Importance of white representation in fiction

[warpus]

It has only been repeated about 1458 times that western Middle-Earth is supposed to take inspiration from medieval Western Europe, but seemingly it wasn't enough and some people still don't get it.

It would impact the overall feeling of the settings and it wouldn't be the way the work was originally designed.

Would it though? Star Trek's Klingons were originally inspired by the Mongolians I think, but since that inspiration has no influence on the story, Trek has been changing the Klingons here and there and trying different things with them. From what I remember Roddenberry based a bunch of the Trek races on various Earth cultures, but... that's just inspiration. There is no in-story link between these alien species and the Earth cultures they were initially based on, so the Trek universe has been changing there here and there, since the initial inspiration doesn't really matter.

Why would the initial inspiration matter in the case of Middle Earth? I'm honestly curious because I don't see why it matters.

If you adapt Dune and have Fremen who are asian-looking and who use chinese-themed words, you can manage to keep the story completely the same, and yet it wouldn't feel the same at all, even if the actors are good.

If you get rid of the Chinese-themed swords, IMO it doesn't matter who you cast as the Fremen. And I mean, it does matter, because the Dune universe is our universe, except in the far future. The Fremen are supposed to be descendent from "Zensunni travellers", and the implication is that these wanderers have Buddhist and Islamic roots of some sort. I could be reading into the story too much, but I always imagined them to be of a varied ethnic mixture of people. I feel that DV did it right by casting the Fremen with actors of various ethnicities. No East Asians there from what I saw, but I don't necessarily see anything wrong about having east Asian looking Fremen. In fact, I would expect some of them to look like that.

Surely you are kidding about the Hercules example though. Hercules is supposed to be a beefcake, not a weakling. It has a huge impact on the story!

In the end Midlde Earth is a made up reality that isn't tied to ours at all, so unless the race is described to matter in some way that matters to the plot, I don't see why it would. That's just my own personal opinion though.

 

[Gorbles]

I don't mind if people have honestly different breaking points for immersion when it's just honest personal preference.
Ok well, not really, I might mind actually, but if I do at least it's on "good/bad tastes" grounds. Lots of people don't care about plot holes, bad dialogue, people acting OOC or lack of realism (can of worms and pet peeve/special trigger of mine here) after all.

This thread though ? It gives strong vibes of having inconsistent breaking points that follow political stance lines, and it becomes pretty irritating - especially with the contrived rationalizations (trying to use the "we don't know Hobbit biology", seriously ?) that just screams of grasping at straws.

People use something like "we don't know Hobbit biology" because people are attempting to use human racial demographics to explain why there shouldn't be diverse hobbits. One comes from the other. I'd consider the entire tangent contrived, especially with the in-thread example of the darker-skinned hobbits existing, canonically, in Tolkien's works. There should be absolutely no reason - to me personally - why there couldn't be a diverse grouping of hobbits. Because such diversity exists amongst the hobbit tribes.

There's a lot of back and forth in this thread, and sure, there's frustration too. But your frustrations with a lack of realism are yours. They're individual. Your adherence to realism in any adaptation will be different to mine. They just will. Does that make you wrong? Does that make me wrong?

I'm consistent in how much leeway I give adaptations, personally. While, for fun (for a definition of fun), I can be more picky with adaptations of source material I'm very familiar with . . . I'm generally not. I'm not a purist in that regard, or perhaps anything close to a purist. It doesn't mean I don't care about bad dialogue, or the like, it just means that when it comes to adapting something from source material, I give a fair amount of leeway to the resulting production. I don't expect you to suddenly change your view on adaptations and become like me. I'm just explaining how my mind works for these kinds of works.

As for the people claiming that Gandalf being (in the events of the book) black wouldn't change anything, they are just jumping right into this part of my message :

You've this strange argument that somehow "the plot" and its mechanisms are important, but the whole explicit descriptions in the books and the entire setting aren't.

It's implicit everywhere that Gandalf is white, if only because nobody notice his skin colour while people NOT white are precisely noticed because they are unusual. I certainly don't believe anyone missed or didn't get that point.

And a setting is an integral part of a work (and a very important part of many works). Fiddling with it is a very shaky grounds for an adaptation (unless it's precisely one of the main deliberate twists), but a bunch of people seem to pretend that it's all irrelevant. I call BS on this.

I don't expect an adaptation to be perfect. But I do expect an adaptation to at least tries its best. That it attempts to tell the story as best as possible (and yes it includes bringing the setting, I can't believe I have to spell out this point).
Deliberately altering the setting when it's not the point, is just purposely adding flaws, and I don't see how it's defensible. Doing it for political reasons is even more insulting, because it's devaluing the work while being preachy. That people actually defend this is pretty maddening.

You want adaptations to try their best according to the source material. But what I don't understand is why this seems to be the correct way to do things. Surely it's just a way to do things?

The reason why I say "correct" here is because you don't see how altering the setting, or a character, or whatever, is defensible. Surely it's defensible simply by the fact that not everyone has the same expectations of an adaptation that you do?

I can understand why you think adaptations you notice the political slant are maddening for people to defend. This is another tangent, and perhaps a whole thread by itself, but for me all versions of something are political. Tolkien's work is political. Any creator, however incompetent or uninspired, will ultimately subject any adaptation they work on to the biases they themselves hold. They don't always have to be political, but they often can be. For an example of technological bias (instead of political), take JJ Abrams' apparent fixation with lens flare. Or Zach Snyder's fascination with the 4:3 aspect ratio (which came out of how him discovering that he liked how films were cut for viewing in IMAX).

So sure. I understand your frustration with political inserts that you find upsetting and / or unnecessary. But likewise, so do others. To take this back to a diverse Fellowship, or a black Gandalf . . . there's nothing saying that they can't be. You say it's implicit that Gandalf is white, but it's not explicit. And while you could argue that with adhering to the basis that Middle-Earth is based on Northern and / or Western Europe, black folk or other racial minorities might be vanishingly rare . . . you can't say that they don't exist. That's some of what other posters are getting at. It's what I'm getting at. I can understand if a black Gandalf breaks your suspension of belief, or it irritates your preference for adaptations being as accurate as possible. But there's nothing to suggest that it's impossible by the lore, and that's why I continue to not understand your referencing the setting. The setting should in theory allow for black characters. Implicitly. Maybe not explicitly. But that's the same as your basis for Gandalf being white. Implicit assumptions based on an understanding of the setting.

Again, does that make you wrong? Does that make me wrong? All I see here are different preferences for what we want out of adaptations. I'd certainly understand more if skin tone played a part in Tolkien's setting (of Middle Earth). A lot of the time it doesn't (if it does at all). It's not that I consider alterations to the setting irrelevant (personally; other posters may have different positions). It's that skin tone is not something Tolkien includes in any object lesson that's springing to mind throughout his Lord of the Rings novels, and as such changing it has no impact on the setting. What it does impact is how believable you find the adaptation. That's fair. But that's also a personal metric. No?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

A nice ideal. But is it reflected in what we see occurring in data?

Do we care? Movies are good or not good. Make enough bad choices, and lose money.

 

[Senethro]

Do we care? Movies are good or not good. Make enough bad choices, and lose money.

Oh. I guess I shouldn't be disappointed that you're sufficiently weak upon ideals that you'd let the market decide. What holier arbiter of virtue after all.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh. I guess I shouldn't be disappointed that you're sufficiently weak upon ideals that you'd let the market decide. What holier arbiter of virtue after all.

Weak enough on ideals to care about what outcomes happen due to policy, and not weak enough on intelligence to blindly follow virtue signaling or make claims like this.

I'm not going to advocate for more privileged classes, sorry-not-sorry. I don't respect the concept.

Kind of funny that you have to try to call out "virtue" here though. Weak/implied ad hominem is another argumentative tactic I do not respect. But it is a CFC standard, so I will play that game too sometimes.

 

[Senethro]

Weak enough on ideals to care about what outcomes happen due to policy, and not weak enough on intelligence to blindly follow virtue signaling.

I'm not going to advocate for more privileged classes, sorry-not-sorry. I don't respect the concept.

So why did you just say you don't care about outcomes due to policy, rather about outcomes due to market?

 

[Senethro]

So sure. I understand your frustration with political inserts that you find upsetting and / or unnecessary. But likewise, so do others. To take this back to a diverse Fellowship, or a black Gandalf . . . there's nothing saying that they can't be. You say it's implicit that Gandalf is white, but it's not explicit. And while you could argue that with adhering to the basis that Middle-Earth is based on Northern and / or Western Europe, black folk or other racial minorities might be vanishingly rare . . . you can't say that they don't exist. That's some of what other posters are getting at. It's what I'm getting at. I can understand if a black Gandalf breaks your suspension of belief, or it irritates your preference for adaptations being as accurate as possible. But there's nothing to suggest that it's impossible by the lore, and that's why I continue to not understand your referencing the setting. The setting should in theory allow for black characters. Implicitly. Maybe not explicitly. But that's the same as your basis for Gandalf being white. Implicit assumptions based on an understanding of the setting.

Middle Earth was literally flat at one point and reshaped to be a sphere at a changing of an age, but its black Gandalf that boggles some minds.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So why did you just say you don't care about outcomes due to policy, rather about outcomes due to market?

Because the market leads to better outcomes in this (and many/most) cases than intervention.

 

[Senethro]

Because the market leads to better outcomes in this (and many/most) cases than intervention.

This is why I used the words "holy" and "virtue". This is practically a religious belief.

 

[Gorbles]

But it is a CFC standard, so I will play that game too sometimes.

You've done it for as long as I can remember. It's only when people finally started biting back you put on this hard-done by victim act, in that you only apparently do it in response to deserved affronts.

Because the market leads to better outcomes in this (and many/most) cases than intervention.

Better outcomes for you personally maybe, but that's typical of status quo conservatism. And yeah, like Senethro points out, is also the holy mandate of free market believers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This is why I used the words "holy" and "virtue". This is practically a religious belief.

It's a belief based on observations. Though we do have to define "better", since some people do want to watch the world burn for example.

Making arbitrary privileged classes isn't the play though, and that's what forcing "representation" in movies (where it would not otherwise happen) amounts to doing.

 

[Gorbles]

It's a belief based on observations. Though we do have to define "better", since some people do want to watch the world burn for example.

Making arbitrary privileged classes isn't the play though, and that's what forcing "representation" in movies (where it would not otherwise happen) amounts to doing.

Insisting that no setting written by a majority demographic for said majority demographic, can reliably feature any given minority because it's "forcing representation" is just another way to enforce the status quo. Representation matters. Why else do we make things in our own image? Insisting that others can't simply because they're iterating on a setting invented by someone who represents you comes across in a bad way.

 

[Senethro]

It's a belief based on observations. Though we do have to define "better", since some people do want to watch the world burn for example.

Making arbitrary privileged classes isn't the play though, and that's what forcing "representation" in movies (where it would not otherwise happen) amounts to doing.

Where was any extension of the franchise or gain of political/economic rights (like desegregation or what have you) driven by the market?

Market forces invented racism.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Market forces invented racism.

And they are destroying it now. All you have to do is watch the ads on TV or the casting of new shows. The market follows the money.

 

[bernie14]

Oh. I guess I shouldn't be disappointed that you're sufficiently weak upon ideals that you'd let the market decide. What holier arbiter of virtue after all.

I think he was talking about movies....and you took the opportunity to insult him. You are obviously projecting the "holier-than-thou", what a great example of virtue signaling

 

[bernie14]

Where was any extension of the franchise or gain of political/economic rights (like desegregation or what have you) driven by the market?

Market forces invented racism.

 

[Akka]

But your frustrations with a lack of realism are yours. They're individual. Your adherence to realism in any adaptation will be different to mine. They just will. Does that make you wrong? Does that make me wrong?

Cue the first sentence of the quote you're answering :
I don't mind if people have honestly different breaking points for immersion when it's just honest personal preference.

Again, that's not the core of my irritation here. It's when these changes are politically motivated that I find them insufferable. Do I really haven't been clear about this point ?

You want adaptations to try their best according to the source material. But what I don't understand is why this seems to be the correct way to do things. Surely it's just a way to do things?

I've already answered this :

Why bother making an adaptation if it's not to have it faithful ? Just make a different story then.
I understand "redoing it with a twist", as said before, but beyond that ? The main (artistic) point of an adaptation is to change medium, not change story. That's why we see movies about books, not books rewritten.

Isn't adaptation basically translation (but with medium rather than languages) ? You take something with meaning and tone, you try to keep both as you use a different language and culture. You argue that as long as the words are translated it's okay, I argue that if you ignore the tone and the accent, then it definitely doesn't carry everything that was said in the first place.

I can understand why you think adaptations you notice the political slant are maddening for people to defend. This is another tangent, and perhaps a whole thread by itself, but for me all versions of something are political.

Everything is political if you push the definition enough, but then it becomes meaningless.
There is a pretty clear difference in intent and in means between unconscious bias stemming from the cultural and political landscape the creator has developed in, and deliberate alterations that are externally inflicted on a work for reasons which have nothing to do with artistic creativity. That's the whole difference between making an adaptation "with a twist" (where the intent is creative) and altering for political purpose (where the intent is to use the work as a platform). The first is in service of the art (even if the result is bad), the second is exploiting the art.

It's like putting adds in, basically, and telling me that it doesn't affect the artistic integrity of the work.

To take this back to a diverse Fellowship, or a black Gandalf . . . there's nothing saying that they can't be. You say it's implicit that Gandalf is white, but it's not explicit. And while you could argue that with adhering to the basis that Middle-Earth is based on Northern and / or Western Europe, black folk or other racial minorities might be vanishingly rare . . . you can't say that they don't exist. That's some of what other posters are getting at. It's what I'm getting at. I can understand if a black Gandalf breaks your suspension of belief, or it irritates your preference for adaptations being as accurate as possible. But there's nothing to suggest that it's impossible by the lore, and that's why I continue to not understand your referencing the setting.

And we're here right in what I described earlier with "contrived rationalization". It's nearly always possible to rationalize something if you want it, it just require to be selective enough.
Someone can also argue that Hobbits and elves don't have genitals, get pregnant by kissing and give birth by their feets, after all Tolkien never explicitely described any of these aspects in the books.
And yes it's a further stretch than Gandalf not being white, I know. My point is that if you're trying enough, you can find nearly nothing is downright "impossible", and you can contrive anything and pretend it doesn't affect the work.
But then you've already surrendered "good storytelling" for "trying to shoehorn something that doesn't flow well in the story", which is already diminishing the overall quality.

Why would the initial inspiration matter in the case of Middle Earth? I'm honestly curious because I don't see why it matters.

If you get rid of the Chinese-themed swords, IMO it doesn't matter who you cast as the Fremen.

Surely you are kidding about the Hercules example though. Hercules is supposed to be a beefcake, not a weakling. It has a huge impact on the story!

Well, just make him a wimp that is very strong. I thought that appearance wasn't important.

 

[Senethro]

I think he was talking about movies....and you took the opportunity to insult him. You are obviously projecting the "holier-than-thou", what a great example of virtue signaling

I think you should read the subsequent posts.

I don't think there is much controversial that modern racism in america arose from use of slaves and taking land/resources, both activities driven by relatively novel/evolved forms of capital venture at the time. First came the drive, then came the ideology to justify it.

 

[Senethro]

This supposedly neutral political/non-political/true-to-the-author political stance you think will be present in "good" adaptations is a reactionary creation. Its just as invented and shoehorned.

Given that JRR Tolkein was really quite astoundingly non-racist for an Englishman of his time, I think you are doing him an incredible disservice that you think your racially pure standards honour his work somehow.

 

[Akka]

This supposedly neutral political/non-political/true-to-the-author political stance you think will be present in "good" adaptations is a reactionary creation. Its just as invented and shoehorned.

Given that JRR Tolkein was really quite astoundingly non-racist for an Englishman of his time, I think you are doing him an incredible disservice that you think your racially pure standards honour his work somehow.

=>

You're just unable to accept any other answer than some variation of "white supremacy". Probably because you're unable to see past "political" whatever the subject.

Each time I let myself baited into answering you, you just show you're completely blind to anything that doesn't fit your pre-boxed opinion. I really should know better and stop wasting my time.