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Amazon can create their own new original fantasy/SF/whatever show stuffed to the gills with BIPOC actors and good luck to them, I don't care if they do, that's no skin off my nose. In fact, write a good new show with Dev Patel in a lead role and I will be "You interest me strangely, pray continue".
Even if they went the whole hog of casting every single character in Rings of Power as BIPOC, I would say "That's non-canonical but by Aule's ever-creative hammer I have to admire your balls".
The fact is, they didn't. They (Bezos) wanted a Big Hit Show comparable to Game of Thrones to really sell Prime streaming service subscriptions. You not alone want to watch this show, you need to watch this show to be au courant with what all your friends, family, and work colleagues are talking about. And for that, you need a Prime subscription.
So they needed A Really Big Name production, with a built-in guaranteed fan base audience and casual viewership appeal. Who is the Really Big Name in fantasy? Sorry George, still not you, it's the guy you joked about "but what was the tax base of his realm?" They snaffled the rights to LOTR and the Appendices, with Warner Studios breathing down their necks about "you can't remake the movies". Hence "Rings of Power" - it's got Galadriel! Elrond! And as many other LOTR characters as we think we can fit in without breaching legal terms!
Why they picked two nobodies to write this, I have no idea. Treating Tolkien's work as a cash cow licence to print money that means nothing to anyone involved (Bezos' dead-eyed boiled frog 'I really really love what's his name's work' appearances being the cherry on top) invoked its own curse, or Doom of the Noldor. They couldn't remake the movies, they weren't talented enough or experienced enough to be able to take the skeleton outline of the Second Age from the Appendices and make it into a coherent plot, so they fell back on common tropes (Strong Woman done down by the Patriarchy is the only one who is right about every single thing, on quest of vengeance, to take down the world-threatening evil, women and minorities most affected) and Generic Fantasy TV Show plots, and gave us this mess where the actress playing Galadriel has about two expressions, both of them like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle, and the character of a two thousand year old noble Elf lady is a whiny teenage rebel (Elendil's verbal smackdown of her as being the same as his two clueless kids is just one more reason he's one of the few likeable characters in this entire show).
They're trying to cover up their blatant lack of quality with "if you criticise this show, it's because you're a racist".
I don't think you're racist if you criticize LoTR, but I think it's pretty racist if you care that Amazon hired black actors for this. If the show sucks why do you need to bring the black actors into this at all? Everybody is saying the black actors are there so you can't criticize the show, and instead of criticizing the show you're criticizing the black actors.
Galadriel is too much for me but that doesnt have anything to do with Amazon hiring black actors.
Amazon thinks I should care. They put out a zillion publicity puff pieces about how I and everyone else should care. They made this video to sell it to people about how they should care.
Personally, I find the actor playing Arondir rather wooden (like his cuirass) but others, even those critical, have found him one of the few good actors. Whatever, opinions differ.
I would be very happy to see this actor playing a character in Middle-earth - say, a human inhabitant of the village of Tirharad (invented for the show) which is populated by descendants of the Men who fought under Morgoth and are being watched (over) by the Elves. Tirharad is a canon-compliant notion for being all black and brown actors, and having white Elves as an occupying force would reinforce the show's parables about colonialism and blaming people for the sins of their ancestors and so forth. Oddly enough, Tirharad is very white; Bronwyn and Theo are the only brown humans I've seen, and we got a nice scene of White Guy Racist To Black Elf in the tavern.
If they gave literally two minutes establishing who is Princess Dísa (e.g. she is from the royal house of the Blacklocks, one of the two Dwarven strongholds in the East), then that would avoid all the "who is this one, single, solitary black Dwarf in Khazad-dum among all the other white Scottish Dwarves?" questions.
I don't care that Tar-Míriel is played by a black actress. At least she's a human playing a human who looks like a queen should look. And you can find some way that her ancestry would be not contradictory with canon if you go into the history of the Three Houses of the Edain and their allies. No quibbles there.
Do you want to call me "pretty ageist" because I think the actor cast as Celebrimbor is too old for the part, and the character should be younger? Go right ahead, fill out the entire bingo card while you're at it.
Why do you care that Amazon cares?
If my brother tries to piss me off by, like, wearing a blue shirt, why would that bother me? Casting black people doesn't bother me, so it doesn't bother me when Amazon casts black people even if they're trying to be twats while they do it.
It sounds like you have a lot of problems with the script and I agree they could have done a lot of things better. I get that and I agree that Disa is not a good character. Isn't that a problem with the script though? What does it have to do with the casting?
Like, basically, if you only have problems with thr script, that makes sense. If you think Amazon is trying to attack you I can understand being annoyed. But there's nothing wrong with using black actors so being annoyed that Amazon is doing it makes it seem a lot more racist.
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This comment, and this one, are really uncharitable. In particular, the idea that it is "racist" to "care that Amazon hired black actors" requires a great deal more discussion (an in particular, a clear definition of "racist") given that race was not at all the focus of the comment to which you replied. Rather, the criticism was that people are using accusations of racism to defend the show; you've dispensed with the defending of the show, but kept the unproven accusation of racism.
Don't do that.
How is this uncharitable?
Someone said that black casting in LoTR is unnatural. How else am i supposed to disagree with it?
A lot of people are criticizing LoTR for casting black and minority actors while saying that Amazon only did this so they couldn't criticize the show at all. But then instead of attacking the show people are attacking the casting. Why does the casting matter if both sides say it doesn't matter?
I think calling the casting unnatural is racist and there's no other way to put it. That's my honest opinion. But I don't think anyone wants to explain what else they could mean, so now I'm the bad guy for pointing it out.
Sweet Eru Iluvatar. If some studio were making a new movie - hang on a mo, I just thought of the perfect example.
Now, suppose the studio thought "We really need an A-list actress in the lead role to make this a sure-fire blockbuster", and they cast, lemme see, Scarlett Johansson as General Nanisca. Would you say that was "naturally cast" or rather that casting black actresses, be they African-American or other black ethnic mix, was the "natural casting"?
One argument would be "they should only cast native Dahomeans in the parts". That's not the argument we're making.
The second argument would be "wait a minute, that's completely the wrong actress to cast in the part, it doesn't matter if she's really good".
You are trying to make the equivalent of "Why not cast Scarlett Johansson?" and telling the rest of us we are racists if we say "That's not the proper casting for this character". If they have (and they probably do) white European slave purchasers in this movie, or white European generals etc. then casting Scarlett as Lady Brassnobs is fine and appropriate. But casting Scarlett as part of the Dahomean Amazon army, and the only white Amazon, is going to make people go "What the hey, movie studio, this is not the correct thing to do even if white people do exist in this world and the Dahomeans are in contact with them".
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Literally no one said that but you.
One person (not the one you replied to here, but in the other link I mentioned) referred to certain casting choices as "natural," which (charitably) seems like an obvious reference to fitting the lore Tolkien wrote. There are races in the original Middle Earth; different people from different regions are described as having varied skin tones etc. Just like in the real world. Nobody said it was unnatural to cast black people, unless you uncharitably modify the words they used in a separate context.
In roles where it doesn't make sense--not unlike casting a black child as the natural offspring of a Norse father and a Japanese mother. Maybe these people are wrong or mistaken or even racist, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to actually argue against what their real position is--not the naked one you (or Amazon) invented for maximum pearl-clutching.
Sure, I'd be surprised if this was Amazon's reason for casting that way (I assume they're just on the "maximum skintone diversity" train like everyone else in the movie business outside of Bollywood). But if people think Amazon does seem to be responding to real criticism by deflecting to "you're racist," that's an argument that seems plausible, too, and it's not racist to point that out.
Er... you were just telling me about people on both sides of the casting issue who think the casting matters, so I don't understand this question.
Then don't call it unnatural, as you're, again, literally the only one who has done so. But even if that's the only way to put it, you still have to actually explain yourself. Why is it racist to think that characters shouldn't be skin-tone-swapped from their author's visions in film adaptations? Like, if the next Black Panther movie had the king of Wakanda played by Tom Hanks, I assume some people would be upset--would they have a point? I've seen tons of people get annoyed at originally-Asian characters being played by white actors, so it seems to me that movie watchers are pretty consistent about being annoyed by this, and Hollywood is pretty consistent about telling them to fuck off, since they're gonna buy the movie tickets anyway.
Calling people "racist" is a serious accusation, certainly an inflammatory one, and so if you're going to do it you have to do it with lots of evidence and clear reasoning. You can't just be like "y'all racist" without putting in some work. Define your terms, or better yet, taboo your words. If you literally can't explain your problem without using the word "racist," then you don't actually understand your own problem.
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