Article originally appeared on Jezebel.com
AH! It's the 'R' word! The word that is quickly becoming about as meaningless as 'love' in our ever-evolving shit storm of a society. So here's the controversy; the casting team for the upcoming film "The Hobbit" rejected a woman as a hobbit extra. The reason? Her skin was not the color of all the other hobbits they had cast, i.e she was darker than her short brethren. Discriminatory? In the pure sense of the word, yes. Racist? Come on. The idea that somehow, the individuals who contribute to casting decisions are actively pursuing a racist, presumably white-supremacist, agenda, is not only absurd and insulting, but actually degrades true instances of racism. Someone being denied a job that does not inherently depend on their outward appearance because of race? That's serious, and seriously wrong. But the decision to create a homogeneous image of a particular, fantastical species? A species that only exists in one specific area and where going more than a few miles afield is nearly unheard of? Find an actual issue to bitch about, please.
Another argument that this mess-of-an-article attempts to make is that all evil characters in LOTR are dark and all good characters are white.
Not like is a seriously evil wizard named Saroman the White or anything...
And as for the charge that this is dark/white thing in relation to groups, I'll just leave this incredibly awesome comment here:
From VictorScope: "Wrong. Nowhere does Tolkien claim that the Easterlings (or any other human society) are innately evil. In fact, he strongly suggests the exact opposite when he describes Sam finding the body of a dead Easterling after meeting Faramir.
It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.
Clearly, the narrow-minded perspective of a racist xenophobe. (But whatever.)"
I'm gonna go read me some Tolkien now...
Stay Beautiful,
IK
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