Where do you think Tolkien got Dwarves and Elves from to begin with? Northern European myth and legend, as Secantur rightly pointed out. That's why people have overwhelmingly tended to imagine his work in those terms, which is why for example the LOTR movies were cast the way they were. Myths and legends are culturally specific, they're from the collective imagination of specific peoples from way back when and they imagined things on their own terms, and Tolkien just happened to have a thing for Northern European stuff in particular.
Any one of many things for which societal values have changed over time and where we view things differently now. Having kids outside of marriage, for example. That used to have social consequences as it was frowned on, nowadays most people don't give a damn. But if you were to write a story set in a time and place where it should be a big deal and instead carelessly wrote it with a modern attitude, that'd ring false.What's "modern values"?
I'm not some white supremist that wants a white only club, according to how you post sounds, but rather that the forced diversity is so blatant in your face to where it's just a joke with an obvious quota that's an insult to everyone everywhere. It was only a matter of time before someone pulled the race card, and here it is.
From what I've seen, this show is Lord of the Rings in name only. Skin colors are all wrong, Hobbits are nomads, elves have butch hair cuts, dwarven women are outside in society and look like nothing as Gimli described them, Galadriel is some sort of female Legolas rebel smarty pants, and these are things just off of the top of my head.
"Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your children when you wanted to."
The variants of feudalism in its early/tribal (Rohirrim), later/national (Numenorean) and Enlightenment/pre-industrial (Shire) forms that Tolkien describes for mannish societies also have a distinctly northern European historical basis.
Elfs, being semi-divine/immortal, have older Celtic/druidic social overtones.
And fat, stinky Dorfs, being twisted abominations, are clearly inspired by feral, sociopathic demons like Beowulf's Grendel.
Dagoreth (Warden) and Belechannas (Lore-master) of Arkenstone
< No Dorfs >
Fighting the Dorf menace to Middle Earth since 2008
Oh right, so we just happened to end up with four roles like that (Arondir, Disa, Miriel, Sadoc Burrows) - one each for Elves, Dwarves, Numenoreans and hobbits - and that's been pushed heavily in all the promo material. Lenny Henry is an activist who's been banging on about representation for decades and he's far from a typical choice to cast as a hobbit as he's 6'2" tall and gangly - hmm, wonder why they might have picked him when they usually pick much shorter people to play hobbits so they're proportioned in a way that looks convincing? He's not a professional actor, either, he's a comedian. Ismael Cruz Córdova's Arondir is to be seen doing some super on-the-nose stuff like being chained up by the Orcs and then leaping around while chained, leaping over chains (plus being in a 'forbidden' relationship). And both Disa and Miriel are royalty. All this is being framed as a 'necessary redress' and you expect us to believe this was all just coincidence and that something so highly specific happened purely by merit?
Yeah, Lenny Henry is not a good choice to play a hobbit, over 6 ft tall and skinny.
I read an article of him(the link is somewhere in this thread) with him thumping his chest about a man of his skin color getting the part. When he said that, it totally ruined any interest of me watching the show. With him, it's agenda all the way. And before anyone pulls the race card, my dislike of him is of him as a person, not his skin color. I think he's a self centered bigot, and I have absolutely no respect for him.
"Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your children when you wanted to."
I gotta love it when a person willingly and with open arms reduces themselves to their skin color, sexual orientation, nationality or disability but doesn't mention other merits at all, as if this superficial "identity" was all that mattered and their only worth as a human being and - in this case - a professional, an actor. That's sad and despicable both at the same time. Or take Sophia Nomvete, she actually takes it to insane levels in her interviews.
Meanwhile... take a stroll through YouTube and some online places... plenty of people of color and of other "identities" who aren't one leg in lunatic asylum so they express the exact same opinion as us. Some of them aren't even outright obvious because they don't advertise their skin color under their opinion, but the fun part is there will be like one or two dudes who accuse them of bigotry, white cravings or something, and then it's like "dude are you crazy I'm black." Just golden. So, in the same manner, you have legions of women who are sick of the cheapened, obsessively overdone "Warrior Galadriel" and everything that surrounds the premise.
I wouldn't go that far but his trouble is that when it comes to diversity he obsesses over numbers, as if just hitting the magic number is guaranteed to make everything better, and as if you automatically get more meaningful diversity of creativity or performance by doing that. Fake diversity (just 'taking up space' to use his phrase, without bringing anything meaningful) doesn't do that and all too often it goes hand in hand with poor writing in general and clumsy messaging in particular.
Especially as hobbits shouldn't even be in this story and their presence is just a callback, contrived and fake to begin with. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear by throwing diversity at it, that's just a distraction.
This thread has clearly run its topic through and is now focused on whataboutism and discussions about the wider political climate, so is now closed.