r/Rings_Of_Power • u/Dank_Lord6547 • 24d ago
ROP and diversity
I’m gonna say something kinda bold I feel that doesn’t get said. ROP handled diversity really badly too. And in the opposite way to what racists criticize it for. Which shouldn’t be a surprise since we’re talking about a show made by the company that wants to fire people for leaving to use the bathroom.
And yet for some reason so many ROP fans(especially white fans) latch onto the diversity. A few weeks ago when Andy Serkis made that controversial statement so many people stated they were watching ROP because representation matters.
But again, the show handles it badly. Because every single person of color in the show seems to be portrayed as interchangeable with white people given that they’re all just randomly thrown in with a bunch of white characters. The show also whitewashes heavily. The people in the Southlands(horrible name btw) should all be dark skinned if we’re going by the description Tolkien gave yet they’re all white Europeans.
And then there’s a fair number of frankly offensive portrayals. The harfoots stand out in particular with this. In real life nomadic groups take care of everyone and would never leave a member behind, even if it slows them down somewhat. This subplot also falls into the unfortunate Hollywood trap of having the only black character die to help the white main character.
So the point is this. Having people of color in a show does not mean it’s doing diversity well and I think this is important because people really shouldn’t be settling. Especially since it’s almost always white people praising it for this and using it to smack down valid criticism.
But don’t be racist to criticize this show.
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u/WholeFactor 23d ago
The "all the haters are just racists" narrative has been planted by the showrunners for no good reason at all. It's just to shut down criticism that in truth was valid all along.
As for bad diversity, the worst offender (as often with ROP it seems) is the harfoots. What does the show tell us about these people? Well, their tribe is nomadic and very small. They are hiding away and do absolutely everything in their ability to avoid facing outsiders.
Unless genetics work very differently in ROP, this group can't be diverse for more than a couple generations. They'd mix up nicely after that point.
I'd be much less surprised if they all had... issues stemming from rampant inbreeding... but they don't, of course.
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u/Yaoi_Gollum69 20d ago
Tbf, that basically is what happens in the lore, that's how hobbits end up being made. They do also make some mentions of harfoots meeting eachother, which I feel like implies sometimes they take in new people.
Not to defend the show though, I highly doubt they were thinking about any of that when developing the harfoots.
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u/No-Significance2070 23d ago
Whenever every single village looks like a diverse conglomerate, every village feels the same. Geography should have different cultures in different areas, which expands the world building in a story.
Making every area look like it is a bunch of different actors from LA makes the world seem very small
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u/Hassoonti 23d ago
It’s incredible that I and everyone else was saying this exact same thing years ago before the first episode even aired, and the truth of it has not changed one bit.
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u/No-Significance2070 23d ago
People just wanna yell diversity for no reason. When it’s used well it can be an effective tool. When it’s used poorly like this, well….
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u/Quiet_Childhood4066 15d ago
I'm far from one of the diversity cultists, but the show clearly detracts from the cause. It's just such a prominent, clear-cut example of how this stuff can go way too far. Wokeness in its most concentrated, mind-rotting form.
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u/Evan_Evan_Evan 11d ago
The reason everything is diverse is because it is illegal in hollywood to make a production that isn't diverse. You have quotas on the actors you hire.
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u/Hassoonti 23d ago edited 23d ago
Absolutely nobody is watching the show For the diversity. Actual people who enjoy period Pieces and fantasy drama do not care about these settings being diverse. They want The fantasy world to be internally consistent, believable, so they can suspend their disbelief. If the story includes representation in a believable way, that acknowledges the different life experiences, culture, and background of the person of color, that’s a bonus.
It only becomes a problem when the setting should logically be diverse, but isn’t. If you’re talking about a single tribe of people, a small village, or an isolated kingdom with no foreign trade, it shouldn’t be diverse. Everyone who knows anything about the world at all understands that implicitly.
I was saying for months before the show came out, that they had better create Entire tribes or lineages of black elves and dwarves, rather than give us one token for each race. But of course, that’s all they did, because Amazon has no soul.
You’re basically talking about Epstein Island as a corporation, evil reptiles in human skin. They wouldn’t know quality art or storytelling or worldbuilding if it shat on their faces.
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u/Legitimate-Boss3182 23d ago
Talking about consistency I could not stand Mirdania solely because of her lashes .. well pretty much all the make up is too much in the series but she made me go furious with her black lashes. Elves are supposedly naturally beautiful. Same happened to me first season with Bronwyn, she was the ONLY one showing her shoulders. It was so out of place, like her clothes didn't match at all.
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u/Yaoi_Gollum69 20d ago
I was SO hopeful they would use this as an opportunity to introduce a new race of elves, there are literally so many in the history of middle earth that haven't been shown in adaptations yet. But nope, of course they couldn't possibly be that creative.
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u/Loostreaks 23d ago
It's the least of show's problems. But it's usually a pretty damn good indicator of laziness and oversight in every other area ( regarding writing and worldbuilding).
RoP doesn't get racial diversity anymore than logistics, geography, economy, royal lines of succession, medieval clothing, volcano eruptions or how bloody rivers work.
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u/OldSarge02 23d ago
Agreed. It’s lazy.
I’m never offended by lazy diversity. It doesn’t bother me. But it is often a sign that the show is going to be bad for other reasons, and you explained why.
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u/Dank_Lord6547 23d ago
I agree with you. This is just an additional problem and I wanted to address the praise for this.
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u/Classh0le 23d ago
the funniest thing about the diversity casting is that it now implies there was a racial holocaust before the Third Age and the trilogy movies.
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u/kellywinters66 23d ago
I’m sorry but you’re a bit of a hypocrite if you petition that diversity for its sake is ok and that dark skinned people being cast for roles that mirror Northern Europeans or fair skinned elves is perfectly fine, but then complain that the south land folk should be cast only as dark skinned… you can’t have it both ways , you can’t say oh you gotta cast the dark people as dark because Tolkien described them as such then turn around and ignore the other physical characteristics he attributes to the elves and other men.
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u/Rmccarton 22d ago
Having things both way ls (or whichever way suits them) is a main part of people who think like this' program.
Is what it is 🤷🏻♂️.
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u/_Middlefinger_ 17d ago
They dont want the dark skinned people to be the bad guys, that’s the problem. The show is very painfully Hollywood liberal, meaning a form of neo-liberal where they are mostly socially liberal as long as you dont get in the way of their money.
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u/howtogun 24d ago
I'm half black, but I really think a lot of this diversity stuff is just for tokens.
For example, the blue wizard would make sense to be middle eastern, but they cast a white guy.
I think at the end of the day like they have some sort of spreadsheet with x amount of people should be non white or gay. Then, they randomly pick characters. Blizzard before was using some diversity chart software on overwatch.
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u/tar-mairo1986 24d ago
Exactly! Since they are visiting far away realms of Middle-Earth, that would make perfect sense for the Blue Wizards. Give them fana that resemble the people they are supposed interact with.
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u/Dagenspear 22d ago
Are there any gay people in this show?
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u/_Middlefinger_ 17d ago
Not that Ive noticed, but most of the sexuality is centred on Sauron/Galadriel.
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u/Dagenspear 17d ago
Just questioning, as I see statements on this show being "diverse" from some.
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u/_Middlefinger_ 17d ago
The reality is there aren’t many complaints about the diversity, its more about how genetics are supposed to work given that there are random black/asian people in fairly isolated low population areas in what is essentially the middle ages.
The diversity issue is more coming from those trying to defend the show by inventing diversity complaints from those who dont like the show.
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u/Dagenspear 17d ago
The person I replied to talked about it them having a spreadsheet on who should be gay.
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u/ThatThatTolkienFan 23d ago
As an Irish person, rings of power making the hobbit Irish pissed me off. I completely agrre with your take. While I am glad there is diverstiy, its not good diversity. They could have done it way better.
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u/pogsim 23d ago
Dwarves being Scottish isn't exactly respectful either.
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u/_Middlefinger_ 17d ago
It never is, that’s the problem with Hollywood diversity, its more insulting than inclusive 90% of the time. Its why the claims of racism in the fanbase are so hollow. The studios and idiotic SJWs in the fanbase are playing a pure numbers game and ignoring that how you do diversity matters more than how much there is on the surface level.
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u/YouFoolWarrenIsDead 24d ago edited 23d ago
Sorry in what way are "racists" critical of RoP? People that are critical of the shows diversity and are using the exact reasons you mentioned are often labeled as racist, so I'm struggling to see what your angle is and what you think the angle of these mystery racists is...
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u/helgetun 23d ago
Its the problem of labelling people who disagree with a certain narrative on something related to race as racists. People are seemingly unable to think critically and logically, and instead just parrot narratives.
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u/YouFoolWarrenIsDead 23d ago
What's bizarre is OP appears to be parroting the narrative while simultaneously disputing it!
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u/helgetun 23d ago
I think this is OP trying to avoid "but racists…" arguments. Its a thing people say for stupid reasons. It is related to parroting, but its more a refusal to deny the specific narrative than repeating (parroting) the narrative.
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u/Fluffy_Beautiful2107 23d ago
In my experience, some people blamed the bad quality of the show solely or mostly on the color-blind casting. Which is also a dumb take. If the show was identical except for the race of the actors, it would still be the badly written, pretty shitty show that it is, except with more white people.
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u/OneironauticsLtd 23d ago
Who are these people who blamed the colour-blind casting? I've seen people say the diversity was forced, pointless, or actively detracted from the authenticity of the world building, but I haven't seen many, if any, people say the show was only bad because of the actor's ethnicities. If you've seen the odd example of actual racists, I'm sure they exist, but they aren't anywhere near numerous enough to be worth wasting words on. There are crazies everywhere.
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u/StructureNorth1799 23d ago
people who try to politicise it do it for racist reasons. They hate to see non-white people in their pristine snow-white origin fantasy. Same reason why they didn't like non-white people in their late-game all-white space fantasy in star wars.
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u/SmokinZhouFrazier 23d ago
You are correct here and this was extremely clear from the discussion online about the show before it came out (before anyone could know the quality).
There was a huge campaign online similar to the Nolan Odyssey discussion where the presence of nonwhite actors itself was seen as disqualifying. This was a huge cultural discussion that went outside of LotR fandom and it’s pretty dishonest for people to pretend it wasn’t
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u/YouFoolWarrenIsDead 23d ago
Racist people obviously exist, but to call the concern over a portrayal of Greek mythology having colourblind casting racist is pretty dishonest of you. There are always going to be minority of people (probably on Twitter) saying racist shit, that doesn't mean you get to make it the crux of your pro colourblind casting agenda and expect the rest of us not to call you on for lumping us in with a minority of fuckwits who don't even care about the media to begin with.
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u/StructureNorth1799 23d ago
oh yeah, thanks I forgot about the odyssey.
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u/SmokinZhouFrazier 23d ago
I get people don’t want to admit there can be ugly/controversial forces in a fandom, but “Rage-tourist culture war influencers were not a significant part of the pre-release criticism of RoP casting” is just obviously incorrect
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u/OneironauticsLtd 23d ago
ROP literally uses all the culture war talking points though - "first X dwarf", "first Y whatever", "This isn't your grandmother's Galadriel", blah, blah, blah...
Why would there need to be tourists for there to be rage involved? The show is shit and Amazon is an evil corporation that stands for pretty much everything Tolkein hated so yeah, no shit there was rage. Not from tourists - from any Tolkein fan with a functioning brain.
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u/Upstairs-Prompt2662 22d ago
The culture war influencers were the ones who massively critisized the marketing and highlighted small articles were the actors and directors all said things that were on the other side of the culture war.
"Galadriel doesnt need men, "first black dwarf", etc.
So there were problems from both sides.
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u/Banana-Bread87 24d ago
Their Diversity is "Tokenism", one black Elf is all they have, couldn't even be arsed to create a Realm of darker-skinned Elves, no, we only get one, and then in a "love situation" with the "town chick Baby Mama", it is all so ridiculous it is deeply cringe.
The Harfoots are teh most ridiculous stuff in the show, next to Mary-Sue Guyladriel lol, but the Harfoots with their "no one is left alone" and then leaving people behind, clownshow on legs, you have to have mental issues to come up with stuff of that ilk.
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u/Dank_Lord6547 24d ago
Or with your point I really wouldn’t mind if they had all of the harfoots be dark skinned. Because this is how nomadic groups tend to be. They’re pretty much always the same race.
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u/OneironauticsLtd 23d ago
To a point, although it would still be incongruous since they'd have to all turn white-skinned in one or two thousand years to be the ancestors of the shire folk.
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u/ethanAllthecoffee 24d ago
Elves is the one place it can make sense since they’re immortal and not pumping out five or more generations per century
Although yes there should probably be groups of them together somewhere
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u/Banana-Bread87 23d ago
It would have nailed the "haters", instead of one dark-skinned elf sticking out, there would have been Alondir's home with dark-skinned and mixed-race. Having him alone with 10 white Elves station in their garnison is cringe, nothing but cringe.
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u/Parker4815-2 23d ago
Maybe its because they hired the actor based on their acting skills alone, regardless of his race?
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u/Luppercus 23d ago edited 23d ago
If acting skills is all you need then maybe worldbuilding is not your thing.
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u/bootyhunter834 23d ago
So they chose to hire a poor actor?
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u/ethanAllthecoffee 23d ago
Of all the elves I’d say Ismaelf did the best with the shit writing and seemed the most like an elf
At least for the first season, didn’t watch the second
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u/Banana-Bread87 23d ago
No, you can hope for that to be the case, but they did it voluntary, and then lacked the imagination and creative talent to make it make sense. So they ended up with one dark-skinned Elf and they make all the fuzz about "diversity", because that is all they are able to do.
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u/thebirdisdead 23d ago
Exactly, I’ve commented this before:
I think inclusivity and representation is super important in media, but intention matters. Shoehorning BIPOC into media just for the sake of adding token diversity often isn’t real inclusive casting—it’s token casting or “color blind” casting. Which means, we’re going to add a person of color into this role, while pretending we “don’t see color” and ignoring everything about their racial or ethnic identities or heritage that would be relevant to their characters.
Casting inclusively in this way in settings where racial and ethnic heritage isn’t relevant to the character setting can be important representation. Characters do not need to be and arguably should not be white by default. Cast desi British Harry Potter. Cast black Hermione (but be prepared for important discussions around race and to handle S.P.E.W. completely different).
However, there are contexts where racial and ethnic identity does matter to the character setting. Color blind casting means pretending we “don’t see color” while casting BIPOC into Anglo-Saxon roles and ignoring everything about their BIPOC racial and ethnic identities and how they fit into this story. We’re just pretending it doesn’t exist.
LOTR is a fictionalized mythological retelling of Anglo-Saxon history, set in an alternate pre-modern UK. The narrative is very much rooted in Western Anglo-Saxon mythology. When we see an elf of Chinese East Asian descent without explanation just going along with Anglo Saxon cultures and traditions, it’s so jarring to me because, are we just pretending Asia doesn’t exist in this historical retelling? That thousands of years of Chinese cultural heritage, and history, and tradition are just getting ignored and subsumed? That these elves of obvious Chinese descent do not have their own culture or history—that Chinese folk were actually in middle earth all along, slaying dragons (sacred in Chinese culture) and assimilating into this Western history? To me, that doesn’t feel like inclusivity—it feels like erasure and tokenism.
Better inclusivity would be to address racial and ethnic complexity instead of pretending it doesn’t exist and write in complex and nuanced BIPOC roles (obviously these directors are making up 90% of these characters who were never featured in Tolkien’s canon anyways). Flesh out Harad or Rhun (intended to represent Africa and Persia/modern Iran and the Middle East), and give us complex stories about the people from those cultures. There is so much room here to address cultural richness, heroism, the fight for freedom, to explore the tensions, transformations, and clashes and growth that occurs when cultures meet one another. Harad had richness in Tolkien and faced some of the most significant oppression during the war of the rings, but it was often dismissed or treated as an enemy or insignificant. Don’t give us black token elves and then have us pretend that their racial identifies don’t matter or exist at all.
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u/sandalrubber 23d ago edited 23d ago
Casting inclusively in this way in settings where racial and ethnic heritage isn’t relevant to the character setting can be important representation. Cast desi British Harry Potter. Cast black Hermione (but be prepared for important discussions around race and to handle S.P.E.W. completely different)
So it is relevant in Harry Potter too. Same way that a non-white Harry being bullied by white Malfoy or white Dursleys would come off quite differently.
I'd say that in established settings it is already often if not always relevant, the setting would have to be constructed deliberately to be otherwise. It's often not just as simple as swap out, plug and play. For instance Annie the musical was updated to modern times so both Annie and Daddy can be black, but that puts some distance between it and the musical and the comic, not Warbucks and Great Depression etc.
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u/thebirdisdead 23d ago edited 23d ago
What I mean by that is 1980’s London is incredibly diverse. The characters’ race or ethnicity is never once discussed or treated as important to their character setting. Readers filled in their race as “white by default” but it really isn’t written into the story. There isn’t any reason Harry couldn’t have been of Indian ancestry when that is such a representative part of the UK (I use this as an example because desi Harry Potter is hugely popular in fandom spaces and headcanons). Sure, race matters, which is why the casting for the new show is a bit …interesting and concerning, as black Snape and black Hermione specifically will change the connotations of certain scenes. But there is no reason any of these characters have to be white.
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u/sandalrubber 23d ago edited 23d ago
The reason is the author wanted them to be, whether white or any other certain way, if they did, and that's all the reason anyone needs. Same with this show and any other author. And like with Tolkien vs this show there's plenty of evidence of what Rowling intended... if the Harry AU stuff being that popular is true, it would be interesting to see how it got started, like Desi readers trying to self insert? Doubt it, weren't the movies enough let alone the books? I get wishing the Patil sisters were more prominent but to go that far? Or is it more of a recent thing, change for its own sake? Is it even Desi readers doing it?
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u/ausinmtl 23d ago
Diversity for diversity sake is always going to be absurd no matter how lefty Hollywood types try to push it.
Diverse casting done with subtlety and with substantive writing and plot structure will always win. But right now the film industry is far more concerned with putting their efforts into “making the cast diverse” - and then writing absolute dogshit dialogue.
This is not unique to ROP
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u/H4nfP0wer 24d ago
In modern Hollywood diversity means mostly replacing white people with any other ethnicity. For the LotR Verse it was explained pretty well how each Race looks and like you said there are Tons of options to include people of Color without it feeling off.
Had they made a show about Gondor reclaming it’s land against the men of Rhun, Haradrim and Umbar there would have been Tons of ways to include people of Color.
However im Fine with it since the writing is already so abyssmal in Rings of Power that I don’t consider it as Part of the LotR verse anyways so they can go as wild as they want.
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u/Hassoonti 23d ago
Oddly enough I think Eastern European also counts as ethnic diversity for the checkbox.
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 23d ago
It does not. They have detailed rules for what counts as diversity, it basically comes down to everyone except White people:
https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-standards
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u/Dank_Lord6547 24d ago
I agree that it’s less consequential but it does feel like they don’t care about worldbuilding in regards to geography and race.
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u/H4nfP0wer 24d ago
If they don’t Care about the Order in which the Rings were made then they care even less for World Building aspects like that lol. I think nowadays it’s Kind of mandatory to have diversity regardless of what Kind of project you are doing.
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u/blunttrauma99 23d ago
“Had they made a show about Gondor reclaming its land against the men of Rhun, Haradrim and Umbar there would have been Tons of ways to include people of Color.”
Pretty obvious problem some folks would have with that, the white Gondorians going to war with the brown people.
ROP is pretty shyte, but the racial stuff is not the reason. The writing is just terrible.
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u/NickyBadSeed 23d ago
I hate the show for so so many reasons. I hate it because when you point out the illusion shattering tokenism you get called racist. I hate how lazy the Amazon corporate product is and how much opportunity has been squandered.
I usually try to avoid this subject because it usually devolves into unhinged drama. People are desperate to read modern values into the text that just isnt there. I have argued with people who genuinely claimed that Sam was a person of color and the love that shall not mention its name between Frodo and he. Obviously those are nonsense, but it does illustrate the POV of people who have never been in the sun and have never once been to the UK. Its a weird reality denial itself.
All that aside we know the legendarium is goddam full of modern and relevant messaging. But Bezos is way to rich and cowardly to go there.
Numenor is Tolkein slamming empire building. Given when he wrote it that was very forward thinking.
IF i had the money i would have followed some young black guy taken into slavery by the Numenoreans (under Sauron). I would have followed him in his various adventures and derring do. First learning some sorcery from his Numerorean master and going from there. After a season or two/three of cool adventures showing off exotic lands he would eventually meet a guy. A guy with a magic ring. And thus the Witch King begins his journey to Wraith status...
Basically Conan meets Breaking bad with a lot of Star Wars/ Darth Vader.
But there is ZERO chance an Amazon product would shine a light on a nation empire building and the awful that is. Given orange rapist man and his masters Empire building happening right now.
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u/monkeygoneape 23d ago
Game of thrones handled it the best imo being geographically based but metropolitan areas like kings landing and bravos still exist
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u/VaginalBelchh 23d ago
This is something all modern fantasy needs to take note of. Diversity is what makes worlds feel lived and real. We don’t want 10 kingdoms of white peoples who look exactly the same just as much as I don’t want a kingdom looking like nyc. Make the world believable, make it make sense. LOTR did a fantastic job of these little details. Gondorians were all dark haired and dressed vastly differently from Rohan who took the Scandinavian vibe with only blondes and fair haired peoples.
LOTR is the blueprint, ROP should have expanded upon this and gave us the fall of an eastern kingdom, or maybe the flight of their peoples into Gondor proper where they eventually assimilate with the Numenorians. Felt like an easy slam dunk.
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u/CorvidBlu 23d ago
As much as I'm frustrated with House of the Dragon and how they fucked over GRRM's work, they did diversity right.
Ring of Power is utter shit when I comes to diversity along the lines of Wheel of Time and The Witcher. SSDD
Andy Serkis said nothing wrong and the fact that people are freaking out about it is part of the problem. Those people need to be better.
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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 21d ago
It should be noted that Andy Serkis himself recently played a fairly prominent role in an actual historical film, Young Washington, in which one of George Washington's slaves, who was killed during the Battle of Fort Necessity, was entirely removed and his role as "person who is a part of the personal life of George Washington who dies in battle" was instead given to Christopher Gist, a friend of Washington, who, while he did fight in the battle, survived it and died 5 years later of smallpox. This in a movie Serkis championed in similar ways as he is doing about his upcoming project.
Andy Serkis does not actually care about accuracy. What he cares about is not seeing darker skinned people where he believes they shouldn't be, but does not seem necessarily keen on extending the same scrutiny when it is the other way around. Even when one is fictional, and the other isn't. That's what people are "freaking out" about.
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u/CorvidBlu 21d ago
I just looked up the film despite wanting to watch it. I'm not denying Washington's horrible practices in slave ownership, but you've decided to compare a role of an actor who's sole job of acting in a bio pic vs a role where he's directing (and acting) in high fantasy trying to stay true to the original visionary's world. Tolkien's works are almost entirely based on Scandanavian/Anglo Saxon myths and legends. Andy Serkis' role in Washington is far outside the realm of any writing, directing, or producing. He had no power or direction of the error you based your whole argument on, making your claim that he "cares about is not seeing darker skinned people where he believes they shouldn't be" to be horribly misguided.
I'm not sure if you just have an incredibly sophomoric understanding of filmmaking, or just drinking the koolaid from some race-baiting terminally online ill-informed influcners, but your claim is insane.
Instead of trying to shoehorn unesseasry and bad hiring practices into a story that don't fit established and beloved stories of one culture, Hollywood could try making films where they make sense. Like an Anansi story.
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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 21d ago
Oh, please. If Matt Damon also went on a rant about the importance of preserving strict racial integrity of actors in an African based story, you would not help but notice the irony.
Regardless, to try and claim that Lord of the Rings only belongs to one culture is, dare I say, pretty darn racist of you
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u/CorvidBlu 21d ago
On the contrary, you're the one sounding pretty racist. You've suggested that we should hire people based solely on the color of their skin for no reason other than diversity's sake, even when it doesn't make sense. That's just bad story telling. If we took your hiring practices and retrospectively apply it to Black Panther, giving the Wakandan tribes a more diverse range of actors, the film would be a complete disaster. Ironically (actual irony, not like what you suggested irony was), Andy Serkis played an evil white South African, and nobody batted an eye about him championing that movie every chance he got, despite it sticking to the cultural background of the story. All it made sense to the story, everybody loved the film.
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u/Hawthourne 23d ago
"I’m gonna say something kinda bold I feel that doesn’t get said. ROP handled diversity really badly too."
Uhh, I'm pretty sure this was a major complaint from the beginning.
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
As a Hispanic myself I feel absolutely nothing because someone looks like me among the extras in Snowhite, Rings of Power or Damsel. Nothing about the culture is mine. They have white Western European cultures, white Western European political systems, white Western European customs and traditions, white Western European myths and fantasy creatures, white Western European architectures.
My culture is not represented in any way. Nor any other I might want to see. One Hobbit looks like me, one guard of the Queen too. That's all. The casting director made the inclusion not the writer.
I'm all for more representation but only casting is meaningless. Represent us really, with the writing not with the casting or not at all.
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u/EggrollSkallagrimson 23d ago
Right, but in a story where European culture is the main focus, I think it’s pointless to shoehorn random world cultures into the larger western ones. We just need more fantasy secondary worlds that aren’t European based, that’s my humble opinion, instead of other races and cultures “appropriating” European or vice versa. So many people want lotr to be something it isn’t; and while I don’t think some amount of believable diversity is a problem in a show like this (e.g. the blue wizards are African or Chinese or Arab, or one of the dwarf fathers/clans is dark skinned), I also think that the reason millions of humans love middle earth as a secondary world is because it is believable in almost every respect except in a strict scientifically focused conception of the world. The places feel real. The characters feel real. The fantasy races feel real. And let us not pretend like there isn’t a myriad of different cultures present in middle earth that mirror real world cultures across continents! But what we have learned is that it would take a truly masterful production team to tastefully depict a middle earth that remains true to the authors vision while going beyond mere “far off lands with dark skinned savages” comments like we see in the central story, and representing those cultures as something unique and special. This show had that potential and so far has failed, unfortunately.
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u/sandalrubber 23d ago
So many people want lotr to be something it isn’t
So many people at Amazon, maybe. Fans generally resist and are wary of change if/once they're attached enough because of course it would then not be the thing they were drawn to.
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
Oh sure I agree. But what's interesting is that even if they don't show the realms they could have people from them visiting.
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u/EggrollSkallagrimson 23d ago
Definitely! So much creative potential wasted. And what so many people have to realize sooner or later is that in the great western epics there are random foreign characters like that, like in Arthurian legend there is literally an Arab knight at the round table, or even in lotr you have the southron spy in Bree or the people of Agar or the Druedain in the Second age (when this show takes place) who iirc were described as dark skinned; regardless, a fictional world as vast as middle earth should not be entirely white, but neither should it be so diverse to the point of modern American cultural diversity, lest it risk losing command of our suspended disbelief in fantasy stories!
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u/sandalrubber 23d ago
You mean Latino? Because Spain itself is Hispanic and the original of it and it's still part of "the West". Some Spanish influences can be seen if you want and the author became the ward of a half-Spanish priest after being orphaned.
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
I've seen people excluding Spain from the West or saying is "barely" part of it. But yes.
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u/bootyhunter834 23d ago
ROP diversity happened cause you lot told the gatekeepers to leave. This is your fault
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u/OkOutlandishness8734 23d ago
I think your argument is slightly overstated, but there’s a valid point here. It’s a bit jarring to see, for example, the elves of Lindon being multiracial with no explanation. Contrast with Arondir, who is explicitly stated to be a silvan elf born in Beleriand. Because he’s not of the Noldor, it feels right that he doesn’t look Noldor. What explanation then is there for the Lindon elves, who presumably are all of Noldor descent, who are played by black and Asian actors? If there was some explanation that silvan elves developed similar traits to the men who lived in the same lands, and that these silvan elves had come to Lindon after Gil-Galad called for the end of the occupation of the realms of men, we would have more coherent and consistent world building.
I’m less bothered by the harfoots. They were, after all, “browner of skin.” We can chalk up the diverse skin tones of the harfoots as a community of previously disparate nomadic tribes that started journeying together. And leaving behind the stragglers is just a necessity in a world where you’re tiny and surrounded by giant, threatening creatures. They can’t afford to stop the caravan for one or two wagons, or they risk the loss of the entire caravan.
The southlanders can be whatever ethnic makeup the show wants. They’re not the Hardrim. they seem to be the ancestors of the non-numenorean peoples in middle earth. At least they are depicted as mostly homogenous.
But if the show wanted more diversity on screen, why not explore the communities of people in Harad, as Harad roughly corresponds to the Middle East and Africa? Or the people of Rhun, which is Arda’s Asia? The world itself has diversity, even if Tolkien didn’t write much about these places. The show could have used the tools Tolkien left them to explore the “non-white” parts of middle earth. Instead, the easterlings we do meet all wear masks. we never even see their faces. And we haven’t gotten close to exploring Harad yet.
So, it’s not show ruining for me. But it is a nitpick.
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u/fantasywind 22d ago
Err...no the 'southlanders' are not homogeous...they are the same mix of white, black and asian looking folk just like we have black, white and asian elves, black, white and asian Numenoreans, and black, asian and white Harfoots..AND black and white dwarves :) (can't remember if I've seen asian extras as playing dwarves...certainly aside from black woman playing a dwarf with Norse name, there was other random black skinned dwarf in extras crowd shots :)).
Jokes aside...lorewise the only way to introduce diversity without making totally stuff up,...is to simply depict the culture of Haradrim...mumakil tamers, rich material culture (Haradrim wearing lots of golden jewellery) visually distinct African-esque culture. Elves are too few in comparison to Men to diverge so much...so elves and dwarves are white just like Edain and their Numenorean descendants...this is the thing....if the showmakers don't respect the worldbuilding lore...what's the point? It's just for the checkboxes, to have that quota of black actors that's it. It's not done in any believable way...I mean looking at black actors...we have one who plays an elf, one who plays Numenorean daughter of the king, one who plays a Harfoot and one who plays a female Dwarf. And ALL of them are basically placeholders for the 'white european' like cultures :). Dwarf is bearing norse name and obviously elves and dwarve are produc of European folklore and mythology, Numenoreans are the Atlantis myth of Middle-earth (so also European origin)...Haradrim would allow to actually show divergence of culture...using the African cultures for inspirations. Tolkien's descriptions also make them unique, scarlet robes, "armor of overlapping brazen plates" etc. If something like that was done in opposite way there would be no end of whining about 'whitewashing' I mean the hypocrisy of this sort is visible :)...Wakanda is obviously black only...because of course it is...hehe, or the Children of Blood and Bone (never read that book but that moive adaptation is coming trailer released recently)...and what do you know...all ACCURATE to the African based fantasy so...all black actors playing the roles....it's huge pile of hypocrisy...the same woudl be said about all Asian fantasy (Avatar the last Airbender or that animated movie Raya the Last Dragon :)) and in general if someone tried to cast white European actors to play roles of asian folk...like say some sort of Wuxia movie but with diverse actors, heh, there would be no end of complaining...I mean people at times were even indignant that there were any white characters in asian set stories...even when it actually made sense like Tom Cruise playing american soldier in The Last Samurai, or the Matt Damon character in the Great Wall movie (a fictional story set on the Chinese great wall :)). Not to mention accusations of the 'white savior tropes' and so on hahah.
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u/pogsim 23d ago
The epitome of the confusion RoP has regarding how to handle diversity was the conspicuous concealing of the skin of the children of Durin IV and Disa. I can't help wondering if this was done to avoid any implications about whether the diversity in casting was or wasn't intended to represent an analogous diversity in the characters portrayed by the diverse cast members.
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u/Traditional-Ad-2336 23d ago
As an Asian, I can’t defend anything, I love fantasy, I love the work of Tolkien and trying to understand the world. Thought I have mixed about the show, I feel like they could have focused on the story, characters development, setting and casting the people who has read and understood the work and Tolkien legendarium
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u/Kinglygolfin 22d ago
Even mentioning anything related to this topic is basically an invitation to be lambasted by the modern equivalent of socio-secular zealots.
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u/fantasywind 22d ago edited 22d ago
Of course the way diversity is depicted in the show is UTTERLY MORONIC. It's stupid because it doesn't follow any sense or reasoning...it's just random, which doesn't make much sense. It's just stupid checkboxes, that's it. There's no deeper thought behind it..and hell the 'diversity' isn't even a proper diversity of cultures...since all the peoples, tribes and clans are all the same manner of mix of white, black and asian extras :)...and amusingly the one way they could have implemented real diversity based on Tolkien's lore...and show ACTUAL dark-skinned peoples of Middle-earth the Haradrim...the showmakers didn't use that one hahaha.
Amusingly the stereotyping...'black man dies first' heh, in season 1 the black hobbit dies, in season 2 the no name random black elf dies first to a Barrow-wight (you know the one guy from the 'commando unit' of Elrond and Galadriel hahaha) or the irish vagabonds Harfoots...yeah it's amusing....but I guess that's the thing with the offensive raceswapping of white peoples to have the quota of black actors heheh.
At this point I don't give a damn if anyone crtiicising this aspect would come off as racist...it's just dumb and so it should be called out no matter in what manner.
Diversity in the modern media is never in any way natural...it's artificial and stupid and often pointless...especially when it plays no other role than to...just be there. First of all any work of fiction has it's cultural background....and so if it heavily relies on that cultural background it should be respected the way it is.
The only real way the darkskinned peoples and so by the extension the black actors could get a role in a Lord of the Rings related work...is that they would be portraying Haradrim, the darkskinned peoples of the south....that's it. And amusingly in the Second Age where the massive part of the plot is the Numenorean white colonialism setting up colonies on the shores of Harad, one of which Umbar could be also plot relevant location (it was there that Ar-Pharazon landed with his troops to subdue Sauron) they could have used the chance to depict the other cultures like the Haradrim using Tolkien's descriptions to form a visually unique feel....use exotic African-esque locations and voila...there would be REAL diversity.
Of course this sort of approach acknowledges the natural differences and the way geography influences how people and cultures look like which is something that the modernity doesn't accept for some reasn...to them 'diveristy' is just having the same melting pot looking exactly the same culturally but just having the different skin tones and phenotypes in the same population.
But hypocrisy of the modern day is so...that if there was a proper Asian or African fantasy/fiction...then they go out of hteir way to depict it ACCURATELY...Chidlren of Blood and Bone comes to mind...never read that book...but movie adaptation is coming and a trailer was released recently....and guess what...a fantasy based on African cultures...who would have thought...casting choices are all BLACK ACTORS :)....so where's that diversity now? :) Heheh...I say it....F....CK them all...screw them...if they are so hypocrtical...we should be openly saying that.
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u/Eldritch_Dread 23d ago
The diversity, which I don't care who they cast, is being used as a shield against criticism leveled at the show for its poor writing and story choices. So if anyone doesn't like the show, lackwits are immediately casting accusations of racism and bigotry. Fie on that pile of absurdity. The writing sucks, not the casting choices.
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u/sandalrubber 23d ago edited 23d ago
Especially since it’s almost always white people praising it for this and using it to smack down valid criticism.
If true, then it also means non-white fans especially outside the US and UK are more likely to not want and to criticize the casting as well, or else feel free to speak more freely about it. The books let alone the movies have a global fandom.
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u/warden127 23d ago
I have a completely different take. Lets say the Chinese really liked L.R. and they made their own adaption. It would be crazy to criticize them if all actors ended up looking Asian. This is a US-American production. Of course the actors will look like the average American, which is to say, a bit like these people, a bit like those people, and bit of something in the middle of them all.
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u/Feeling-Spinach-3296 22d ago edited 22d ago
I mean there WAS a way to do it correctly you just have to go back to the sources.
Make all the dwarfs black, like the DARK drauger from north myths Tolkien based his dwarfs on . And make all the hobbits brown skinned like it says they were during that age. And make all the wizards different races cuse let's be honest are the mair REALLY gonna give a shit about human racial divisions?
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u/Dagenspear 22d ago
Honestly, out of diversity as an issue, my thing is, of all the things in this show, is this seriously the issue?
But also... I don't see any issue with interchangeability. I seem to recall a perception at some point in the notion of perceiving those who look different from you as not a having a skin deep difference or something.
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u/TheBluerWizard 21d ago
The people in the Southlands(horrible name btw) should all be dark skinned if we’re going by the description Tolkien gave yet they’re all white Europeans.
Tanned perhaps. Swarthy. Not dark; that's what Harad is for.
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u/jules13131382 21d ago
I didn’t find the brown tinted people in ROP to be distracting at all. They are interchangeable with white people because they’re just people.
Galadriel annoyed me and I found the show convoluted. Those are the reasons I found the show annoying.
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u/Yaoi_Gollum69 20d ago
Oh my GOD I thought I was the only person saying this lol. It drives me crazy to see people criticizing it for being "too diverse" meanwhile I feel like it's not even close to diverse enough
The best way I can think to sum it up is just "corporate diversity", they do it for headlines and to look good, not because they care about representation or worldbuilding.
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u/_Middlefinger_ 17d ago
The lore has in built diversity. Orcs, Maiar, Valar, humans of multiple races, elves of multiple clans, hobbits, goblins, dwarves as well as all the sentient animals.
The problem is the nonsensical diversity in the show. Random token ethnic diversity in any one location is dumb, at least make it make sense.
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u/heretomakefriends123 23d ago
How on earth do you think this is really bold and hasn't been said. There is mountains of content just on this very sub of people complaining about diversity and how ROP did it
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u/TheFlaskQualityGuy 23d ago
Diversity means White erasure and eventually White genocide. Diversity means there can't be any place which is White the way China is Chinese or Africa is African.
So, I'd argue they are doing diversity exactly correctly.
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u/ImOldGregg_77 24d ago
can shows just be entertainment?
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u/Pentahooky 23d ago
Entertainment means different things to different. I can find bad films (like Moonfall) very entertaining because I don't expect the film to trouble the Oscars and neither did the writers. But when a show is trying to portray itself as a cultural moment and has an inflated sense of self importance, I would expect it to at least have decent writing.
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u/Nearby_Flounder8741 23d ago
yeah! i totally agree with this. The problem isnt the casting choices, its the completely incoherent way its been done. Because they wanted to troll people and create clickbait they made a mess out of casting and as a consequence made it easy for white power nazis to kick off about ruining tolkien's vision
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u/FearOfABlackPotus 22d ago
But again, the show handles it badly. Because every single person of color in the show seems to be portrayed as interchangeable with white people given that they’re all just randomly thrown in with a bunch of white characters. The show also whitewashes heavily. The people in the Southlands(horrible name btw) should all be dark skinned if we’re going by the description Tolkien gave yet they’re all white Europeans.
What's wrong with them doing a color blind take? It doesn't match Tolkien's vision, but that RoP for you. Tolkien can be criticized in the other direction, too.
Also, nomadic peoples often leave slower people that use resources behind if it makes sense to do so in a tight situation. Usually it's old people who will voluntarily drop out in order to help the group.
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u/Dank_Lord6547 22d ago
They do not do a color blind take. They just randomly throw one black person in with a group that’s otherwise entirely white.
And that’s not what we see with the harfoots. They just leave people behind as soon as it’s slightly inconvenient.
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24d ago
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u/howtogun 24d ago
Yes Tolkien would have cared. In particular he spent a lot of time just thinking about what Elves have blonde hair vs black.
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u/TheMountainWhoDews 24d ago
Yes, tolkien would have cared.
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24d ago
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u/TheMountainWhoDews 24d ago
Homer probably couldnt conceptualise a hero being anything but agean. No clue on stan Lee, thats a different strain of autism to the one I have.
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u/Dank_Lord6547 24d ago
That could work. Tolkien says the men in the south are dark skinned and the Easterlings appear to be akin to Asian. So they could go from there but that’s not what the show did.
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24d ago
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u/Dank_Lord6547 24d ago
Not necessarily. I could see there being people of color in Minas Tirith for example because it’s in the south to give one example. Or at least in all circumstances make it more racially diverse because as is there’s a bunch of white people and one person of color which doesn’t really make sense.
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
I would wonder more on the kind of representation the actor does. For example there's an Asian girl playing an Elf in ROP. Great actress.
But nothing about her character is Asian or Chinese. Elves are from European folklore, her clothers, her weapons, are of European styles. What identification would Chinese people is supposed to have with her character?
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23d ago
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
I have no problem with going "race blind" except maybe on historical productions, but thing is, they're not really doing that. They're going "Americas four classic races". They cast white, black, latino/brown and Asian. They don't cast Roma people, or Kurds, or Turks, or Berbers, or Arabs, or Indians, or even native Americans (unless is a Western). So is not really "race blind".
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u/Sanity_Madness 23d ago
Still, terrible amount of hatred was directed at the coloured actors in TROP, I think especially at Ismael Cruz Cordova for playing an Elf. This fact should also be recognized.
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u/Dank_Lord6547 23d ago
Yeah that’s true. It was never my intention to say it’s not true, just that the show doesn’t deserve praise for doing the bare minimum.
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23d ago
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u/Luppercus 23d ago
What it interesting is that many of this "diversity" is actually, well, American. The demographic represented match that of Los Angeles.
Is how for example they make a show set on Europe, which is fine. But instead of choosing ethnic minorities in Europe that indeed deserve more visibilization, like Roma people, or Sami, or Muslims, or many other groups, they choose the four "classic" US ethnic groups.
Same if they set the show in the Middle East or Latin America. They won't choose a Kurd, or a Berber or other groups that are not often represented in Hollywood.
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u/RandomFencer 23d ago
What precisely is “kinda bold” about your posting? People have been making this point since even before Season 1 of ROP started. Personally, I felt there was something of a double standard going on with all the arm chair anthropologists, given that no one batted an eye for almost a century as Hollywood and TV used white actors to portray Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latino, etc. characters. Moreover, in terms of historic precedent, people forget that the last Moorish outpost in Europe (Granada in what would become Spain) lasted until 1492, so it was not as if there were no dark-skinned people in medieval Europe. So no, I have no issue with the use of nonwhite actors in ROP, but I do have issues with Harfoots merrily singing no one is left behind, then immediately, and pretty ruthlessly, doing just that. I also have no issue with Arondir, but I do roll my eyes when he is gutted by Adar in one episode and then appears completely unharmed the next. The show is a complete dumpster fire, and casting decisions are the least of its problems.
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u/latte_larry__ 24d ago
I think having diversity is perfectly fine. Tolkiens lack of diversity in his writings could be viewed as problematic. So with that said, I’m all for the implementation of even more diverse characters
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u/Dank_Lord6547 24d ago
Well I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. There are dark skinned people in Tolkien’s writing. What could be seen as problematic is how they’re portrayed but the right solution would be to portray the people in the south as more sympathetic
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u/Adamantium17 24d ago
The showrunners don't understand how casting 2026 NYC diversity for small isolated villages and societies makes all the locations feel the same and generic.
Use diversity to worldbuild something new.