Comments
user_dan t1_iu9pwg0 wrote
>The method of Rings of Power of just randomly making every fourth character black is just silly (feels like a decade ago this would've been called "tokenism" and universally detested).
They went to each Middle Earth group and added one or two non-white characters. It's the old 90s and early 00s flavor of "diversity". On top of that, the finale either killed or excluded almost all of their "diverse" cast.
Hollywood has had a diversity problem for a long time, especially compared to other forms of entertainment, like music and sports. I feel like the diversity in RoP was done in bad faith.
GenericAustin t1_iu9m1bt wrote
>The UK has a lot more south Asians than black people but for some reason they don't get included when talking about "diversity"
UK shows are kinda weird in this way. Blacks make up 3% of the UK population but UK shows make that percentage seem way higher
So I think black actors find it much easier to get roles there than other races. I am not sure if that is negatively affecting some groups of people or not, I guess it can be considered okay because blacks probably found it hard to get roles many years ago
ConnorMc1eod t1_iuasprj wrote
I mean, every single show/ip in the US has a black dude in it these days and they are ~6-7% of the population. It's not just a UK thing. Working with a lot of East Asians many of them are surprised when they come here and find so many more white people.
Chlodio t1_iub7e06 wrote
USA has two times as many Latinos as afro-Americans, yet from watching Hollywood movies you would be led to believe the opposite.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iubjbfh wrote
Agreed, not even close even.
sambalaya t1_iuccxl5 wrote
Would love a citation because this isn’t true
sambalaya t1_iuccrdz wrote
Do you just make up statistics?
ConnorMc1eod t1_iud2az0 wrote
?
Black Americans are ~12% of the US, presumably half of them are male.
What statistic did I make up?
sambalaya t1_iudk59v wrote
I own my mistake because I did not see “dude” and thought you were stating 6% as a whole
ConnorMc1eod t1_iudvwvl wrote
No problem my dude
zakattack799 t1_iucpkct wrote
Uk is still majority white. Like maybe 10% minorities 80 to 85% white
stomach t1_iu9s2ud wrote
tbh, any media being made for general audiences (in the western world) would be kinda dumb to not capitalize on black culture, whether it's a fair representation of your regional demographics or not. hip hop has absolutely conquered the world in terms of culture. since the 80s/90s it's just been a blanket laid over everything. it's nearing its final stages working its way into country music.
Powermac8500 t1_iu9xi3c wrote
>a decade ago this would've been called "tokenism"
Tolkienism
Chlodio t1_iub6sig wrote
>How do you have these insular communities in an ancient world where people are not homogenous?
Particularly with the Numenoreans, who are supposed to be isolationists. It is like if a third of Japan had been Indians during the Perry Expeditions, despite them having been in isolation for centuries.
Regent Miriel is black despite her father being white, and Tolkien explicitly describes her skin tone as white.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iuatr9u wrote
Ehhhh the black Valyrians makes sense, how does it not?
They are a different blood line than the Targaryens also from Old Valyria. Old Valyria is much more racially diverse than Westeros especially with the lands beyond the immediate coastline where the Free Cities and Old Valyria are.
yoaver t1_iujjtme wrote
Valyrian is an ethnicity in the books. And Valyrians were very much not diverse at all. They thought they are superior, and it was taboo for them to marry the "lesser" races, especially because their genes comtain the magic dragon connections.
Black Velaryons don't make sense from a lore perspective, and it's kinda hilarious whenever Corlys talks about his "pure valyrian blood", but it doesn't matter much to the show and the acting is still great.
It's at least a bit better than the pure tokenism in Rings.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iujl81z wrote
But are "races" defined by the same parameters we define races in current year Earth? Valyrian being an ethnicity is irrelevant because we don't know exactly what defines that ethnicity.
All I remember was blonde, fair hair and purple eyes being indicative of Valyrian blood. Nothing specific to skin color.
Regardless I am glad you and I (and basically everyone else) agrees it's superior to how RoP handles it with no attempt to even hand wave it away with a goofy explanation.
[deleted] t1_iua207s wrote
[deleted]
Autisthrowaway304 t1_iu9ug4d wrote
>The UK has a lot more south Asians than black people but for some reason they don't get included when talking about "diversity"
Quick Answer? Most filming takes place in London where the majority of the british/african descended population live so they get opportunities that elsewhere would be snapped up by Asians.
Also it probably helps that nobody gives a fuck about Asian diversity, while african diversity is appealing to any potential american audience.
LightThatIgnitesAll t1_iua1vcs wrote
>Most filming takes place in London where the majority of the british/african descended population live so they get opportunities that elsewhere would be snapped up by Asians.
There's more asians in London than black people. By quite a large gap.
>probably helps that nobody gives a fuck about Asian diversity, while african diversity is appealing to any potential american audience.
And that's what people are calling out. It really isn't "diverse" if they only care about seeing black people and not asians (or other groups).
SpreadYourAss t1_iubzk5g wrote
>The method of Rings of Power of just randomly making every fourth character black is just silly
Maybe I'm crazy, but I honestly thought the diversity in HotD made even less sense. I can accept people from random sections being a different skin color. Maybe a group of elves evolved to be black. Maybe a group of dwarves lived separately at some point, and had a different skin color. I can make up SOME excuses for it to kinda make sense.
Valerians being black literally makes absolutely no damn sense. The are literally Targaryens copies and have lived right alongside them for centuries on the exact same location.
How can one family possibly be all white and one be all black? It's even weirder than RoP.
ryraps5892 t1_iu9r1oi wrote
I noticed the same haphazard placement in lord of the rings and I think I appreciated it more for that reason 🤷♂️ they gave all the middle-earth races representation, but didn’t get preachy about it.
ThreeLittlePuigs t1_iu9r91i wrote
I think they did the castings race blind vs race conscious. I think race blind is better. I can ignore that some elves are black and some are white, I don’t need a genealogical explanation of why. It’s a fantasy tv show.
WordsAreSomething t1_iu9hjpo wrote
Diverse means having actors from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. That's it.
LightThatIgnitesAll t1_iu9ohok wrote
That's what it means but that's not how the term is often used when talking about media.
WordsAreSomething t1_iu9t4y1 wrote
Nope that's still what it means
LightThatIgnitesAll t1_iu9tfon wrote
Yes and I said "that's what it means."
WordsAreSomething t1_iu9udnw wrote
And I'm saying that your second part is wrong. It means the same in any context.
donkeylipsh t1_iu9r4fs wrote
So HoD tokenized them, where RoP simply made them a natural part of the world, and the conclusion is HoD did it better?
>How do you have these insular communities in an ancient world where people are not homogenous? Are these cultures strictly against race-mixing?
RoP has multiple offspring of mixed race. Both elf and human, and dark and light. As well as an entire race of elves that migrated from a magical realm. We also have proof of migrating hunters and hobbits. As well as the Southlands becoming refugees and the aftermath of Morgoth's war causing mass migrations.
So if you actually paid attention, RoP is a world where cultures develop their skin tone homogeneously, but will regularly encounter and mix with other homogeneous cultures.
But please, don't let that get in the way of good circle jerk. I'll see my way out and let you haters go off.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9v6uf wrote
>So HoD tokenized them, where RoP simply made them a natural part of the world
Its the opposite. RoP sprinkled diversity in a jarring way that made no sense to its world.
HoP did it in a way that made sense. The same way Baratheons have Black hair and Targaryens have silver hair, Valryons have Dark skin.
They're a full flavor, nor sprinkles.
-OrangeLightning4 t1_iua2ssv wrote
>in a jarring way
What does that even mean?
"Oh look, a few of the Southlander men are black. And as we all know, if a character doesn't justify being black in the world, they shouldn't be there."
Solid_Rice OP t1_iuahd82 wrote
jarring might be too strong of a word.
not believable is more appropriate.
I'm glad my folks are in there I just wished they made it more believable instead of feeling like corporate diversity.
HoD did a bang up job in that department.
donkeylipsh t1_iu9xcmo wrote
So in HoD they're allowed to have homogeneous cultures with a token family that somehow never mixed, despite the show having lighter skin for their mixed offspring. So the show contradicts your head lore. But you have no problem forgiving it.
But when you incorrectly assess that RoP has strictly homogeneous cultures, you use that as justification for your hate.
Make it make sense.
ihohjlknk t1_iu9ys7d wrote
> So in HoD they're allowed to have homogeneous cultures with a token family that somehow never mixed
These families regularly commit incest. They're not in the business of marrying outside of Old Valyria.
donkeylipsh t1_iua10m8 wrote
So HoD is allowed to have the first mixed race coupling in thousands of years. And you will completely accept that without any questioning of how they would really maintain this skin tone.
But when RoP goes deep into world building to show you why there would be different homogeneous evolution with uncommon but not unheard of intermingling of species and races, you cry foul and refuse to accept it.
Naw. There is no logical foundation in your argument. You simply like HoD more than RoP. And so when the show runners give you the lore they created for their representation, you choose to just accept what HoD says, but you demand we hold RoP under a microscope and evaluate if what they say is anthropologically correct. GTFO
Solid_Rice OP t1_iuagqfa wrote
> But when RoP goes deep into world building to show you why there would be different homogeneous evolution with uncommon but not unheard of intermingling of species and races
.....when did they do that? lol
the Harfoots who are scared of their own shadows somehow mixed with another group?
donkeylipsh t1_iue3ee0 wrote
I like how you avoided trying to refute any the reasons why the Valeryons in HotD don't make any sense and jump right to attacking RoP. It's almost as if you have no interest in a holding HotD to the same standards as RoP. But that would mean you're arguing in bad faith, and you wouldn't do that would you?
Throughout the whole show and multiple replies from me. Clearly you haven't been paying attention.
So scared of their own shadows? Tell you didn't watch the show without telling me you didn't watch the show.
They befriended a stranger. Announced their presence to clearly powerful beings. And fought them.
So we have verifiable proof that hobbits will interact with other species.
When you migrate, you will encounter other tribes. If you paid attention. Some get left behind. Not all of them will die. Some will survive and make tribes of their own. Who will have their own genetic traits. And who will also migrate. Having chance encounters with other hobbits form relationships and have offspring.
The fact is, there is more anthropological accuracy in RoP than there is in HotD tokenizing a single family.
But you like HotD and you don't like RoP. And so you demand RoP conforms to your head canon, and you accept whatever the showrunners say for HotD.
[deleted] t1_iuaik8a wrote
[removed]
Solid_Rice OP t1_iuagisk wrote
> that as justification for your hate.
lol this is funny considering I'm Black.
I'm glad both had Black actors cashing checks.
The overall point was verisimilitude.
Its fantasy but make it seem real if you want people to invest time in the story.
donkeylipsh t1_iue2jpx wrote
When did you express hate for any race? We're talking about your hate of a show here. The color of your skin has nothing to do with you hating on RoP.
And my overall point, is you are showing a double standard for you evaluations of the shows and how they did representation.
For RoP, You ignore refuse to accept the show runners lore for their representation, you demand anthropological accuracy, and when it's pointed out to you that they've actually SHOWN you how there would be mixing of homogeneous species and races, you reject that evidence.
But alls HotD has is one quote form the showrunners, and you put your microscope down and just accept what they say. You stopped to consider, wait, how the fuck did this one family stay black when everyone else is white? And before you say "incest", the mixing of races would have come long before any cultural norms of incest would ever be established.
Face it: You like HotD so you will accept any shortcomings. You hate RoP, so you will attack it for anything.
That's cool. But don't pretend you're evaluating things objectively. Own your hypocrisy and double standards.
btbrian t1_iu9zx4z wrote
If it was "jarring" for you to see people of color represented in film without a deep lore reason for why they have darker-colored skin, you're a racist. Full stop.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iuagxra wrote
lol holy shit! I guess I'm racist against my own people because I wanted the story to be believable. wow.
ralf_ t1_iuag71c wrote
They qualified it that it has to be consistent with its film world. Seeing every fourth citizen in Wakanda be a blonde would be jarring too.
ryraps5892 t1_iu9uajd wrote
I thought the same. These Downvoters are the same grown-ass children crying about little mermaid, fuck em
DiscreteConnected t1_iu9zh10 wrote
Meh. Diversity was the least of RoP's problems. Poor writing, corny dialogue, and awful pacing however...
Vaadwaur t1_iuaf2xe wrote
I agree that they actually made very solid minority hires but they kept tripping over themselves into making them tokens. We shouldn't have one black dwarf or one black elf, if you are making that choice then make their region broadly conform to them.
marccoogs t1_iuax93q wrote
Ate you just talking about characters with speaking parts, because there were multiple black dwarves seen in the Khazad-dum scenes.
BigFang t1_iuhhq21 wrote
I havent watched it, but there was a pretty big backlash on the Irish subreddits for racism and its portrayal of Irish accents and influenced characters. That would put a lot off before it even gets played.
topdeck55 t1_iuapu1c wrote
It does kind of distract though. I kept having the thought, "is there some sort of genocide that happens?" How do you go from an age of high diversity to low diversity? It should be the other way around.
LeftButtcheek69 t1_iuak4fy wrote
The onlu corny dialogue was from Garadial. Everyone seemed to talk normaly except her. Like someone who majors in literature and goes to a cheap pub for a beer to speak to strangers.
DiscreteConnected t1_iuall7o wrote
Nah there was a lot of corny dialogue across the board, not just from Galadriel.
"I'm good!", "The sea is always right", "Do you know why a ship floats?", etc...
Wompawompa1 t1_iucfoxv wrote
That’s how I speak to my cat
“Who’s a naughty floofen. You’re a naughty little floof ball. Is the little floof monster hungry ?”
BuddyBroDudeMan t1_iu9m2bs wrote
R/television go 5 minutes without telling everyone how much they don't like ROP challenge
Impossible
DiscreteConnected t1_iu9voqu wrote
Television subreddit discusses TV show... Who woulda thought.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iuasx55 wrote
>gigantic, billion dollar show from beloved IP is kind of a stinker
>whine that a television board keeps talking about it
D3Construct t1_iuaaqys wrote
ROP go 5 minutes without gaslighting, falsifying numbers and auto playing episodes for people who are watching other shows entirely challenge.
Impossible
[deleted] t1_iuah4w4 wrote
[deleted]
GarlVinland4Astrea t1_iu9qe4q wrote
And it’s always the most boring and uninteresting conversation. But I guess nerds need to feel like they watch the better fantasy show to feel cooler or something
BioStudent4817 t1_iua5n4m wrote
The TV show that just ended and is the follow-up to one of the biggest fantasy franchises in the Modern era is widely discussed.
Huge shocker.
-OrangeLightning4 t1_iua33w3 wrote
What gets me is that every article posted about Rings of Power is labeled astroturfing. Meanwhile there's like 5 different HoD articles on the frontpage and nobody in those comments has the same complaints.
HumanOrAlien t1_iu9dt6r wrote
I didn't see any issues with the diverse casting on either of the shows. None of them felt on the nose to me personally. I don't like this continuous comparison between these two shows as I believe they are different types of shows even though they are telling fantasy stories. One show is focused on the drama and the other is more focused on the fantasy elements. It's an unfair comparison as the source materials for both differ very much and these articles at this point are getting ridiculous and most probably being created as clickbait and nothing else.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9fdvo wrote
How about actually read the article?
HumanOrAlien t1_iu9hric wrote
I read the article and it uses the logic of HOTD to define how races should work in LOTR. In HOTD they are telling the story of a family or dynasty and the race of the characters is important to be kept in a line which signifies blood relations.
There are some flaws with the storytelling of ROP for sure but diverse casting isn't one of them. This continued discussion on the diversity in ROP is becoming stale now and people (including the author) should move on from it.
DaveInLondon89 t1_iu9soay wrote
Being a maritime empire like Carthage, Numenor being a multi-ethnic society makes perfect sense. But the token POC sprinkled into the Southlands looked like nothing more than nonsensical window dressing.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iuav7tn wrote
Eh, disagree. If anything the Southlands makes slightly more sense than Numenor.
Numenoreans are exclusively descended from one race and keeps the same appearance due to their isolation as an island. They certainly went out and conquered/colonized but they are still all described as 7 foot tall, fair skinned bodybuilders. The Southlands all being connected by land allows much more effortless migration and mixing of populations.
yoaver t1_iujk99x wrote
Yes look how diverse maritime empires were in real life, like Scandinavia /s
Paolo94 t1_iua34jb wrote
I’m actually glad HotD used black actors for key roles. Keeping track of all the characters and their names is already confusing to begin with. Having them all be played by white actors with silver hair would have made things even more confusing. Also, I’m all for more diversity in fantasy entertainment, which has long been dominated by white people.
SonofNamek t1_iua733t wrote
Opinion: HoD and RoP both use writers and showrunners. One of them does it better.
[deleted] t1_iu9ofs5 wrote
[deleted]
NonstopGraham t1_iubg43a wrote
Good.you?
jogoso2014 t1_iubxjap wrote
Ross Douthat
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9ewfs wrote
ARTICLE:
When I last wrote about the first seasons of the two blockbuster TV fantasy epics — HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon,” and Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings” prequel, “The Rings of Power” — each was only a few episodes old. My reaction was that each felt like half of a great fantasy story; the return to George R.R. Martin’s universe offering Machiavellian political action without clear metaphysical or moral stakes, the return to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth offering myth and magic and beauty, but not enough in the way of interesting human-level politics and drama.
Now that both shows’ first seasons are completed, my take remains generally the same. By the end, HBO’s prequel has sort of chosen sides in its simmering civil war, tilting our moral sympathies toward Emma D’Arcy’s adult version of Rhaenyra Targaryen, but it never really tries to be anything more than a dark drama of dynastic succession, with dragons showing up for spice and spectacle, but nothing at stake beyond the throne itself. Amazon’s Tolkien expansion eventually works some political machinations into its mythic sweep, but they’re crudely drawn and stilted, inferior to Peter Jackson’s portrait of Rohan and Gondor in “The Lord of the Rings” movies, let alone to the realpolitik of Martin’s Westeros.
That each show is deficient in something that the other offers, however, doesn’t mean they succeeded or failed equally. “House of the Dragon” has a million flaws, time-jumping through decades, recasting roles repeatedly and not always successfully, leaving plot holes gaping here and there, never really getting outside a few locations in its imaginary realm. Yet scene by scene the acting and writing hold your interest, persuading you that the characters are complicated people with genuine relationships engaged in a conflict with real stakes. The show fails to be the epic that “Game of Thrones” aspired to be, before its later-season collapse, but at least it succeeds in being interesting.
On “The Rings of Power,” by contrast, there is way too much mediocrity, too much simple boredom. It’s visually striking, but at a certain point, being asked to luxuriate in painterly images becomes wearying. The acting is consistently just OK, the writing is average with occasional flourishes of true inanity, and the plot is overburdened with blockbuster tropes. The heroine, Galadriel, is closer to a Marvel superhero than an ancient elf-lady, and you’ve got various unnecessary origin stories, MacGuffins and a J.J. Abrams-esque puzzle box approach to world-building — What is in that mysterious dwarf box? Who is the mysterious bearded giant? Which of our characters is secretly Sauron the Deceiver? — that just serves as a reminder of the seams in the stitched-together story.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9ezb8 wrote
CONT.. One useful test of a fantasy show is whether its world, its sub-creation, feels like it exists independently of the story being told about it. “House of the Dragon” doesn’t always meet that standard, but “The Rings of Power” misses it consistently. Apart from some nice inventiveness with its Hobbit antecedents, the Harfoots, it has no sense of everyday depth beneath most of its characters and cultures, no prosaic realism, no commitment to the full verisimilitude of its world.
I know that complaining about verisimilitude in fantasy can sound a bit weird — dragons, elves and magic are fine, but a little implausibility in plot dynamics is a bridge too far? But in fact, it’s precisely the magical elements that make verisimilitude in non-magical dimensions so necessary. Fantasy worlds are supposed to be unlike our own in some crucial and internally consistent respects, but not in random, careless ways. And if you want viewers or readers to suspend disbelief for those crucial, plot-defining differences, you can’t be constantly asking them to also suspend it for banal implausibilities.
So it’s fine, for instance, to ask the viewers of “Game of Thrones” to accept the existence of dragons or White Walkers or winters that last a decade; that’s all essential to Martin’s world. What’s potentially fatal — what was fatal, in the terrible later seasons of that show — is to ask them to accept a world where armies seem to cross continents in milliseconds, and other rules of character and politics and non-magical existence generally seem to change at the writer’s whims.
“The Rings of Power” is full of this sort of carelessness. One example, with implicit spoilers: In the story’s main arc, a key issue is whether a particular character might be the lost king of a region of Middle-earth. This region is a fairly noteworthy zone, formerly loyal to dark powers, patrolled by elves at the outset of the story, well known to the great human empire of Numenor, and in the penultimate episode it’s revealed to be just six days of hard riding from the greatest elven citadel. Yet the basic facts about this region’s line of kings — whether they exist at all, who they are, whether their line is still extant or died out a thousand years ago — are all somehow completely unknown to the show’s important characters until a browse of an ancient scroll at a key moment reveals the truth. It’s as if someone made a contemporary geopolitical thriller in which the C.I.A., MI6 and the Vatican were all making crucial policy choices on the assumption that the Visigothic kings are still in charge of Spain.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9f1bn wrote
CONT Then there’s the aspect of the show that churned up a lot of internet controversy around the time of its premiere — the use of multiracial casting to diversify Tolkien’s very Eurocentric source material. “House of the Dragon” attracted some of the same controversy, but it became a bigger deal with “The Rings of Power,” a culture-war signifier, with the casting condemned as an example of Hollywood wokeness betraying authorial intent and celebrated as a blow against the reactionary tendencies of the fantasy genre.
In theory, I’m on the side of the diversifiers. It’s true that Tolkien’s legendarium is a self-conscious attempt to invent a mythology for his beloved England, such that stripping away too much Northern European atmosphere is the equivalent of making a “Black Panther” adaptation set in South Korea or Scandinavia. But it’s also absurd to imagine that a narrative so vast and complex, spanning thousands of only partially mapped-out years, is somehow sullied if every adaptation doesn’t recapitulate the final battles in “The Lord of the Rings,” with its proto-European heroes pitted against darker-skinned Easterlings and Southrons.
Especially when you consider that several thousand years pass between the events of the famous trilogy and the antecedents depicted in “The Rings of Power,” it seems easy enough to imagine diversifications that don’t betray anything essential to Tolkien’s world. If the Hobbits of the Shire are supposed to look like plump Englishmen, for instance, that doesn’t mean that their distant Harfoot cousin-ancestors can’t appear to look more African or Asian. If the people of Gondor seem Greco-Roman, that doesn’t mean their distant Numenorean forebears, based on the myths of Atlantis, shouldn’t be presented as looking more Egyptian or Phoenician. If the core property of elves is their unsurpassed beauty, then why not make the Vanyar look Germanic, but the Noldor and Nandor look South Asian or Ethiopian? And then it’s easy enough to imagine Nordic- or Celtic-looking bad guys, the progenitors of the Hill-men who serve Sauron and his Ringwraiths in the backstory behind “The Lord of the Rings.”
But notice what I’ve done in these extremely nerdy speculations: I’ve evoked a racial reimagining of Tolkien’s peoples (human and nonhuman) that still treats them as peoples, with shared histories and phenotypical traits passed down somewhat similarly to the way that they are in our world, whose distant-past Middle-earth is supposed to embody.
This isn’t what “The Rings of Power” ended up doing. Instead, on the Amazon show each tribe and kingdom is internally multiracial, resembling an elite college campus engineered for maximal diversity. The Numenoreans, who hail from a deliberately set-apart island kingdom, look Asian and African and European. Ditto the Harfoots, all in a tiny population of wanderers who presumably mostly marry one another. With the dwarves and elves, the pattern seems basically the same. On the show, every kingdom and clan, however insular, whether human and nonhuman, boasts the diversity of a United Colors of Benetton advertisement.
Now, one could certainly invent a fantasy world where, for some reason, magical or otherwise, skin color and other physical characteristics are assigned randomly at birth and every family, to say nothing of every domain or principality, is home to a perfect cross-section of the human race. But that kind of invention would need to be part of the world-building, part of the fantasy, and “The Rings of Power” isn’t doing that. It’s just asking us to accept its Benetton-world without any attempt at explanation. And since we can guess that the actual explanation is just that this was the simplest way to do diverse casting, requiring zero world-building effort and minimal risk, it’s a constant reminder that a story set in vanished Numenor or mythical Eregion actually belongs emphatically to America in 2022.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9f3ev wrote
CONT
Here, the choices in “House of the Dragon” offer a useful contrast. The main way that the show diversified its source material is by making one of the major noble houses in Martin’s version of medieval Europe, the Velaryon family, dark-complexioned, albeit with the same platinum blond hair as the light-complexioned Targaryen family with whom they share a distant point of origin, the lost realm of Old Valyria.
The show doesn’t address (not so far, at least) Valyria’s internal ethnic diversity or how exactly traits like white hair, the signifier of its ancient bloodlines, get passed down. But the general dynamics of skin color on the show are familiar to our world. The Velaryons don’t look like other families of Westeros, who are mostly light-skinned, because they aren’t from Westeros. When Velaryons marry Targaryens, their children look multiracial. And — again, mild spoiler — when a Velaryon heir marries a Targaryen heiress, but the Targaryen heiress takes her captain of the guard as a lover, the fact that her lighter-complexioned, brunet-haired oldest sons don’t resemble her Velaryon husband creates a climate of suspicion that’s then crucial to the plot.
In other words, “House of the Dragon” uses diverse casting to raise the stakes of its family drama, while “The Rings of Power” just injects diversity haphazardly. And that lack of care is a defining feature of the show.
There are still things that can be said on its behalf: that it had a harder task, a bigger canvas and less of a road map than “House of the Dragon” (whose politics were mapped out in Martin’s source material) or that it needed to be a little more naïve, sincere and, frankly, magical than the gritty HBO style of television, which entails certain artistic risks in our relatively jaded times. If you want a Tolkien fan’s summary that’s similarly critical but ultimately a little more forgiving, I recommend reading this end-of-season wrap-up by Steven Greydanus of The Catholic World Report.
But here’s what I can’t get over: The show’s first season cost $465 million, part of an outlay that will probably reach a billion dollars before Amazon is done. How is it possible, with that extraordinary budget, that there apparently wasn’t money for actors memorable enough to match the “House of the Dragon” cast and writers who could elevate the material from C territory to at least a B-plus? Jeff Bezos, you were had.
meerkatx t1_iu9px3g wrote
Ya, the author isn't familiar with Tolkien's works otherwise he would know the Noldor would have been like superheroes compared to humans.
GarlVinland4Astrea t1_iu9q8hv wrote
Yup. People who clearly don’t know the sources should shut stop trying to act like authorities
MadeByTango t1_iu9zq83 wrote
Wow, that’s a lot of grief that has nothing to do with the headline. Author has a clear chip against Amazon and the show.
ragner11 t1_iuanxvm wrote
This is the weirdo that is always posting thot fights. He gets pleasure out of seeing women beat each other up. Check his profile
Solid_Rice OP t1_iubu99z wrote
guilty as charged
check my profile if you like to see half naked women beat the crap out of each other
prolly post more tonight!
ThreeLittlePuigs t1_iu9qu2r wrote
The author apparently didn’t even read the foreword to LoTR when it points out there’s hardly any history of men recorded by elves as they don’t care too much about it. How can we take their opinion seriously if it’s based on such false building blocks?
Strident_Hood t1_iu9rldq wrote
Do you think Tolkien imagined his universe as having every 4th person black for no reason other than to hit diversity quotas? How are there non-homogenous communities in an age pre-global migration? Don’t try to act like the author misinterpreted Tolkien when we both know I am right.
EDIT: I’m supportive of diversity but in the context of this series it was not done right. For example, if they wanted to include asian people then have a story set in Rhun. If they wanted to include black people then have a story set in Harad.
You can include diversity while respecting the world Tolkien built but instead they did the lazy route and made a pre-industrial and pre-global migration based on Western Europe reflect the diversity of modern day America.
WordsAreSomething t1_iu9tn45 wrote
Do you need a reason for nonwhite people to exist
orderinthefort t1_iuadk18 wrote
Yes. For the same reason why I would need a reason for White, Latino or Asian people to exist in Wakanda before they went international. If there's logical inconsistency, it will rub people the wrong way.
It's really no different logically than if WB cast Stephen Hawking as Superman. It doesn't make sense. He physically just could not be Superman. If something doesn't make sense, it causes friction.
I'm not saying history doesn't favor white people, and it definitely indirectly causes 17-20th century European and American stories to naturally favor white people as well. But at the end of the day if there's a historical context to the fiction, then it's weird to be shocked when people hold it to historical logic. And when it fails to adhere to that logic, it's normal for people to be annoyed by it.
WordsAreSomething t1_iuae8z6 wrote
>Yes. For the same reason why I would need a reason for White, Latino or Asian people to exist in Wakanda before they went international.
Yeah because a completely fictional land is the same as a fictional country in the real world and they need to follow the same thought process for the race of the inhabitants.
There is no reason a elf needs to be white.
orderinthefort t1_iuafgg6 wrote
Because we have Tolkien historical lore that follows the logic of our reality. Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, even Humans themselves were separated into homogeneous groups, most of whom despised each other. A group of humans in Harad were dark-skinned.
People were mad when they added a hot elf character in the Hobbit movies so they could make a love story with a dwarf. It directly shits on the historical lore of the books because there wasn't any narrative logic for it, it was purely external.
WordsAreSomething t1_iuagj7f wrote
My whole point is that there doesn't need to narrative reason for nonwhite people to exist. If the only reason you're critical of the race of the characters in ROP is because "historical lore" then I think you need to reconsider your perspective.
orderinthefort t1_iuah5d7 wrote
I understand and I'm just saying that I disagree. I think there needs to be a narrative reason for virtually every facet of a story. No story is perfect, and some poor logic is more forgivable than others. It has nothing to do specifically with skin color or race. But a visual inconsistency is more apparent than non-visual because you're constantly reminded by it and it takes you out of the immersion.
Dawnbringerify t1_iuan5zm wrote
Completely fictional land? LOTR is set in the real world, in Europe in a fictionalised history set 6000 years ago.
[deleted] t1_iuapqj8 wrote
[removed]
PowRightInTheBalls t1_iub1ast wrote
Oh so adding elves and dwarves to Europe circa 4000 BC is realistic but adding black people to the European continent circa 4000 BC is unrealistic bullshit that completely ruins the source material?
Elves are fictional. Dwarves are fictional. Ents are fictional. Orcs are fictional. Magic is fictional. Nothing about LOTR is realistic or reflects real-life ancient Europe at all. So get the fuck over yourself that they added one more fictional thing to a fictional world.
bizarrobazaar t1_iuakyf7 wrote
Does HotD give us a reason why black people exist or something?
The point is that diversity can be more than just tokenism. Writing roles with substance for people of colour instead of adding them in and pretending like race doesn't exist. HotD really did a great job with it while RoP was extremely on the nose.
ConnorMc1eod t1_iuaw82t wrote
I mean, in the context of the adapting an existing story sure.
If we had a movie about Yoruban deities I would not expect there to be any white people because that'd be kind of dumb.
fullofhotsoup t1_iua8g05 wrote
Lol thank you. Every time I see these posts I can’t believe it’s even a conversation. Did the actors play their characters well? Then wtf does it matter what color their skin is?
[deleted] t1_iu9utvy wrote
[removed]
-OrangeLightning4 t1_iua3n34 wrote
Do you get annoyed when you go to public places and black people exist? I'm picturing you running up to every black person you come across and asking them why they're there.
"I counted 3 white people and then saw you. It just feels a little forced, you know?"
Actually I'm starting to see why there are so many videos of Karens doing exactly that.
ThreeLittlePuigs t1_iu9s3dm wrote
I don’t think Tolkien would care but neither of us know? You could say “did Tolkien want this shot in HD? Do you think he wanted this to be streamed online?” It’s really got nothing to do with him. I personally don’t mind the race blind casting. I think only a small portion of folks seem to…..also this has nothing to do with the comment you responded to?
SyrioForel t1_iu9sgwh wrote
What’s stopping a fantasy setting from “having every 4th person black”?
“Oh but it’s not realistic…” Correct. It’s a piece of fantasy.
“But I want fantastical things to be grounded in realistic things…” Fantasy does not need to follow this rule, and if you were a real fan of the genre, you’d realize that.
sunboxing t1_iu9w7tq wrote
Not letting HoD or GRRM, who had a sure hand in show development, off the hook here. Both shows were equally awful at it because neither used the lore properly to include ppl oc.
Diversity is valuable in world building because it enhances the suspension of belief. But if it isn't thoughtfully done it's worse than not doing it at all.
Aedujsvemor t1_iu9pjjm wrote
Diversity is ultimately nothing more than a weapon of corporate colonialism - there is no right or 'better' way of doing an inherently bad thing.
Adiwik t1_iu9dcts wrote
One of them has dragons... That's probably better.
Solid_Rice OP t1_iu9eqv8 wrote
Don't agree with Ross Douthat very much, but he nailed it on this one.
AbsurdlyClearWater t1_iu9ge0c wrote
Why does "diverse" always mean the same thing? The UK has a lot more south Asians than black people but for some reason they don't get included when talking about "diversity"
Anyways House of the Dragon obviously did it a lot better. If you can get past the silliness of the blood-obsessed Valyrians seeming not to notice that this one family looks completely different than everyone else (all the talk about "keeping blood pure" doesn't really help), it actually is coherent. You have one foreign house that is fiercely proud of their descent, and when they intermarry the children look like the combination of their parents.
The method of Rings of Power of just randomly making every fourth character black is just silly (feels like a decade ago this would've been called "tokenism" and universally detested). How do you have these insular communities in an ancient world where people are not homogenous? Are these cultures strictly against race-mixing? They could've easily just set one of the plotlines farther south in Harad and everything would have made sense. But maybe part of getting the brownie points for inclusivity is to make it make as little sense as possible, to show that you're doing it just because you're so ideologically committed to it.
The reality is that these companies have internal and external racial quotas they're working to fulfill. Artistic considerations are second. But if you're going to do it, at least make a serious attempt at having it make sense. House of the Dragon did, to its benefit. Rings of Power did not.