O_P_T
Why Be Normal
When 'wokeness' comes to Middle-earth: Why some say diverse casting ruins the new 'Lord of the Rings' series | CNN
The new "Lord of the Rings" Amazon series has cast non-White actors in pivotal roles, ruffling some fans who say it betrays J.R.R. Tolkien's original vision. Others say a more diverse cast of heroes is overdue in a fantasy franchise that has been accused of implicit racism.www.cnn.com
As one who has been reading Tolkien since I was 8, I’ll be curious to see what they’ve changed.
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I never read The Silmarillion, which is what it's based on, so I can't speak to the accuracy question.
As far as the reviews is concerned, it presently has an 85% critic score and a 39% audience score on rotten tomatoes.
I've seen all the episodes aired to date, and I don't have any real issue with the casting of any character, however, the representations of them is a bit problematic.
All the non-white and female characters seem to be likeable, powerful, brave, and have their excrement together. The white male characters? Not so much.
Which seems to be a trend in Hollywood, for some time now.
I did note something in the latest episode that caught my eye.
Balin's wife was leading a ceremony to try and beseech the rock to release trapped miners and all the male dwarves look like prototypical anti-semitic images.
Hmmmmmmm.... Dwarves are supposedly only interested in gold, jewels, and other forms of mineral wealth, i.e., money. Who else in history has been characterized that way?
Now I don't recall how Tolkien described the dwarves, and if the portrayal here is in line with it, and if he had any anti-Semitic tendencies. Maybe he did.
I was just surprized that a show that prided itself so much on "diversity" and "overthrowing stereotypes", and changing how characters appeared for a "greater good" seem to not recognize, or maybe not care, that they were portraying a classic anti-Semitic trope, just struck me as odd.