Lord of the Rings: The Series

Has anyone made that argument yet?

If not, explain why you think they might, without revealing your own subconscious knowledge that some of your beliefs are, in fact, possibly racist.

I'm hearing some pretty substantial push back from hardcore Tolkien fans on this. Bearing in mind no-one has seen anything but a quickie teaser and some stills, fans are already saying things have been done wrong. We'll see.

No way!

What are you even talking about? Pretty random thing to say

The Youtube CHUD-o-sphere is diabolically obsessed with this show failing.
UA is as much a YT robot as FF these days.
I think they throw a dart to pick the ones to spray foam-spittle over.

Ohhhhh!!!
I figured it out!
Of course!
Some scholars have always said the LOTR universe is a bit dog-whistle white supremist.
Even if that shit starts out not real, real white supremists will latch on to it, because fascists can't do their own art.
So, when you put black people in their thing, they get pissy.
Like black Heimdall in Thor.

Lord of the Rings was an attempt to manufacture a mythology for England and as such (like it or not) is deeply imbued with an anti-modernist, pre-industrial attitude. Introducing anachronisms like dark-skinned elves and the like goes directly against that aesthetic and is a valid target for criticism.

Netflix recently had a series where black people were living in high society of Georgian England. It's a box-ticking diversity exercise for them - but it also shows what respect they have for actual history - none.

Shakespeare's plays weren't historically accurate either. It's entertainment, not the History Channel.

That's stretching it when it comes to Tolkein.

"Slow torture by boredom" would be more accurate.

You sound like Sisko bitching about the Nic Fontaine holo-program.
I take Cassidy's side on that.

I don't remember that one, but whatever. Just get that not everyone who criticises a shows lack of fidelity to its source material - or who finds identity politics tiresome - is a literal Nazi.

Didn't say that.
But there are enough of them out there.
And FF and UA watch them religiously.

About the only element I see in the trailers that bothers me is the frumpy, pudgy elves.

It's worth noting that the reason we got LOTR and The Chronicles of Narnia was that Tolkein and Lewis felt that the legends of Britain were as rich as those of Greek mythology and ought to be better known. So, Tolkein promptly cribbed from Germanic myths (the rings of Sauron were from The Ring Cycle) and Lewis swiped from the Bible. Okay, guys, if the original tales were that great, you wouldn't have had to steal other people's shit.

Tolkein emphatically denied that he cribbed from Wagner. His quote on the topic was 'Both rings are round. That's where the resemblance ends.' While there are indeed some similarities, both rings granting great magical power and coming with a horrific curse, the details of the story are quite a bit different. As is the greater theme - in LOTR the Gods (Valar) while absent still influence the story and try to help mankind. The story is in many ways restorative. In the Ring of the Nibelung the Gods are very much present, die themselves, and almost every character dies tragically.

WTF does Tolkein know about LOTR? More seriously though, George Harrison denied that he swiped "He's So Fine" in writing "My Sweet Lord," but if you hear the songs back to back, it's pretty obvious that, consciously or not, he definitely used a lot of the music from "He's So Fine."

Tolkien was a scholar of European texts and could hardly deny being familiar with the Ring of the Nibelung and the gods being alive in that, but dead (or absent) in LOTR strikes me as the same kind of denial some folks make about Citizen Kane being inspired by Randolf Hearst. Kane dies in the film, but Hearst was still alive when the movie was released, so obviously the film couldn't have been about him.

I can see how you would come to that conclusion when you see everyone you disagree with as a Nazi.

I disagree with Jenee, Tererun, Amaris, etc, they aren't Nazis.


And I don't think you're a Nazi, I think you're terribly lousy at critical thinking, and knowing when you're being had by the most obvious cartoon charlatans.

Bridgerton was based on a romance novel series. And in that novel, they explain having black people as part of the nobility of the early 1800s.

Honestly, though, what difference does it make? Much of what is portrayed in movies and tv is historically inaccurate. Who cares about this inaccuracy?

Who cares about anything? Would you have an issue with seeing jet fighters in a World War II movie? Or swordfights in the old west?
Entertainment - as was implied above - is not simply about shutting the brain off and mindlessly consuming. I find that good entertainment requires thought and can generate insight. Coherency and authenticity are important underpinnings of this, allowing a viewer to become immersed in a work. While there are obvious considerations of dramatic effect, all other things being equal getting things right is preferable. Deliberately changing them to impose modern sensibilities often runs counter to this.

Apart from that, very often audience perceptions of history are shaped by pop culture. In the case of Bridgerton the implication that racial inequalities were some sort of historical accident that could have been "fixed" while leaving the glamour and everything else intact is risible. It completely misrepresents how that society operated and the complex historical processes required for it to arrive at that state. In particular (see also Downton Abbey) it serves to conceal how elites existed - and could only exist - because they stood atop an enormous mountain of human misery and passes brutal class structures off as essentially harmless. Viewers come away with all kinds of distorted impressions.

Interesting though I'm not sure that's an apt comparison. Changing one minor detail at the end doesn't countermand the entire story.

Though the more I thought about it the more I thought you were right - clearly the Ring of the Nibelung is an influence in Tolkien's work, but it's really his rejection of the theme. It's the Anti-Wagner, his answer to it, much in the way Joseph Haldeman's Forever War was his response to Starship Troopers.

And LOTR takes huge swaths of British myth. Aragorn is quite clearly Arthur - the Return of the King is the Once and Future King. The Sign of Kingship is the sword he bears. Some critics compare Gandalf to Wotan,but I think there is a much more direct line to Merlin, the advisor to the King and the one who maneuvers to get him the throne, particularly in the Mallory stories.

The Hobbits live in the Shire, an obvious British motiff, and represent the common people mixed with a touch of Fae magic. The land itself holds great magic, not unlike the Enchantment of Britain in the Vulgate.

The ring is the same corrupting agent as in Wagner, but it serves the corruption of the Lord of the Rings, a significant difference in the opera where it is ultimately the agency of the Gods destruction en toto.

And IMO it's highly fitting that a mythic reinvention of British history include the Norse influences, as the Norse invasion and conquering of virtually the entire island was hugely significant to its development. You can't tell the history of the people of Britain without it. The Ring of the Nibelung after all is entirely Norse in its antecedents, not Germanic, and Tolkein's first love was the Old English interpretation of the Norse Beowulf. It's possible he saw the Germanic element, especially as Wagner was popularized in first the Kaiser's Germany and then Hitler's, as a tale of corruption in itself, thus making the Ring doubly the instrument of what in his eyes was evil.

Anyway, fun to speculate.

Entertainment can mean many different things to one person, let alone many. So, then it must be broken down further. I agree that many times, movies should be historically accurate - but, it's going to depend on the genre. I mean, science fiction and science fantasy can't be historically accurate because generally both are set in the future. and when the storyline happens to reference history, science fiction should be accurate where science fantasy does not need to be.

Romance novels follow a specific format. and while most historical romance novels are historically accurate because the audience, more often than not, requires it; sometimes, if the story requires a detour of that format, the writer must account for that inaccuracy within the story. I'm not familiar with the writer of the Bridgerton series, and I've not read the first book in that series, so I don't know what reason was given for the ... (for lack of a better term) alternate timeline. But, I'm willing to bet that the writer is black and while she enjoys romance novels, there aren't many romance novels with black leading characters. So, she wrote her own. As a fan of romance novels from way back, I have no issues with this. In fact, I applaud her in that the explanation given and following the format, she wrote excellent novels and the translate to the big screen much better than I would have thought.

No, the writer of Bridgerton was not black and she doesn't address race in the books. That is an innovation of the producers of the Netflix series.

So, you've read them? I would not have taken you for a romance novel reader. I know some men do read them. I've just never met one.

No, I just know how to use Google.

I did attempt to watch the show but found it so mind-achingly awful, I stopped after one or two episodes.

Just googled it and the author is Julia Quinn. You're correct, she isn't black. But, she does write very well. I own many of her books (not the Bridgerton books, though). She's an excellent writer and very often plays with historical accuracy more than other romance writers.

Much like any other genre, the books are better than television or movies. I am not surprised, though, that you only lasted two episodes. As I said, it's a romance novel. They're written for women.