This is the latest culture war front. The right-wing media ecosystem are pointing their hundred millions viewers at this one outrageous thing. It'll eventually wane like the previous iterations, such as critical race theory in schools.
Wait what's the culture war angle here? I don't get the correlation between "purist" Tolkien fans and the right wing vs left wing? I'm probably missing something since I've never read or watched anything related to tolkien or LOTR, but for me it looked more like a typical fanboy reaction/rage to Amazon adding new stuff to an original story.
(Which honestly can suck, because of course some people will just review bomb it no matter without ever actually watching a single episode. Makes it harder for everyone else to actually know if it's bad on its own merits.)
That's an oversimplification. The "controversy" is that some people already had an image of what elves looked like (tall, very white, long haired) and now one of the main characters who is an elf, is a short haired black man.
As someone who doesn't live in the US, it is always a bit amusing when you see these Hollywood productions very clearly add or make some characters certain race or gender because of US politics.
It's even more bizarre when you consider that all of Tolkien's works are based on an incredibly Anglo Saxon/European centric view of the world.
I find it extremely ironic that people are so bent out of shape about a couple characters cast with darker skin. These must be the same people that have no clue that every character in their favorite book (The Bible, King James version) was non-white. These are most likely the same people with the historically inaccurate pictures of Jesus Christ as a caucasian man.
The two largest fantasy franchises in the world are Euro-centric white fantasy (Middle Earth and GoT). It isn't enough that our fantasy canon dominates the world, we need to have every actor be caucasian as well?
It's a US political decision. In my country, where there are very very few black people, it definitely wouldn't be a political decision to not include black people. But it goes beyond that. What I usually see is that the focus is on including black characters. There is rarely focus on including for example Asian or Hispanic characters, or they are portrayed in much more stereotypical ways.
As I said, it's a very US thing, that is very noticeable to non US viewers. Try watching some non US movies or shows and you'll see what I mean.
The US seems to have in general a lot of interest in races for some reason. For some applications or forms I've had to fill for US things, I was asked my race or ethnicity, which to me seems completely bizarre (what does it matter?). Moreover I didn't even know what race I was supposed to put (am I white? am I Hispanic?) because I've never been asked.
> The US seems to have a lot of interest in races for some reason.
The reason being systemic racism imposed on brown and black people in the US.
Look back to the 1990s movies where you'd have large casts depicting everyday life, and there'd be literally 0 non-white people. Non-whites were explicitly excluded in many movies, obviously with exceptions, but we're talking about averages and tendencies here. Racism didn't end in the 1960s.
Conservatives think we live in a post-racial era where there's equality of opportunity just because there aren't laws that explicitly discriminate against certain races. But that's a really flawed sociolegal analysis, given that equality of opportunity isn't exclusively determined by equality under law, and given that there's laws that aren't explicitly racist but cause racist outcomes and likely have unstated racist motivations (e.g. marijuana criminality, immigration restrictions).
> There is rarely focus on including for example Asian or Hispanic characters
I totally agree that they need to do a better job on that.
> it’s a political decision to have movies and tv shows with entirely white people in them.
Well, that kind explains "I just don't understand the level of virtriol about a TV show." from OP.
For instance, I don't live in the US, I don't care about the US and most importantly I don't care about US politics, but the US is the only capable of running shows like this.
I imagine there would be americans that don't want politics or political influences in their beloved stories too.
Me, I just want a Tolkien show despicted as in (or as accurate as possible to) the books. I watched the trailer and I didn't watch the show yet, but I if it follows the trend, I imagine what I will find. I don't know if I will watch it.
How much time will I have to wait for a new version? 15, 20, 30 years? I'll probably be long gone.
Lots of shows have black people in them, and most of them don't get tons of negative reviews.
So here's my theory: LOTR is extremely popular with a huge number of fans. This show is subpar. Subpar adaptation of very popular thing means lots of disappointed fans, meaning lots of negative reviews.
I'd heard "meh" things about it before it was even out and none of it included anything about there being a black elf. What was complained about were weak writing, trying to add sex/nudity to GoT it, and firing their lead "Tolkenist" because he was opposing it, etc.
