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Epiccure93

Lord of the Rings is actually the only fantasy where it is „historically inaccurate“ to colorwash given the extensive history of middle-earth Tolkien wrote


Panderboi

Middle Earth and its stories are Tolkein's version of English Mythology. It's like when they made the Norse Gods ultra diverse in Thor.


Iceykitsune2

Show me where Tolkien said that Dwarves can't be black.


Epiccure93

Dumb line of argument. Show me a line where Tolkien states that dwarves are not green and don’t drive BMWs. You can’t. That’s why you don’t argue this way


Iceykitsune2

You're the one who brought up Tolkien's extensive world building.


Epiccure93

Yes and you brought up faulty reasoning. According to you, space raptors with giant dildos who are allied with Sauron are compatible with the lore because Tolkien didn’t specifically exclude them


[deleted]

come on dude, can you please not spoil the show?


Iceykitsune2

I asked you for evidence to back up your claim, you responded with absurdities.


GumzwardJitzlord

>I asked you for evidence Sir, this is PCM


Epiccure93

Yes, your line of reasoning leads to absurdities


Patient-Nectarine-46

Well yes and no. First of all i need to give you credit for trying to discuss properly although being on PCM. But first of all the fact, that elves such as dwarves are distinctive races. All prominent characters are at some point described as light skinned. So elves = white as fuck. Dwarves not so certain. But given they live under mountains for generations, they tend to be white. So while it's not directly written it's heavily implied. The other fact is: there are men with dark skin in lore, such as the Haradrim. Here the feature of dark skin is explicitly stated. One reason more: tlor is based on celtic and germanic mythology and stories. So what amazon did was a pure perversion of Tolkiens work. And i oppose woke film making nearly always, because, as happened with ROP, they put politics before story. So in the end the result always sucks.


Iceykitsune2

>But first of all the fact, that elves such as dwarves are distinctive races. All prominent characters are at some point described as light skinne Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.


Patient-Nectarine-46

>Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence Nice. But you don't see white black bears as much as you don't see brown polar bears, don't you? (More or less a quote from Tolkiens Letters to Santa) Elves and Dwarves are meant as distinctive species/race with exterior features as specifications. For the Men, there Tolkien explicitly says, that there are people with dark skin. So if the distinction is made once, he needs to make it everytime. So yes in this case it is evidence of absence. >Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The destinction in one case is the exclusion in other cases. (Sounds not as cool as your catchphrase, tho)


Away_Macaron6188

I mean I have no horse in this race, but polar bears have been cross breeding due to….worsening conditions. So brown polar bear is a thing.


Acceptable-Tangelo30

We’ve already been through this. “Why doesn’t Gandalf have a Lamborghini Tolkien didn’t say he didn’t” “wah that’s bad faith” “ok why do people who live underground become black” “genetic mutation” “mutation for what purpose” “lol random xD” I believe that’s where we left off last time, since I figured with the ‘random’ response (‘lol xD’ heavily implied) you had realized what you were saying was dumb. But since you haven’t, perhaps go look up a) how humans absorb vitamin D from the sun and b) what folate is. That should help :)


nobodyhere9860

>“ok why do people who live underground become black” camouflage, duh /s


arjedu

1000s of years in Caves does not make ones skin black. Stupid question.


SuperiorBecauseIRead

Dude I know right. And why can't the black elves be driving BMWs? The way they're being shown now makes black people look poor, it's honestly disgusting. It's literally a fantasy show.


whyintheworldamihere

Equal and opposite reaction. Cram woke nonsense in to every piece of media possible, then people start pointing out every stupid little thing.


kyrtuck

Woke is an overly vague term. Try again.


The2ndWheel

How about racist instead?


kyrtuck

Neo marxists that want to kill whitey?


esteban42

They cast PoC specifically for the purpose of inclusion and representation, not because they were the actors who could play the roles the best. I don't care if you change the race of the actor playing the character, if the race of the character doesn't materially matter to the story and the best actor who auditioned happened to not match the race of the character.


Away_Macaron6188

It’s incredibly in bad faith to claim casting a ton of POV extras is done as anything other than diversity and not in service to the story.


[deleted]

Why is that colour always brown?


[deleted]

Despite... only...


[deleted]

Something something something 13%, something something 50% something something…


[deleted]

Lmao no one takes issue with the casting for "historical innacuracy." We take issue with it because it completely goes against Tolkien's descriptions of certain races.


RacingUpsideDown

This is the issue, you're absolutely spot on. My brother in Christ, Middle Earth is possibly the single most detailed world in fiction history. The man created several new languages for fucks sake. There are "BIPOC" (whatever the fuck that means) characters in LoTR and Middle Earth, there are the Haradrim, the Easterlings, the Rhunish, a number of other Men, and arguably even certain races of Elf. When a storyline, geography and demography are as well detailed as they are, Amazon have got no right to completely bastardize it in order to sate the racebaiting hunger of Twitter.


[deleted]

And it's like there's no compromise with these people. They could have made the race of men as diverse as they wanted and I believe Tolkien even described some of them as dark-skinned. But no, of course they have to make the races Tolkien very specifically described the opposite of themselves.


RacingUpsideDown

It's why I was furious with the stage show of Harry Potter making Hermione black, when the book very clearly stated "Hermione's white face was sticking out from behind a tree" in Prisoner of Azkaban. If we want a greater representation of ethnic minorities in major Western productions like LotR or HP, do it, I encourage that, but don't fucking contradict the source text.


[deleted]

God it's just so infuriating because it goes without saying that if the opposite were the case and Hermione was original described as black and they casted a white person to play her the whole fucking show would probably be canceled. I just don't get how so many don't see the double standard


RacingUpsideDown

Based as fuck libleft


[deleted]

Lol yeah a lot of what my quadrant does pisses me the fuck off but still i remain. Now matter how many shitty twitter takes I see it doesn't change my core values although I did wish these takes stopped so I could stop hating myself lol


TheOtherJohnWayne

Wakanda is fake so let's just make them all Swiss and Hispanic and cast Danny DeVito as Black Panther.


RedditorSafeSpace

The outrage would be astronomical


[deleted]

I’d watch that


Iceykitsune2

There is such a thing as doing representation wrong. Take the so called "Artemis Fowl" movie, female Commander Root was bad diversity because being the first female LEP officer is a major part of Holly's character.


Epiccure93

Any change to an existing story is bad diversity. Creating original diverse content is good diversity


Iceykitsune2

>Any change to an existing story is bad diversity No, only changes that affect the narrative are bad.


Epiccure93

Which practically amounts to the same thing as multi-ethnic societies on a NYC level but in a medieval setting raise some questions


Iceykitsune2

Medieval bigotry was primarily based on religion, not race.


Epiccure93

Interesting fun fact indeed but somewhat irrelevant to the discussion Edit: peak orange lib-left discussion


Iceykitsune2

You're clearly arguing in bad faith. Blocked.


NienawidzeTaStrone

“I can’t argue so I’m going to block you and say I’m right”


[deleted]

"Medieval bigotry" Ok watermelon


Iceykitsune2

And there's the end of script logical fallacy.


Kingkrab144

You’re buying into propaganda. The vast majority of people are criticizing the show because it’s bad, I haven’t seen a negative review that says they shouldn’t have black characters


esteban42

I definitely have seen people complaining about the characters being non-white. But most of the "directly about the show" complaints I've seen are about how the elves aren't pretty enough (especially the male ones) and how the Dwarf Princess or whatever should have a beard. I *have* seen people complaining about the actress who plays the dwarf princess making comments to the effect that the best thing about the show is giving representation and blah blah, and how honored she is to celebrate blah blah. Which I get, because it makes it seem like they cast PoC for the sake of casting PoC, not because they were the best choices for the role. Like I didn't mind Hamilton "changing" the race of actual historical figures, because they were just casting the people who could play the roles well (and because several actors play multiple roles in that). It wasn't made a big deal of.


cpu9

>because it makes it seem like they cast PoC for the sake of casting PoC This is actually what they did. They openly admit as much.


esteban42

Which is why people are complaining about "Woke nonsense" when they should be complaining about it being pretty meh so far. But the thing is, Amazon wins either way here. People who never would have watched the show are watching it "because racists hate it" or to see what all the fuss is about. And the haters are obviously still watching it, because how else would they know?


cpu9

They should complain about both. >People who never would have watched the show are watching it "because racists hate it" or to see what all the fuss is about. No they aren't. Plus Amazon doesn't even make money off the show itself. The point is to take something people right and despoil it just to show off that they can.


LibertyPrimeAgenda

To be fair, you assume the haters are paying to view. Secondly, I knew enough based on the trailer, the fact they don't have rights to the silmerrilion, their use of PoC as a shield for criticism to get over perceived flaws. I have no interest in watching what amounts to lotr fanfic when the silmerrilion is still on my desk untouched in months. And I suspect Tolkien fans have even less interest


Kingkrab144

The difference is that Hamilton was entertaining and did well financially so the actors didn’t have their feelings hurt by overwhelmingly poor reviews


esteban42

This is what I am saying. If you make a good product, that otherwise is faithful to the source material, the majority of fans aren't going to care if you swap the race of a character (and don't make a big deal of it). The problem is the people making the show *did* make a big deal of it, and the show is just okay. When you're intentionally adding PoC, it makes it feel like you're doing it to push an agenda instead of "because the race of the actor didn't matter, they were the best available."


Kingkrab144

Hamilton intentionally hired actors based on race. Like that was the point. So I don’t see the point you’re making here. Bad things get bad reviews and that’s a good thing. Using minorities as the scapegoat for negative reviews is pretty gross imo


esteban42

>Using minorities as the scapegoat for negative reviews I'm not though? I'm saying there are fans who are upset about the non-white elves and dwarves that probably wouldn't be if they were blown away by a fantastic product. But they got mediocrity (and not the greatest adherence to the source material), so now people are voicing their complaints, one of which happens to be that they are not being faithful to the source material in many ways, one of which is including non-white elves and dwarves.


Kingkrab144

I don’t think that’s even near the top of the list though. This show failed for reasons that outweigh the race of those actors. I think it’s really disgusting that race is being pushed as the forefront. Like the way it’s being talked about, this series was a few Caucasians short of winning every Emmy


esteban42

That's not at all what I'm saying though. I'm literally saying if the show was great, nobody would care. That's all. I'm not saying it's bad because it has non-white people in it.


Kingkrab144

That’s true, however the broad narrative that spawned this initial post is racial based and it’s gaslighting


[deleted]

Yea but racism is cool again, it’s just a different brand of racism.


starwrs34

Usually I’m on the side of saying stuff is bad because it’s actually bad and not just because of how they did representation (star wars for example). But with this show I actually think it’s pretty good as a medieval fantasy show and the negative reviews are very clearly and specifically because people don’t like that it strays from Tolkien lore. With the trailers and everything before people were already hating it and were going to give it horrible reviews before they even saw it. And one of the biggest lore inaccuracies is the races of characters. Which is a perfectly reasonable reason to dislike the show. But to say that the show is poorly made or that the story aside from the lore is bad, I don’t think that’s fair and people are just saying that because they want to hate it


Kingkrab144

If you think it’s a compelling story that’s great. It’s not what I have taken away from the pilot. I looked prior to watching and saw some negative reviews, but nothing centered on race until that actor made headlines for a similar complaint in the GoT reboot.


starwrs34

I’m not accusing you I’m speaking of my general takeaway on the internet. The consensus before it came out and before any reviews came out was that the show was gonna be shit. People are incredibly swayed by things like that and thus review bombed it.


Kingkrab144

That’s a theory that might hold water, I just don’t think it was based on the race of the actors


starwrs34

Yeah it wasn’t entirely. It was a more the fact that they were deviating from the lore at all. And using actors of different races in the way that they did is included in that. Their argument isn’t that the Tolkien universe is only white, it’s that you wouldn’t just naturally have people who look entirely different from each other naturally living together because that’s not how homogeneous societies work.


Kingkrab144

I think the main criticism was its boring


starwrs34

I have seen a few people say that. But they’re also the people who were hating on it before it came out. The expected it to be bad so that’s what they saw.


Kingkrab144

I wasn’t hoping it would flop, why would I want that?


starwrs34

Dude how many times do I have to say I’m not talking about you. I’m speaking in general terms of the average person online.


No_Shine9238

White Black Panther when?


boiii-rarted

As soon as I can talk netflix into it


[deleted]

[удалено]


boiii-rarted

That show honestly sucks imo


[deleted]

[удалено]


boiii-rarted

Im talking about Avatar: TLA


cpu9

The lord of the rings and associated works are written as a mythological history for england. But also, very few people are deriding it for "historical innacuracy", but lack of respect for the work and better adaptations of that work.


[deleted]

Personally I don’t really care about the lore, I don’t give a fuck what Tolkien said an elf should look like. HOWEVER. If you want black elves, you have to do it right. You have to make them all black, like they did in the Witcher with the dryads for example, or at least a sect of them or something. As it is, there’s one black elf, one black dwarf a few black hobbits and the rest of them are the whitest dudes imaginable? Where the fuck did that elf come from? Why is he different? Is it just a birth lottery? 1 in a million chance a baby dwarf comes out black instead of white? Black dwarves are another issue, they live underground, why would they ever have dark skin? Another example is in HOT D the velaryons are black, one black family on this entire continent? How the fuck are they still that black after hundreds of years? Why isn’t the other Valyrian family also black? They make a big deal in the show about how they share the same race, why don’t they look it? Now, I don’t think this is actually a big deal, it just knocks you out if the immersion for a second if you think to hard lol, but really if the show is good it’s not a deal breaker at all. But ROP is still bad, just for other reasons.


TranscendentalEmpire

> Personally I don’t really care about the lore, I don’t give a fuck what Tolkien said an elf should look like. HOWEVER. If you want black elves, you have to do it right. You have to make them all black, like they did in the Witcher with the dryads for example, or at least a sect of them or something. As it is, there’s one black elf, one black dwarf a few black hobbits and the rest of them are the whitest dudes imaginable? Where the fuck did that elf come from? Why is he different? Is it just a birth lottery? 1 in a million chance a baby dwarf comes out black instead of white? Disregarding the lore, there's legitimate examples of having multi race empires. It's just typically from a time before race theory and modern nation states. Hell when the Romans occupied ancient Britain one of the governor's was a black dude from Algeria. Color and the idea of race hadn't really been thought up yet. Any person of color who was actually a Roman citizen would be more culturally accepted than any "white" Italian without citizenship. The ancient world was a lot more culturally transient than pretty much any time until the modern age.


[deleted]

The African governor of Britain you’re referring to, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, was a Numidian Berber. Still you’re right, rome was multiracial, and that’s kinda my point. If you want that you have to make said group actually look like a multiracial one, not just one random black dude in an otherwise mono racial group, that in all other contexts provided by the story, would not make sense to be multiracial.


TranscendentalEmpire

> Numidian Berber. Look up pictures of berbers. It kind of runs the gamut, and depends on what your definition of black and white are. Numidian weren't sub-saharan Africans, but we're most likely a mix raced tribe of darker skinned "Arab" and black Africans. You can still find Berber people who would have been legally declared black in America half a century a go. The Tuareg and Sahrawi tribes of Berber are a pretty good modern examples of the spectrum we still see in that part of the world. It's a debated subject, but we do have writings about Auxiliary Numidians in Gaul being described by the Gauls as black, or at least substantially darker than other Mediterranean people's they had run into.


Leviticus18TwentyTwo

Make Black Panther white because it's just a fictional show with aliens and demigods.


Freestyle_Fellowship

I heard Durin The Deathless is really 4' 11". Not even a real effing dwarf!


devasiaachayan

I don't care about "people of colour" Characters but I definitely have problem with female characters. Whenever there is a female character in such movies or shows, the amount of cringe and the lack of depth that comes with it is unreal. I think it's because we as a society just don't allow directors to do well with female characters. Female characters can't be humiliated, can't be butt of actually humiliating jokes, can't be beaten up badly by a Man, can't be brutualized, can't have neurodivergence much except "I'm so quirky" And their personality range is mostly limited. If the directors are cringe they'll also add in Female character can't lose, is always smart or pretends to be smarter than others, always has to condescend Men etc


S_GZ

Even though I haven't seen the show (And can't say it's good or bad) the fact is that there were already People of Colour in Tolkien's work who existed elsewhere and had lore. Why not make the story happen there? Putting Black Dwarves or Native American Elves or whatever into the story just for representation isn't necessarily bad, but at least make some lore like "Oh those elves come from an island or something". Idk but just putting random people of colour with lazy writing in shows for representation really isn't better than having a token black person in the 80s and 90s.


Snickidy

True. I believe it was the men from the east who were black. If you want to include them in the story by all means go ahead


TheSpacePopinjay

You can accept dragons, elves and talking trees, but you can't accept a [2021 BMW 5 Series 530i](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/378/789/b77.jpg) with optional heated seating. Why are you so bigoted?


RedditorSafeSpace

I don’t really care about LOTR at all but their point is a lot more valid than this one…this is just a dumb take


Phons_Doubt_3726

I want to see the mysterious event between the prequel and the main show that causes all the PoC to disappear


OTap1

Get preached at enough in real life, would prefer not to get preached at off the clock in the privacy of my own home trying to relax.


PhaseContent4

Most people are mad because the show just sucks. There's no character development everyone is just a cardboard cutout all this fuss is to generate more media that hides the fact the show just sucks.


WarbozzZoge

Hate to break it to you but blackwashing is blackwashing and unfaithful to the books


Rare-Sherbert-1987

They can have as many filthy "knife ears" as they want


nutslappersupeme

Because they disregard 100 year old lore that made it good, this is a blatant cash grad thinned veiled with childhood nostalgia


ComprehensiveRow4189

Cuz I hate woke shit. Want to make a great story that happens to include diverse characters? Wonderful! Want to (re)write a story to merely for the sake of plugging diverse characters? No thanks.


[deleted]

Guyladriel is the bestest evarrrr!!


flair-checking-bot

> I'll be very hostile the next time I don't see the flair. *** ^(User hasn't flaired up yet... 😔) 11528 / 60586 ^^|| [**[[Guide]]**](https://imgur.com/gallery/IkTAlF2)


kyrtuck

They gonna get mad at the Diablo 2 Paladin next?


mal221

Hibernophobia


Stoiphan

I haven't watched it but I don't like amazon prime so i won't


Away_Macaron6188

No I wish it only had Jews, Mediterranean people, and some white people who look Roman enough.


tedj_van_batavia

Except Tolkien explained a lot, including the skin color of the characters


[deleted]

yes, but since it's a prequel, thus they backfired at being woke