My issue with the show has nothing to do with the “woke” stuff mentioned here. I don’t like it because none of the heroes are likable. All of them have some form of sticking it to the man and doing what they want as their story line. True heroes are self-sacrificial and reluctant. Contrast Galadriel who acts like a self righteous dickhead with Aragorn who was reluctant to accept his calling spent and three movies proving himself to be worthy of honor and love and then going to what he thought was certain death to give Frodo a chance to destroy the ring. The gender or race of the characters in TRoP is not the point. It’s that they’re all unlikable because they don’t love and respect others.
> Contrast Galadriel who acts like a self righteous dickhead with Aragorn who was reluctant to accept his calling spent and three movies proving himself to be worthy of honor and love
You mean three books, right?
The difference here is that Aragorn was written by Tolkien, this show wasn't and has completely betrayed the original material.
Race or gender swaps are not a big issue, but they become one if the purpose is the swap for the swap just for marketing purpose.
Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same, want to add some diversity? Go for humans.
Wanna piss off the audience so that the debate will create more engagement? do exactly what shouldn't be done, because it's out of character.
Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen and she is also described as "il viso bianco come un'immagine di cera" that translates to "her face as white as a wax image".
It becomes clear that the black blue fairy was put there to check a box and not because she serves some need to modernize the story, which is exactly the same that Collodi wrote 140 years ago.
EDIT
it's the same reason why people cricized film directors that casted Scarlett Johansson for every role or the god awful Ghost in the shell live action where, not only the story was orribly mutilated, but the setup was very very far from the original Japanese one, completely ruining the experience.
It's not about the colour of the skin or the gender of the actors, of course, it's about expectations. I expect Black Panther to be black, Thor to be white and blonde, Ghost in the shell to be set in futuristic Japan etc.
I mean ... she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared?
And there's literally zero reason to insist that Collodi's description is the only way a fairy character can be portrayed in a staged version of his book.
The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies (or stormtroopers or elves or angels or for that matter any fantastical role, which is rooted in escapism and alternate realities.)
> she's a fairy, not a human .. what does her skin have to do with the time period or place in which she appeared?
I mean, why can't we have a viking Black Panther and put Wakanda near Iceland?
> The real problem is getting upset over the skin color of the actors and actresses playing fairies
No one is upset for that, I, as Italian, am upset that some writer thinks that Collodi's story needed to be changed in ways that add nothing to it and also betray what he clearly wrote with his own hands.
The pale white skin is a well known proxy for ethereal/angelic beings, they are not white people, they are otherworldly magical creatures, made like that.
There were a lot more places where they could have added diversity, they decided to go for the most obviously controversial one.
The reality is that at least as a North American, nobody even knows it is an Italian story. We all know Pinocchio from our childhood. Nobody knows it’s Italian.
So watching a Disney movie, I’m not watching an Italian movie featuring an Italian story, just watching Disney.
I’m watching a common fable. And in that case, I really don’t see why everyone HAS to be white.
Not asking to change the original Italian book here. But the reality of Disney as a global storyteller is that it became a lot more than an Italian story.
> The reality is that at least as a North American, nobody even knows it is an Italian story. We all know Pinocchio from our childhood. Nobody knows it’s Italian.
Yep, that is the problem.
USA is both pushing diversity and inclusiveness everywhere they can, while also using other cultures because "they don't know where things come from"
Which is cultural appropriation according to modern standards and it's neither inclusive nor helps diversity, it actually crushes it and make all the debates about recognizing the cultural differences as they exists look like white people complaining over minutia, or, even worse, racists that do not want women of color in movies or shows.
When It's actually the opposite, I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned.
> The reality is that at least as a North American, nobody even knows it is an Italian story. We all know Pinocchio from our childhood. Nobody knows it’s Italian.
I love the contrast between being woke ("Be inclusive and represent all people") and being woke ("Taking another cultures history and erasing the cultural aspects of it, making it all white, is bad") on display here.
Saying you didn't know that Pinocchio (!!) was set in Italy (!!!) is like saying you didn't know the first half of the Little Mermaid was set underwater.
> Tolkien is culture, Amazon's rings of power is not.
Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture, that's a huge discussion. But for sure the TV series is culture.
* * *
Cool link! True, the association with light is strong, universally.
Actually, there was also the social class factor in any culture where tanning is highly visible: aristocrats vs everyone else, who had to work outside. No tan = upper class.
> Funny. Culture is almost everything. If we like it or not, if it's high or low culture
Fair enough, point taken.
I should have phrased it better.
Let's put it this way: Tolkien was an intellectual and a Linguistic Professor, his works have cultural relevance, he was trying to write the new British mythology from the
POV of a scholar, he wasn't thinking about writing a best seller to get rich.
Conversely, I love the Terminator, but Terminator has no cultural relevance, it is popular culture or pop culture, it lives among us, yes, but the reason why it exists is entertaining people that go to the movies.
I want the best actor for a role, not one with the right skin color. You can hedge around the skincolor issue all you want, but that's the basis for your complaint.
Colorblind casting is the right approach to theatre, I firmly agree with this. The world might not be ready for Raisin in the Sun to be translated to Vietnamese and performed entirely by Vietnamese people, I say go for it.
This works so well because theatre is a practice. Any play, even if it's performed once by one company (surely the mode for plays) is of the ages. Merry is black in your stage adaptation of the Fellowship, you say? Of course he is, everyone knew Isaac was going to get that role, he's a natural for it.
Cinema is a product, not a practice or a process. Like it or not, it makes a single, definitive statement about a story. It's fair to dislike it when those choices differ dramatically from those made by the author, including in matters of appearance.
If you think rabid fans won't be put off by 'trivial' things like an eye color mismatch, think again. You singling out skin color is your special pleading, reflecting your interests. I reject it. It is one of many aspects of casting in film which differs from the stage, for good reason.
The problem is that casting is explicitly not colorblind. Nobody would complain if a Nigerian studio did a black-only version of LotR because (presumably) they have more black actors than white.
It's the intentional woke fuckery, just so the studio can talk about racist manbabies or whatever, that is toxic. They're trying to start this very review-brigading as an excuse for however bad the show turns out. If it tanks they blame the ratings, not the material.
I don't know why this fixation with the colour of the skin.
I was merely pointing out that they changed a character, one that was very distinctly described, that obviously would be at the center of flamed debates and cause uproar.
My understanding is that the more people talk about the movie, the less Disney need to spend in marketing it.
Of course best actor for the role, but the studio never put it that way, so they are to blame IMO.
Also, I mean, the blue fairy is called blue (it's actually turquoise in Italian) because she has long turquoise hair.
The new fairy is bald.
Kinda provocative, does it make for a more compelling story or is it for attention grab?
I was very surprised by the Wheel of Time reviews (they were almost entirely racist) because I thought the casting was great in that show. It was an eye opener when I finally looked up “what other people are saying” after I watched a few episodes.
Obviously for RoP, Amazon is hoping to avoid the WoT review mess.
Maybe. If race matters to the story, then it might be confusing if the person doesn’t look like the race they are supposed to be, to some viewers. If race isn’t really part of the story, I don’t see how it matters.
Well, the Black Panther being a black superhero character, with African background, which is important to the story, means the "best actor" should include those qualities.
It's not just about "best" in acting abilities alone (as if those can be taken in abstract regardless of the story), but best in fitting the character and the role.
Why do you think that is what the parent post meant? He said he doesn't care about "the right skin color". If he doesn't care about skin color, then why can't Black Panther be white? I don't think the post was claiming it matters if it is intrinsic to the plot.
Can't reply to the post below but where you say "I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned." - I don't personally care if a movie reinterpretation casts a bald black actor (of either sex) for a character that's orginally a blue-haired pale-skinned fairy, but I definitely agree with this statement. And I wouldn't personally have an issue with using obviously caucasian actors in such a story, even if the original authors would have naturally assumed all the characters were black.
Unless the character's racial background is important to the story itself (12 years a slave etc.) or the movie is aiming for historical accuracy, I'm all for having an open slather approach to colour-blind casting.
> I want to see black people stories, not just black people participating in white people stories where they are not originally mentioned
Isn't part of the problem that there are no such stories for those who were stolen from their culture and made to work by force, kept uneducated on purpose, and weren't given the opportunity to build stories of their own?
A lot of Afro American don't speak their original language anymore, they don't know the folklore, the religions, the customs, might not even know where they came from, it's all been forgotten and erased, they're raised American now.
I feel this is where inclusivity matters, if you're raised American, but aren't, and all movies and stories exclude you, it just reminds you that you're still treated differently.
I'm definitely not very educated on Afro American stories, so maybe I'm wrong here, I just thought this is possible, it can be easy for colonized nations and enslaved people to lose their culture as they are forcefully assimilated, so decades later of this it's hard for them to make movies about what maybe is forgotten even to them.
Even if you restrict "black" to mean African Americans, that subculture has existed in its own right quite long enough for new stories to have been formed surely? The wikipedia article on African American literature would certainly suggest there's plenty to choose from.
> The wikipedia article on African American literature would certainly suggest there's plenty to choose from.
Absolutely, I recognize I might just be unaware, and that's probably because they're not made into big budget movies and very much should be. I'd also love to see that. And to be clear, I'm in 100% agreement that I want to see and think there should be a lot more of their stories represented and made into big productions.
What I wonder though is how much those stories are a part of the average Afro American active culture. Do they grow up reading those books too, or they do so reading Tolkien instead?
If the experience of an Afro American child is Marvel Comics, Disney movies, and Tolkien stories, and you continue to exclude them from the characters, it just seems wrong.
I also wonder if there are a lot that aren't slave stories or racial tension stories.
And finally I wonder if the stories would always be diverse, logically they'd all include white people, since Afro American heritage now is American life, a life in a place of diverse people from many race.
And maybe this is my point as well, if you write fantasy, but your experience is American, why wouldn't you include people of all color in your story? But if you did, you'd one hundred percent get some folks come out and say that fantasy stories are European inspired and should only have white people in them. That if a person has an Irish accent they can't be of black skin, and what does that make of black people in Ireland right now?
Why should a writer or for that matter film or TV producer even care what "some folks" are gonna think - it's impossible (and pointless) to please everybody. The idea that the fantasy genre is inherently European and should only consist of caucasian characters is patently absurd and untrue anyway - even CS Lewis had an Arabic-inspired protagonist (female, at that, but that's no denying a fair bit of racist sentiment in his writings too).
>>>What I wonder though is how much those stories are a part of the average Afro American active culture. Do they grow up reading those books too, or they do so reading Tolkien instead?
I read Tolkien, because my mother was a nerd, and shared her love of sci-fi/fantasy with me. I presume she got her exposure to sci-fi/fantasy at university (graduated 1973), despite attending an HBCU. I really do wonder who introduced her to Tolkien.... I can't say I've ever consumed any "high fantasy"-like stories of African origin.
>>>If the experience of an Afro American child is Marvel Comics, Disney movies, and Tolkien stories, and you continue to exclude them from the characters, it just seems wrong.
This is a bizarre line of thought that has really only emerged in the past ~15 years or so, IMO. Growing up, I never once looked at Sean Connery as James Bond and thought "I can't relate to this guy because his skin is too light." My favorite Marvel character in the early 90s wasn't Blade or Black Panther, it was Cable.
All of this cultural squabbling is the fault of a loud demographic of predominantly-young, emotionally-immature, college-brainwashed intersectionalists, deep in a the Hollyweird bubble. We have members of the black community who are critical of this nonsense, but they are often marginalized by the mainstream. JustSomeGuy on YouTube (a black guy from Chicago) shits all over the "woke" LOTR community: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy089HU5Ksc
Also Eric D. July ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhFvd5vkB8o ) who calls out modern "diversity" characters as "tokenized": they're not actually black/minority characters, they're just the exact same white characters with a lazy skin-color/sexual orientation change. That's why Eric July went and created his own entirely-new comic book universe, which pre-sold $3M+ dollars of comics in just a few weeks. Almost no coverage from mainstream comic websites, and discussion of his success is banned on the major comic sub-Reddits.
>>>And maybe this is my point as well, if you write fantasy, but your experience is American, why wouldn't you include people of all color in your story? But if you did, you'd one hundred percent get some folks come out and say that fantasy stories are European inspired and should only have white people in them.
I think this is a strawman. I've never heard such criticism for Game of Thrones. My understanding is Westeros is based on the War of the Roses period in England, but the world is still built with other regions and non-white cultures (Dothraki = obvious not-Mongolians, etc...). But if they had cast Wesley Snipes as Eddard Stark, there would be a rightful uproar.
I've got some follow up questions if you don't mind.
I understand you don't have issues with stories where there are no black characters. And I totally get that, I don't mind stories where there are no white characters, so the reverse seems true as well.
But my question is, do you mind if there were simply no big budget movies or TV shows to ever be centered around black American characters, or portray black American culture in any way?
Do you feel it's okay to have a large ethnic population and continue to exclusively produce content with only white people and historically white culture in them?
>>>do you mind if there were simply no big budget movies or TV shows to ever be centered around black American characters, or portray black American culture in any way?
I think those are strange questions, because they aren't the situation we have in America. We have plenty of entertainment content focused on the black experience. Friday franchise, Shaft franchise, Undercover Brother, Black Dynamite, all those terrible Tyler Perry movies, even some of the classic blaxploitation films such as Coffy (Pam Grier in her prime, 1973) are solid entertainment. So I wouldn't prefer that this stuff not exist.
>>>Do you feel it's okay to have a large ethnic population and continue to exclusively produce content with only white people and historically white culture in them?
Why deprive all the non-white people of their agency? If a non-white culture wants content that better communicates their lived experience, they should produce it themselves. Japan does it. India does it. Those cultures rightly recognize that they don't need some goofy Americans with gender studies degrees to write their stories for them. Stop outsourcing your culture to people who hate you ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt9MKUsKqHk ).
The amazing thing we are seeing lately is the decentralization of content production; people are realizing that they don't have to rely on the weirdos in Hollywood to produce culture for them.
This means the content created by independents needs to stand on its own merits though, it can't coast to success on established star power or well-refined CGI content mills: it needs genuinely good storytelling, compelling characters, innovative but affordable visuals, etc.... And this is where a TON of the current-generation BIPOC/LGBT/whatever content falls flat on its face: it fucking sucks. You have mediocre creators trying to separate the buying public from their money by brow-beating people with "if you don't buy my product you're a racist!". The backlash to such tactics was predictable and IMO well-deserved.
> Why deprive all the non-white people of their agency? If a non-white culture wants content that better communicates their lived experience, they should produce it themselves
Historically, in the US, they were not allowed to produce it themselves. So many decades went by where they were in fact deprived of their agency.
Not only that, but they were deprived of political, financial and economic agency as well, which means today, they are generally less wealthy, since they missed on decades of opportunities for wealth accumulation.
So in order to produce it themselves today, capital is required, especially if we're talking about big budget production.
The woke argument is that, it seems that some effort from white investors should be made to invest some of their capital to non-white artists, as retribution for all those years where they had their agency taken away.
That's different than the corporatist take, which is simply to appear progressive by checking some diversity boxes in order to get more sales, or protect their brand from backlash or bad press. I reckon that, and it's possible LOTR is of this kind of attempt.
So my question is, do you feel this retribution maybe actually comes with a hidden price? White capital somehow can compromise the work and have clauses that hurt the creative output and maybe ends up making the content worse. Do you feel it isn't necessary? Or do you feel it's a good thing that should help support and kickstart better quality non-white content?
By the way, as I understand, this capital doesn't need to come straight up as budget for a movie production, though it can, but I think it can also be as scholarship, financial aid, talent programs, etc. which can all focus more on non-white artists. It can also be done simply by opening up more roles for non-white artists, which does imply that some characters which maybe were meant to be white or which had non-specified gender/race needs to be made non-white, in order to create more job opportunities for non-white actors for example.
> And this is where a TON of the current-generation BIPOC/LGBT/whatever content falls flat on its face: it fucking sucks.
Does it suck any more/less than similar non BIPOC/LGBT content though? I personally don't feel like it does. I feel there's a similar likelihood of content sucking, no matter if it's trying for diversity, is promoting or made by BIPOC/LGBT or if it isn't. The only difference is there's simply more non-BIPOC/LGBT content being made, so it ends up there's more good content that make it past all the crap.
If for any 10 movies, only 1 is actually good, you'd need a lot more attempt at BIPOC/LGPT movies to get some good ones no?
>>>So my question is, do you feel this retribution maybe actually comes with a hidden price? White capital somehow can compromise the work and have clauses that hurt the creative output and maybe ends up making the content worse. Do you feel it isn't necessary? Or do you feel it's a good thing that should help support and kickstart better quality non-white content?
Currently white capital availability is gatekept by socio-political ideology. If you aren't toeing the party line, your endeavors will not be subsidized. So definitely the type of content produced/amplified will be compromised as a consequence.
>>>but I think it can also be as scholarship, financial aid, talent programs, etc. which can all focus more on non-white artists.
The reality is that this subsidizes mediocrity, and we all suffer as a consequence. Blind meritocracy is preferred, IMO. I'll admit this is much harder to get correct with a subjective field such as creative works/art, compared to something like the military or engineering.
>>> in order to create more job opportunities for non-white actors for example
To what end? Is the objective for the labor ratio of content creators to match the demographic breakdown (i.e. black people should be 15% of comic writers and movie creators)? Why aren't we putting as much effort into balancing other career fields, for example, addressing the massive gender disparity in coal mining (~96% males)? We're not equalizing the parts of the economy that are unpleasant, only the prestigious ones (cultural and economic influence). Why?
>>>Does it suck any more/less than similar non BIPOC/LGBT content though? I personally don't feel like it does.
"90% of everything is crap". IMO the difference is that garbage-tier content from straight white men doesn't get signal-boosted the same way. Perfect example, Bruce Willis movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd1eNS9HtXo . This crap gets shipped overseas for a profit, but almost nobody in the US knows or cares about this low-budget trash, despite the formerly A-List star involved.
^If these were crowdfunded from the LGBT community, that might make some sense. But they are showcased content from titans in their industry. Why are businesses greenlighting content like this and expecting a positive ROI? Who is doing their market analysis, because this content doesn't move units. And if they aren't expecting to make money on these product lines, then what is their real goal?
>>>If for any 10 movies, only 1 is actually good, you'd need a lot more attempt at BIPOC/LGPT movies to get some good ones no?
I mean....sure. All I'm saying is that it should grow organically, from within the relevant community, with no external subsidy, funding, handouts, or signal-boosting. The 2nd and 3rd order effects of such are worse than doing nothing, IMO. Good discussion and valid thought-provoking questions, I'm gonna peace out.
> All of this cultural squabbling is the fault of a loud demographic of predominantly-young, emotionally-immature, college-brainwashed intersectionalists,
You are undoubtedly better qualified to have an opinion on such matters than I am, but the article I linked to above suggests your view is not shared by all with strong ties to their African heritage.
The race and location of Black Panther and Wakanda are integral parts of their story and character. Not the case with the blue fairy. Definitely not the case with elves in a fantasy world.
I hate to break it to you but Black Panther IS a fantasy story set in a fantasy world. The reason why black people would lose their minds if they would have Black Panther played by a white actor is that escapist superhero fiction has become cultural identity and the superheroes are role models. Therefore replacing a central element by their oppsite, is destroying said cultural identity. Now ask yourself why it appears to be so important to Hollywood to replace white roles with black and queer actors: Why does Arielle need to be black? Why Spiderman? Why James Bond? Why Captain America? Why Roland Deschain from Dark Tower?
Actors should be a good match for the role they play. That includes accent, build, height, sex, attractiveness, characterization (Will Smith couldn't play Sauron) and skin colour.
Not op, but I believe he meant that casting in theater and cinema are different.
"In film and television, the audition is called a screen test, and it is filmed so that the casting director or director can see how the actor appears on screen."
> disqualifies Shakespearean theater in the time of Shakespeare
Ira Aldridge was born a couple centuries later than Shakespeare's King Lear.
Theater and movies are different media, if you wanna put up a play about Matrix you need actors that are able to act and to fight like in the movie, which I guess are not that many.
If you're shooting a movie, you simply hire stunt doubles.
Cinema is a fiction, it's not a live performance.
Most of the times main actors are there because they are popular and help the movie promotion.
That really depends if those attributes are an important part of the character, how well the actor can fake those (e.g. Hugh Laurie without British accent in house md), and what you want to achieve. Jesus for instance most likely had a bit darker skin, but it makes sense to make him more similar to your target audience, so people can better identify with him.
> Jesus for instance most likely had a bit darker skin, but it makes sense to make him more similar to your target audience
It's a bit more complicated than that.
In most of the paintings you'll find Jesus has a darker skin tone (and hair)
Then in 1940 Warner Sallman’s created the popular light-eyed, light-haired Christ [1], Sallman worked for advertising and marketed the picture worldwide.
If you are referring to "Hamilton" using a diverse cast to play characters that were white in reality, I'm not sure that is a good example. The commenter above said "Actors should be a good match for the role they play".
I haven't seen "Hamilton", but from what I've read it has little or no mention of slavery. When you don't have slavery in a story set in that era the character's race usually isn't important for the role so the actor's race doesn't matter.
... when does the actor's race matter? It would when the story is about racial tension, I suppose: it'll be a century or more before you could have a white actor play Malcolm X. But most of the time, it doesn't matter that you've recast, say, Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers as a white character.
Regardless, the criteria above about actors needing to match their characters in every detail is risibly ahistorical and unmoored from any principle of film or theater; it's pure applesauce, rationalization pretending at erudition.
Exactly. People will follow “fairy magic” hook line and sinker and to have a diverse cast of elves (who are still by the way still very pretty except that guy who plays elrond) makes them doubt the quality. I think there's a lot of hidden affront at diversity here. All I care about for this series is 1) is it entertaining, 2) are the actors good? 3) give me more dragons. I think it's off to a mediocre start, but I have hopes it will get better. It's certainly not the steaming pile that Reddit and HN are making it out to be, and it's not Better Call Saul level either.
To upvote, geeat performances are rarely based soley on how the source was written and often based on the cast available and the audience.
To not target a performance with accent, race, mores, values, language would be most dull indeed. And no human tales would spread past a homogeneous population.
> Elves are almost eugenetically born all the same
Elves are fictive and have a long literary history--mostly publicized by white Europeans. Originally, they were described as evil creatures who infected people with diseases. Tolkien stepped into the folklore at a particular time and place and offered his interpretation. Sticking to a tradition in which they're all genetically similar--and white--is also just an interpretation. My point is that there's no elf manual that everyone needs to stick to.
You point out a good detail with Pinocchio. But again, Collodi offered his interpretation of a folk tale. In Collodi's text [1], the fish that swallowed Pinocchio is described as "Pesce-cane grosso come una casa di cinque piani e con un treno della strada ferrata in bocca" -- "huge shark [technically 'dog-fish'] like a five-story house and train on a railroad in its mouth." It was subsequent interpretations, like Disney's first version, that portrayed the fish as a whale.
So I don't think it's woke, or too liberal or whatever, to portray elves as different skin colors. We shouldn't keep them white just to avoid pissing off certain audiences.
> It becomes clear that the black blue fairy was put there to check a box
The movie is in English, using exclusively non-Italian actors , which in itself is checking a box. What difference does it make if they cast another non-Italian actor to play a role?
> What difference does it make if they cast another non-Italian actor to play a role?
Who said anything about being Italian?
I've only quoted the author words (Collodi)
The fairy is pale white not because she is a white person, but because she's pure.
Pale white skin is not an Italian trait, so I don't understand what Italianness has to do with anything.
If anything, the fact that she is pale white makes her obviously non-italian, because she's better than all the other characters that try to deceive and corrupt Pinocchio.
Unfortunately that's really how Tolkien's mythology tends to work. White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption and evil (or at least, between the two, "civilized" and "uncivilized".)
It's a trope that's carried on into sci-fi (particularly Star Trek, where the more animalistic or violent races also tend to be darker - see the Klingons who get portrayed as darker-skinned and more aggressive with each iteration) and related high-fantasy properties like D&D.
> White skin is associated with purity, darker skin with corruption
it's the oldest metaphor in the world
it's light vs darkness, like white magic and black magic.
Heaven is light, hell is darkness.
Nobody sees "the dark at the end of the tunnel".
The idea that black people mean evil and white people mean virtue is a stretch of the modern thinking, by the same people that believe that blacklist comes from black people.
> where the more animalistic or violent races also tend to be darker
Not true.
Borgs, arguably the most dangerous species in the series, are white
The Borg are all races and Romulans, though majority portrayed as white, likely have multiple skin tones the same way the Vulcans do. Though the idea they purged different skin tones at some point fits with their overall narrative.
All the Dominion races were white, more or less. The Changelings have a whole meta commentary going for them.
>it's the oldest metaphor in the world
>it's light vs darkness, like white magic and black magic.
>Heaven is light, hell is darkness.
>Nobody sees "the dark at the end of the tunnel".
You seem to have confused "the world" for "Christian Europe." There are plenty of cultures in which these metaphors are reversed, or don't exist at all.
And the only referent that is relevant to this specific conversation is that of Tolkien, who himself described orcs thusly:
squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types."
He's clearly not drawing entirely from "universal" metaphors of "light" and "darkness." And even if he were, mapping that to race is still ignorant and worth calling out.
>Borgs, arguably the most dangerous species in the series, are white
I wasn't talking about simply being dangerous, since in context even the Pakleds are dangerous (speaking of problamatic portrayals) so much as presenting depictions of animistic or "savage" behavior that hearkens to outdated racialist stereotypes of non-white cultures. The Borg are essentially a force of nature, so not relevant in that regard.
Fair point about the Romulans and Cardassians, although they're clearly metaphors for Colonial Europeans and Nazis respectively, and both are presented as clearly "civilized" in their behavior. Klingons drink blood wine, Cardassians drink kanar. The implications are still there.
> You seem to have confused "the world" for "Christian Europe."
Not really
Yumboes are supernatural beings in the mythology of the Wolof people (most likely Lebou) of Senegal, West Africa. They closely resemble European fairies. Their alternatively used name Bakhna Rakhna literally means good people, an interesting parallel to the Scottish fairies called Good Neighbours.
Yumboes are the spirits of the dead and, like many supernatural beings in African beliefs, they are completely of a pearly-white colour. They are sometimes said to have silver hair.
Chinese mythology has white foxes and white tigers.
There are similar examples in all the mythologies.
> He's clearly not drawing entirely from "universal" metaphors of "light" and "darkness." And even if he were, mapping that to race is still ignorant and worth calling out.
Tolkien was a well known anti-modern, Roman Catholic orthodox conservative.
But mongol-typed are not actually dark skinned, they were in fact often very pale in the past, and tbf he also wrote "degraded and repulsive versions of".
Same way I could say, as Italian, that "Jersey Shore" protagonists are a degraded and repulsive versions of Italians.
>But mongol-typed are not actually dark skinned, they were in fact often very pale in the past, and tbf he also wrote "degraded and repulsive versions of"
True, but Star Trek's treatment of the original Klingons was much the same, based on a vague archetype of "swarthy" Eastern "barbarians" like the Khanate or stereotypes of the Japanese during WW2. We're talking about broad-brush stereotypes here. There was no non-racist reason to make the Klingons dark-skinned to begin with. As has been mentioned, the Romulans were also a villain species and they were white (as a plot point, they looked exactly like Vulcans because they were the same species. The Klingons were dark-skinned because in Western culture dark skin is visual shorthand for "savage."
And portraying "degraded and repulsive" versions of a specific human race is the literal definition of a racist caricature. Especially if the point is to make them evil.
>Same way I could say, as Italian, that "Jersey Shore" protagonists are a degraded and repulsive versions of Italians.
... if literally every Italian in the show was portrayed that way, and was canonically in the Mafia. And the protagonists were all non-Italians. And when people were corrupted by evil, they turned more Italian.
There are plenty of counter examples within Star Trek of patently evil or aggressive characters and races being humanoid with light skin. This is purely your own projection.
Might have been true with Star Trek as of early TNG, but not sure it's been that way since. I imagine there was uproar around Tuvok being a black Vulcan, but would be hard to imagine Trek fans caring about that today.
Just keep rolling with basically racist concepts because we like the other aspects of the mythology? Or explicitly overturn the racist parts, and keep the rest?
I like the second one, but apparently many other commenters are perfectly comfortable with "white=good".
D&D is at least trying to do the latter - they just issued an apology for the Hadozee - a slave race of monkey people for which the unfortunate implications are obvious. At least to some people.
Of course we're still left with the archetype of race mapping to moral alignment in general which is gross, but at least it's something.
And of course every single time anyone tries to decolonize (I'm going to use that word specifically because it irks certain people) fantasy and sci-fi, there's a controversy like the one we're in the middle of now. Some people have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.
By translating the origin from Italian into English another crowd is reached, and movie adaptations often differ from books. In this case, casting was chosen to be diverse at the expense of a detail barely anyone cares about. Whether such behavior is -all things considered- a win or loss depends on if such choice hugely hampers the popularity. IOW, vote with your wallet.
> In this case, casting was chosen to be diverse at the expense of a detail barely anyone cares about.
Sorry, but that's like saying that nobody cares about Gandalf the white in LOTR, and you can cast whoever you like for the role and make his robe rainbow colored.
In fact Amazon didn't do that, the actor playing Gandalf in Rings of power is a white man. For obvious reasons, that have nothing to do with being against diversity.
The blue fairy has a central role in Pinocchio and she has long blue hair.
They knew that casting a shaved woman would be much more than simply adapting a story. it's like if in a Nausicaa in the valley of the winds adaption Nausicaa is a black disabled boy. It would simply not be the right choice, casting as a job is exactly that, choosing the more apt person for the role, which includes appearances.
Of course the colour of the skin is not a fundamental trait, unless it is in the story.
A white Apollo Creed would be highly controversial, like a black Abraham Lincoln, an Asian Sitting Bull or an Italian Malcolm X that only eats spaghetti and says "mamamia" with the hands.
Perhaps the casted person was the best choice? Ian McKellen was an excellent choice for the role of Gandalf. Whether the same is true for other actors and roles depends on a case by case scenario. I couldn't care less about his skin colour.
We in the West allowed foreigners and people of colour into our culture. We deal with it by being inclusive in 2022. Deal with it, simple as that. You don't like it, you don't watch it.
I live in a country where a bunch of people have decided to hang their flags upside down. I don't like that and if I see a business doing such, I don't do business with them. Simple as that as well.
I don't know if that person would be right or wrong for that role since I don't know enough about acting in that sense. I envision myself being a terrible caster (but not on this specific matter).
It appears you believe skin color isn't compatible with a role, but I don't care about it; I only care about the actor's performance, and if the actor's skin is incompatible with the script we make it compatible. Either we change the skin color, or the script.
> The fairy is pale white not because she is a white person, but because she's pure.
Right, because of all of parts of the story that have been changed, _this_ is the part that must be kept - using white skin to equate to purity.
Do you agree that in our modern diverse society a black woman can be used to represent "purity"? Because if you do, then surly we can keep the author's original intent without tying it to skin color like he did in 1883.
> Right, because of all of parts of the story that have been changed, _this_ is the part that must be kept - using white skin to equate to purity.
And maybe the blue hair too, given she's named after her blue hair.
> Do you agree that in our modern diverse society a black woman can be used to represent "purity"?
Do you agree that for white here we mean white the colour, not the pink skin tone, which is inhuman?
I am not white like Swedish people are, certainly not like the blue fairy.
It's mythology, it's not literal, you are taking it literally, only zealots do that.
Do you know that in African mythology fairies are white too?
Yumboes (they resemble European fairies) are the spirits of the dead and, like many supernatural beings in African beliefs, they are completely of a pearly-white colour
Did it ever occured to you that western mythology was made by westerners and it is silly to try to bend it to reflect USA of today, while they could use non western mythologies and finally show other cultures respect, but probably American studios can't do that, because they wanna make money and not really respect diversity?
Why take an 1883 Italian book to show a black fairy?
It seems pretty telling that you didn't actually answer what should have been a simple question.
> And maybe the blue hair too, given she's named after her blue hair.
So then... you agree? White skin representing purity is an aspect that _has_ to be kept, even when so many parts of the actual story have been changed and we've had ~140 years of society in-between?
> Do you agree that for white here we mean white the colour, not the pink skin tone, which is inhuman?
Ok, so is the portrayal in the 1940's Disney Pinocchio equally as outlandish considering she's just a white woman with blond hair? Would you be reacting the same way if they cast a white woman in the role?
And to that point, isn't the new movie intended as a remake of the Disney version, not the original, in which case the blue fairy already didn't have blue hair?
> Why take an 1883 Italian book to show a black fairy?
Because people like the Disney version of the story?
> It seems pretty telling that you didn't actually answer what should have been a simple question.
it is not.
I do think that a black woman can represent purity.
It simply doesn't fit the story as it has been written in the case of Pinocchio.
If you have to explain why things are the way they are, you're probably overthinking them.
Let's explore why the "representation era" is a smokescreen, shall we?
Imagine a no brainer: a black Tarzan.
There would be nothing strange about it, he's living in the jungle in Africa.
Except now you have to rewrite all his back story, because Tarzan is the son of a white British lord and his white British wife.
You can rewrite them too, as a black British lord and his black British wife.
Except now you also have to explain why in an all white community, the British lords, there is this odd couple.
Where do they come from?
How do they made it to becoming lords?
Are they black people living as white people or do they help the black community?
etc.
What's the problem?
The problem is that Tarzan was written by an American author of British Puritan ancestry, supporter of eugenics and scientific racism, beliefs that he used extensively in his books.
No matter how many black people they put in the story, they'll never be able to fix it.
They shouldn't adapt the story, they should write a new story or adapt a story where black people are already protagonists of the story.
That would actually mean something, but it wouldn't generate much attention I guess...
Less attention = less money (or a loss)
If Disney things that Pinocchio needs "fixing" they better leave it alone, because Pinocchio is a story from 150 years ago and it is not adherent to contemporary American standards in many ways.
Including the presence of a human eating monster fish.
See, simply putting "black person" in the cast doesn't add anything to any story,it doesn't improve representation, people don't actually feel more engaged, it's simple easy selling identity, but, tbf, it generate a lot of buzz, and buzz is all studios need right now, they won't admit they are remaking for the nth time an old story because are incapable of writing new ones, so they are distracting the audience with this silliness, hoping it will work.
Even Pixar is stagnating dramatically, take their Luca, directed by an Italian, set in Italy, I should feel oh so represented, but exactly because it plays with my culture trying to sell it to people who don't know it very well, I found it embarrassing.
The moral of this story is, I guess, that representation is overrated and there is much more to a movie than simply watching someone who looks like me for the sake of watching someone that vaguely looks like me.
> Ok, so is the portrayal in the 1940's Disney Pinocchio equally as outlandish considering she's just a white woman with blond hair? Would you be reacting the same way if they cast a white woman in the role?
Do you realize it is the same Disney both times, do you?
Two wrongs don't make a right.
> in which case the blue fairy already didn't have blue hair?
Yep.
Disney, being wrong since 1940s.
I wasn't born back then and we had no internet, but yeah, I prefer the Italian adaptation of Pinocchio with the blue fairy having blue hair.
> Because people like the Disney version of the story?
so there are times when cultural appropriation is actually OK?
As a member of the culture that story comes from, do I have a say or should I bow to the Disney overlords?
Isn't it the case that race is acceptably mutable if it isn't germain to the story and that making all audiences feel more accepted and therefore happier is a laudable goal. Nothing woke about greater non white representation. Plenty snowflake about not wanting this.
Yup, the Witcher series did a great job at that (I say this as a fan of the books but not the game). E.g. Elves are discriminated because of pointy ears, not skin color, so no reason to limit the cast the story works equally well.
I don’t understand this position. If they add more diversity to appeal to wider audiences, that’s bad. If they make everyone white skinned, even if Tolkien himself didn’t describe most races as such, that’s fine?
> Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, [where] no black woman was ever seen
I hear people say things like this a lot, and it's always jarring to me to think where they get that impression, because it's quite ahistorical. Going back actually all the way to antiquity (Romans, Vikings), there was far more visible diversity across Europe than what you typically see in cinematic portrayals. The homogenous image people have is a product of Hollywood, not a reflection of what the time period was actually like.
Anyway, your statement is objectively incorrect, even beyond the obvious hyperbole. There were plenty of Black people in Italy in that time period, enough that it's really not shocking to imagine one as a magical character in a literal fairy tale.
There are still plenty of villages in Europe, where older people, who don't go to the cities, have never seen a black person in real life in their lives. So I would dare to guess very very few people saw a black women in mid 1800s in Tuscany. Objectively your perception of European history and its people is wrong.
> A black woman in Italy: Impossible! Unbelievable!
You're being overly dramatic.
But if you want stories with black women in them, why are you adapting a book where there is none?
I think that's because Pinocchio is a very good story and they know it, people.know it, and also is in the public domain.
Disney "modernizing" Italian literature for free to feed their money making machine? OK!
Disney adapting an African story about black women and black mythology?
Impossible! Unbelievable!
Which one is more probable, that Disney wants to use Pinocchio IP while also riding the inclusiveness-washing activism wave, or that Disney really actually cares about black women and their culture?
Diverse casting is in fact the laziest form of racial inclusivity possible.
PLEASE make movies and series stemming from African tradition and mythology, and rightfully cast black people for that.
The problem with forced diverse casting is that I can't bring myself to imagine how and why dwarves/elves/etc.. can be both black and white, since they all come from the same land in the LoTR lore. At least pick a lotr race - skin color pair and only cast people of that skin color for a determined race, I'd be ok with that. It just messes the lore for me, nothing more nothing less.
Except Othello is set in Venice 4 centuries before...
We study at the age of 6 that the Roman empire had black emperors, African born (see: Septimius Severus), but no, where Pinocchio is set and among the people he is living with, nobody knew about Othello or Septimius Severus, nobody could even read, for sure not Pinocchio, that is in fact turned into a donkey for being so ignorant and certainly there were no black fairy women.
>Another example is the new Disney's Pinocchio, were the Blue Fairy is portrait by a black woman. The problem is not that she is black of course. but that the original story is set in Italy, Tuscany, mid 1800, were no black woman was ever seen
It’s quite clear that that is YOUR problem. It’s funny when people like yourself claim “I’m not X” while then clear laying the case.
And for the récord, i hope you open up a geography book. There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )
Also, can people just chill with this racist crap. It’s freaking art, up to interpretation. An actor can be of any race or gender. Get over it.
> There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )
I hate this argument because it's disingenuous. It's in great part a lie and undermines the push for diversity.
Just because there were 1-2-5-100, in major cities, in countries with populations of millions, didn't make them common and frankly more than a curiosity people would gawk at everywhere except for their immediate residential area.
The vast majority of people until 1900 or so lived and died within 100km from where they were born, most likely a village.
The average Congolese in 1700 died without ever seeing a European or a Chinese person.
The average Chinese in 1700 died without ever seeing an African or European.
The average European in 1700 died without ever seeing an African or Chinese person.
Heck, even today, go to poorer and less developed countries and tell me how many outsiders from far away you see. Moldova, Belarus, Tadjikistan, etc.
I don't mind character switches and such in media, but reaching a point in conversation like the one above, where the comment I'm replying to is asking everyone to RTFM history books to discover this supposedly hidden massive diversity in the Middle Ages is frankly, just a bad comment.
Racism certainly plays a big part in the frequency of such complaints, but it nonetheless raises some important questions.
Ultimately, nobody really, genuinely holds the opinion that an actor can be of any appearance for any role. There will always be exceptions that will break their immersion, because unlike with theatre there is the expectation that the movie is WYSIWYG.
To give an extreme example, would you be completely undisturbed if the main character in 12 years a Slave was portrayed by John Malkovich? Or if a Jewish camp inmate in Schindler's list was portrayed as a black person? I don't think either example would sit well with the vast majority of people, no matter how racist or not racist they might be.
That's why pointing out that black people did exist in Italy is correct but beaide the point. The real debate is around the acceptability of certain expectations, and what determines the criteria for this acceptability.
> [would you be completely undisturbed] if a Jewish camp inmate in Schindler's list was portrayed as a black person?
Why would you be disturbed in the slightest? Hitler hated blacks, and yes, some WERE actually in concentration camps:
"Although no exact figures exist, it is known that a significant number of black people were detained in concentration camps and forced labour camps during the Nazi reign, and that many were murdered. Nonetheless, there seems to be little interest in Hitler’s black victims. Their plight is not talked about enough. This is partly because unlike Jews, Roma and Sinti, black people were not marked for destruction. But they were denied their human rights, sterilised, persecuted, experimented upon and murdered in camps."
I am aware of this historical reality, but note that I specifically mentioned a Jewish camp inmate. Now, you might say that it's entirely possible that an Ethiopian Jew, somewhere somehow, was caught in the Holocaust's net and shot by Amon Göth, but let's be honest, we would be verging on bad faith argumentation at this point.
Taking the example even further, what about a specific Jewish inmate whose appearance is solidly documented an in the popular imagination, such as Anne Frank?
Ultimately, some expectations are seen as socially acceptable, others are not. But there are always expectations.
I was surprised to learn (about myself at least) that this isn't really true, when I saw the musical Hamilton. Of course, the characters also break out into song, etc.
Well that is to be expected, because much like theatre musicals don't have that WISYWIG immersion expectation at all.
To test your belief, it would make more sense to picture a "serious" historical movie where the actors portraying the founding fathers don't look much at all like the faces on the dollar bills.
Not quite that level, but plenty of people seem fine with Bridgerton swapping the race of its characters, which I believe is otherwise a standard period drama.
> It’s quite clear that that is YOUR problem. It’s funny when people like yourself claim “I’m not X” while then clear laying the case.
if you don't see a problem in changing someone else's literature and culture (I am Italian and have read Pinocchio since I was a kid) than you probably don't know what respect for different cultures is.
I would never think of a movie were Kunta Kinte is Dutch and is portrait by Chris Hemsworth.
A quick search shows results saying his ancestors were all from northern Africa and the Middle East. He doesn't even look black in various busts/statues depicting him. He definitely looks north African. I'm pretty into Roman history, and this is the first time I've ever encountered someone suggesting there was a "black" (in the modern sense of the word) emperor.
Not commenting on Severus specifically, I’ve noticed that it seems really common in modern times for some reason for people to believe “white” means European, even though “white” people lived indigenously throughout North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia - including people with blue eyes or red/blonde hair.
Similarly, “African” is for some reason taken to exclusively mean “sub-Saharan” even though as you note most people would not identify most North African ethnic groups as black.
Don't worry, it's not you. People who are quick to call someone racist are nearly always struggling internally with their own racism. To their credit they feel quite a lot of shame about that, but until it's resolved they can be quite unpleasant.
I think GP is not arguing his case well, especially not to Americans, who come with a preset cluster of expectations and arcane protocols to signal that we "get it".
And, sure, anti-Black racism might be his prime motivation. But, just assuming it's so, when someone questions American appropriation of his own culture's literary traditions is ... it's frankly imperialist.
"Americans agree: Italian who questions American depictions of Italian cultural traditions is just a bigot"
Have a hypothesis and then do your best to falsify that. Give him all of the charity he needs to refute your guess that he's a bigot.
"So you say that there is a convention in Italian literature of depicting other-worldly beings as having freakishly white skin. Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up with freakishly white skin?"
If he doesn't refute your generous chances, then guess what? You found a bigot. Congratulations.
If everyone were more parsimonious about it, calling someone a racist or white supremacist or a Nazi would actually have some meaning again. At this point it's just coming to mean "This person disagrees with me and I don't like it".
Remember, these depictions are intended to be immersive. If some element reminds the watcher that they are watching a story, and they find it difficult to suspend their disbelief, they're not going to like it. That could mean an actor with clearly incorrect ancestry for the role.
For example, in the real world, a rural village of people whose ancestors have been in the same region for hundreds or thousands of years are going to look a lot alike. This is why Finns do not look like Khoisan. Everyone knows this. No one has a problem with this.
If your fantasy setting has human beings (or humanoid beings) living for generations together in a small rural village, and you just throw a bunch of different real-world ancestries in there, a Khoisan burgher and a Finnish tavern keeper, that's going to need some kind of explanation. Highlighting that as a problem isn't automagically racist. Maybe it's "magic world" and people there just have that kind of reproductive variability. Cool. Whatever it is, it needs a reason. But without that, it comes off as immersion-disrupting tokenism.
So, no, I don't think "focusing on race" is an automatic signifier of racism.
"Would you be ok with the Pinocchio reboot if the same African-descended actress portrayed the fairy, but were instead made up with freakishly white skin?"
Including the word "freakishly" is deliberately setting up the expectation that nobody would think that was acceptable. But I'd like to think we should be able to live in a world where if being literally white-coloured was a key component of a character, then yes, a black actor should be able to play the character wearing whatever costume/makeup or using whatever special effects are necessary to pull off the part. Unfortunately I'm not sure we are in that world yet - the most well-known case of a black public figure appearing "white" still gets accused of betraying his racial background, even if it's almost certain it was entirely due to a skin condition (Vitiligo, a diagnosis confirmed on autopsy).
In another post, GP discussed how "wax-like, otherworldly" white skin is a signifier of supernatural goodness. My brain translated that into "freakish". If he had said "ruddy, tends to tan in the sun" or no adjective qualifier, I'd have just in turn said "white" without qualifier.
I'm not sure how what I wrote sounds like that, because if I wanted to write that, I would have. It's a lot simpler, for one.
It's a difficult concept, rhetorical charity, especially in today's climate of flinging the most reprehensible accusation in our repertoire at the slightest provocation.
As I said before, a lot of the excesses of "wokeness" is projected overcompensation for private shame about bigoted feelings.
> The only part of the depiction he’s complaining about is race
Am I?
Are you sure?
Can you quote me on that please?
The blue fairy is an important part of my culture, at least for me.
If someones rewrites it using all the power of a conglomerate like Disney, that puts at risk our shared culture and heritage.
For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman, that has no direct representation in the society where I live.
I don't care who the actress is or what the color of her skin is, it's just not the "Fata Turchina", it's another character.
Simple as that.
Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.
What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?
I would totally watch a Sherlock Holmes played by Benedict Cumberbatch dressed up as bald black woman!
Look, if having the blue fairy's character being reinterpreted in such a way is simply something you'd prefer not to watch, that's cool. Maybe it bothers you that a generation of new viewers will absorb a different version of a story for which the orginal has a particular place in your heart, but that's just how culture works - for most of human existence stories weren't written down and changed on each retelling anyway. It doesn't lessen their importance or impact.
Having said all that - I've yet to hear many examples of modern adaptations of music in classical tradition written 100s of years ago that I can accept as any sort of improvement. I can't quite put my finger on why there's such a difference.
> What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?
You're not very good at arguing your case. I see where you're trying to go with this, but that analogy sucks.
Look, Disney just ruins everything. I grew up with the A.A. Milne books for Winnie the Pooh. As a child, I had a picture in my mind for all of the characters, appearance, voice, manner. Disney's Winnie the Pooh is not it, and they have such cultural dominance that their vision can seem to overwrite the original.
I've had to just learn to not sweat it. Blade Runner 2049? Excellent movie, but I do not consider it canon. The original had a sense of humor and hopefulness that 2049 just absolutely lacked.
My Disney+ shows that I'll have access to Pinocchio on September 8th. Not sure if you have already seen it, but if not, give it a watch with an open mind. You might like it.
> For me she's gonna be a woman with blue air, for someone younger it will be a bald black woman
Weird that you spend more time complaining about her skin color than her hair.
> Try doing that with Sherlock Holmes and see what happens.
Shit yeah, sign me up.
> What would happen if a Chinese company made a movie where Martin Luther King is an Albanian immigrant who came to Italy with the Vlora ship in 1991 to become a supporter of immigrants rights and got killed by a mobster in a fight over a pool game?
They might well do that. But it’s different when it’s a real person than an imaginary fairy. And also when you change his appearance versus when you change what he stands for.
Collodi often used the Italian Tuscan dialect in his book. The name Pinocchio is a combination of the Italian words pino (pine), and occhio (eye); Pino is also an abbreviation of Giuseppino, the diminutive for Giuseppe (the Italian form of Joseph); one of the men who greatly influenced Collodi in his youth was Giuseppe Aiazzi, a prominent Italian manuscript specialist who supervised Collodi at the Libreria Piatti bookshop in Florence. Geppetto, the name of Pinocchio's creator and “father,” is the diminutive for Geppo, the Tuscan pronunciation of ceppo, meaning a log, stump, block, stock or stub.
It seems to me there's a lot of cultural references here that are elided for non-Tuscan audiences. I imagine that could be frustrating. I think it would not be easy for Americans to be sympathetic to this kind of thing.
Hey, this is a cool song. It's a bit how Europeans can feel about American hegemonic cultural dominance: https://youtu.be/Rr8ljRgcJNM
> I would never think of a movie were Kunta Kinte is Dutch and is portrait by Chris Hemsworth
Kunta Kinte was a slave in a story that heavily dealt with slavery, set in a time and setting where slavery was race-based, for an audience somewhat familiar with the history of that time and setting.
If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.
Most of the race changes people have mentioned so far did not involve characters where their race was either important to the story or to reducing the amount of exposition and world building you need to convey the story's context to the audience.
Not dutch, but Chris Hemsworth could perfectly fit in the role of a --slavic-- people in an history of slavery. The first slaves with that name where white. In this particular case the history is easily translatable to a different location.
> did not involve characters where their race was either important to
I think the appearances of a character is quite important if the author took the time to describe it, don't you think?
Would a Little women adaptation where the three women are two trans gender people, one Black, one Asian and one South American person that identifies as woman, be a good idea?
We all know what "Little women" is about, we all expect that, not something else completely unrelated to the original IP.
Why isn't Jay Gatsby black in the movies and only black people in the book are also black in the movie?
Want my opinion?
People are making a big fuss about the ethnicity of actors, but I'm more inclined to think that Disney's worried about another failure like Tim Burton's Dumbo (the original Dumbo is considered unacceptable by today's standards and people staid away from the new one) and is playing it safe with a story (Pinocchio) that has no such bad legacy attached. it's so safe that there's even a "project Pinocchio" in my country against racism in schools.
> If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.
That's exactly my point.
A black fairy is not an issue because she is black, but because it's a plot hole that the original story don't have.
>> If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.
> That's exactly my point.
> A black fairy is not an issue because she is black, but because it's a plot hole that the original story don't have.
I just watched a couple trailers for the new Pinocchio movie and they included a scene with the fairy.
She's dressed in glowing white sparkly clothes, has translucent sparkly wings, a wand with a star on the end that is clearly a magic wand, is surrounded by sparkles, transfigured Pinocchio, and it looks like she travels in some sort of amorphous flowing light blob.
The amount of extra exposition and world building needed to let the audience know that the character is a fairy is zero.
The black bald fairy is just a stunt to create fake controversy, to sell tickets.
And if any children read this, let me tell you that either you run to ask money to your parents and go to itchy and scratchy land, or you are a bunch of little racists. You are warned. Gimme money.
I think you're right. Italian is not an ethnicity. Italy hasn't been a unified political entity for very long. There are Italians from all sorts of different ethnicities and races. Would it be okay for a Black person to play this role if they were Italian? If not, why is it okay for non-Italian white actors to play other roles?
Is a Corsican person Italian? Is an Italian-American? Is Mario Balotelli (for example)? Why does any of this matter?
> There’s been black people in Italy for pretty much all it’s history. You may want to also read a few history books. (Black moors, Alessandro de' Medici, etc )
I've always hated this disingenuous line of arguing. Yes, technically there were some black people in Italy, but these types of arguments always frame it in such a way that it seems like it was a common thing to witness for the average citizen. The large, large majority of Italians (we're talking in the past obviously) have never seen anything other than other Italians, and those few foreign black people were very much a rarity.
Hell, go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien, even in the capital Belgrade, yet alone in the smaller cities. Or do the flipside, go to a remote part of a country like Indonesia as a white man, like a random village in Papua or even a city like Jogja (and it's not exactly a small or unpopular city either), and you'll similarly be gawked at.
I'm a Serb (so corpse-white when I don't tan) but lived in Indonesia my whole life, I can't tell you the number of times I've been in situations where people have looked at me in fascination because of my white skin, even in places where tourists are common. If you go to Borobudur as a white person, you're going to be asked to have your picture taken by a dozen curious Indonesians who have never in their lives seen a white person in real life, and this is a massively popular tourist spot in a pretty massive city with plenty of foreigners coming and going.
So sure, there were some black people in Italy, but let's not pretend like that was anywhere near the norm or something you could expect to see every day in 1700s Italy as an average Italian.
"go to places like Serbia today as a black man and you'll be gawked at like you're an alien"
But don't you agree this is something we should be trying to improve, and we could do so by ensuring that movie casting better reflects the more racially diverse situation we enjoy in the developed world (who produce much content exported to less diverse parts of the world)?
No amount of seeing black characters in a movie or show (or the flipside in Indonesia, seeing non-asian characters) is gonna make it any less strange for people when they spot them in real life if the reality for them is that every single person they ever interact with in their day-to-day lives looks like them.
I also don't see what exactly you're improving here either. Most people outside of the West that I've met don't care about diversity, at least not in the way American leftists seem to portray it. In my eyes, that Hollywood cast of elites making millions off of acting are all the same type of person regardless of their gender, skin color or any of the other superficial traits people usually judge diversity by, and I can relate to them as much as I can relate to a mosquito. Likewise, I might be Serbian by blood, but I feel about as Serbian as you probably do, considering I was born and have grown up in Indonesia. I relate more to Indonesians and stories revolving around Indonesia than I do anything coming out of the West (the influence of the Internet notwithstanding), yet by all superficial standards I definitely wouldn't be considered "diverse" enough for a lot of things considering I'm just another corpse-white dude.
I guess my point is that the US, and especially the Liberal/Hollywood idea of diversity isn't anything like what my friends and I would consider diverse at all, and I suspect a lot of people in the real world feel very similarly, though that's obviously hopeful conjecture on my part. I'll take my friend group consisting of every nationality that exists (and a lot of them are dual nationalities as well!) who have white skin color over the same number of Americans of every shade of the rainbow any day of the week if you ask me to make the most diverse crowd of people possible.
I'm not I entirely agree that frequently witnessing racial diversity in movies isn't going to affect the way you react to what you might see in your own neighbourhood. Our perceptions of what's "normal" absolutely are shaped by cultural norms and they can be spread by literature, TV and film as much as they can by lived experience.
I'm a bit baffled by your description of a group of friends from "every nationality that exists" but all being white skinned - how on earth does that even happen?
FWIW I'm not American but I have grown up surrounded by friends and colleagues from all over the world, and they very much do have a variety of skin colours, eye colours/shapes, and other superficial features that mark them as coming from various ethnic/racial backgrounds. There's literally no racial appearance it would be at all surprising to see featured among those in my suburb (e.g. there's a significant population of Somalians, who have very distinctive features, but plenty with an obviously Mediterranean background, likewise Chinese, Vietnamese, subcontinental etc. among a slight majority from the more obviously northern European ancestry that I share). I certainly would have found the experience of going to, e.g. Japan and seeing almost nothing but ethnic Japanese quite unnerving if I hadn't had some exposure to that reality via TV and/or movies beforehand.
When I do watch movies or TV shows made in the US that somehow manage to avoid casting anyone who isn't white in a substantial role it's hard not imagine that somehow the producers/casting agents felt uncomfortable about living in a multi-racial world and were subconsciously trying to project a world that only existed in their imaginations.
Wait, there were no black people in Italy in the 1800s? Italy isn’t exactly far from Africa - Africans were part of the Roman Empire, and Shakespeare was writing about black people in Italy only a couple centuries earlier - Heck, Othello was based on an Italian story written around the same time as Pinocchio, and that one had a black protagonist, too! They may not have been a majority, but they existed.
yep... but there a thing called the sea between them
> Africans were part of the Roman Empire
1400 years before Pinocchio times
> Othello was based on an Italian story
In Venice, set 400 years before Pinocchio.
Where Pinocchio lived and where Collodi set the story there were no black people in ~1850s
Not that some black person couldn't be found in Florence, but Pinocchio is set in a small village where people knew each other and didn't travel far from home.
People mostly lived a self segregated life.
There's a reason why there aren't many popular Italian books of the time including black people, they were not a numerous presence.
I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed from Manzoni) it's probably the most popular Italian novel ever, it was written around the same time of Pinocchio and is set in Milan in 1630s during the plague and the Spanish rule.
There isn't a single black person mentioned in the ~600 pages that make the book.
Generally because the wokeness of a few things like that is used as a stick to beat reviewers with, tarring all their valid complaints as racism.
See star wars where when people like a character with a black actor (Finn) it's ignored but when people dislike a character with a Korean actor (Rose) the studio/media line is that people are racist and hate asians.
If these adaptations were better their PR staff wouldn't need to blow up a few comments about race swapping by being the only thing they acknowledge, all to justify deleting the "racist criticisms" which they say are all that is plaguing their score. This is the tip of the criticism iceberg but it's all they're willing to engage with.
I went over 2 pages of 1star reviews in rottentomatos and not one mentioned the woke stuff. Not sure where this notion that it’s been brigaded by the anti-woke crowd comes from. Most bad reviews mentioned bland characters, mediocre acting, bad dialogue/writing etc.
I'm not sure. The counter argument is, would there be as much review bombing had the cast been all white with main characters as men?
And I think no, there wouldn't have been as much. It still wouldn't be rocking a 9/10, but I don't believe it would have gotten as much review bombed.
I feel the truth is a bit in the middle, people are more critical and harsh on shows that also have more diversity, there's a lot more scrutiny on them. That doesn't mean the show can't be bad, but it does make the criticism a lot more difficult to navigate.
The difference in these scenarios is whether to use diversity as a means to an end, or that diversity naturally fits the expectations held by people of all races, given the nearest period and setting in human history depicted where fantasy is drawing from.
The issue is that it was forced/selected, and the cast members who championed diversity in their interviews made it extremely clear this was the case through their remarks around self-proclaimed activism, which lends itself to the poor reviews.
People are tired of identity politics influencing their entertainment, which they are trying to use to avoid said politics. Naturally, viewers are rubbed the wrong way when a show presents itself as a medium for subtle activism in a time when racial tensions and identity politics are at the forefront because racial differences are being forcefully minimized in favor of a singular prescribed globalist posture, while some groups are being verbally abused and humiliated on public television, late night comedy shows, in our elected offices, and on well-funded talk shows on the regular -- as all of these establishments laugh together while they publicly dehumanize white folks (and brown folks who see through their BS).
This is what we have on our hands, and it's unwelcome.
I wonder if someday people will invent giving something the lowest possible rating and then not telling the truth about why they’re giving it their rating?
On an individual basis, you can’t. That’s the reason for doing it. But en masse, if there’s a whole bunch of people complaining about the race of the cast before it airs, and then immediately after it airs a whole bunch of 1-star reviews appear like clockwork, then it’s not hard to draw the line between the two. It’s not the first time people have review-bombed things they don’t like, and it won’t be the last time. All they can do now is complain “how dare you not let me review bomb this show!” until the next target appears.
> All of them have some form of sticking it to the man and doing what they want as their story line. True heroes are self-sacrificial and reluctant. Contrast Galadriel who acts like a self righteous dickhead
This seems to be a recurring problem in a lot of media these days. Protagonists who are just self-righteous jerks who both lecture others about how they need to act and pretend they're above any rules themselves. If this was the start of a character arc, fine, but a lot of the times these shows act as if these characters are right and that others should appreciate their toxic personalities.
I'm seeing the same pattern I saw with Star Trek: Discovery (race and gender) and Captain Marvel (gender) - a critic would say 'I don't like the plot/logic/world/strength of the hero' and be accused of racism/sexism/not liking strong female characters, where this was untrue and just used to dismiss valid criticism. On the other hand, there was a contingent of people who did dislike it based on somewhat sexist or anti-woke reasoning, but as far as I could tell this was overall a small group. A bit of conflation later and, well, you get the worst of all worlds: critics who feel like they are being censored (or who are), and fans who will not accept the slightest criticism without slinging accusations of racism/sexism/whatever, along with a contingent who is deserving of the latter criticism but is more likely just laughing at the total chaos.
The actual quality of the show, on the other hand, almost ends up being irrelevant. Personally I usually wait about two seasons before judging a TV show.
Apparently it's also used as a marketing strategy. I remember reading news when the 2016 Ghostbusters trailer dropped of Sony deleting negative comments on the video - but only the non-sexist ones that made legitimate criticisms of the humour or other non-controversial stuff. The theory was that they left the sexist, racist comments live so that they could characterize all their criticism as such. Clever plan, if true.
That's the Second Age for you. None of the major characters is supposed to be likable, except maybe Elendil. This is not a story about heroism and self-sacrifice. It's a story where powerful people do stupid things out of pride, great empires fall, and almost everyone dies.
That’s just lazy writing, akin to those cheesy horror movies where everyone has to be a complete idiot to die to the monster.
A much better story is where smart, cunning characters vie against one another. There’s eb and flow, give and take, maybe a few pivotal movements that set the characters down a path they’ll resist but ultimately succumb too. Where when they reach the end despite their best efforts looking back they made the (mostly) same choices but still failed. Early Game of Thrones was a masterpiece in this regard.
Some might take that as a criticism, but when it comes to the creative and performing arts I'm an unabashed elitist snob, and it's a perspective I recommend.
Art is an evolution and transforms over time both in its creation and it’s interpretation. The same stories are told across generations and they both influence, and are influenced by, the culture in which they originate.
It’s in this context that I believe every artist sends their creations out into the world. Having a vision of what it means to them and what it may mean to others. A world of the imagination is conveyed that can never be fully reproduced and for which we are left to fill the gaps. It is from these gaps, from our own imaginations, that the story continues. I appreciate that this is a story that will continue to be told, a universe that will continue to grow, through the imaginations of others.
I’ve enjoyed the storytelling and pacing so far, I believe there is time for the characters to become more developed and “likable”. Galadriel, however, was never a “hero”. She was an imperialist with a desire to rule her own realm. She was a self righteous dickhead who proudly refused forgiveness. So far the new series isn’t too far left field. Still, even if it was, I would watch it and judge it on its own merits. I want to see more of this type of content, just like I want to see more Star Wars content. I want to see the future continue to be inspired by, and inspire new additions to the story.
In the end we will collectively and individually determine what is and isn’t canon.
I really think that the "woke" thing is bullshit, most of the people who don't like XYZ piece of media aren't actually sexist/racist/whatever but are painted in that light to deflect criticism.
Galadriel took part in the kinslaying at Alqualondë, she is totally a dick. The LOTR movies portrayed her in a much more positive light than the books.
True heroes as you describe them exist only in your imagination and in fairy tales.
No she didn't. Tolkien re-wrote her story a few times, and she is a late addition to the myths. In one passage
> Galadriel, the only woman of the Noldor to stand that day tall and valiant among the contending princes, was eager to be gone. No oaths she swore, but the words of Fëanor concerning Middle-earth had kindled in her heart, for she yearned to see the wide unguarded lands and to rule there a realm at her own will.
Which doesn't say she was part in the kinslaying (though it doesn't say she wasn't, but its hard to interpret "Standing tall" as "participated in slaying her mother's kin").
In another version
> Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fëanor in defence of her mother’s kin, she did not turn back. Her pride was unwilling to return, a defeated suppliant for pardon; but now she burned with desire to follow Fëanor with her anger to whatever lands he might come, and to thwart him in all ways that she could.
Which sounds like she participated _against Fëanor_, as in: she defended those being attacked.
In another unfinished version she left Valinor on her own separate from the rest of the Noldor.
In any case, she seems to be motivated by a desire to rule her own realm and a strong dislike of Fëanor.
Also, I am fairly certain that Tolkien was writing a fairy tale when we wrote about Galadriel and co. :)
Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings books shows none of that. You only learn about it if you read the Silmarillion (and the other History of Middle-Earth books).
It's not at all unreasonable for her portrayal in the movies based on the LotR books to be...based on her portrayal in the LotR books, and not attempting to incorporate largely irrelevant details of her backstory from Tolkien's other writings.
It's true there's nothing about what she really got up to, but there are hints that she's hardly benign, e.g. in the speech discussed here https://reprog.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/i-wish-jackson-hadnt... (that was just the first result I found on Google).
Ehh....Gandalf himself says that if he took up the Ring he would in time be corrupted. I'm not going to say it's wrong to read Galadriel's speech there as, in some way, referring to her checkered past, but I've never read it as indicating that.
Basically, anyone with a personality built for command, taking up the Ring, would become a tyrant of some sort. That's part of why it was so important that it came not just to hobbits, but to these hobbits, whose strongest desires were about protecting, and gardening, and living their hobbity lives. (I imagine if Lobelia Sackville-Baggins had gotten her hands on it, she wouldn't have fared so well. Not a Dark Queen by any means, but still something much more dark and dangerous than what became of Bilbo, Frodo and Sam.)
Tolkien's intent for Galadriel as she appears in Lord of the Rings is exactly what appears in Lord of the Rings.
The Silmarillion was his unfinished writings. I don't recall whether he had any intention to ever publish it, but certainly, he did not make strong efforts to do so. His son Christopher had to make a monumental effort to take the various disparate scraps and versions of stories to put them together into what appears to be a coherent whole.
To say that Tolkien "intended" for Galadriel to present, in Lord of the Rings, any of the traits one would associate with a kinslaying ruthless warleader is to completely ignore the context and the manner in which he wrote those two different aspects of her.
> To say that Tolkien "intended" for Galadriel to present, in Lord of the Rings, any of the traits one would associate with a kinslaying ruthless warleader
For the record, I'm not in this camp. I think it's fair to debate whether Galadriel participated and/or was culpable in that (as other threads have).
I'm just arguing (perhaps specifically in Tolkien's case) that LotR sits inside the "legendarium" and can't be properly interpreted in a void. I don't feel that the Silmarillion stories were so unfinished that they don't reveal truths about the characters, that Tolkien must have already held when writing LotR.
But now in retrospect, I'm probably glorifying Tolkien a bit too much. It's normal for authors to change their minds about their characters, and it's normal for people reinterpreting those works to sometimes ignore those changes of mind. (It's also normal for fans to dislike those reinterpretations when it clashes with their understanding of the characters).
This Galadriel is such a step down compared to the LoTR trilogy... Also, in one of the first scenes wind was blowing so strongly they barely moved ahead. Then one of the company members falls down, she turns back and walks there like there was no wind at all.
Don't you think that 2 episodes is a bit too little to judge the entire series like that? The show covers A LOT more time than LOtR did, there's plenty of space for character development. Galadriel was not exactly likeable when she participated in the first kinslaying, or when she ran away from the war of wrath.
> The show covers A LOT more time than LOtR did, there's plenty of space for character development.
The first two episodes of TRoP are 90 minutes each, for a total run time of three hours.
Three hours is about the run time of the first LoTR movie (Fellowship): how much story were they able to tell in those three hours?
Further, the other epic fantasy series, House of Dragons, also has released two episodes: how much story have they been able to tell? What are the reviews of that franchise?
The TRoP series may not end up sucking after the first eight episodes, but having the first two (allegedly: haven't seen it myself) suck seems to be a waste of everyone's time/effort/money.
If I exclude the credits both episodes are almost exactly 60 minutes long. And the credits are ~5 minutes or so, so the displayed runtime is 1 hour and a few minutes. I have no idea where you get the 90 minutes from, that is simply not true.
I have watched both Rings of Power and The House of the Dragon, and both are essentially setting up the story in the first two episodes. There is plot in those episodes of course, but a lot is setting up characters and places and the world in general.
> Not watching something that you critique, and instead basing it on what you saw on Reddit, HN or YouTube, seems de rigueur these days.
Movie and television reviews have been around for decades. There are only so many hours in a day/week, and everyone has to decide how to spend their finite amount of time, so "pre-judging" a show by early episodes is nothing new. But if you want to try to watch everything as a completionist, start to finish, go right ahead.
But as the GP of this sub-thread, I'm was not so much "critiquing" and simply observing that there's a lot ways for people to spend their time, so if a show "wastes" 2 out of 8 episodes with a lot of what folks consider non-plot, then why should I spend my time watching it?
Again, I haven't watched it, and I'll wait until the season is over and see what the consensus is after the full season. But even if it does turn out to be good as whole, why did the show runners seemingly not do much with the plot for a quarter of the season?
The Expanse took about four episodes to really 'set' the universe, but even the first two episodes had quite a bit that happened ("Remember the Cant!").
How does a show producer worth their salt not know that you have to give juicy bits early in a show's run?
I'm not suggesting critique without completion is invalid: I am suggesting critique without viewing is invalid.
Since BBSs and Usenet there has been plenty of commentary of ongoing series.
But the difference now seems to be people having an opinion, sharing that opinion... and then calling out that they haven't even watched the part of the show that is out.
Which boggles my mind.
I probably wouldn't opine publicly on Sidney Poitier or Katharine Hepburn as actors if I'd never seen anything they were in...
Watched only the first episode of Dragons, but I am not convinced. What is the point of this show? We know that the real fight between dead and living is happening 200 years later. We know that all of the dragons will be dead at some point. The characters itself are pretty boring, compared to what Thrones had to offer. It is technically well made, but it is boring.
I recently binge watched a series (Irma Vep) that, very tongue in cheek, addressed the malaise of "platforms" affecting film/cinema. It's a very complex work (in terms of multiple layers of readings) spanning the director's closure over his lost love (see Irma Vep 1996), a hat tip to Truffaut's Day for Night, and a very explicitly expressed concern of characters of how "content platforms" have killed cinema and mutated it to "TV" and "series". Naturally all this was said, to wrap up the irony train, on HBO's platform.
Have to check it out. Not sure about the 2022 show, but the 1996 movie sounds intriguing. Don't remember anything about Day for Night, just that I found it similarly confusing as Fellini's 8 1/2. I do remember that I really liked Jules et Jim by Truffaut, but then again, it has Jeanne Moreau. I can recommend her movie Bay of Angels. It's a simple but great movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056846/
I really liked the 2022 -- there is a lot to chew on if you are a film buff as it is very self-referential in context of French Cinema -- but it's likely not everyone's cup of tea at the surface level. Technically, like (or surpassing) his Carlos miniseries, it is exceptional. Great acting as well. Lars Eidinger's was quite excellent imho, as was Vincent Macaigne's. (Plan to revisit the 1996, for Maggie Cheung. /g)
For me, I like the political intrigue. It's also a reminder that the quest for power is never ending, and even when one wins, it's never lasting.
But, to your point, it's not that dissimilar from other quest for power dramas. I told a friend the new GoT is a bit like Succession with dragons. The quest for power is part of the human condition, which is why I think so many enjoy the stories in whatever form they are told.
I really like Succession, but sorry, Dragons is nothing like that. There is no political intrigue, just people in costumes making fairly obvious moves.
They both seem fairly obvious, yet still enjoyable. The one thing a GoT based show has going for it though, is they have historically not been afraid to kill off major characters. That willingness to kill characters keeps the audience a bit on their toes.
Now that you mention it, I have to admit obviousness is not the distinction between Succession and Dragon. I guess the dragon characters just seem dull to me, and I don't really care about what they are up to.
I disagree. Not every narrative has to be one over some apocalyptic threat. I actually prefer the more grounded (for fantasy I suppose) story over the zombie apocalypse-adjacent White Walker stuff.
If I want to watch a history lesson, I can do that, there are some great documentaries out there. Probably produced for less money. And I would actually learn something.
But of course, there are many interesting narratives that don't involve the apocalypse. The Wire has a great one. Bladerunner is superb. The recent Black Bird was captivating, too.
I'm not saying it's of the same caliber as the trilogy, but it's definitely not garbage which deserves one star. It's already better than the hobbit, however low of a bar that is.
I haven't watched the show yet, but is it not generally understood that plot and character development in television proceeds at a slower pace than in film? It's arguably one of the main reasons to chose one medium over the other. You cite House of Dragons, but I hardly think you can argue that the first two episodes of that show could make a movie.
I am not opposed to that being her prospective character arc but she’s not portrayed that way. There’s nothing to make us like her and from the storytelling and craft perspective there should be. We should at least see her questioning herself. She’s not presented as a cautionary tale. She’s presented as a strong woman who has to deal with domineering men. Even that would be a compelling story line. But again we don’t have any way to sympathize with her. She treats every other character except her brother in the intro with contempt. All she does is try to prove to the haters that they don’t understand her and she’s gonna do what she knows is right regardless of any warnings.
Isn’t this just because we, the viewers, know that she is right given the whole Sauron is the big bad in Lord of the Rings? We are suppose to appreciate her focus and refusal to give up given that we know she will be ultimately vindicated.
If 2 episodes is a bit too little to judge that a series is bad, then it is also a bit too little to judge that a series is good.
If it's too early to review, then scrap all reviews including the good ones, and if reviews are expected, then selective deletion is just creating false advertising.
I would generally translate reviews based only on the first few episodes of a new series as "shows promise" or not. You really can't say more than that at this point.
My beef is that there isn't much in terms of character development. The first episode was an atrocious formulaic mess that tried to stack as many memorable LotR style moments on top of each other as possible. So far they haven't taken the opportunity to use the format to their advantage at all. Visually appealing, but bland is how I'd summarize things so far.
Story tellers need to do their job to give us compelling characters. We don’t owe them watching an unspecified number of episodes - hours of screen time - to give them a chance to give us something to like about the characters. I liked every character in the LotR trilogy within five minutes of their introduction.
> We don’t owe them watching an unspecified number of episodes - hours of screen time - to give them a chance to give us something to like about the characters.
Nobody thinks you owe the authors anything - of course you don’t have to watch it at all.
But if you wanted to try it how few episodes or chapters are you will to give a creative work time to reach a character development?
What's the point of a character development in the first couple of episodes or chapters? That's just churn - they aren't genuinely developing in that time because you won't have given them any time to establish something to develop from. And where do they go from there? Just keep having major developments every episode? That'd be exhausting.
In two hours. Yes they could have fit in some character development along with backstory. Want an example? Just look at pretty much every movie ever with run times less than two hours.
How faithful was that storyline to the Tolkein lore? Did he really write a book where a commander driven literally insane by zeal is vindicated, saves the lives of the men in her company like a mary sue, only to be mutinied and sprung by her king for being right? It makes everyone look repulsive. The only win scenario in that situation is if they'd all just sat on their hands and done nothing.
For a show where you spend 300M just for the rights, you are showing your best effort in those first couple of hours to hook people. At least that's what I've experienced with the many HBO shows I've watched and loved. Maybe the task is more difficult when you're building on an existing story, associated characters and lore that people have expectations of.
Galadriel tried to stop the Kinslaying - it's the reason she had to cross the Arctic rather than ride on ships[1] - and she didn't "run away" from the War of Wrath. As for her general character, though she was proud and wanted to be "free" in her own lands, she was described as wise, understanding, and merciful from her earliest years. [2]
I am never going to watch the series because the movies were bad enough, and I find it cringe-inducing how people talk about "the lore" and act as though adaptation can occur 1:1 from books to video, but I have found people seem to be spreading and repeating a lot of misinformation apparently in an attempt to make the show look better, which will inevitably be repugnant to Tolkien regardless.
Which is the reason I'm not watching it. I don't believe in watching a series that would deeply hurt and grieve the author had he lived to see its production.
[1] > Even after the merciless assault upon the Teleri and the rape of their ships, though she fought fiercely against Fĕanor in defence of her mother's kin, she did not turn back.
[2] > Galadriel was the greatest of the Noldor, except Fĕ'anor maybe, though she was wiser than he, and her wisdom increased with the long years. [...] From her earliest years she had a marvellous gift of insight into the minds of others, but judged them with mercy and understanding, and she withheld her goodwill from none save only Fĕanor.
There’s propaganda on both sides. You’re quite right about Galadriel in the earlier ages, but those complaining about her being a Mary Sue in the show are also missing the mark. She fought, she had ambition. Tolkien Elves are generally ridiculously OP compared to humans.
If you didn’t like the films, you won’t like the show. I’m ok with it so far, it’s exceeded my initially very low expectations, and as fantasy fan fic it’s fine IMHO.
I was a huge fan of the books and frankly I think the book series itself went off the rails at some point. I'm still not even done with book 9 and don't really plan to finish it. I still enjoyed the Amazon series, but I will admit it wasn't perfect. I was surprised to see that so many people seem to vehemently hate it.
I do recall seeing a lot of one star reviews on Amazon having to do with what the actors looked like, and I observe the same thing in the reviews for Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, which I also enjoyed.
Are Amazon productions perfect, on the level of other established studios? No, they're still finding their stride I think, but there is a definite trend of review bombing and I think that's why people are probably assuming it's happening here.
I've watched one episode of TRoP and don't mind it. I attempted long ago to read the silmarillon but got bored so I've no vested interest in the book/base material.
I dont care whether a white character in a book or comic is played by a black/brown person, or the other way round really.
But I am baffled by the reactions they get. You always get the same reaction, people with the same coloured skin as the fictional character complain while the people of the same coloured skin as the actor don't see a problem.
But it does only seem to be racist for white people to complain about white fictional characters not being played by white actors, and racist for white actors to play non-white fictional characters. (I'm not talking about stuff like blackface here)
Admittedly I have limited knowledge about why this is the case, and obviously risk being labelled a racist for stating these observations. But genuinely I'm confused by it all.
The issue with characters you describe is linked to the whole thing though.
The philosophy behind the so called works IS to create a new type of hero, one that isn’t someone who takes responsibility, sacrifices, works hard and fails a lot.
That type of hero is purposefully removed from fiction because it contradicts what wokeness is about.
funny, people hated romanticism when it came 150 years ago (Victor Hugo was thrown under the bus), and now people complain because a show doesn't follow the romantic canvas.
Watch the recent Sandman. Perhaps it's because the source material was already very woke before it was everywhere and the adaptation is very faithful, but the series is quite good.
The little red hen is clearly a tool used to control other people.
The story could easily have been written by venture capitalists, trying to convince potential employers to sign on to risky entrepreneurial ventures in exchange for a share in the future rewards.
And obviously, animals don’t form cross species coalitions to manufacture baked goods. So it’s Better for us to disregard the story entirely.
Woke seems to purposefully imply a bungled attempt at progressive characters so it's kind of tautological. But if we just mean progressive, then Zootopia.
Interesting. I did not perceive Zootopia as progressive ( tbh, I don't remember much of it except for the DMV skit ). Could you elaborate on that interpretation?
The entire plot of the movie is about predator animals going savage and the rabbit cop and fox conman working together to understand why.
Act 1 is rabbit cop overcoming assumptions that she cannot be a cop because she is a rabbit.
Act 2 is they catch a savage predator and then, when prompted on the news, rabbit cop suggests it may be due to predators having savage behaviors "in their genetics"
Act 3 is realizing that this was an unwarranted bias, working together, and finding the real culprit.
It's a great progressive film because one of the big racial conflict moments is the rabbit cop, a kind and well intentioned protagonist, grappling with her own subconscious biases.
I think it was a warranted bias. Obviously in the show's past there was a time when predators predated, or they wouldn't have brought it up.
That makes it more noble. The Rabbit is not just getting over a silly uninformed prejudice, but is willing to intellectually set aside the ongoing murder of her ancestors to fully analyze a case. "Sure, they are naturally violent and we all know that, but is that enough to account for ..." She's a real investigator who refuses to be distracted.
The entire premise of the movie is the conflict born if prejudice between prey animals, who are the majority, and predator animals, who are the minority. Throughout the movie, prey animals are depicted as being suspicious of predators, or even refuse them business. The main character is a idealistic cop, from a rural setting who moves to the city and encounters anti-predator bias. There is a panic after a series of predator animals appear to engage in random acts of violence. And the big reveal is that the panic is all manufactured by prey animals in government to maintain power.
I feel like a lot of Disney movies aren’t exactly subtle in their messaging these days, but even by that measure this one was about as hamfisted of an effort as they’ve ever made.
Memories are short. Both were criticised for being woke, especially Black Panther, which I distinctively remember being both lauded and lambasted for the same reason.
I sense though that most people who parrot the "go woke go broke" narrative, focus only on those that have done badly in the box office.
The parent is using the term pejoratively. In this context, I would describe it as calling someone a poseur of liberal/progressive issues, i.e., someone who cares more about the appearance of supporting progressive issues than actually supporting those underlying issues themselves. It means calling someone dishonest about their outward intent, basically. Personally, I'd prefer that people would just say what they mean rather than relying on slang entangled in the modern culture wars.
Yeah, the writing is the issue. I have no problem with ethnicity or even gender swaps. Honestly, a gender swap of a male character would have been better than changing Galadriel
The problem is that they’re more focused on tying the series to Peter Jackson’s work and ensuring that children can watch it. The original stories were better.
I’m not saying that you don’t have a valid critique, but you’ve played into their trap just by publicly posting this online. Now instead of having a valid discussion as to how they’ve butchered the actual story, now they can just lean on how most critics of the show are “racist”, which will garner ratings
