People pitch a fit saying that “middle earth” is supposed to be a fantasy history based on British Isles, so they have to all be fair skinned. This of course ignores that the oldest known residents of Britain were dark skinned.
Or that tolkien did include more diversity in the stories than they want to admit
yellowface!
If they start making the skin color of the elves and dwarves important to the story (they are lesser because of the skin color or somthing like that), that will be annoying. If it’s just “some elves/dwarves have dark skin”, there is no issue at all with it. I have actually only watched the first episode so far (hopefully will be able to watch the 2nd tonight - watching with the family and schedules have been tough), so maybe there were some themes that came up in the second episode around race that I don’t know about yet.
It should be noted that Peter Jackson did introduce a bit of a “racism” theme into the Hobbit movies. Legolas’ dad is concerned that he (a Sindarin elf) was wanting a relationship with a Silvan elf, who was considered “lesser”.
That had nothing to do with how they looked - the difference is really just “how far west did their ancestors go right after the elves appeared”. Legolas’ ancestors went further than Tauriel’s
yup, as long as skin color is a non-factor to the storyline, then humans are just humans, with different skin tones, same with dwarves and elves.
You’ll often hear the people that are upset about this saying things like “well, what would you think if everyone in Wakanda was white?”
Well, the race of the people in that story is a very important aspect, so it would be inappropriate.
Although, if you wanted to swap things around and make a world where white people in general were oppresed by black people and had a “white panther” situation, that might be interesting…
i believe that was planet of the apes
FTR, I also have no problem with black people on Asgard, which is where the gods of the whitest of the white people live.
Anyone that has problem with Heimdall has a lot of other issues (unless you are Idris Elba, who didn’t always enjoy the role).
Just to clarify - I haven’t heard anyone say they have a problem with him. It’s just the closest to the Rings of Power situation I could come up with.
I’m not sure how Political became LOTR, but I vote that we keep sending that super amazing chick to look for Sauron. Worst that can happen? She stops interrupting our fun woods dancing time.
OTOH, that Har’foot girl should not go exploring, because that will definitely lead to trouble for the whole village.
Also, the elf-human couple is way too sexy, which makes all the drunkards super jealous. We need some kind of race-blind policies to deal with people being too sexy.
Agree with all of this.
Okay, if that is the case, then I don’t think it’s prejudiced to claim this mandate exists; acknowledge that it’s probably for the better for society, generally; and take exception to anyone who refuses to acknowledge the mandate.
I don’t intend to imply that any particular person or entity has or has not done this.
Eh, just make sure they are decent actors.
Is there a correct counterbalance on the scales of race/gender inequality in film?
Like, do you think that the has been too much of a push for equality?
Blue people have it tough on film. They’re often typecast as dead people or 9 foot tall tree huggers.
dabadeedabadai
I dunno. Just asking questions!
Should the film representation be comparable to demographics? For example?
Or should there be some overrepresentation of underprivileged minorities?
And how should we mandate roles for these mandated minorities?
One thing that bothers me, on this topic, from watching kid cartoons-- is that we’ve elevated women to the roles heroes and warriors, but we still use men as punching bags. We don’t want to see violence against women, but we still want to see violence against villains and buffoons and jerks and wimps, so they all have to be men.
That is some selective watching of disney cartoons.
Yes, they have not had the helpless princesses that need to be saved. And there is an entire “disney princess” theme of movies, which will have the female lead. But, outside of those, it looks pretty balanced looking at the disney releases (from all of their animation lines) over the past decade.