# Diversity Casting & the LOTR movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 12, 2017, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482 "2017-05-12T21:04:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/21 "2017-05-13T07:20:55Z")
Who cares. It’s fantasy. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/22 "2017-05-13T07:49:00Z")
It’s because it’s fantasy that people care. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/23 "2017-05-13T12:51:42Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **ITR champion** : > > Personally I find the Disney/Marvel Comics approach of having one and only one token black guy in a minor role in every movie to be a lot more problematic than having an all-white case. Well, _Captain America: Civil War_ had Black Panther, War Machine, and Falcon. I suppose you could argue that War Machine and Falcon were just in there because they were the Token Black Guys in two previous movies, but if that’s the case, then they wouldn’t have felt the need to add a new Token Black Guy, or to give him such a prominent role. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/24 "2017-05-13T13:11:57Z")
Written by a white upper class british person. Yes they’re white. You’d have to show me where he intended anything else. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/25 "2017-05-13T13:34:34Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > If a movie is set among the Norse Gods, an all-white cast is reasonable. If it’s set in modern-day California, a racially diverse cast is reasonable. I agree with this, with the proviso that we need a helluva lot more fantasies that don’t draw on Europe for their background. It’s starting to happen, and it’s a really exciting time in fantasy lit for this (and other) reasons; but it hasn’t really made it to the big screen yet, where the fantasies we see still tend to be based on Europe. As for the non-swarthiness of orcs, I’ll defer to people with better Tolkien knowledge than mine. It surprises me to hear he never describes orcs as dark-skinned; I suppose I got that impression from the various visual depictions of orcs I’ve seen. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/26 "2017-05-13T13:45:58Z")
[relevant descriptions](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien%27s_Works) > [@](#): > > Of the orcs, the Uruk-Hai are described as "black and a smaller orc, a tracker, is described as “black-skinned”. All orcs are often described as “slant-eyed” and the Uruk-Hai at least refer to the Rohirrim as ‘white skins.’ In one of his letters, Tolkien described Orcs as “…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.” ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/27 "2017-05-13T13:49:30Z")
I wouldn’t say that diversity just for diversity is a worthwhile goal. Every bit of casting should have some reason behind it. The poster child for this - Hamilton notwithstanding - should still be Branagh’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in which he casts Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, the man in charge of everything. Washington fills the role masterfully. He is the man in charge, knows it and all defer to him. It was an inspired choice. As for Sam being ‘brownish’? That’s less about ethnicity than class. Sam is the only working stiff in the bunch. That means he’s outside in the sun getting a tan. The rest of the hobbits, Bilbo, Frodo, Merry and Pippin are the gentry of the shire. None of them work for a living, instead their time in the sun is limited to bracing walks and reading in the shade of trees. Sam is our window into how the common hobbit thinks and acts. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/28 "2017-05-13T14:19:42Z")
Yes, the orcs refer to the Rohirrim as white-skinned, but even the other humans do the same. The Rohirrim are unusually pale as humans go. Of note, though, the Rohirrim are not stated to be superior to the other nations of Man: They have a history of being allied with the Good Guys, but that’s not anything inherent. The Numenoreans are superior to other humans, but I don’t think that anything at all is said about their typical pigmentation, beyond that (like everyone else) they’re at least somewhat darker than the Rohirrim. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2017, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/29 "2017-05-13T17:06:37Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > [relevant descriptions](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien%27s_Works) The only time that Uruks are described as “black” is the term “Black Uruks of Mordor”. This could describe their skin, but given that he’s talking about Mordor, I’ve always interpreted that to mean that they are Sauron’s, probably clothed in black armor, with black shields, etc. As the link notes (it’s primarily taking from the Wikipedia description of Tolkien orcs), the only solid description of orcs as a whole we get is that they are “sallow-skinned”. That generally means sickly pale, or yellowish. This is no shock, given that they live underground. Obviously, there are different “breeds” of orc, as Sam and Frodo find out in Mordor; cf. the tracking orc. It’s also important to remember that “orc” as used by Tolkien is basically his version of a “goblin”; indeed, in _The Hobbit_ and even in _LotR_ (primarily when the hobbits are doing the talking), they are called goblins and orcs interchangeably. Recall that the Battle of the Five Armies at Erebor was fought between the Elves, Dwarves and Men on one side, and the Goblins and Wargs on the other. So Tolkien is drawing upon a common northern-European idea, the goblin, a grotesque impish creature that be-devils people. He specifically mentions in at least one writing that he’s indebted to the concept of goblin depicted by George MacDonald (“Princess and the Goblin”), though as critics have noted, by the time he wrote _LotR_, he had abandoned the idea of orcs/goblins as being impish, comic creatures. Generally speaking, these creatures were not depicted as being “black” in the sense of black-skinned. See also references in Germanic literature to _kobolds_. The tendency to portray orcs as black-skinned in the various movie adaptations I think stems from the fact that we see large black things as menacing (including these days cars with mostly black exteriors). What relationship this bears to our views of “blacks” I leave to those who wish to engage in the realm of speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/30 "2017-05-14T02:12:28Z")
And then there’s Gollum- in _The Hobbit_ he’s black with shining eyes, but in _Lord of the Rings_ he’s described as black in some places and white in others. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/31 "2017-05-14T03:21:18Z")
Since Tolkien intended Middle-earth to be a long-ago precursor to what we now know of as Europe, it’s hardly surprising that all the stars of the Jackson movies were white. Several of the Lake-Town denizens in his _Hobbit_ movies were non-white, however, perhaps implying that it was more cosmopolitan or drew from a larger geographic area than, say, Hobbiton, Minas Tirith or Bree. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/32 "2017-05-14T05:11:39Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Rather than re-film them, though, I’d like to let them stand, and instead get some films of some non-European fantasy. Get some NK Jemisin on the screen, or some Minister Faust, or some Kai Ashante Wilson, or some Octavia Butler, or some Ken Liu. There is plenty of mindblowing fantasy being written that doesn’t depend on a European fantasy world. Or, you know, when they filmed _A Wizard of Earthsea_ they could have cast brown people because, outside of the Kargish people who are explicitly white, everyone in the series is brown or browner. But no… ! The leads wound up white folk. Now THAT was a problem. It’s been awhile since I read Tolkien, but to my recollection while various ethnic traits wouldn’t be out of the question the setting is so very European that “mostly white” for the cast makes at least some sense based on the books themselves. It’s not as explicitly “white folks” as the tales of Robin Hood or the Knights of the Round Table (which, both taking place in England, pretty much means “pasty white folks”) but I think the recreational outrage is a bit misplaced. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2017, 7:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/33 "2017-05-14T07:12:01Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Or, you know, when they filmed _A Wizard of Earthsea_ they could have cast brown people because, outside of the Kargish people who are explicitly white, everyone in the series is brown or browner. But no… ! The leads wound up white folk. Now THAT was a problem. > > It’s been awhile since I read Tolkien, but to my recollection while various ethnic traits wouldn’t be out of the question the setting is so very European that “mostly white” for the cast makes at least some sense based on the books themselves. It’s not as explicitly “white folks” as the tales of Robin Hood or the Knights of the Round Table (which, both taking place in England, pretty much means “pasty white folks”) but I think the recreational outrage is a bit misplaced. Pasty white folk has the same cache as nappy headed black folk. Why use it? ---
**Author:** ![bmoak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@bmoak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bmoak)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/34 "2017-05-15T03:12:49Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Since Tolkien intended Middle-earth to be a long-ago precursor to what we now know of as Europe, it’s hardly surprising that all the stars of the Jackson movies were white. Several of the Lake-Town denizens in his _Hobbit_ movies were non-white, however, perhaps implying that it was more cosmopolitan or drew from a larger geographic area than, say, Hobbiton, Minas Tirith or Bree. That makes sense since Esgaroth (i.e. Lake-Town pre-Smaug), was a major trade center and crossroads, with traders coming from places like Dorwinion (on the edge of the M-E map) and beyond. I’ve not read a much of Tolkien’s notes and apocrypha, but other semi-official source materials (such as [Cubicle 7’s The One Ring RPG](http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/) make it clear that there is a whole lot of Middle-Earth that goes beyond the map seen in LOTR. When Tolkien created Middle-Earth, his goal wasn’t to write fantasy novels, but to ostensibly create a new mythology for England, heavily drawing upon the Norse, Germanic, and Celtic. As Tolkien was also a pedantic linguist, he often used language in the way it was used in those times. When he wrote that someone was “dark” or “swarthy”, he might be well using those words in the way they were used in Norse sagas (i.e Svart- as in Svartalfheim, land of the dark elves). ---
**Author:** ![bmoak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@bmoak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bmoak)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/35 "2017-05-15T03:28:28Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > The tendency to portray orcs as black-skinned in the various movie adaptations I think stems from the fact that we see large black things as menacing (including these days cars with mostly black exteriors). What relationship this bears to our views of “blacks” I leave to those who wish to engage in the realm of speculation. Even in the movies, there a few (sickly, greyish, sallow-looking) pale orcs/goblins: Azog, Gothmog, the Goblin-King, and some of the Moria orcs (“Why can’t we have some meatss?..Ooh, they look fresh.”). In one of the extended edition DVD commentaries, the design team talks about Orc/Uruk-hai design. Since geysers of gushing, realistically-red orc blood could have jeopardized a PG-13 rating, it was decided to give the orcs black blood. Black blood influenced the design, as something with black blood would not have any reddish or pinkish flesh. If you look at closeups of featured orcs in LOTR, even the tongues and the gums will be dark-colored. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/36 "2017-05-15T04:18:32Z")
But they could just as easily made the blood, and thus the skin, green, as was done with Spock. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/37 "2017-05-15T04:56:40Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > It’s not even “pseudo-European.” It’s meant to be actual Europe, some six thousand years before recorded history. One of the conceits behind the book is that it wasn’t authored by Tolkien, but _translated_ by him, from a very old copy of The Red Book of Westmarch, the account written by Bilbo and finished by Frodo, that he acquired at some point in the 20th century. Interesting - so Tolkien explicitly stated at some point that his stories were supposed to situated on _actual planet Earth_, not some made up alternative Earth-like reality or some such, but actual Earth thousands of years ago? I did not realize that. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/38 "2017-05-15T06:52:31Z")
Race has history. As a rule, there shouldn’t be different groups of people with very different appearances living in the same place, because in a normal society, everyone has sex with everyone else and within a few generations everyone looks more or less the same. There are only two reasons for there to be distinct ethnic groups in the same location, and those are immigration or racism. Either you’re from somewhere else, originally, or your people are kept - or keep themselves - apart. So if you have a broad variety of ethnic groups in the same story, you have to ask a few questions, such as: where did Person A, or their recent ancestors, come from? Why are people who look like Person B treated differently and what impact does it have on the story? This is basic world-building, and can lead to some very interesting stories. But just having people look different at random? That’s not diversity; it’s storytelling laziness. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/39 "2017-05-15T09:02:16Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > Since Tolkien intended Middle-earth to be a long-ago precursor to what we now know of as Europe, it’s hardly surprising that all the stars of the Jackson movies were white. Several of the Lake-Town denizens in his _Hobbit_ movies were non-white, however, perhaps implying that it was more cosmopolitan or drew from a larger geographic area than, say, Hobbiton, Minas Tirith or Bree. [Screenshot](http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/peter-jacksons-the-hobbit/images/d/dc/Laketown_crowd_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140323170113). Every once in awhile, someone tries to portray Tolkien as racist. 1940s attitudes were very different than ours, but it is clear that he was somewhat progressive on this issue for the time. He really hated Nazis and their racial policies, and also disliked their usage of “Aryan” for wonderfully pedantic reasons. Also he grew up in South Africa, and didn’t appear to like apartheid. I feel like he would’ve used similar thoughts to point out that Laketown et al. are “Europe,” but a particularly cosmopolitan town would be unlikely to be monoracial. If there is any part where Tolkien seems out of place today, it’s in the very minimal female roles in his work. > [@Broomstick](#): > > Or, you know, when they filmed _A Wizard of Earthsea_ they could have cast brown people because, outside of the Kargish people who are explicitly white, everyone in the series is brown or browner. But no… ! The leads wound up white folk. Now THAT was a problem. My favorite is that Gaiman’s _Anansi Boys_ was in talks to be a movie at one point. Most of the characters are explicitly black, but the suits were uncomfortable with the marketability and wanted to whitewash at least some characters. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2017, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482/40 "2017-05-15T10:49:42Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Race has history. As a rule, there shouldn’t be different groups of people with very different appearances living in the same place, because in a normal society, everyone has sex with everyone else and within a few generations everyone looks more or less the same. There are only two reasons for there to be distinct ethnic groups in the same location, and those are immigration or racism. Either you’re from somewhere else, originally, or your people are kept - or keep themselves - apart. So if you have a broad variety of ethnic groups in the same story, you have to ask a few questions, such as: where did Person A, or their recent ancestors, come from? Why are people who look like Person B treated differently and what impact does it have on the story? This is basic world-building, and can lead to some very interesting stories. > > But just having people look different at random? That’s not diversity; it’s storytelling laziness. Thats not how genes and phenotypes work and you should know. Places where there has been heavy “mixing” like the sub-continent, S America or the Levant and surrounding ME illustrate this well. After a few generations, when ethnic identities start changing, you see people of the same ostensible ethnic group began to display a wide variety of looks. Look at Britain, which had several centuries of immigration from all four corners of the Old World during Roman times, then saw little of it for about a millennium. Red heads, blondes as well extremely swarthy dark headed folks, sometimes all in the same families. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/diversity-casting-the-lotr-movies/786482.md?page=3)