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Notes -
I'd posted a while back about how Wizards of the Coast was making Aragorn black in the soon-to-be released Lord of the Rings Magic set.
Since then most of the new cards have been released.
There were several more race swaps—see, for example Theóden, along with many other Rohirrim, was made black, but not Éomer. If they had made them all black, this would have been closer to my original suggestion—that they change races, if they really must, do so in ways that make sense in the world. But they did not do that for some reason, and keeping Éomer white makes no sense, if you're changing the rest of the Rohirrim.
Nevertheless, I was surprised at how good the set was, if you ignore the race changes in the art, for fans of Lord of the Rings. They referenced all sorts of relatively obscure things, had cards that had thematic abilities, (for an especially fun example, see how Merry+his blade or Eowyn can defeat the Witch King, who is ordinarily rather invulnerable), or just had fun flavor text quoting from the book, or nice art. And was faithful to the lore in another respect where Rings of Power was not, although I don't remember such a character actually existing…
Ignoring the race issue, I was very impressed overall. I think it's interesting that they were willing to put so much effort into it, while at the same time having unnecessary race changes. I suppose it's not entirely the same people making the various decisions. But I had read it as first as "we don't care that much about Lord of the Rings," which now seems to be false. They must have cared both about signaling leftist politics and about making a good product, and so this was the result.
I might be willing to overlook the problems, because Tolkien is dearer to my heart.
You know, this brings to mind Romeo + Juliet, a film that uses the exact same dialogue as Shakespeare's play, but changes the characters and setting to one that is familiar to Americans.
Would it be unreasonable for a British person to complain about this for the same reason? It's not inconceivable, the movie is partly a cultural and national swap in the same way Aragorn was race swapped - the original most certainly did not conceive of the character(s) this way. I say "partly" because they kept the same dialogue, and language is an important part of placing a culture.
And yet, I suspect most Americans don't mind this, perhaps because it was a swap in their favor, but probably because Shakespeare just isn't as big a culture war topic. Are the British upset about it? I doubt that as well, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't follow their media critics.
@problem_redditor says precisely what I suspect is the real belief of many here - that there is nothing illegitimate about X-swapping, only with the intentions behind it.
Nobody was upset about "Romeo and Juliet in Harlem" either (though possibly nobody noticed it). But these types of adaptations aren't the same as woke replacements. American versions of Romeo and Juliet aren't essentially insisting that the original Shakespeare characters were American (whether black, white, or Puerto Rican). Copyright issues make it difficult to make such an adaptation of more recent works.
What kind of "woke replacement" do you think insists the original character was the new version?
I would understand if they did changed something but insisted it was historically accurate. But that is about a fraction of the complaints about "woke replacement"
Rome in the BBC, Aragorn here, and Hermione in Harry Potter all come to mind.
What is the BBC media you are referring to? A cursory search does not tell me.
As for fictional characters, I don't think it has been conclusively shown that there is any obligation for them to claim they aren't adhering to the original depictions.
Google "history is a whitewash"
But this discussion has happened before, and will happen again. And people will pretend not to remember to score points.
Fair enough, that example does seem to be a case of social commentary, in which case, I would agree that there is an obligation to get things right. But not all media is trying to do social commentary.
In cases where characters are raceswapped, it seems like most of it these days is trying social commentary, even if on a meta level. To my eyes, at least.
Turning a character that was long considered white in the original text and all of its adaptations may not have have anything in-universe turn on it. But you can just go ahead and read the press release or the creator's Twitter page to figure out why this is happening. They may even say something like "I only did this because I thought this was novel and interesting!", but then quickly reveal that what makes it novel/interesting is pushing back against white male patriarchy or whatever.
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