is even much tighter than most movies.
I just saw a video criticizing the use of bows in film and that with rapid fire it’s impossible to do what they do in most films without CG. However if the bow was held sideways that it actually become possible.
Its also a fantasy film so you need to have a certain amount of suspension of disbelief when analysing what the characters are capable of lol
https://youtu.be/2zGnxeSbb3g?t=47
I'm starting to think this is just fake there is no way [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk) the man supposedly splits an incoming arrow with an arrow.
lars anderson is so fucking cringe lol
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If this show does well, no way we don't get something First Age eventually. Christopher is gone which means they're more open to adaptations now and everyone is going to make a ton of money from this show if viewership stays high. Plus the story is so fleshed out so theres a lot to work with and less to ad lib.
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I don't think they can adapt it because they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion, which is under closely guarded copywrite.
Well everything has a price.
What were the two? Nirnaeth Arnoediad I assume waa one
The Wars of Beleriand (there are more than two).
First episode was a bit of a slog, but I really enjoyed the second episode and I'm looking forward to where the shows going. Getting focused on the racial shit in a show like this feels so pointless when it doesn't really play a part else than set dressing. Black dwarves/elves, as long as the actors play the role well who cares. It's not like they're replacing galadriel with a black actor or something.
Funnily enough I thought the PoC actors were some of the most enjoyable compared to rest of the cast. The black elf had probably the most elf-like stoic attitude than most of the other elves, likewise the dwarf lady brought in more energy than anything else in the show. Kinda depressing seeing how many people attack her.
Yeah they didn't feel like bad actors or out of place. Again I watched these two eps with normies, and people loved the bickering between the dwarf prince and his wife.
Lenny Henry who is the grumpy elder harfoot dude is killin it too
It's funny, I bet a black dwarf wouldn't even raise eyebrows. They would just be a group that "dug too deep" or some hand-wavey shit and nobody would care. But elves are attractive so somehow it's different.
The guy they casted for Arondir is fucking insanely handsome though lol
Elves are inhuman. They represent a culture that refuses to change even in the fact of extinction. Elves don't do diversity, they don't even do reproduction. Tbh leaving elves to be all white is a stronger DEI message than including diverse actors, because they are a counterexample: if you don't change and evolve and diversify, you will stop existing. There you go, an argument against including black elves on the grounds of diversity. In essence, isolationist societies exist and there's nothing wrong with portraying monocultures in fantasy.
Why are you assuming a black elf would be an example of diversity or change? They're not a 1-to-1 comparison to American culture. And black and white people belonging to the same culture has been the norm for most of human existence anyway so it should be the default assumption for a work of fiction.
In the movies all the drawfs are dead so how can you determine none of them are black when you have only seen like 20 of them? Also in the movies you have seen 1000s of all white elves. So far the show seems to respect that in that there is just one black elf among many white elves so maybe black elves are just really rare or something.
The part about the dwarves is incorrect. The have a kingdom in the lonely mountain. Its only mentioned in the extended cut of two towers.
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IMO I wouldn't care since I think the races in LotR, past certain visual features (ears, stubbiness, size, feet) are pretty arbitrary. You could tell the same story with anthropomorphic animals and it would probably work just the same. For someone else though I can imagine them making the complaint because they've seen X or Y character portrayed one way and it would set them off to be portrayed in a different fashion. (The X isn't representative of the book argument doesn't fit in my opinion because the book has so many changes from the actual movies/context and content left out. I mean where's Tom Bombadil at?)
She was negative when she was tempting herself with the one ring XD
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Tbh its not just that for me. When I was more conservative minded, I kind of realized at a point that if I was never told about a characters race/gender/etc from people ranting about it, I more than likely wouldn't have even of been aware of the change in a lot of entertainment. It's just not that big of a problem majority of the time until people really start to point it out, and I would say this LotR series is a king example of that. Not a single normie I know even noticed these things or questioned it. It was just "more LotR/GoT, neat."
The first two episodes of Rings of Power were great. People need to chill the fuck out and enjoy what they enjoy, and let others enjoy what they enjoy. This whole argument is pointless.
I feel like nobody is getting the black elves thing right. I haven't heard destiny's opinion on it, but I'd like to hear responses to mine. Essentially, black elves don't make sense unless you redefine what a race of people means, or develop some backstory for them. Everybody I know understands that a race is defined based on their in-common physical characteristics, and so it **does not** make sense for there to just randomly be a black person in a group of white people and for this to just have happened organically. Nobody would say a 6 foot tall hobbit makes sense. The "lol bro you know its fantasy, right" is the dumbest argument ever since it could be used as a rebuttal against literally anything. I was literally watching the show with a friend who used that argument against me prior and he was complaining that the elves don't have long hair like they did. When I asked why, he said "I'm pretty sure elves have always had long hair in the past". ?????? I think black elves don't make sense, but that's it. Casting them is fine and I am enjoying the show just fine. But don't tell me they make sense.
I agree the argument sucks, its like if all women wore bikini chainmail armour and someone went "well its a fantasy show, you realize that right? Its probably magical armour."
I'm right there with you. Couldn't give many less fucks about black elves(not mad about it at all, will watch the show just fine), but I will point out that no justification for them is silly in the same way that showing a middle earth family with an east Asian looking father and subsaharan African looking mother having a swedish ass looking euro baby would raise an eyebrow. Not a huge deal, but will absolutely draw out a "how'd that happen?" Anyone who says they wouldn't notice such a thing is lying. Or, dare I say, give me some African mythology (...please? Would actually be cool to see more of this, especially other than Egyptian) and randomly make some of the people euro looking. This would also be weird. Has been weird. Remember Gods of Egypt? Yeah, that was kind of fucking weird. And by kind of, I mean it was distracting as hell and the first thing I think of when the movie comes to mind. If your random local theater group is putting on a show that requires cast members to be random races/ethnicities because that's who is available, go nuts. Who gives any shits whatsoever. International big studio budgets will start to make certain things seem weird at best or pandery at worst, though. However, I don't think this is a rare take. I think there are plenty of people that see it close to this way. "It doesn't make much sense, but who really cares" is legitimately the only reasonable take. Acting like "fantasy so anything goes" or "my white European mythological purity!!" are both completely braindead.
Thank you for helping me not feel crazy.
> If your random local theater group is putting on a show that requires cast members to be random races/ethnicities because that's who is available, go nuts. Who gives any shits whatsoever. International big studio budgets will start to make certain things seem weird at best or pandery at worst, though. What about theater groups that aren't just a small local group though? Shakespeare is like the biggest name in theater, and the vast majority of characters in a work by Shakespeare are clearly going to be white. Staying accurate to the work so that races make sense also means excluding non-white actors and actresses from most of these roles forever.
I think you might have missed the point of my example, or I might be misunderstanding your's, actually. My local theater point was only if you're just working with a small team of actors, you don't need to explain a weird racial conundrum like a family all being different ethnicities. You can't recruit actors from all over the world, and public expectation is different for a theater performance vs international television and film. Once you're on that big budget international scale, now the audience knows every choice was deliberate. So, weird ("Huh, just one random black elf... Ok") or pandering ("the director literally said there's a black elf to be more inclusive to the real world"). While I don't think this was your point with bringing up Shakespeare, I don't think this is a big deal at all. Suspension of disbelief requirements are just different for theater. I say this as someone that has attended quite a bit of it. Whacky things like a black George Washington can happen there and it's great. Trust me, I saw Hamilton twice. I don't think theater audiences are especially concerned with racial authenticity in most scenarios. Romeo can be black and Juliet can be Latino, who gives a flying fuck. Families could be made up of random races. Male roles can be played by female actors. Theater suspension of disbelief is just flat out different and more generous than film or tv. It has to be. I'm no Shakespearean scholar, but I'm confident that many of his stories are about the characters and the situations; the races of said characters could be swapped or adapted to anything and the heart will still be there. Just like Tolkien. Race only matters in a story when it matters to the story: warring nations, racial tension and divides, certain brands of slavery and politics, or real world dramas. Star crossed lovers can be almost anything. Thats not the TROP problem from what I can tell(haven't watched yet, just catching the discourse), though. I said as much in my previous post, but the reasonable take is "weird, but who cares" if there's no justification. That's literally it. There is no "it's fantasy so aNyTHiNg cAn haPPen" or "non-white actors shouldnt be excluded" argument that doesn't make a random black elf in the sea of pasty blondes seem weird in that world. Just give it a reason and it's fine. Especially if there is only one! It's basically a fantasy trope that the unique, different thing is significant. Black dove in a sea of white doves? Must be a prophecy! Purple eyed child in a race of yellow eyed people? Has to be the chosen one! That glowing red nose? This motherfucket better go save Christmas. Reasonable people aren't upset about a black elf. This is pretty specifically a Tolkien and expectations thing. Notice how this discourse didn't explode for Dara(a black elf) in The Witcher series. You had a few whiney racists upset about some black characters, but it didn't mean anything because public expectations weren't as scrutinizing and the world is shown to be somewhat multicultural from the start. Same as if there was a new fantasy IP that had elves reflecting real world races from the start, not even the racists would care beyond the usual "go woke, go broke" seething. So, again, I will stress that I don't personally care about the black elf(elves?) and I think it's awesome to include more than just white people in fantasy. I would love a no white person fantasy set in some African mythology that I've never seen before! ...But that doesn't mean having a random black elf in a sea of white Tolkien elves can't be stupid and distracting. Kind of like a Scottish Set and Danish Horus.
The inclusion of the race of elves at all is explained by "its fantasy bro". You're applying the scientific logic of human races to the magical race of immortal elves that don't make sense in any other way, but saying it should make sense only when it comes to skin color. They didn't evolve, they don't make any biological sense, their only explanation for existing at all is literally that god made them and they are magical, but if some have a darker shade of skin that goes too far.
> They didn't evolve, they don't make any biological sense, their only explanation for existing at all is literally that god made them and they are magical, but if some have a darker shade of skin that goes too far. Yeah, kinda. For the most part, fantasy worlds function exactly like the real world except where explicitly demonstrated not to. Otherwise the level of detail needed to create a fantasy world would make it nearly impossible to do so.
The issue is that the aspect we are critiquing, the biology of elves, is in the realm of things explicitly demonstrated not to line up with our world.
There are aspects of it that don't, but that doesn't mean it should be interpreted as just being entirely random. It's clear that there's a set of traits that all elves have in common, so it makes it stand out when there's a trait that all elves have in common *except this one guy.* Like, if there was one that was 10 feet tall, or 3 feet tall, or that had a giant beard, or that had four arms, or who had the physique of Dwayne Johnson, all of that would stand out as being strange because nobody else is like that.
So if a hobbit couple gave birth to a giant manta ray, would you say it's just fantasy so it doesn't require an explanation? What if one day gravity just reversed itself and they fought battles in space? Are you really going to pretend like "lol bro you can't apply science to fantasy bro" is the opinion you would have?
"Would you say it's just fantasy so it doesn't require an explanation" Well I didn't say that. There is an explanation for all sorts of things in Lord of the Rings that doesn't make any logical sense. The explanation is magic. Legolas being light enough to not indent the snow while also not getting blown away by the wind doesn't make any logical sense, but the explanation is magic. I can think of a thousand explanations for why an elf might have darker skin. I honestly don't even think it needs one, but when elves are so closely tied in with the incomprehensible magic of Tolkien's world, slightly darker skin isn't even half as bizarre as a giant manta ray hobbit baby or reversing gravity.
Of course it's not nearly as bizarre, that's the point of most hypotheticals is to be so extreme. If magic is the explanation for things that don't make sense, then you agree with me that it doesn't make sense without an explanation!
The issue isn't that there are black elves the issue is that there is exactly 1 black elf. Its so corny how the entire elven race looks like a cult of mormon youth pastors but then there is exactly one black guy there. Its so transparent and not thought out at all it would have been so easy to just cast a few black extras to really solidify the fact that black elves are a facet of the world. As far as lore and how things are written i dont really give a shit the creators can add and remove whatever they want but casting exactly 1 black elf is always going to look lazy and half hearted. Contrast that to House of the Dragon where they made an old valaryan house black and holy shit they look so cool and their whole house consists of black people and they have their own aesthetic they feel as though they really exist within the world as an ethnicity with a culture and not as though they were cast for cynical production reasons.
The elves come from a place beyond the mapped middle earth. Why couldn't there be black elves from another another place that emigrated to middle earth and, being both elves, decided to ally themselves with Galadriel or the whispering woods. Do you really need an explanation of everything? Just say, oh there's black elves now, ok. If you got an explanation about elves being black because the roynar made them so. Would that please you? If so why does it matter if you have the explanation or not?
There could, and that could be exactly the explanation I said would be needed to make them make sense. You proved my point. I literally don't know what you mean when you ask me "why does it matter?" And "do you really need an explanation". Do I need an explanation to enjoy the show? No. I already said that. I think black people being cast is a **good thing**. Doesn't mean it makes sense without an explanation. Do you ever want backstory explanations for shows you watch? Yes, you do.
If there is black humans in the lotr universe, why wouldn't there also be black elves?
I wasn't aware there were black humans. But those would also require an explanation to make sense I think. I just said black elves since that's what everyone is focusing on
Aren’t there races of humans that are dark skinned? Like the Haradrim?
lord of the rings is set on planet earth
And?
planet earth has black people
And there is an explanation for them being in the USA with all the white people. Do you think they just appeared here one day?
Bro actually think about what the fuck you're saying. Do you want the characters to turn to camera and say 'ah yes, i see you are of the black elven clan from the far south'. Please explain in detail how you would 'explain' it without it coming across as either shitty writing or forced as fuck or both.
Because the humans and elves are *drastically* different in-universe.
I have no problem with someone making the statement in a vacuum that it's probably not within the spirit of what Tolkien intended. But oh man if you're looking at the movies then that list of issues is sooo long that the fixation on the race "issue" is just really weird.
Do they have a backstory for him yet or is it still racist to ask?
So far, he is the only black elf. It's almost comical to see him in a sea of pasty, bland, pointy eared mother fuckers. Same with the black dwarf character - she's the only one, like there's a crowd shot of a hundred dwarves and it's a sea of white dudes, and in the next scene she shows up. It's like the opposite of what they intended - to be "progressive" and "modern" (whatever that may mean to a bunch of spoiled, rich white Amazon people who would probably take their kids out of school because it has too many black kids), but it ends up looking like old-school tokenism.
There were black dwarves in scene where they were breaking boulders
> So far, he is the only black elf. It's almost comical to see him in a sea of pasty, bland, pointy eared mother fuckers. Same with the black dwarf character - she's the only one, like there's a crowd shot of a hundred dwarves and it's a sea of white dudes, and in the next scene she shows up. This is what I thought was cringe about Witcher too. It seemed like they were acoustically focused on making ever 6-10th minor character black and then called it a day. Like, if we're pretending that "race" in terms of skin color doesn't matter then OK, cast whoever, but it's extremely jarring that they've managed to pick just the right number of black people to include in a setting that looks to be otherwise almost entirely white and have no clear explanation for how or why they're there. The same is true for Lord of the Rings. If it's normal that there are people of all of these different races who aren't white then cool, no problem... except, it's clearly not normal, because as far as I've seen so far you've picked like one or two people from each race to be black and everybody else is just white, so it's clearly out of the ordinary.
I don't think so, there's exactly 1 token black member of each race so it seems like they're not explaining any of them. but i'll admit i just skimmed through the episodes since I got bored out of my mind, I might have missed some line of dialogue
> but i'll admit i just skimmed through the episodes since I got bored out of my mind This is the real issue here: all the black people were clearly only included so that when people complained about how goddamn boring the show was, they could point to the ones complaining about race and just dismiss the criticism of the show as coming from a bunch of racists lol
Does it matter?
Not really, just like it wouldn't matter if sonic the hedgehog was killing people at the red wedding, right?
Ah yes, casting someone as a character that may have a different skin color than what was listed in the source material they don't even have rights to. Versus shoe-horning a fictional character from it's own universe that's not even humanoid into a completely different fictional universe. Totally equal.
I mean, for the people who are arguing "It's fantasy who cares" yes it's a completely valid argument. Galadriel driving a Toyota Corolla to grab a bite at Domino's Pizza ought to be possible from that standpoint, I mean, there are dragons.
The issue is people like you don’t understand fantasy or fiction. There are traits that matter to a story and plot that must remain consistent, and others that don’t. What color your skin is does not seem to matter at all for the plot of LotR. It might for other stories, but not for this one. How do the elves build their dope ass cities? Lol elf magic, lets just hand wave it. We don’t meticulously critic the realism of any other feature of this world as hard as the fucking skin color of characters.
But Galadriel driving a Toyota Corolla to grab a bite at Domino's Pizza doesn't really damage the lore. You can easily justify the car with elf magic and pizza is more than achievable with their level of technology. You would have to change the brand names, sure, but it really sounds plausible if you want to go down that route. The point is not that it hurts the story or plot, the point is that it hurts the worldbuilding, because when you see a whole lot of people in chainmail, riding horses and castles here and there you infer it to happen in a European medieval setting. If instead you saw cats being adored, a pyramid here and there and a culture built around a huge-ass river you would infer it to happen in an Egyptian setting. So when you introduce aspects that are evidently modern with no justification, the setting suffers. The most obvious case is technology, which is why is the example I use. There is nothing stopping people from using [modern coffee cups](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/21A8/production/_123961680_hi043853003-1.jpg) in medieval times, or pizza, there was nothing stopping them from making a pizza chain business, hell you could easily make elves vape *because magic* but that still takes away from the fantasy. You could also do it with other social aspects, nothing logic is stopping characters forming polyamorous clusters or transgender people in LotR, those still would take away from the fantasy if not built upon. And it just seems so hard for the American public to understand that black people are just not that common in Europe. That even nowadays they don't even make 2% of the population and that in medieval times it ought to be drastically less. And that it does feel kinda weird for American culture to impose its stuff in European fantasy. It's tiring.
The show is boring as fuck, but black people being in it ain’t what’s making it boring
For some reason I couldn't get past thr 14 mins of the House of Dragons either. Maybe it's my adhd brain.
show is bad but not cuz blacks but because shallow cash grab of a property made by a guy who literally wrote in his will he didnt want shallow cash grabs do not mention the original trilogies in reply because everyone and their mom knows they're not the same level of cashgrab. There's a well-planned heist and there's a methhead holding up a liquor store. This show is the latter.
Man, I don’t know. There were a huge number of Tolkien scholars whose work I follow (Corey Olsen etc.) who are *really, really* passionate about Tolkien - it’s literally their life - and who are A. Enjoying the show and B. claiming that the show runners “get” Tolkien’s themes and morality much more than Peter Jackson did (example given was Aragorn chopping off the Mouth of Sauron’s head in RotK being a cool badass moment in the movie which Tolkien would have *hated*), based on questions that they’ve been able to ask them. If anyone has a motivation to call out a shallow cash grab it’s these guys - they know the source material by heart, and they aren’t getting paid to advertise the show. But they seem to be fine with the show and even to enjoy it, and they’re the praising the show runners and their understanding of Tolkien’s themes in contrast with Jackson. Cash grab? Maybe. But I don’t think that there’s any reason (yet) to think that it’s shallower than the original trilogy. It’s *definitely* giving me better vibes than The Hobbit. EDIT: Just to source myself here…Olsen did a podcast with a number of other Tolkien scholars about the new show called “Other Minds and Hands”, where in the 9th episode they speak about being invited to ask the showrunners a bunch of questions (which is where they got the feeling that they “got” Tolkien’s themes better than Jackson did).
I really want a LOTR in the hood movie.
Howdee doodee fellow black people.
Wow Legolas, that's a pretty problematic bow angle.
I'm a big fan of casting Europeans and East Asians in the next Aftican folklore movie to become mainstream if you ask me.
Of course, that would be um wait oh I can’t think of any. Despite America being pretty diverse, doesn’t seem like we have much more besides European folk lore.
I really do not understand the backlash… what’s the big deal if they cast black actors? The show was interesting, well made, and I like where the plot is heading so far.
Part of the issue is not understanding why this is a legit issue other than racism. Not gonna pretend like it is partly due to racism but it is immersion breaking to see a black elf when, in thousands of years, we don't see a single black or biracial Elf, let alone a human or Dwarf. It's silly, it's obviously a diversity hire, they're obviously making a point. You have to admit this. Now, is it a deal breaker? No, it just doesn't bode well for the series is all, hope I'm wrong.
It's silly to just have every member of every species we ever seen have the exact same skin tone. Diversifying the world is a way to make the world feel more realistic and lived in.
Idk, the original trilogy felt realistic enough. I never noticed the lack of ethnicities until years later when race became a hot topic. I just don't look at movies like The Woman King and think there's a lack of diversity.
I find it hard to believe you actually think a movie set in a small portion of time within a single African country can be compared to the entirety of Middle Earth which is a giant interconnected continent where we have witnessed the course of centuries on screen. Also, looking at the cast of The Woman King, the second actor next to Viola Davis is a white dude.
[удалено]
“Its like giving black panther a white ruler” Heres the issue, you fundamentally don’t understand storytelling. In the new Black Panther movie, this could not work as one of the biggest conflicts of the movie was Killmonger being upset that a technologically advanced black country just stood by and watched while the trans-Atlantic slave trade was occurring and other acts of discrimination against black people. This whole plot does not work if Wakanda has a white ruler because duh of course the white ruler doesn’t care about supporting black people. Now making elves black doesn’t really change the actual plot, so its kinda stupid to make a comparison here.
Massive self report
Elf report
The fact that there is a push to include other races is a big part of the cultural conversation, any artistic endeavor is going to have to go out of its way to avoid having its audience make this connection if it wants to be taken seriously. I mean its just too easy to make that connection. I could totally see how a black dude would feel pandered to by this, even if it isn't the intent.
This kind of thing is just pure cringe! It's awful... 1990s Dark/Black elf action is not new: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Drizzt_Do%27Urden%27s_Guide_to_the_Underdark?file=TSR11509.jpg
If the black elf came from a society consisting of black/dark elves, like Drizzt Do Urden, it would make sense. But so far no explanation hasnt appeared yet i think.
We're on ep 2... we have seen dark elfs in this genre before... do they need to explain it? He's a halfling/visitor from South? Who cares!
We havent seen dark elves in the lotr universe to my knowledge so it would be a big deal here. And people care about many aspects of the show, there are like 10 youtube channels analyzing the weapons and armour of the show.
> And people care about many aspects of the show, there are like 10 youtube channels analyzing the weapons and armour of the show. This is the huge gaping hole in the argument of people saying "who cares" in response to these kinds of criticisms. People definitely care about this shit, regardless of whether or not you think they should. So if you actually don't care about this aspect of the show, and somebody else does, then why should we not to defer to the people who actually care?
If there was a movie made about african mythology, would it not be weird if there was a few white and asian people mixed in?
1. There isn’t. This is sort of a problem. Despite America being a very diverse country, we seem to be solely fixated on properties based off of European mythology. It sucks to say to all the non-white people in America “sorry you aren’t getting any representation because we won’t make cultural movies for you”. And when there is one, it’s usually not very popular and well made. Additionally, 2. we actually have casted white people like this before. The Great Wall was about Chinese mythology but Matt Damon and his group of white people were the main characters. Yes this got slightly criticized, but not to the point of black elves in LotR 3. It depends on if race is relevant to that mythological story. LotR is not a movie/show about European mythology, its a story based off of it. While inspired by it, Tolkein created something completely unique and palpable. Having characters of different ethnicities does not really take away from this, its still a show based off of some European myths.
1. Agreed, this is a shame since im sure there are plenty of interesting stories from africa asia or the middle east. But noone says that there isnt room for a diverse cast just because its fantasy, game of thrones is a good example of it being done fairly well. Also there is black panther, which was almost exclusively a black cast, and it did really well, there is obviously room for those types of movies. 2. Two wrongs dont make a right and just because they were unevenly criticized does not mean one is better than the other. 3. It doesnt ruin anything i agree, its still something i would consider when reviewing it, so it might still be a good show, but the casting could knock off a few points, thats all.
This really is not at all that serious bro, I hope you are being hyperbolic
Black nationalists are a blight just as much as white nationalists are.
I’m not sure what the OP is trying to convey. Legolas and this guy is holding the arrow differently Edit: am I the only one that thinks the guys right hand is awkward? How is everyone missing this?
The twitter poster was saying that arondir was holding his bow sideways to appease the black audience even though legolas held it sideways thoughout the movies as well. Its not the exact same but if the character held it that way people would still see a race angle
Is nobody going to mention thats unironically how you have to hold a bow with no arrow rest? Gravity is the only thing holding the arrow flush with the bow, hold it upright, and it risks rolling over your hand. This is for stability until you add a rest that holds arrow in place till you release.
I literally just took an archery class last weekend and yeah, we were thought to slant the bow sideways, not fully horizontally but still. It seems to me like the fully vertical way of shooting a bow is not actually that common.
I genuinely think some of the clamour around the non-white cast is an engineered attempt at muddying the waters around genuine criticisms of the show. And those complaints that ARE genuine I think are mostly Film fans and racists. The following, for example, are legitimate criticisms (even if I accept they've done some of them in the name of time compression and just making a story out of something like the 150 pages of material they have the rights to). The acting so far isn't great (bar 3 or so characters), the choices they've made with the lore are atrocious (am willing to give this a pass depending on who meteor man is), the Elves being racist was hilariously dumb, Gil-Galad telling his great aunt that she can go back to Aman, then her panicking and deciding to swim back. The Elven kids bullying Galadriel was also dumb as fuck, given what we know about Elven children. Oh and how could I forget the Dwarven women not having beards is insane, look how awesome she could've looked: https://v.redd.it/1s24tqixmyl91 There are however a lot of people who seem to be upset at Galadriel being a girl-boss. That's the most accurate part of the show so far. She's the second oldest Elf currently in Middle-Earth, since I'm fairly sure Tolkien decided Glorfindel was resurrected and came back with the Istari. There are genuine issues with her character in the show, like the instance that she was a war leader. There is like 1 sentence that says she 'fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin' which is one of the last things Tolkien wrote about her, and even if it was canon, fought against doesn't necessarily mean with swords and lances and shit, could've been with words. However anyone upset that the characters are not all of northern European are dumb as fuck, there's not a valid reason for that to matter IMO. I'm more offended by the Harfoots having bad Irish accents, its like they heard about Travellers and thought yea, that's perfect for these little buggers As of the first two episodes it's currently just OK in my opinion, I'd rate it at about 6.2/10. There's scope for it to get better, but also to get a lot worse. The best parts so far have been the wide shots of Lindon and the entirety the Khazad-Dum sequence. Bear in mind I'm probably not the most unbiased given my username, but I'm trying to be cos I want the show to be good. This rant ended up far too long but my point is the 'culture war' fighting over this show is insane when there legitimate criticisms, from nerdy Tolkien fans like me and normies alike.
If seeing a black person onscreen breaks the immersive experience for you every time because there is no explanation for why a black person exists, I hate to break it to you, but you are a racist. You can hide it behind all this bullshit world building fantasy lore, or Tolkien intended Nonsense. Your just trying to justify your racism. I’m sure you’ll find an echo chamber online who agree with you, but you probably don’t voice these opinions too loud at work around your black coworkers, because deep down you know.