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The thing that bugs me most about an elf that played by an African descended actor is that it blatantly forgets that racial characteristics exist for reasons.
There's an evolutionary reason for Scandinavians and Europeans having pale skin.
There's an evolutionary reason for Africans to have dark skin.
A people from a given location tend to look the same.
The reason that we have people who look different in modern society is because we have insanely efficient and fast transportation and communication.
Prior to this, people from elsewhere didn't venture far from where they were born.
The new LOTR show is going to have to explain some stuff they can't explain.
Not that there CAN'T be an explanation for a dark skinned dwarf, it's that they cannot fathom an explanation is necessary.
Having mixed race... uh... races means you need even more explanations.
Having done it in a couple settings, I know it's possible. It's not even particularly difficult to come up with plausible explanations. My players seemed happy with them, and we had an anthropology student rules-lawyer playing for a while.
No where in Tolkein's works wer Djokkalfar or Svartalfar, though both existed in Scandinavian lore.
ReplyDeleteIn Tolkein's universe, there were the people who came from the south during the final war, implied as black, and the Corsairs with their lanteen sailed ships, implied as middle eastern (Persian, Egyptian and North African-non blacks, you know, proto-Islamics) because the Scandinavian world DID have contact with lanteen-sailed corsaires.
It's right there in Red Orm's tales, "The Longships" by Frans G. Bengtsson, who decided to write a good readable book about Scandinavians, in the line of "The Oddessy" or "The Three Musketeers."
Gee, why is it so bad to have white people play white characters?
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