CAST FOR THE HOBBIT ANNOUNCED

[Kegg]

^
Try Morgan Freeman as Gandalf.

Yes, in the books. We are not talking about the books. We are talking about motion pictures that are adapted from the books. Why is it so hard for people to understand that an adaptation is not supposed to be an exact, slavish copy?

Wait wait wait.

Point to me the poster who sad that the Hobbit film had to be an exact slavish copy, or who was otherwise working under the assumption it was an exact, slavish copy.

If anything the context we're discussing here assumes the same level of fidelity to the Tolkein books as the last three Jackson films... which certainly played fast and loose with some elements of the story but were actually consistent with the books on the matter we're presently discussing.

 

[stj]

Re Rowling: The villains are explicitly "racist" about Muggles and Mud Bloods. This may be fantasy but it's anti-racist. As an English fantasy, it necessarily ignores the rest of the world, especially the United States. It feeds English delusions of significance. Cho et al. and a fellow sufferer from "alliance" wth the US government (aka France) is there precisely to de-whiten the book, just as England itself is not all white either.

As for Dumbledore's sex life, Harry met Dumbledore's widower at the funeral. But Harry's kind of clueless about the interior life of adults and didn't know who that man was and why other people at the funeral acted that way around him. Possibly the most fantastic thing of all about the Potter books is the magical suppression of sex beyond "snogging," which sounds like something no one should even want to do. No way an old man's sex life gets on page in the Harry Potter series, not even hetero.

Re Tolkien: The numerous references to higher blood, nobler lineage, et cetera make it quite certain that Tolkien was a racist. This is particularly obvious in the appendices, where the Edain are the nobler race of men and the Quenya the nobler race of elves and orcs are a degenerated race of elves, and the corsairs are degenerated Numenoreans. Much of the imaginary history is couched in racial terms. It isn't the pseudoscientific racism of the Nazis (and their forerunners,) and their cousins the Social Darwinists and euguenicists. Nonetheless, there's nothing else you can call this nonsense but racism.

Re Jackson: The natives on Skull Island.

 

[Kegg]

As an English fantasy, it necessarily ignores the rest of the world, especially the United States. It feeds English delusions of significance.

One can say pretty much the same thing for a lot of American genre fiction.

This is particularly obvious in the appendices, where the Edain are the nobler race of men and the Quenya the nobler race of elves and orcs are a degenerated race of elves, and the corsairs are degenerated Numenoreans. Much of the imaginary history is couched in racial terms.

Mhm.

My point wasn't 'Tolkein isn't a racist' (not really interested in having that argument at the moment) and more 'this specific thing cannot be extrapolated as inherently racist', namely the idea that in a fantasy world where there is relatively little mobility, there is also relatively little if any racial diversity.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Re: Casting for Middle-Earth: non-whites can totally audition!

We need more white people playing black, asian, and latino characters. Especially when the color of their skin is a major aspect of those characters. Brad Pitt needs to play Martin Luthor King Jr., I say.

Or does equal opportunity only work one way?

Okay, here's the simple explanation.

Martin Luther King was a real person and was black. He should therefore be played by a black person.

Whereas, the characters in LOTR and The Hobbit are make believe. They can thus be any colour.

Clear enough?

 

[JarodRussell]

Middle-earth, or at least the parts of it occupied by the vast majority of Tolkien's stories, is meant to be a prehistoric Western Europe, before the Great Flood came along and changed the landscape. That's why it's so whitewashed. It's not meant to be another world; it's meant to be our world in ancient times, before the Elves and other magical creatures left the world to Men.

Yes, in the books. We are not talking about the books. We are talking about motion pictures that are adapted from the books. Why is it so hard for people to understand that an adaptation is not supposed to be an exact, slavish copy?

Why is it so hard for YOU to understand that most people actually want an as exact as possible version?

Middle Earth is supposed to be European-ish. That's the author's intention. End of story. Moreover, Alan Lee and John Howe, the two original artists that influenced the entire production design on the movies, made drawings of white Hobbits and white Elves, heck, everyone in Middle Earth white. Unless there has been colonization of a southern continent, blacks should be very rare in Middle Earth.

How about Harry Potter being black in the movies just for the heck of it? Why?

We need more white people playing black, asian, and latino characters. Especially when the color of their skin is a major aspect of those characters. Brad Pitt needs to play Martin Luthor King Jr., I say.

Or does equal opportunity only work one way?

Okay, here's the simple explanation.

Martin Luther King was a real person and was black. He should therefore be played by a black person.

Whereas, the characters in LOTR and The Hobbit are make believe. They can thus be any colour.

Clear enough?

Why? It's just a movie about his life. The actor can be any color. He doesn't even need to speak like MLK. He doesn't even need to do all the things the original person did, he can just sit on a chair and ramble in a long monologue, if that's the creative intention. They do that all the time in theaters, why not in movies?

And as said above, black, red, blue, purple, brown Hobbits make no sense in the universe. Why are they coming from? The environment the Hobbits live in simply doesn't fit with that.
My point is: I don't care which color they have. But they are white now, and it makes no sense to scatter black or asians amongst the Hobbit actors. Had Frodo and the gang been black in LotR, then it wouldn't make sense to see a single white Hobbit. Where is that one supposed to come from?

 

[Kegg]

Frankly, I think the Earthsea books are a better comparison then Martin Luther King, as it's a fantasy series without any white leads which actually had white people cast in the leading role.

Ursula Le Guin has the conveinence of not being dead and actually weighed in on that here:
http://www.slate.com/id/2111107/

 

[Goliath]

Try Morgan Freeman as Gandalf.

You know--after McKellen in the LotR, on top of decades of fantasy art depicting Gandalf as white, having Freeman in the role would obviously take some getting used to.

But I can see it. And I think he'd do a good job.

As an English fantasy, it necessarily ignores the rest of the world, especially the United States. It feeds English delusions of significance.

That's a hateful thing to say.

 

[Captaindemotion]

[
Why? It's just a movie about his life. The actor can be any color. He doesn't even need to speak like MLK. He doesn't even need to do all the things the original person did, he can just sit on a chair and ramble in a long monologue, if that's the creative intention. They do that all the time in theaters, why not in movies?

And as said above, black, red, blue, purple, brown Hobbits make no sense in the universe. Why are they coming from? The environment the Hobbits live in simply doesn't fit with that.
My point is: I don't care which color they have. But they are white now, and it makes no sense to scatter black or asians amongst the Hobbit actors. Had Frodo and the gang been black in LotR, then it wouldn't make sense to see a single white Hobbit. Where is that one supposed to come from?

So you're saying we can have a Martin Luther King of any colour but Hobbits must be white? Riiiiiiiiiiiight ...

 

[Silent_Bob]

Try Morgan Freeman as Gandalf.

You know--after McKellen in the LotR, on top of decades of fantasy art depicting Gandalf as white, having Freeman in the role would obviously take some getting used to.

But I can see it. And I think he'd do a good job.

Morgan Freeman could play anyone and do a good job, so he's not really the best example. Hell, he could play me, a white 20-something who's as pale as it gets and still be brilliant.

I couldn't care less what colour anyone is in The Hobbit, as long as they are the best man or woman for the role. But then i'm not casting it nor am i privy to behind the scenes information on how Jackson and co. are deciding it. But it should be done on merit, not to avoid accusations of racism.

And really Jackson can never win in this regard. Had he cast all the dwarfs with black actors, or every Elf with someone asian he would have been accused of racism anyway as clearly he'd be presenting non white ethnicities as sub-human blah blah blah

 

[JarodRussell]

So you're saying we can have a Martin Luther King of any colour but Hobbits must be white? Riiiiiiiiiiiight ...

No, it depends on the context of the movie.

Kojak has already been played by Ving Rhames. No problem with that.

But this is still Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien's universe. And people of Middle Earth are white there.

I don't care if JJ Abrams does the next Lord of the Rings movies with Aborigenees and Lens Flares. That's his creative decision then for an entirely new adaptation. Jackson based his entire approach on Howe and Lee, trying to stay as close as possible to the novel and the original illustrations. And there Middle Earth is European. It's that simple.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ The people we've seen to date are white. We haven't seen all of them. We didn't see black Vulcans before Tuvok or bumpy-headed Klingons before TMP. We didn't see any black people in Star Wars until Lando Calrissian.

 

[JarodRussell]

^ The people we've seen to date are white. We haven't seen all of them. We didn't see black Vulcans before Tuvok or bumpy-headed Klingons before TMP. We didn't see any black people in Star Wars until Lando Calrissian.

I already said why I think black or asian or blue people in this Middle Earth make no sense. Read it again.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^Because there are none in the books on which he based the look of the movies? Completely irrelevant.

 

[Skywalker]

Completely relevant. The peoples of African or Asian origin in Middle-earth didn't play much of a role in the War of the Ring. The only ones who did were the Easterlings we saw in The Two Towers and the Haradrim in The Return of the King, and both of those groups were from lands closer to the part of Middle-earth in which the story took place. People from the more distant eastern and southern lands had no significant role in the story.

 

[Captaindemotion]

This is a film adaptation. It is entitled to take liberties with the source novel. Plenty were taken with the Rings movies, generally for the better, IMHO. Moreover, there was absolutely nothing in the movie version of LOTR - and people are entitled to expect continuity and consistency between those movies and these - to say what colour or ethnicity the peoples of the various parts of Middle Earth are meant to have been.

 

[RoJoHen]

The LOTR films don't even imply that there are other "lands" where different races may live. As far as the films are concerned, the people we see are the only people in Middle Earth, so if they want to throw some black people or some Asian people in there, they are free to do so, and it wouldn't upset any kind of continuity.

 

[Skywalker]

It doesn't matter that it's a film adaptation. The background story remains the same. If they really didn't care that much about staying true to the material, they wouldn't have bothered making the Easterlings and Haradrim look so noticeably different from the European peoples of Gondor, Rohan, etc., but they did.

The LOTR films don't even imply that there are other "lands" where different races may live. As far as the films are concerned, the people we see are the only people in Middle Earth, so if they want to throw some black people or some Asian people in there, they are free to do so, and it wouldn't upset any kind of continuity.

Wrong. In The Two Towers, Faramir's lieutenant tells him that armies of Easterlings and Southrons under Sauron's command are marching on Gondor. Before that, in the Extended Edition, after Faramir's Rangers ambush the Haradrim (Southrons), Faramir looks upon the corpse of one of them and wonders what people in his lands must have thought about what was going on, and whether or not the man had marched to war of his own volition or because he had been forced to do so.

 

[RoJoHen]

Did they?

Everybody looked white to me.

 

[Captaindemotion]

^ But this is the movie version of The Hobbit, not LOTR. I am all for remaining faithful to the source material but I am genuinely totally baffled as to why anyone feels that having some non-white faces in the cast is in some way inconsistent with the other movies, never mind the books.

The only differences I noticed between the people in the LOTR movies were that the Elves were all blond and Aryan, the Hobbits short and curly-haired, the dwarves short with blunt features. Didn't see much to distinguish the humans.

 

[Skywalker]

It would be inconsistent because The Hobbit takes place in the same region of Middle-earth as did The Lord of the Rings. The men of Lake-town could be presented as swarthier than most of the humans we saw in LOTR, but they'd still have to be of obviously European origin to remain consistent with the world as interpreted by Peter Jackson's movies.

On the other hand, I suppose since Jackson and his designers made most of the Elves in LOTR blond even though most of Tolkien's Elves were dark-haired, they could introduce human ethnic groups who probably shouldn't be there. Golden hair was only present in a small minority of the original Elves, and most of those traveled west to Valinor, long before The Lord of the Rings or even The Silmarillion, and never returned to Middle-earth.