Yes, they’re mad about this too
Brandon Morse has read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” the “Lord of the Rings” series and watched extended editions of Peter Jackson’s ring trilogy so often that “I can almost quote them all line for line.”
But Morse is dreading a new addition to the Middle-earth canon that he says “perverts and corrupts” Tolkien’s mythical medieval universe because TV showrunners have committed this storytelling crime:
They are trying to “woke-ify” Amazon’s new series, “The Lord of the Rings: “The Rings of Power.”
Morse is deputy managing editor of RedState, a conservative news site. He says “The Rings of Power” producers have cast non-White actors in a story based on European culture and who look wildly different from how Tolkien originally described them. He says it’s an attempt to embed “social justice politics” into Tolkien’s world.
“If you focus on introducing modern political sentiments, such as the leftist obsession with identity issues that only go skin deep, then you’re no longer focusing on building a good story,” says Morse, who wrote an impassioned essay about his misgivings. “You’re effectively making propaganda, or art meant to fit a message, not a message to fit the art.”
The makers of “The Rings of Power,” which premiered Friday, promise viewers plenty of epic battles. Yet some of the biggest battles surrounding the Amazon Studios series have erupted offscreen. Middle-earth fans and scholars like Morse have clashed in online forums and dueling op-eds over this question: Does casting non-White actors enhance the new series, or is it a betrayal of Tolkien’s original vision?
It’s fantasy fiction. It’s not history. None of it is real. And everything is open to artistic interpretation anyway. Shakespeare has been done in modern dress played by people of color and if it’s good enough for Shakespeare it’s good enough for Tolkien.
Interpreting any work of art in light of modern sensibilities is exactly why these works stand the test of time: they are universal. The work speaks for itself no matter who is cast in the movie. And no, casting a person of color to play a white Hobbit does not mean you’re no longer focusing on building a good story. That’s just nonsense.
These people similarly had a fit over the possibility of Idris Elba playing James Bond because “James Bond isn’t Black.” But James Bond isn’t real and neither are Hobbits. And even if they were, who cares? Of course we know what this is really all about don’t we? Their little white slips are showing.