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My facebook has been ablaze with the War of the Rings of Power, and by that I mean Amazon putting out tons of propaganda to indicate that everyone is racist for not liking the the Rings of Power, followed by half of the people saying no that doesn't make us racist, and the other half saying they just don't like it because it's a bad show. A similar thing is going on for the Little Mermaid, too. Alas, that these evil days should be mine.
The thing that strikes me is that no one is saying the obvious. To me, and I'll guess to many others, I really don't mind diversification of media. Or, that is to say, I wouldn't mind it, if it weren't for the fact that it's now the norm, it's practically mandatory for any show that doesn't want to be cancelled by internet SJWs, it's crammed down my throat everywhere, and it's turned into a major moral issue where half the audience browbeats the other. I feel like I'm being subjected to someone else's religion.
But that woke audience always comes back to "Why are you against black people playing roles? What are you, racist?" Well, no, I honestly don't think I'm racist. But in the position I'm put in, I get that I am taking actions that a racist would. The only difference is that a true racist would be against black people being cast no matter what, and I am only against it being mandatory and moralized. But since we live in this world, where it is mandatory and moralized, does that mean that there's nothing that would really satisfy me short of black people not being cast?
I don't quite think so. Another point that the woke audience comes to is "They clearly just thought that Halle Berry was the best person to play Ariel". And really, I think the answer to that is, no, they clearly prioritize diversity casting. She is black and they want to cast lots of black people because it scores them points with the woke crowd (and possibly also because it drums up controversy, which may be good for business). And then on top of that, they thought she'd be fine for the part. I don't know how I can prove that, but it just seems evident to me that diversity casting for its own sake is something that is being given high priority. In some limited cases, it's possible to prove it, such as with Ryan Condal, the showrunner for House of the Dragon who indicated that they cast black people to play Valerians explicitly for the purpose of diversity-washing. However, I'm guessing that Condal regrets saying that outright, because it's not a good look. It gives the other side ammo and also casts doubt as to whether the people hired really would have earned the spot on merit alone.
At this point. I don't really know what it would take to convince me that most castings of black people are not just to fill a quota. But this puts me in a tough spot, because I don't really want to be racist in action, even if I know I'm not in thought.
Why can't the production studio be looking at the demographics of the customer base and decide that hey some %age of our customers are black, and so they may relate to the story better and spend money on it if we include more/any black characters?
I've barely read LOTR but unless whiteness was a critical part of the story it seems fine to change skin color. It's a movie about, like, whole different species of humanoids right? Different skin colors should be well within bounds?
I agree a lot of productions feel like they're bending over backwards to include more races and it comes off as cheap and woke fearing (see: children's books), but the more basic business case seems valid too.
EDIT: I've not seen the show nor have I read the books and I mostly watched the original movies with 'drinking game' style interest, so pardon my ignorance. I see from the responses that the sprinkling of racial diversity is done in a clearly cheap and ham-fisted way. Thank you to everyone who took my question seriously.
I don't mind there being Elves of Color or humans of color in the Amazon series. Elves came out of the far East before being drawn West? And then some elves stayed behind while others went on over the sea. If there was a consistent racial difference between the elves that came over the sea and those that had stayed behind, I'd be ok with it.
Numenor was a massive empire centered around what would now be the Mediterranean and the crown was based on the Egyptian crown. So there's a lot of room for a cosmopolitan society there. (Though there is a rule that only a man can inherit the crown, and the show breaks that.)
What bothers me is when people's ethnicity just does not make sense considering the historical context.
Like isolated Hobbit village. If they want to argue that hobbits used to all be darker but got lighter over thousands of years by the time of LOTR, I'd accept that. But if they have hobbit precursors that look like they are from every corner of the globe in a small isolated community that hasn't had any intermarriage for hundreds of years... that makes no sense. Same with dwarves. If they want to say that elves who have been in the same geographic regions and marriage stock for thousands of years have distinct ethnicities, that seems impossible too.
This is all to say, what will really bother me at the end of the day is a show that doesn't give the same consideration to history, language, and time that Tolkien imbued on his universe. If there isn't an explanation for everything that goes back tens of thousands of years, they did it wrong. If everyone acts like a modern American, with modern American values and motivations, they did it wrong.
Well, Númenor did hold by the law that men only could inherit the throne, so that the eldest child of the fourth king, who was a daughter, was passed over. She became the ancestress of the line of Elendil, which is how they are related to the royal family.
By the time of Tar-Aldarion, he only had one child who was a daughter, so he changed the law to permit her to become ruling Queen. The next ruling queen was the tenth monarch, and the third and last ruling queen was the sixteenth monarch. Then we come to Tar-Míriel who should have been queen, but her throne and crown was usurped by her husband and cousin, Ar-Pharazon.
Making her queen-regent is the show breaking the lore, but they probably needed another Strong Woman or something. After all, Galadriel (despite her best efforts to piss off every single person in Middle-earth) does need allies to fight Sauron, and she makes an alliance with Tar-Míriel who can provide her with ships and Númenorean cavalry (finally an explanation for why she's charging around on horseback at the head of Númenorean forces, we have now seen how much she loves horsey-rides!)
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Right, okay, that does sound annoying. I immediately thought this sounds like how American movies give "foreign" characters in a movie British accent instead of subtitling them. Except worse. Much worse than that.
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