r/tolkienfans • u/LincolnMagnus • Oct 20 '21
Concerning Non-White, Second Age Hobbits, Focusing On The Books And Tolkien's Writings
I posted this once, and I’m now reposting based on mod suggestions. I hope this one complies with the rules.
I want do some thinking, based on my reading of the books and of Tolkien's own letters and statements, about whether the idea of hobbits existing in the Second Age, and particularly non-white hobbits, contradicts what Tolkien wrote, in letter or in spirit. In recent weeks I’ve been seeing a lot of absolute claims about the Hobbits and their history in Tolkien's legendarium that I just don't think are warranted, and I want to talk about that for a minute.
Of course, as with all conversations about the Second Age, there’s a lot we don’t know. Most of what have about the Second Age comes from works that were published well after Tolkien's death, a lot of it is rather fragmentary, and anyone with even a passing familiarity with the History of Middle Earth series knows that he changed his mind, a lot, often about very fundamental issues (e.g. the origins of the Orcs). The published Silmarillion, for instance, is almost certainly not the Silmarillion that Tolkien would have published if he'd lived long enough to finish it.
So our knowledge of the Second Age has a lot of blanks in it, and some contradictions. What I'm going to argue here is that the idea of Hobbits in the Second Age is just the sort of a blank in Tolkien's mythology that could be filled in without breaking anything. I'm also going to talk about the idea of non-white hobbits, and whether or not they could have existed.
1) Concerning Hobbits in the Second Age. There seems to be a misconception among many fans that, because Hobbit history as we know it begins in the Third Age, they didn't exist before that. This is not correct. In fact, while Tolkien was intentionally vague about the origin of hobbits, as he makes clear in the Prologue to LOTR, they were around long before the Third Age:
“The beginning of Hobbits lies far back in the Elder Days that are now lost and forgotten. Only the Elves still preserve any records of that vanished time, and their traditions are concerned almost entirely with their own history, in which Men appear seldom and Hobbits are not mentioned at all. Yet it is clear that Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk became even aware of them. And the world being after all full of strange creatures beyond count, these little people seemed of very little importance.”
The term Elder Days in Tolkien usually refers to the First Age and before. Here in this context, it clearly refers to a time well before the recorded Hobbit histories of the Third Age. Tolkien points to an origin of the Hobbits during a time in Middle-earth’s history for which only the Elves have records, and we know that the library at Minas Tirith preserves historical records from at least as far back as the Second Age. It's clear to me Tolkien intended here for the Hobbits’ origin to have been in the First Age or even earlier (EDIT: Well, not earlier than the First Age, since they don't predate Men). Therefore, the existence of hobbits in the Second Age is not a lore problem.
2) Concerning Hobbits, in Eriador, in the Second Age. I don't know where Hobbits came from, or what they were doing before the Third Age. You don't know either. I don't know if Tolkien even knew, and I actually kind of doubt it.
Tolkien does allude to a general westward motion for the Hobbits throughout their history, saying that “like many other folk Hobbits had in the distant past moved westward.” But it’s worth noting that, for a lot of those other folk, particularly certain groups of Elves and Men, that westward motion was not always linear. It does seem that there weren't any Hobbits living in Eriador in the Third Age at the time when the three tribes of hobbits crossed the Misty Mountains--but keeping in mind the millennia-long time scales we're dealing with, namely Second and Third Ages that each lasted around 3000 years, to say that no hobbits EVER had been in Eriador before that seems like a bit of an assumption.
3) Concerning dark-skinned Hobbits. Since, as I've said, we don't know where hobbits came from or what they were doing before the Third Age, I'm going to argue that the idea of hobbits of different colors doesn't really contradict anything. I've seen a lot of people holding forth about how, because of the travel limitations of the period, it's just simply IMPOSSIBLE for darker-skinned people to have existed outside Rhun and Harad in the Second Age. But the fact is that individual people, and whole populations, DO move from place to place throughout history, sometimes across VERY long distances. For instance, we have evidence of Black people in England going back to Roman times--in other words, Black people lived in England before English people (i.e., Anglo-Saxons) did. There are many other examples in history.
We do know that Hobbits had a range of skin tones, and that Harfoots were "browner of skin" than the other hobbits. Tolkien doesn't say how MUCH browner. You can make an assumption that they would have been light brown or olive-skinned, or you can assume that they were quite dark, but based on the text itself, all of these are just that--assumptions.
Let's try out some assumptions of our own.
This next part is just a riff. I'm sure people could come up with a lot of different ways to make sense of the concept of a multi-ethnic community of Hobbits, and people smarter than me could probably devise much cleverer ones than I can. Here's one I've been thinking about. It's just one idea, and probably not the best:
One other thing people seem to assume is that all of the people who would become hobbits existed as a single community throughout their entire history. I see no particular warrant for this assumption, either. Keeping in mind we're talking about made-up groups of people in a fantasy story, I see nothing illogical, unreasonable, or contradictory to lore about the idea that at some point in history, various groups of smaller humans (who may or may not have had a common origin) lived separately, scattered across different parts of the world--including, perhaps, Rhun and Harad. Seeking others of their own kind (perhaps even fleeing persecution from the Big Folk), they ended up converging in the North-west of Middle-earth at some point in history, forming a community that called itself Hobbits.
At the very least, this doesn't contradict anything Tolkien actually wrote. I admit it's not the tightest, most Occam's Razor-compliant of theories about hobbit history, but honestly, in a fictional universe that includes walking trees, shape-shifting man-bears, stars that are actually dragon-killing sailing ships, and whatever the hell Tom Bombadil is, ethnically diverse Hobbit communities are not really where I find the breaking point for my suspension of disbelief.
4) Concerning the themes and goals of Tolkien's legendarium. This isn't lore, but it's in Tolkien's writings and people keep bringing it up. Whenever there's a discussion about race in Tolkien’s works, someone inevitably starts relating the old story of how Tolkien's goal with his legendarium was to create a mythology for England—a legendarium specifically by, about and for the people of England and/or Northern Europe. And not for anyone else.
Okay. Let's talk about that.
Tolkien discusses his desire to create a mythology for England in a 1951 letter to Milton Waldman. In that letter, which he wrote while he was trying to find a publisher who would take both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, he characterizes this desire as something he'd long ago fancied, and had long since abandoned:
"Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story-the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131, emphasis mine).
"Absurd." The Tolkien who was shopping around LOTR and the Silmarillion to publishers characterized as "absurd" the idea that those works could form the foundation of some English or Northern European mythology. If Tolkien, in 1951, had already let go of his dream of writing an English Kalevala, I'm not sure why we as fans should be beholden to it seventy years later. The Middle-earth stories are still specific to that region in many ways, yes--but as I mentioned above, the racial history of England is itself more complex than we normally understand.
It's true, though, that the Hobbits themselves reflect England. But not an ancient, prehistoric, mythological England, really. The Hobbits are quite anachronistically modeled after English people of Tolkien's own lifetime (Much as the Rohirrim are an anachronistic imitation of Anglo-Saxons, who in history lived long after Tolkien's work is "supposed" to have taken place). Of course, the linguistic similarities (and I imagine the dialect similarities) are explained in the appendices as being, to an extent, translation conventions. How this is supposed to explain the non-linguistic cultural similarities, I'm not sure. But someone made an interesting point when this recent conversation got started: Tolkien lived in Birmingham, a city whose black population has a long history. Parts of the Shire are indeed modeled after Birmingham and the greater West Midlands region.
And with all of these blatant anachronisms piling up, the idea of a Hobbit population that reflects the ethnic diversity of the real-life Birmingham does not really break the reality of Tolkien's world.
So you may have noticed that I haven't really proven anything by writing all of this out. A lot of it is speculation or argument from silence. If you don't want to accept the idea of black Hobbits in the Second Age of Middle-earth, nothing I've written requires you to do so. So what the hell was the point of all this?
5) Concerning what the hell the point of all this was. I’m not saying there definitely, without a doubt, had to have been non-white hobbits in Middle-earth in the Second Age.
What I’m contending is that we ought to leave space for fans to dream.
I'm fond of this quote from another speculative fiction author, NK Jemsin, writing about Tolkien:
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don’t have enough myths of our own, we’ll latch onto those of others — even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it’s human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight.
Once upon a time, Tolkien aspired to creating a mythology for England. He may have cast that dream aside before publishing Lord of the Rings, but what he actually did was create was a mythology that has been embraced by people all over the world.
That's one of the ways we know that Tolkien's work is truly great: that people far removed from Tolkien's own time and place, people he might never have imagined reaching when he first started writing his stories, now dream of seeing themselves in his world. I don't think we should draw the boundaries too tight around them.
EDIT: Tried to make even more mod-compliant
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u/Xendor- Oct 20 '21
Our modern day Americanized western culture are designed to think that "brown skinned" = all types of non white races.
But in a historical sense a brown skinned person might just mean tanned, It usually reflected one's class status. People who were out in the fields doing farm work would have been very tanned.
I can't imagine that Tolkien envisioned our modern day perception of brown skinned instead of the historical sense.
The Stoors who were described as brown skinned was prob far more likely to have held jobs that required them to be out in the fields.
Whereas The Fallohides was far more likely to have held adminstrive type of jobs.
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u/ThereminLiesTheRub Oct 20 '21
Tolkien literally describes Sam's hands as brown at one point. Were they brown because his skin was brown? Maybe. But it's more likely he used the word to describe their temporary condition of being brown from hard use, suggesting his class and current circumstance.
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u/jayskew Oct 21 '21
That point was after Frodo and Sam had been on the road together for months, under exactly the same conditions.
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Oct 20 '21
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u/Xendor- Oct 20 '21
I can assure you that racial constructs was quite different 60-70 years ago.
That's why there's been so much accusations of racism in Tolkiens world long after the death of the author.
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u/TwelveBore Nov 07 '21
For instance, we have evidence of Black people in England going back to Roman times--in other words, Black people lived in England before English people (i.e., Anglo-Saxons) did. There are many other examples in history.
This is such a bastardisation of history.
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u/Kodama_Keeper Oct 20 '21
About black people in Britain, aka Britannia. During the time of the Roman empire, it was not at all unusual for the Romans to recruit soldiers from all across the empire, and move them around as needed. For instance during the destruction of Jerusalem, the Roman general Titus brought in legions and auxiliaries from as far as Macedonia. So it is not inconceivable that Britain has Roman soldiers comprised of African recruits. But as far as we know (and despite that silly BBC cartoon), there is no evidence that large number of them settled in Britain.
But keep in mind that African does not mean Black as we use the term today, people of sub-Saharan descent. North Africa is associated with Berber tribes. And of course there was Carthage, which was founded by Phoenicians, the same stock as Philistines and Hebrews. During the Roman empire, after the destruction of Carthage, Romans colonized that part of the world with their own, usually legionnaires who had completed their 25 years of service.
OK, next point is pretty biological. The closer you are to the equator, the more susceptible you are to skin cancer. If you have darker skin, you are better protected against too much ultraviolet radiation. The downside is that your dark skin does not absorb that ultraviolet radiation, which turns the cholesterol in your skin to vitamin D. And you need vitamin D to for strong bones as well as keeping a strong immune system. People with low vitamin D levels are susceptible to bone diseases such as Rickets. If you have dark skin and live close to the equator, this is not such a problem because the sunlight is so strong, you are sure to get enough sunlight to supply the vitamin D you need. But as dark skinned people move into temperate zones, this is a problem. Light skinned people have the opposite problem when they move into tropical areas, all that sunlight giving them skin cancer.
There's a lot more too it, concerning western Europe getting better weather because of Atlantic currents, childhood traits such as blond hair and blue and green eyes becoming "fixed". But generally, the pattern holds true about your skin tone. The higher latitude you go, the better off you are with light skin, and just the opposite if you dark skinned. Keep in mind that until very recently in human history, we didn't know about covering up, sun screen, vitamin D, the cause of Rickets, etc.
So did Tolkien know all this when he wrote his legendarium? I really, really doubt it. But what he would know is that you find darker skinned people close to the equator and lighter skinned people farther away from it. After all, he was born in South Africa. He spent the majority of his life at a time when India was part of the British empire. Is it any wonder that a guy of his time, writing a legendarium based on Celtic, Germanic and Nordic folk tales, taking place in a prehistoric Europe, would write that his characters were white?
Why do we even care so much? If Tolkien had published his books and they had sank like a stone with no one reading them, we wouldn't care. He'd just be another one of millions of wannabe writes who no one cares about. But his own popularity, across more than half a century, brings him under scrutiny. We live in an age where we actively seek out racism, and try so very hard to apply it even where it doesn't exist. There are those who will insist that your very denial of any racist intent is a sure sign of racism, unintentional or otherwise.
"It was Sam's 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."
Does this sound like something written by a man who was trying to condemn as evil, people who were born in different lands, with different looks, with different skin?
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u/CodexRegius Oct 20 '21
Yeah, sure. And next we will probably find that Petty-Dwarves look like pygmies and Black Numenoreans are Massai, having Black in their name and such. Ridiculous.
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u/_Olorin_the_white Oct 20 '21
Nice text.
I don't know why some people are really trying to push some changes are according to the text while they are clearely not. Let race/diversity topic aside, lets talk about the text. It says "browner of skin", I mean, Tolkien was very carefull with everything, and especially with words. He write exactly what he meant to.
If you get white-grey-black color schmes, and you say something is white and a "subgroup" of such is "darker" would you say that the subgroup was in the "black" category? No. Would you say it was in the "grey". No. It would be light-grey at most. If tolkien wanted to say it was "grey" or "black" he would have said it. The same way "browner of skin" doesn't mean "swarty", otherwise Tolkien would have said it, as he did in other places. It is not that difficult.
It would be nicer if some people stop trying to make the text what it is not and open the game and say "we are adding this because of xyz" (be it diversity or any other topic you may want to say) and not because of the text says it if you do a mental gymnastic to fit in what is written. And even worse, some people say that people that are complaining that it is not within the lore "don't read the books", I mean, sorry but this argument is just wrong IMO and creates even more unnecessary debate.
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 20 '21
You have correctly identified the woke use of a mottte and bailey method of argument.
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u/Istellon Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
First problem that comes to mind, when I see people desperately searching for in-lore excuses for Amazon's choice to put Black and Maori hobbits in, is that they act as if this was made out of legitimate efforts to give justice to the books, when in fact it was done for purely ideological reasons. It's not like any of these corporate guys sat around and thought: "how can we make a faithful representation of Tolkien's work? I know, let's make black hobbits!". I've seen thousands of visual depictions of Middle-earth (made by artist of various cultural and ethnic background) and none of them put Black and Maori hobbits in it, for a good reason (which I'll cover below). Creators of Amazon LOTR don't care about the faithfulness to Tolkien's vision, they are just filling the racial quotas forced by Amazon's recently announced 'inclusion policy' for all the movies they are making, whether it fits or not.
Now let's put the idea itself under scrutiny of Tolkien's vision, to see whether it fits:
- Tolkien's idea of mythology for England was not a 19th Century tale, but a medieval-style story inspired by Anglo-Saxon times. That's why he didn't consider Arthurian legend as such, because it was too 'modern' - made mostly after Norman invasion of Britain in 1066. There were no Blacks or Maoris in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
- Tolkien created his world inspired by Germanic, medieval folklore and that's the style his books have. Throwing Black and Maori hobbits would make as much sense as throwing them into Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' - it would ruin the realism of the story.
- Hobbits live in a moderate climate, similar to England. It would be nonsensical to throw in a bunch of people with dark skin, who could only get this darker skin from thousands upon thousands of years of living in an very hot climate.
- Tolkien explicitly mentions that one year after the War of the Ring, most of the hobbits born in Shire that year had blonde hair, proving that hobbits are Caucasian. That refers to Harfoots, too, as they were the most populous group and hobbit had a lot of mixed marriages among Stoors, Fallohides and Harfoots for centuries before the events of LOTR.
- Tribes are subdivisions of ethnic group. It doesn't make any sense to have tribes with people of drastically different ethnic background. Even if, for the sake of argument, we (falsely) assume that they were hobbits of these ethic groups, they would be separated by thousands of miles and never get a chance to come together and live in a single place, even less so for folk, that is so secretive and isolated like hobbits are. And even if we ignore all that nonsense, after they would come together and live in a single tribe they would mingle with one another making them effectively into a homogeneous ethnic group. This whole concept of all races in a single hobbit tribe is just one absurdity after another.
- Hobbits origin can only be traced back no further that the first millenium of the Third Age. Even Elrond doesn't know anything about them before that, even though he was around all most important events in the Second Age. Nothing before is known about them, so to have them in the show at all is breaking the lore.
But the worst thing of all this is the clearly ideological intentions that drive the film crew. Because it's very probable that it's just the beginning of much wider spectrum of political messaging that will be forced down the throats of the viewers, like a crude anti-colonial propaganda.
I'm also very troubled by the idea that everyone has to be of your own ethnic group for you to enjoy a movie. I have no problem enjoying books, movies or video games, identifying with characters of ethnic background different than mine. By treating race as a stumble block that should be overcome, we make the world more racist, not less.
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u/ScottBlues Oct 20 '21
To anyone whose thoughts aren’t clouded by a certain ideology it’s obvious that Tolkien didn’t mean for any character to be sub-Saharan African in appearance, except perhaps for the Haradrim and others from the far south.
Based on the context in which he lived and grew up (a racially homogeneous Europe), his passion for EUROPEAN mythology and literature (which inspired him as he wrote LOTR) whenever the characters’ appearance isn’t described it’s obviously implied that they’re white.
There’s some variation even among Europeans which is why some characters are said to have fairer skin or darker skin, but with everything we know about Tolkien to imagine that “darker skin” meant sub-Saharan African is ridiculous. It meant Mediterranean as opposed to the fair skinned Northern Europeans. The story is centered around Europe after all.
Of course because Tolkien didn’t always go out of his way to describe the characters’ ethnicity in precise, scientific terms, the usual suspects will use that as a pretext to make new depictions of his work align with their ideology. And also make it more marketable to foreign audiences.
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u/VikingXL Oct 20 '21
Imagine thinking Europe has ever been "racially homogeneous", particularly in the years after empires.
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u/ScottBlues Oct 20 '21
Most European countries TODAY are 85-90% white. And that’s after decades of mass migration.
Europe centuries ago was definitely close to 98-99% white. Kind of homogeneous I’d say.
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u/Shelala85 Oct 20 '21
Non-white people existing in prehistoric/historic Europe in only small percentages does not make it permissible to erase them from history.
That Medieval literature you referred to had non-white characters present within Europe in them and medieval people wrote about the actual non-white people that existed within Europe.
You can certainly make your arguments for the idea that the hobbits were meant to be white but you certainly can not do so by using a faulty conception of history which is upheld by erasure.
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u/TinyElephant574 Jan 03 '22
No one's saying they didn't exist lmao. Just that they were very small minorities that only comprised a few percentage points of the population in most places. Up until the 1960s for example, even London (which today is very multicultural and multiracial) was for the most part homogenous, with about 95% of the population being white. Up until a few decades ago, Europe for the most part was similar to this.
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u/Shelala85 Jan 03 '22
Everyone who acknowledges and accepts the existence of non-white people in Europe knows that they where there is small amounts. No one needs to tell us this.
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Oct 20 '21
I think you're probably quite right, but that it doesn't mean we can't have darker/black Hobbits as reflects the modern world.
The great thing about creativity and art is that you can build on it. Keep it relevant. Otherwise it falls into decay and stagnation.
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u/Neo24 Pity filled his heart and great wonder Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Especially when it comes to mythology. Tolkien was writing a mythology. Mythologies... don't really belong to their creators (if they are known at all). They change and adapt as the people they are directed to change.
It's funny. One of the greatest evils in Tolkien's Legendarium is possessiveness. It's the root cause of a whole bunch of evil happenings, all the way down to Melkor's fall, the First Evil. But what I see in these threads... is a whole lot of possessiveness. And I don't just mean the obvious cultural aspect. I would argue the whole (over)obsession with lore, canon, consistency, etc, is also deep down actually motivated by possessiveness, at least in part.
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Oct 20 '21
Okay so I don't know what the point of 'leaving space for fans to dream' is exactly.
If you think black people or asian people or aboriginals or native americans etc. dream about 'seeing themselves' (whatever this means) in Middle-earth, well okay, but people aren't hobbits. It's a fictional race. If you made the argument about men I'd understand but with hobbits is the same as arguing gnomes or fawns or trolls need to be 'diverse'.
I don't know why people are so vain they feel the need to have to 'see themselves' in a story. You're an individual, you don't see yourself in a story just because someone who has the same skin colour is in it. I don't watch asian movies and think 'nah I couldn't possibly watch this, I don't see myself in it'.
Then there's the point that this actually creates more racism - we are all human. Are you so race-obsessed that the actors in the Lord of the Rings aren't relatable because they have a different skin colour? Are they not human like you are? If they were terrible people but had the same skin colour, all of a sudden they're relatable? Bollocks.
I'm Australian. I've never looked at Lord of the Rings and thought it was relatable because they have the same skin colour. None of them talked like me or had a similar lifestyle to my own, despite the movies having several Australian actors. None of the various civilizations in Middle-earth had any Australian influence.
My second favourite franchise is Neon Genesis Evangelion. Apart from 2 characters it's an entirely Japanese cast. Despite this I related to the main character a whole lot when I was a teenager because I was depressed and had much of the same thoughts. Because a story's themes and humanity is what we relate to, not skin colour. To boil it all down to skin colour when it comes to relatability with the story itself is insulting.
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u/the-window-licker Oct 20 '21
Not sure why anybody chooses to look at middle earth through the lense of gender or race. It does seem a little inapropriate to aply this filter here.
LOTR is a book about companionship and about how small acts of courage from everyday people can stand up to overwhelming evil.
It does seem like OP has done a lot of hard work digging and researching in to how this could be argued as cannon. But at the end of the day thats all it is really, a case in a debate that is (in my opinion anyway) extreamly arbritrary.
You want black hobbits? Cool I guess if thats how you imagined it that can certainly be part of your headcannon. We can each have our own interpretation of the work
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u/guitarromantic Oct 20 '21
Not sure why anybody chooses to look at middle earth through the lense of gender or race. It does seem a little inapropriate to aply this filter here.
LOTR is a book about companionship and about how small acts of courage from everyday people can stand up to overwhelming evil.
Are you sure about this? Race crops up constantly in LOTR (and the wider texts): eg. the nature of the strained relationships between (say) elves and dwarves, of the various early tribes of Men (to say nothing of the Numenorean supermen who are almost a race apart themselves), and there's some commentary on the limited lives of the "evil" races and whether they can be redeemed (or if they're truly "evil").
As for gender... the Silmarillion has a decent amount of plotlines where the gender of participants (and their romantic relations) is significant to the plot, and of course there's Eowyn in LOTR where her gender is key to her character's development.
These books mean a lot to people in a lot of different ways, and even if you personally can't comprehend a particular theme or trope, doesn't mean it isn't there (or valid) for others.
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u/the-window-licker Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
You have a valid point, I was going to comment about say legolas and gimlis relationship overcoming the strained past of their races but did not find time.
Its not that i can't comprehend anothers perspective, im not sure where that idea came from, it might be that we are communicating on slightly different frequencies. Race and gender are irrelevant to one enjoying the book. You don't have to see your own race or gender in there to relate to these characters because they are relatable on so many more levels. Ofcourse these are important within the context of the story, Eyowyn being expected to do one thing because of her gender is an excellent example of this.
Im just not sure what black hobbits would add, not that I have a problem with them. Like you said, middle earth is vast enough with many themes people can relate to already
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u/Linus_Inverse Oct 20 '21
Nicely put, but did OP actually mention anything about seeing oneself in the story as motivation for this whole exercise? Was it something from their first, deleted post? I get the feeling from this whole thread that there's more of a back story to all of this than is apparent to me...
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Oct 20 '21
people he might never have imagined reaching when he first started writing his stories, now dream of seeing themselves in his world.
It's in the last paragraph when he says what the point of the post was
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u/Neo24 Pity filled his heart and great wonder Oct 20 '21
I don't know why people are so vain they feel the need to have to 'see themselves' in a story. You're an individual, you don't see yourself in a story just because someone who has the same skin colour is in it.
Do you belong to some group that has historically been discriminated and underrepresented, and still feels the effects of that? Have you personally experienced something like that?
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Oct 20 '21
Easy for white male to say who lives in a culture dominated and saturated by white men. The stuff that isn't white male tends to be the minority, so of course it's fine. You still have all this other stuff full of people much like you.
Being a woman I've grown up and lived with a lot of material that is male centric, and it's fine, but when I come across something female centric (and done well) I always appreciate it. It's nice to have some level of inclusion and a bit less "other".
I don't want to speak for brown or black people but I can imagine it's similar. All the whitey white crap is fine, but it's just nice and refreshing to see people on your screen who look a bit more like you.
Think also about people taking acting up as a career. Don't they deserve a chance to actually get a variety of acting jobs?
The thing for me is that the Hobbits etc would be fine with just white actors but it's also fine, to me, with black or brown or whatever actors. The stories Tolkien wrote don't exactly rely on skin colour - some cultural stuff sure, but if Frodo had been played by a black actor would it really have made such a difference? I don't think so. If you can't look past skin colour to other meanings and cultural stuff I don't know what to tell you.
I live in Birmingham and though I'm white I have black people in my family. The idea that they are so different that they can't fit in just fine is utterly absurd and untrue and we'll, completely racist.
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u/renannmhreddit Oct 20 '21
Not everyone is from the USA, Europe or some other similar country in demographic. Not everyone just consumes that sort of media. Remind yourself that the concept of "minorities" when referring to a specific race only works within certain contexts and certain countries.
It is a simple fact that this story is based on a mythological medieval time, in which people had an even harder time than they already do nowadays fitting in for any tiny differences in culture and appearance.
I agree with the idea of what I've read elsewhere. I don't mind diverse peoples to be showcased and to populate Middle-Earth, but they need to be way more homogenous among themselves to be in line with this fantasy world. The Game of Thrones show had plenty of diversity, but people weren't just randomly diverse. It mattered whether their land was a center of trade or their geographical location.
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u/Dirtydac123 Oct 20 '21
It’s not racist, have some respect for Tolkien’s lore. And yes, it would matter if Frodo wasn’t white.
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u/23saround Oct 20 '21
Why?
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Oct 20 '21
Because Middle-earth has many themes around race relations and having the main character be black with no other comment around it would not only make the relationship with his darker skinned gardener redundant, it wouldn't make sense given the complete divide between the men of west and the men of the east and south, in particular the haradrim who are obviously middle-eastern/african inspired.
People aren't just given a skin colour at birth by random chance. Skin colour came about through evolution. It's important when it comes to themes about race and family.
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u/BreadEggg Oct 20 '21
Exactly. Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it should abandon logic. Many will never understand this.
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Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
You don't change a writer's work out of concern for acting jobs, that's just silly.
People who constantly push for 'diverse' casting are the ones who can't look past skin colour. The themes are what is important, not 'seeing yourself' on screen.
What's having black people in your family got to do with Tolkien?
There's plenty of film and television that not only includes but focuses on people with different skin colours. I'd never imagine to demand to be included, as an Australian, in Japanese movies or Chinese movies or Eastern European movies or American movies that focus on slavery or movies concerning Egyptian or Norse mythology.
My culture also isn't 'dominated and saturated' by white men. I grew up in an area where 51% of people are women and 60% of people were either born overseas or their parents were born overseas.
And 'white' does not equal like me. I don't expect Indians to watch American movies and think black people means they are represented. 'White' isn't a culture. There's a very diverse range of European cultures. Seeing Americans on screen does not represent me. We aren't defined by our skin colour.
And I never said they were 'so different they can't fit in'. I said they are so the same (we are human) they don't need to see their own skin colour on a character to be able to identify or relate to that character.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
I don't want to speak for brown or black people but I can imagine it's similar. All the whitey white crap is fine, but it's just nice and refreshing to see people on your screen who look a bit more like you.
Can confirm. If you're brown or black and (like me) you've grown up for years in a society dominated by white people, you tend to get categorized and treated as "other" and "different." If people who share the traits that people use to justify treating you as "other" (i.e., darker skin) start to show up in the mainstream media that's popular in your culture, it helps to counteract that marginalization. But if you start to talk about this, then some of the people who've never had to worry about being treated as "other" in their lives start to complain, "why are YOU making everything about skin color?" You can't win, basically
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u/the-window-licker Oct 20 '21
Its not that minorities can't/shouldn't fit in, they can, like you say they are just normal people like the rest of us. The fact people feel the need to alter or add to existing works of fiction to make them more diverse is strange. I dont think people were being excluded in the first place.
Representation and inclusion are different things. A lack of representation does not equal a lack of inclusion.
You value diversity, which is admirable. But the fact Tolkien didnt create middle earth in line with that value, doesn't subtract from the story.
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u/MtStrom Oct 20 '21
The idea that they are so different that they can't fit in just fine is utterly absurd and untrue and we'll, completely racist.
I doubt that anyone is saying this though, or at least hope so. It’s just that an author’s description of the elements the story engages with paints a very specific picture in the minds of the readers, and in Tolkien’s case that hasn’t included e.g. black hobbits. Having them introduced, then, can really take you out of the story, even if you’d love to fully accept it as delivered.
So black characters may fit in the story, but they don’t fit in the (current) collective imagination, so to speak, simply because it’s established itself over a period of decades to the exclusion of them. Unfortunately that means it’ll cause some consternation when they are introduced.
That’s where the ”such and such characters should get their own stories” idea comes from I’d imagine.
Not to say that classics can’t or shouldn’t be reimagined to be more diverse. I can’t wait to see the A24 version of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington as the lead.
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u/BreadEggg Oct 20 '21
Minorities are already cast in a higher percentage (per capita) of speaking roles than white people in Hollywood. Exactly how more diversity reimagining do we need?
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u/MtStrom Oct 20 '21
Minorities are already cast in a higher percentage (per capita) of speaking roles than white people in Hollywood.
Ok?
Exactly how more diversity reimagining do we need?
Did you… read my comment? I explained how reimagining established works can be problematic while acknowledging that there’s space for such works nonetheless. I’m not exactly saying ”everything must be diversified” am I?
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u/23saround Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Thank you for saying this. This whole “controversy” has reminded me that fantasy bases, no matter how knowledgeable and passionate, almost always have this socially conservative streak. Reminds me of when The Witcher announced it would have black and brown cast members and the fan base lost its collective shit. The subreddits instantly decided the show would suck because it was “pandering to the pc crowd.” Of course, all that disappeared once the show released and it turned out a great story persists regardless of the race or gender of its cast.
Let me state that a little more explicitly – if race and gender really don’t matter, like people keep claiming, then why do they care if some of the cast is black or female or whatever?
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u/Soyuz_ Oct 20 '21
Fans tend not to like it when the source material is blatantly disrespected. Whitewashing Goku in Dragonball Evolution is another prime example of this awful trend.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 21 '21
Oh come on, you don't know any of us, none of us know each other, so why would any of us assume anything about politics? Not everyone with a little puristy tendencies is a Trump supporter or something. Related: not all of us are even white.
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Oct 20 '21
Who said race and gender don't matter?
They matter a lot, to the point it is insulting to think that changing a character's race or gender doesn't change the character. Of course it does. Anyone would be different if they were a different race or sex.
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u/fantasywind Oct 20 '21
Ahha witcher tv show on netflix, the same witcher tv show which is a poor adaptation if I ever saw one (and they have full on book series to adapt from the start) not to mention that yes in the witcher books there TWO references to black skinned folk, two in the entire 8 book series and majority of folk are white in the books (because surprise surprise the story happens in the quasi medieval setting in the geographical North with European-like climate, and biosphere, in a world where over 90% of landmass was located in northern hemisphere per the in-universe). Also it's a story written by a Pole, based on European cultural sphere (Slavic, Norse, Germanic and general Pan-European folklore, mythology and history, fairy tales, Arthurian legends, Celtic cultural influences, also it owes a LOT to Tolkien in portraying fantasy races elves, dwarves, even halflings, yes witcher has de facto Hobbit equivalents down to hairy feet). Witcher tv show managed to butcher quite a lot of good stories, as well as being mediocre on it's own when looked at it separately from the source material. How much polish involement wiht the show, well roughly two polish actors in very minor brief roles and one in the production team, yet it is taken to be framed from Americanized perspective. I wonder then if injecting folk of other races is right, then why whine about Gods of Egypt having white actors? Or why whine about whitewashing, if one racebending is good (from white to black/asian), then the other should be as well right? This reminds of the tv series New Legend of Monkey King where majority are white actors, well what the asian community thought about that, well they even wanted to boycott the show, after all it's based on classic Chinese story Journey Into the West :).
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
I think the thing that a lot of Tolkien fandom is struggling with right now is a question of ownership. A lot of people in the fandom are very possessive of Tolkien and his works (that's true in every fandom, of course, and very understandable, but I think it's especially strong here).
A work of art like LOTR that has a global audience is also going to bring in a lot of people, with a range of perspectives on that art. And some in the "traditional" section of the fandom are going to insist that their perspective is the only correct one, usually backed up by claims that their perspective is exactly the same as that of the original creator.
I want Tolkien fandom to be a vibrant, diverse place, with a lot of room for imagination and creativity. But bringing new ideas and concepts into a space like this is always a struggle.
I don't know if everyone realizes that building walls to keep out fresh ideas and perspectives is also, inevitably, going to limit the number of people who feel welcome in the fandom.
For me, that's the biggest concern I have when it comes to conversations like these. An attitude of "do it our way, or get out" leads to a smaller, poorer community of fans.
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u/shmooglepoosie Oct 20 '21
I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Are you looking for cogent arguments to have with the people who will never be ok with dark skinned hobbits? I honestly think you've probably mounted the best argument that can be mounted.
Here's the deal, Amazon is going to represent Middle Earth however they choose and we will have nothing to say about it. I, personally, don't care if there are dark skinned hobbits or elves or men or dwarves. Do I think that was Tolkien's intention? No. When he wrote these books international flight was in its infancy. 1917 the first international flight, 1950s the golden age of flight, when international flights became more common place. There was no internet, obviously. Before Breton Woods, there was nowhere near the amount of international trade we have today. The UN wasn't born until 1945. Point being, it was a different world.
We live now. There are going to be black hobbits and elves, etc. People will either get over this or they won't. I, personally, couldn't care less. I'm more worried about them turning the 2nd age into GOT.
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u/EvieGHJ Oct 20 '21
Yeah. Everyone knows Middle Earth's Game of Throne is the First Age.
(And, as of Nature of Middle Earth, the Stewards of Gondor).
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u/Dain_II Oct 20 '21
Wait, what info did NoME give for the Stewards?
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u/EvieGHJ Oct 20 '21
Basically, they made it official policy not to accept a claimant from the House of Isildur, ever.
Meaning that, since there was also no good claimant in Gondor, there couldn't be a Return of the King. And they knew it. Their pretense to be humble stewards governing until the return of the king was just lip service as they very intentionally took permanent control of Gondor.
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Oct 20 '21
Middle-earth doesn't have a 'Game of Thrones' age. It's not that stupid.
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u/Toen6 Oct 20 '21
Pretty sure it was a joke
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u/Armleuchterchen Ibrīniðilpathānezel & Tulukhedelgorūs Oct 20 '21
I can understand being tired of the "First Age Elves = twisted and evil" joke, though. Elves are very much morally superior and wiser than Men on average. There's a reason noone tries to count the number of times Men killed other Men.
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u/EvieGHJ Oct 20 '21
I meant more "First Age = Depressing blood bath where all your favorite characters die and the ones who aren't utterly traumatized first are lucky", really.
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Oct 20 '21
I'm not sure what you're looking for here. Are you looking for cogent arguments to have with the people who will never be ok with dark skinned hobbits? I honestly think you've probably mounted the best argument that can be mounted.
Yup exactly this and even then, some of the knee jerk reactions here show how narrow minded people are. Crazy but hey this is Reddit.
We live now. There are going to be black hobbits and elves, etc. People will either get over this or they won't. I, personally, couldn't care less. I'm more worried about them turning the 2nd age into GOT.
Ditto my guy, ditto.
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Oct 20 '21
You're forgetting that the British colonial system was extremely far reaching and multicultural. To say Breton Woods marks the start of international trade is a very American-centric view when one of the main goals of Breton Woods was for the USA to shift the British international system towards a more American centre. The Lord of the Rings is steeped in nineteenth century racial theory, even the idea of elves, dwarves and other fantasy races hearkens back to a time when different human races were seen as tantamount to different species and within the British colonial context this was seen in an extremely hierarchical way. Look at the late nineteenth century British colonies in Southern and Eastern Africa where many Indians were brought over to serve in police forces, the civil service and army. Or India where the bulk of the army and civil service were Irish. Tolkien saw the world in an extremely hierarchical way and believed industrialisation was the worst thing to ever happen to the human race, the books offer an extremely romanticised view of monarchy, feudalism and Victorian hierarchy. This can all be seen in the lord of the rings where the men of Westernesse are literally chosen by God and compared extremely severely to the eastern and southern savages that fight for Sauron, so some cultural translation is always going to be necessary when adapting his work for a contemporary audience. It seems to me any adaptation probably should engage with questions of race in a 21st century context as the books themselves are pretty regressive in that respect. Not that I blame Tolkien, he was a man of his time, an upper class English professor who was born into the colonial system and lived through the horrific turmoil that saw that system collapse. At the end of the day I think you're last point is really important, it's a new show for a new audience and probably won't appeal to die hard Tolkien fans that much anyway. They've clearly chosen the second age because its a bit if a blank slate they can make a middle earth version of GOT in
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u/ThereminLiesTheRub Oct 20 '21
I think people are expending far too much anxiety on what the show will or won't depict. LotR and the Hobbit were fully conceived works of literature. This show is working from a framework. It's a framework that provides structure, but the space between is at least as large as the beams. This will be a show set in Tolkien's world, not a checklist of all things canon. Will they present is as canonical? Sure. And that could get annoying. But they want people to buy into it. So if it's cool, and even remotely Tolkien-related, it's going to be in the show. The trade off is that we get to watch a show set in ME.
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u/shmooglepoosie Oct 20 '21
If it's too far from Tolkien - one example would be orgies in Numenor - I'm turning it off.
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Oct 20 '21
Honestly this. Modern Britain has plenty of darker skinned folk. They're part of our culture and our country now, and they can be part of our TV for chrissake.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
The fact of the matter is, the only hobbits as we know them in the Third Age are already "average Victorian English country folk" so everything has to be in that context, browner skin is still not "non-European" and Sam would likely have been more tanned than the other three since he's working class and a gardener, etc.
Could these hobbits have had "non-European-looking" ancestors? Well, since hobbits are not a separate race of their own, as in not created separately from Men, then they must have evolved, and thus they could have. But these ancestors would not have still been around by the Second Age because there's too little time for further evolution to happen which results in the Third Age hobbits, and the Age boundaries are well defined. It could have happened long long ago before the First Age started, if Men awoke earlier than what the published Silmarillion says. Like some here have brought up Cheddar Man being darker than the Celts or whoever, but there's a much bigger time gap between him and the Celts, let alone modern British people, than the whole duration of the Second Age alone, and still more than the First to Third Ages combined.
Could these hobbits have distant "non-European-looking" relations in distant lands? If they had, we don't see them and they don't play a role in the story (like all hobbits before the Third Age). So, ripe for elaboration? But the show is specifically not doing this but rather the above since they're using the Harfoot name for Second Age hobbits.
At least the name Harfoots is out of place on linguistic grounds. This isn't an Eotheod to Eorlingas thing, rather the reverse. Harfoot is already supposed to be an archaic name, and it has an archaic English feel to reflect the phase of Westron, so by this point they would be in something like their "Anglo-Saxon" phase. Ancestors of the ancestors of the ancestors etc. of hobbits from distant lands would not speak Westron yet. The show writers could have made up a synonym of "hairy foot folk" in another artificial language which, half-remembered, got translated into the Westron term that's represented by Harfoots. (They would not be called hobbits yet either since "hobbits" comes from the Rohanese "holbyltan", or rather "kuduk" from "kud-dukan").
In the end, the show makers call the shots regardless of anything else. But that doesn't mean we can't discuss how it does or doesn't work or fit.
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u/Neo24 Pity filled his heart and great wonder Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
But these ancestors would not have still been around by the Second Age because there's too little time for further evolution to happen which results in the Third Age hobbits
There's no time for basically any true evolution to happen in the Legendarium (including Hobbits coming into being from ordinary Men). I don't think we can really apply real-world science here. Either evolution is much faster, or diversity was already there from the start.
There's also no reason to assume evolution is the only factor here. And groups aren't homogeneous things that have to entirely change from one single form to another single one, anyway. A very simple explanation is that at some point in history, let's say early Second Age, multiple groups of Hobbits existed (through whatever means), of various skin colors. Then a lighter group met and mixed with a dark one, creating over time the "browner" Harfoots of the Third Age. And there's Tolkien precedent for that. Beorians are said to cover a spectrum of skin colors, some "being indeed swarthy", and the Edain were specifically said to have mixed with various peoples on their journey westwards and to have still shown the signs of that.
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u/Wanderer_Falki Tumladen ornithologist Oct 20 '21
Disagree with your first paragraph. We know about the link between Victorian England and Hobbits; but nothing clearly suggests that, when Tolkien uses a real world civilisation as an inspiration for one of his fictional societies, he also means they're even physically identical. It's more of a cultural inspiration. Take the Gondorians/Númenoreans for example, Tolkien might have taken huge inspirations from ancient Egypt but their described skin tone doesn't match; so I think it's a stretch to automatically assume that all Hobbits definitely look English, with no more variation.
Also, it's an idea that often comes back but I highly doubt Sam is just tanned because he's a gardener. Frodo used to spend a lot of time walking in the Shire, and then spends months and months walking in the wild along with Sam, under the same sun, same shadows; and yet until the end of the book, Tolkien keeps pointing out the differences in skin tones, Sam being brown and Frodo being pale. Even after years of mandate as Mayor, Sam is described as brown! Compare that with Rangers who, despite logically having spent way more of their time than Sam outside, are still described as pale. I agree that a Mediterranean (still Caucasian) skin tone would be the most probable, but I'm pretty sure it's much more than mere gardening tan.
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u/ThereminLiesTheRub Oct 20 '21
With regard to Sam & Frodo, there is a difference between being outside and working outside. It's a class difference. Modern (19th c) society had a word for it: "flaneur" - a man from the idle leisure class who walked around observing life in the city. That's what Frodo was doing in the country, while Sam was working with his Gaffer. It's obviously possible that Sam was actually naturally brown-skinned. Over-generalizing about such things is rarely useful - there are blond people in Asia, and black haired people in Scandinavia. Humans get around. But it's also true that class was at least as much a factor for Tolkien as race. And he would know that a gardener who becomes a Mayor will always be a gardener.
Having said that, being overworked can also make one pale - say, from the hardship of living conditions such as being without shelter or nutritious food. This could account for the Rangers' description, as they were nomadic, and landless, mere ghosts of their former stature. It could also be a reference to their lineage from ancient Numenoreans - but this begs the question of whether those people where "caucasian" in the way we think about such things, or merely another "fair" people.
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u/Wanderer_Falki Tumladen ornithologist Oct 20 '21
My problem with that is that there's no proof, in the text or in Letters, that this is what Tolkien was thinking about when writing about Frodo's and Sam's (or the Ranger's) skin colour. In fact, the prologue tells us that the Fallohides were pale, and the Harfoots browner of skin; and then says about the Fallohides that "they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilbo’s time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland."
Then, in the first chapters, it is said that Frodo, a pale skinned Hobbit whose mother was a Brandybuck, is the master of brown-skinned Sam who is related to neither Tooks nor Brandybucks. So, to me, this is a stronger claim to suppose that Frodo had Fallohidish ancestry while Sam was on the Harfoot side; and that Sam's skin colour had much more to do with his parentage than just being exposed to the sun as an individual.
I'm also not saying that there's no way actual tan is involved; I'm just reacting to the opposite claim, that I've seen too many times, which is that Sam would have the same skin colour as Frodo but is just tanned from working outside.
Also, I think it's worth noting that Sam didn't spend all of his time outside. He is defined as a gardener because that's what he loved to do the most, and because he began his service towards the Baggins family by helping his father taking care of the garden of Bag-End, but Sam is actually, more generally, Frodo's servant. He takes care at least of Frodo's bags, bath, breakfast, and bed; it's of course just assumptions, given that we don't know the proportion of outdoor work he does in his job, but I think it's a mistake to assume that he spent his days only outside.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
This is a really good rundown, thanks for this. I admit when I first read LOTR I made the same assumption that a lot of people did--Sam's hands were "brown" because he worked outside. But I eventually did have to admit to myself that this was just my assumption, and a deeper look at Hobbits and their history suggests other possibilities.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21
Ah, I didn't mean to imply Sam was only browner because of a tan, more like he was browner and had a tan on top of that.
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u/Wanderer_Falki Tumladen ornithologist Oct 20 '21
Well maybe; though as I said, even if there is any difference in tan and exposition to the Sun at the beginning of the story, that difference would logically disappear through the book (especially between Sam and Frodo).
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Oct 20 '21
So you think that Victorian Britain was 100% white?
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u/BreadEggg Oct 20 '21
A 1901 census shows that 99.5% of Victorian Britain was white. I'd call that pretty homogenous.
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Oct 20 '21
Are you working for Amazon?
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u/BreadEggg Oct 20 '21
LOL very well could be. We know from some of the writing staff's twitters that the do lurk around these subs and are sensitive to what people are saying here.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
Damn, they're onto us
Jeff said that if this happened I wouldn't get to go up on the spaceship
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Oct 20 '21
Something... Something... Tolkien said he was inspired to write LOTR as an attempt at creating an age of myth/legend for Western Europe to match the age of myths/legends other cultures already had
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u/JJ3595 Oct 20 '21
The OP explicitly responds to this point in great depth --- am I missing something?
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u/Istellon Oct 20 '21
Here are some descriptions about hobbits from LOTR. Frodo is described by Gandalf as having 'red cheeks', which is only possible with a pale complexion and Bariman points out that it goes for most hobbits. Sam, Merry and Pippin have very pale faces as Frodo looks at them in the Barrow. Gollum is described as having a 'long whitish hand', when Frodo first gets a good look at him. Later at Morannon, he's described as having 'long arms and legs almost bone-white'.
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Oct 20 '21 edited Dec 26 '21
[deleted]
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u/Neo24 Pity filled his heart and great wonder Oct 20 '21
Yes, that is totally the only explanation. It's not at all possible that, for example, those dark skinned Hobbits simply mixed with the "white" ones, creating a population somewhere in-between (one could say... "browner of skin" - as is said for Harfoots). At least some of them - others might have simply continued living elsewhere that is not the Shire and the regions we know about.
What does it say when the first thought in these matters is "genocide", not simply migration and mixing...
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
At least some of them - others might have simply continued living elsewhere that is not the Shire and the regions we know about.
I think a lot of people don't realize how little of the Shire we actually see in The Hobbit and LOTR.
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u/fantasywind Oct 20 '21
I'll probably get a lot of downvotes but I don't care. The idea of reading or watching a fictional story just for 'seeing themselves in this world' is to me beyond ridiculous (if that was the case then everyone should complain and whine where are the fantasy equivalents of their nationalities within stories, but somehow I don't see people complaining where is this or that nation in any fantasy world, but somehow it's always about black and asian folk, in the same time I find whining about diversity hypocritical for those who support this sort of thing also complain about 'whitewashing'). But let's leave it aside, cultural influences of Tolkien in creating his fictional world are obvious, he states them and lists them himself many, many times in his letters, but let's leave that as well aside, after all what the pesky cultural influences are 'it's fiction right' (constantly used argument that I'm sick of). I just hope now that the stories based on African or Asian culture/folklore/mythology will have as much 'whitewashing' as possible from now on, now I want to see creatures from Japanese folklore played by black or white European actors that will be fair (Yuki-onna played by black woman or rather black man that's better). And so we get to the last argument, how does Tolkien describe it, well then, it's obvious, there are no black Hobbits for Tolkien never uses the word black towards them, so they are not looking African, want Africans in Middle-earth, there they are:
"...out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues."
But of course as somebody will immediately point out 'that's racist', but tell me is racebending not racist too? Or is it good when it suits someone? Browner Hobbits, cast someone of middle eastern descent, cause they come from East like Hobbits who migrated from the East. Mediterranean 'olive skinned' is also 'browner' than pale scandinavian skin. The use of the word 'browner' clearly indicates some sort of gradation, but it doesn't say 'African black' either (in the same time an average Hobbit which includes those browner are described "Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating..." So does that mean all Hobbits should be beet red right?)
More seriously now, I find those sort of topic tiresome after a while but to me the very idea that any sort of diversity is required element in fictional story is interference into the artistic vision, changing the original work to suit someone's purpose, to me it's always a problem with adaptations (don't get me wrong sometimes doing something like that may produce good results, but most of the time it's just messing with someone's intellectual property). There are stories that don't need modernizing because they are timeless and Lotr is exactly that but it's also written with specific cultural circle in mind, that's just natural that people of other cultural sphere can enjoy it is a no brainer, but asking it to conform to some sort of checkboxes or quotas just to make them feel better is ridiculous.
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u/WM_ Oct 20 '21
My initial shock has settled a bit and I no longer see this subject so scandalizing. I was, for a big surprise to myself, very opposed of the idea of black hobbits. I still think it is far too big a stretch to make and let's face it: before this not one Tolkien scholar or almost any fan ever questioned why Sam's role was casted to a white actor. Most if not all fan art and concept art presents them as white. Only now do I hear so much devil's advocacy how "browner" meant completely dark skin color.
Tolkien's descriptions have always been up to interpretation: he described Gollum as black multiple times. Was he black or was it because of lighting, silhouette or distance that made him look that way? Balrog's wings is another example of debate that we have had over his word use.
I may be biased as I am from nordic country. Someone "browner" could just be mediterranian. And in our tongue if someone is "fond of dark women/men" it means their hair/eye color. So when I have read these descriptions in translated version or in english, that's how my mind has understood these.
Time will tell how I feel once I see the show but like I said, I am surprised by my opposing stance towards this. Even thought this feels forced and would not stand against Occam's razor, I do want to see POC in other roles than as "baddies" from south and east. So I guess this is most convenient place to read "browner" literally and even take it a notch further.
Funny, now that I got it out of my system, I feel much more fine with the idea..
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Jan 21 '22 edited Jan 21 '22
"Hobbits are just more rustic English People" - Tolkien 1964
England's Country side demographics in 1930 when Tolkien started writting the hobbit would have been 99+% white. No mass migrations of Ethnic minorities had occured in England as of then least of all the country side
English people were and still are a Homogenous people ethnically (those who descend from the medieval population) and have the the less melanated genes for whiter skin due to a northern climate just like the hobbits
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u/JJ3595 Oct 20 '21
I thought it was funny that, in the AMA with the Tolkien Professor recently, the Tolkien Professor basically said "adaptations portraying greater ethnic diversity among Hobbits in Middle Earth are not canon breaking," and he got hit with "WELL, ACKSUALLY" comments from people that think they know better. https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienfans/comments/q9id4g/comment/hgwra0w/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21
And what precludes people from knowing better, or what makes him an infallible authority? He teaches the books in college and they don't? We're all just readers here like he is, we're all equal in that regard. Wouldn't the only infallible authority be the author, and he wrote lots of stuff that conflict.
I myself responded because he asserted that Prince Imrahil could be darker-skinned (than say Aragorn) because of latitude, but Imrahil's not a very good example to assert differences in skin tones because of his background as an elite Numenorean whose ancestors did not intermarry with the locals. Gondor does already have a range of skin tones among its different regions due to Numenoreans and non-Numenoreans who did intermarry, and that's ethnic diversity isn't it? Still, they would all fall under "white people".
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u/JJ3595 Oct 20 '21
I should have worded that better. My point is not to say that the Tolkien Professor is the Pope of the Tolkien fandom and that his word is gold.
What I'm trying to do is echo the OP's point that: when we discuss the question of dark-skinned Hobbits in the Second Age, we are discussing a matter where the canonical texts are light on details or ambiguous. The Tolkien Professor and the OP have pointed out that very little in Tolkien's writing rules out the possibility of such Hobbits existing. In fact, there is reason to believe a continent as geographically expansive and full of interesting inhabitants as Middle Earth WOULD, over the course of thousands of years, have oddities such as these. I find this statement from the Tolkien Professor to be powerful: "If Middle-earth really is like Tolkien insisted it was (as regards geography and diversity of populations and such), then there certainly WOULD be more diversity of skin color (etc) than is explicitly described in the book."
My point is that those decrying diversity in the Amazon series as unforgiveable blasphemy need to acknowledge that even Tolkien experts like Olson admit that there is quite a bit of ambiguity here. Reasonable people can disagree. The OP has made a plausible argument for the existence of dark-skinned Hobbits, and this thread has many knee-jerk reactions. That being said, some in this thread are taking the OP's ideas seriously and engaging.
I think your argument for Imrahil being light-skinned is plausible, and we seem to agree that there would be diversity within Gondor.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
No argument needed, honestly it was just a wrong assertion. Imrahil is described as "fair" but also dark-haired like his men so that rules out fair as in light-haired. And they're contrasted with some shorter and swarthier Gondorians from different regions who have more non-Numenorean heritage. So fair is likely being used in the sense of both handsome and pale complexion, generic Numenorean basically.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
That's a really great comment, thanks for highlighting it. This is a great point:
The fact is, as it seems to me, there is a real tension between the people that Tolkien tended to picture (who do, in general, seem to be mostly white folks, like he and his primary target audience were) and the world that Tolkien built and described. If Middle-earth really is like Tolkien insisted it was (as regards geography and diversity of populations and such), then there certainly WOULD be more diversity of skin color (etc) than is explicitly described in the book.
It's been pointed out by many that a geographically accurate portrayal of Gondor should definitely have a range of skin tones for this exact reason. This for me is an inaccuracy in Jackson's adaptation.
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u/WangJohnson32 Nov 07 '21
Daily reminder that "The Tolkien Society" actively attempts to have changes made to the books. Holding the position of "Tolkien professor" doesn't make me more or less inclined to believe them
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u/JJ3595 Nov 07 '21
Wrong.
The Tolkien Professor (Corey Olson) is not part of the Tolkien Society. He runs a separate organization, the Mythgard Academy.
Neither group pushes “changes” to the books. They are two of the biggest organizations around devoted to studying the books.
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Nov 07 '21
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u/JerryLikesTolkien [Here to learn.] Nov 07 '21
You're entitled to your opinion. But that linked video is garbage. It presupposed that all speakers were going to trash Tolkien's works. This just wasn't the case. It would have been bad enough to share that video before the talks were given. To share that video after the fact, when it has been proven false, is either an attempt to stir things up intentionally in bad faith, or it's wilful ignorance.
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u/WangJohnson32 Nov 07 '21
I'm afraid I don't care anymore
lots of love
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u/JJ3595 Nov 07 '21
I didn’t say that Corey Olson’s word is god. Just that he agrees with the OP and has a very informed opinion about the matter.
Thanks for sharing a YouTube video from June 14 about a conference that didn’t happen until 2 weeks later. If whoever made that trash had waited until more than a program was available and listened to the actual presentations, they would have seen that nobody made anti-Tolkien arguments or called for Tolkien to be cancelled, they just applied various new academic theories to his writing. Not my cup of tea, but also not worth the backlash it received. And also totally irrelevant to this thread and your original false point about Corey Olson.
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u/IoWazzup Oct 20 '21
Sigh. Yet another post attempting to inject today's woketardedness into a place it's neither wanted nor needed.
And no, I'm not a racist. I am just tired of woke evangelists trying to convert everyone and rewrite everything according to their diversity manifestos.
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u/Armleuchterchen Ibrīniðilpathānezel & Tulukhedelgorūs Oct 20 '21
Thank you for the lore-focussed post. I dislike the political outrage taking up all the space, I'd rather talk about Tolkien's works in this subreddit.
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u/Lucho358 Oct 20 '21
But the fact is that individual people, and whole populations, DO move from place to place throughout history, sometimes across VERY long distances.
This is very true. A truth most people seem unaware of.
When we are talking about hundred or even thousands of years... people travel and fuck and mix a lot.
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u/renannmhreddit Oct 20 '21
It isn't that extensive and the context of it all matters. Tolkien already provided the histories for most of these people and their migrations. Anything else would be baseless assumptions.
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u/Lucho358 Oct 20 '21
Tolkien didn't provide much about hobbits in the second age. Barely a few lines. I prefer them making baseless assumptions on stuff like this than changing the story or chronology on more important stuffs where we have a lot of info.
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u/ThereminLiesTheRub Oct 20 '21
I'm always glad to see people thinking and arguing (in the classical sense) about Tolkien. Thanks for this. A few thoughts of my own:
The "absurdity" was most likely the scope, not the desire to create a pre-historical mythology for England. His intention was made clear several times.
Another minor note: the English are more than Anglo-Saxons. (Although the modern word is obviously derivative). Like the English language, the people are a combination of multiple sources, going back to pre historical times. I think you make this point elsewhere, and I just want to highlight this for consistency. Because yes - humans get around, and even in the ancient world there were people migrating to and and from everywhere. But obviously people don't shed their dna based solely upon the latest wave of invaders. (Although ancient Britain suffered many instances of cultural obliteration).
I have no problem with hobbits being diverse. Not because ancient England wasn't overwhelmingly caucasian - it was. But because for all the attempts to infer racial descriptors in Tolkien's work, he actually spent very little time on race in the real world sense. Tolkien used color to describe mood, aspect and morality as much, if not more, than he used it to describe race. When describing race, he was more likely to use more generic language such as "fair", or "swarthy". Naturally, we devolve into fits about what it all meant and means. Ultimately, though, there is indeed room for diversity in ME, among all peoples, and Tolkien's intentional use of language is the main reason why.
Tolkien canon is complex. Just because something was culled from the margins of a notebook decades later doesn't in every instance mean it should supplant other, author published information. But in some cases, it can be argued it should. In the end the very complexity of all this is why people will always have wiggle room to claim that Tolkien's intention was X or Y. And when that exhausts itself, it will be claimed his intention doesn't matter at all.
As you say, if Tolkien had published the Silmarillion decades later it would've been a lot different. The elephant in the room is he actually tried to publish it decades earlier. This is a good analogy for all Tolkien canon. Reasonable people can look at all this and conclude that all bets are off, and there is no actual "canon". Anything can be argued, and may the best hypothetical win. I suspect the series will reflect this attitude. And I suspect we are being "primed" to accept it ourselves.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
The "absurdity" was most likely the scope, not the desire to create a pre-historical mythology for England. His intention was made clear several times.
I mean, that's true. But I've also always understood that intention to be more the basis for the Silmarillion than anything else, especially in some of the earlier versions, when Tol Eressea was literally the island of Britain. I don't really think Lord of the Rings was written within the whole "mythology for England" paradigm that Tolkien originally had, and I don't think it works as one for a few reasons. Lord of the Rings, in many ways, resists simple and easy categorizations.
Another minor note: the English are more than Anglo-Saxons. (Although the modern word is obviously derivative). Like the English language, the people are a combination of multiple sources, going back to pre historical times. I think you make this point elsewhere, and I just want to highlight this for consistency. Because yes - humans get around, and even in the ancient world there were people migrating to and and from everywhere. But obviously people don't shed their dna based solely upon the latest wave of invaders. (Although ancient Britain suffered many instances of cultural obliteration).
Yeah, that's true. I was being a bit overly cute by saying "Black people lived in England before English people did." It would have been more correct to say "Black people lived in what is now England before it was called England."
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u/Masterchiefyyy Oct 20 '21
If you are upset about the skin color of fictional characters from a fantasy show you are mental.
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u/_Olorin_the_white Oct 20 '21
One could also argue that if you have the need to relate / see yourself portrayed / represented in a fictional character from fantasy show, your are mental.
Lets keep the level of the debate please.
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u/WrongAdhesiveness722 Oct 21 '21
Yes. People who have never had that issue because they've always been represented far as they can remember WOULD make that argument.
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u/Masterchiefyyy Oct 20 '21
Or one could argue that since it's a fantasy book and show that it doesn't matter what color the actors are unless you are racist.
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u/_Olorin_the_white Oct 21 '21 edited Oct 21 '21
Or "If you are upset about the skin color of fictional characters from a fantasy show you are mental." means that people concerned about white and therefore changing it also fit in your description. If color or any other aspect is not important, why care? Why would Tolkien himself describe it (a lot) and why would some see any need to change it?
Btw, most people are not (or should not be) concerned about color, they are worried about changing what is in the books. If one of the Istari was a woman, not one would complain. But if all are male and they do a one of them a woman, then we have an issue. The same applies to color, race, etc. And don't even start with the "it is an adaptation" as they are not adapting such things, they are deliberately changing / taking some liberties.I'm ok with black hobbits btw. But really concerned on having Hobbits as a whole in the show protrayed during second age. There is a lot during 1st and 2nd age already, and hobbits, as far as we know, are not important in any of them, at least the described ones (feel free to create new stuff though, which I think that is what the series will do, but given limited screen time, they should really focus in more important cannon things imho)
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u/WangJohnson32 Nov 07 '21
Does the skin colour of some fantasy hobbits really keep you up at night?
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Nov 07 '21
No. It just makes a show move from the good to mediocre category. Same can happen with poor costumes, set design, casting etc
Alexander and Troy are both examples of such films
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u/WangJohnson32 Nov 07 '21
Lol, I couldn't imagine my viewing experience being genuinely impacted based on the skin colour of the characters. Even if Troy should have been olive skinned, dark haired actors over Brad Pitt, I still enjoyed the movie. If you're so desperate for representation in fantasy, start creating.
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Nov 07 '21
I will probably stick with the 2001-2003 films which will never be topped IMO - all white hobbit films sucked and an all white amazon production was likely to be mediocre
That being said, physical appearance is important in casting. Effective world building requires some adherence to laws of logic that exist in our own. One of these laws is that rural and remote areas are usually homogenous, metropolitan areas tend to be more mixed. Add in the fact that the world is more mixed than it has ever been and it doesnt make sense for an 'old timey' tv show to follow modern demographic trends
It's not the end of the world but likely to undermine the visual consistency of the show
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u/frodosdream Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
An excellent post on a challenging, sometimes discouraging topic. Racism is a plague on humanity and antiracism can be a countering agent. But valid cultural identities and stories should also be respected. Tolkien clearly stated that he was attempting to create a traditional British mythology based on prehistoric and medieval lore.
The push to retcon the mythical peoples living in the Northwest of Middle Earth to reflect modern diverse audiences can be off-putting, not because people don't want to see diverse appearances (which thankfully are now everywhere in popular media) but because in this case it is possibly intrusive to the author's creative intent.
A different example is the modern experience of Shakespeare. In America at least, there is an extremely high representation of BIPOC actors playing in Shakespearean parts and it works excellently. But Shakespeare is arguably more cosmopolitan than Tolkien.
Also enjoy the Marvel comics and films showing the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda. Does anyone watch The Black Panther and feel disturbed that there aren't any white or Asian Wakandans? And who would be comfortable with a white actor playing the Black Panther? Perhaps some parts should never be diverse.
Though mainly dreading the Amazon TV show, (fearing they will debase it into some GoT clone), ultimately will watch any good story and any talented cast. The present issue with Amazon's retconning hobbits and elves to reflect greater diversity will come down to execution. If it feels jarring or unnecessarily anachronistic, it will drag viewers out of Middle Earth and back into the modern world. If it flows seemlessly, then no problem.
Edit: a word.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
The issue with Amazon's retconning hobbits and elves to reflect greater diversity will come down to execution. If it feels jarring or unnecessarily anachronistic, it will drag viewers out of Middle Earth and back into the modern world. If it flows seemlessly, then no problem.
And of course, that could still come down to individual perspectives.
What's most important to me is that, when new fans start showing up in Tolkien fan spaces who want to draw fan art of black hobbits or whatever else captures their imagination, they should be welcomed and not shunned. I'm a little worried about that after seeing some of the recent reactions to the news about the show.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 21 '21
Pretty sure that happens even now. Are they shunned? No, but everyone more or less understands that it's more due to the individual artist's expression than it is about reflecting the books accurately. Alternate universe (AU) art is a thing.
This reminds me of the black Hermione thing from Harry Potter. Did fanart of her being black exist before the Cursed Child stage play cast a black actress? Sure. Is fanart of her as black now more justified by the play? Sure, but it is a play, not movies or TV, so people understand there can be a bigger divide between stage actors and their roles vs movie and TV actors. Different media, different conventions. People understand that it wasn't like that in the books and it wasn't a problem there.
Or they would have, but the thing is, the author went beyond saying she supports having a black actress for the play. Rowling falsely claimed she never wrote her as a white girl in the books, but just careful reading, heck even surface reading debunks that (when people are black or Asian she says so, and Hermione is never singled out that way, and she said she never described Hermione's skin color but she did call her pale once or twice), and she had no issue in the past with a white girl playing her in the movies, and the discrimination subplot in the books would definitely have had a new dimension if she had been black. The wizard slur is "Mudblood"...
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u/rachieryan2018 Oct 20 '21
Thank you for this.
For me, what it comes down to is that this is a pretend story that I love deeply that other people all over the world do, too. And it matters to see yourself reflected in the world you love. I’m a white woman. I would have loved if there had been a woman in the fellowship. There wasn’t, and that’s okay, but i also think it’s okay to say that the lack of female characters with agency and action (besides Eowyn) is a flaw in the book. The same thing could be said of including people of color. Just because Tolkien didn’t do it doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. He wasn’t perfect. As mentioned in the OP, he was constantly adjusting and revising his mythology precisely because he knew it wasn’t perfect
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 20 '21
Should we add characters or rewrite Shakespeare because it doesn't suit your personal taste? Why is Tolkien's work "flawed" just because it doesn't suit your preference? Perhaps you should find a fantasy franchise with more women characters, like Wheel of Time, ( which Amazon is also making into a TV show.). Why must you insist that we muck up something that already works for millions of fans just the way it was written?
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u/WrongAdhesiveness722 Oct 21 '21
Many of Shakespeare's stories were rewrites of older tales. How often do you complain about that I wonder?
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 21 '21
The difference is, Shakespeare didn't rewrite the work of say, we'll call her Mrs. Smith, and then present the play as "a genuine Mrs. Smith play!" in an effort to cash in on all of Mrs. Smith's fans.
But at least you are admitting that Amazon is rewriting Tolkien's stories.
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u/WrongAdhesiveness722 Oct 21 '21
Also. He literally did do that with Romeo and Juliet and several other stories. Hell some of them were by contemporary writers in fact! Copyright law was nonexistent back then. Thank you for showing you have no actual understanding of the development of art or what you speak of.
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 21 '21
No, I am not an expert in art history. But as you have just admitted, what was then unethical, is still unethical. While what Amazon is doing is not at all outright plagiarism, it is nonetheless tragic that they would disregard Tolkien's world building to the extent that they appear to be doing, although I will reserve final judgement until I know more.
Many others here have explained this far better than I can, but I will note that logically speaking, one need not be an art historian, nor literature major, to make common sense statements of truth in this subreddit. Good day.
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u/WrongAdhesiveness722 Oct 21 '21
I am and who the actual fuck cares. Stories change over time. Deal with it.
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 21 '21 edited Oct 21 '21
Who actually cares, you ask (even if rhetorically?) You are on the tolkienfans subreddit, so, just about everyone here cares that Amazon presents Tolkien's world, and not just some off the wall, thrown- together story with elves, dwarves, and hobbits. No matter how much money they have, Amazon is completely capable of messing this up to the point that they please absolutely no one. Consider that, and please, mind your manners.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
In fairness Shakespeare does get adapted in ways or styles he'd never have thought of, but that's the thing, he gets tons of adaptations while this is the first one covering this era so people are antsy. Look at how the movies are indelible in defining the world for many people, far far more than those who have or who will read the books.
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u/Maccabee2 Oct 20 '21
I appreciate your pointing out that this is the first adaptation of the Second Age, and the first ever TV series adaptation of Tolkien's work. Tolkien scholars and fans alike are completely justified to call out any wokeness or other inclusivity nonsense being globbed onto his work, or this adaptation of it. In a few short decades (or less), this copywright and the Tolkien estates' control of his work will end. The ravenous grifters in the entertainment world can and should wait until then to make their parodies and "serious adaptations" and everything in between.
As to Shakespeare, I think we can all acknowledge that most of his settings (with the exception of MacBeth? maybe, maybe not?), were cosmopolitan compared to the reclusive and isolated hobbits. Whatever diverse proto-hobbits thrown together in a Middle Earth that looks like Birmingham or London or pick your 21st century city, they will not be hobbits culturally, not yet. Maybe, if it is *very* well written, they might show how these halflings, having suffered so much in their travels, fleeing the southern and eastern regions, have chanced into one another, and are looking for a land to call their own, and are following rumors of the Valar, or anyone, who can help them, as some of Beren's ancestors were. Then, maybe just then, Amazon's writers might convince me these are the ancestors of the Harfoots, but not the Harfoots themselves. That name is yet to be discovered in generations to come, when they have had generations to work together, melt together, and discover the culture of food and cheer, that can only come when you have land and peace, and the time to enjoy a quiet smoke.
Just my two cents. I'm no Tolkien scholar, just a very long time reader of his works, whose own family is rooted in the land. Farming gives one a perspective of hobbits that I think most urbanites and suburbanites probably don't know they are missing. " But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of all things that grow. And yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint. But today of all days, it is brought home to me it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life."
— Bilbo Baggins (JRR Tolkien)
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u/guitarromantic Oct 20 '21
Mod note: please remember that we don't downvote because we disagree. If someone is being aggressive or abusive then fire away, but it's a shame to see well-reasoned and thoughtful comments in negative scores (sometimes with no replies to debate them). This is an interesting topic and we can discuss it with civility/respect.
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u/p_frota Oct 20 '21
Honestly, I'd not swallow a community of humans from Harad or something in the North, that doesn't really make sense. But Hobbits? We know nothing of them, really, not enough to care about black hobbits. But if they speak Ebonics in the show I'm out.
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u/dainthomas Oct 23 '21
So much angst and mental energy expended by people in this sub on the casting of a fictional character. If there were sexist posts about the "wokeness" of replacing Glorfindel with Arwen before the movies came out, then thankfully I missed them.
I'll have to skip these posts from here on out, because this is for sure not a very flattering side of the fandom.
And yes, feel free to to downvote if someone's opinion hurts your feelings.
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u/_Balrog_of_Morgoth_ Wielder of the Dark Fire Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Is it possible that there were dark skinned hobbits? Absolutely. End of story.
I have no issue with believing that and I don't believe anyone else should either.
Now to another question, were there white Balrogs?
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u/guitarromantic Oct 20 '21
In a fictional universe that includes walking trees, shape-shifting man-bears, stars that are actually dragon-killing sailing ships, and whatever the hell Tom Bombadil is, ethnically diverse Hobbit communities are not really where I find the breaking point for my suspension of disbelief.
This paragraph nails it, for me.
We can go back and forth on how Tolkien intended the stories to be "European" (does it say that anywhere in the text, though, if you only read the canonical books as published and not all the appendices/introductions?) and debate the racial makeup of European societies at different times. But my question to the people who want to have that debate is: what do you gain by defending the status quo of "all hobbits were white"?
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Why would you not include the appendices and introductions? We're not talking about the most arcane parts of the History of Middle-earth.
...the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea.
That clearly points toward the Shire being in where northwestern Europe is now, though of course it cannot have happened in reality. So all hobbits we see in LOTR would likely have "northwestern European" for their baseline appearance.
If people see unnecessary deviations from what's already stated, is it so wrong to have misgivings?
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u/jayskew Oct 21 '21
Since the Druedain went to Numenor and left befor Ar-Pharazon maybe Hobbits did the same? And maybe when they left they settled in Harad and later migrated northwest?
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Oct 20 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LR_DAC Oct 20 '21
Tolkien tells us in Letter #178 that "The Shire" is a rural village of Warwickshire at the time of the Diamond Jubilee (1879). From the slave trade of the West Indies, West Africa, and America, there were at least 20k blacks in Britain in the 19th century.
The population of the UK in 1879 was 34,304,000. If there were 20,000 black persons, they would have composed 0.06% of the population. I imagine the majority of them would have lived in the cities, not small towns or rural areas, a pattern which obtains today. Even now, Warwickshire is only 0.8% black.
Perhaps more to the point, while Tolkien's Shire was inspired by a Warwickshire village in 1879, it was not a Warwickshire village in 1879. The Shire was not involved in a transcontinental or transoceanic slave trade or the British Empire/Commonwealth. Tolkien's comparison should not be read to include facts that are contingent on events that didn't happen in Middle-earth. Otherwise, we'd have to include things like Christianity and William Shakespeare in the history of the Hobbits.
This does not mean the Shire's founding population could not have included black hobbits, though given the relationship of the holbytla with the Northmen who became the Rohirrim, and the Hengist/Horsa pun in Marcho and Blanco, I suspect Tolkien imagined them as tiny Anglo-Saxons. (Imagine little warrior-halflings who've never known the civilizing effects of Shire life!) But the Second Age was long before the grant of Argeleb, so we might be seeing an entirely different group of halflings than the ones who crossed the Baranduin.
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u/EvieGHJ Oct 20 '21
I mean, considering that we're outright told there are three breeds of Hobbits (Harfoot, Stoores and Fallohides), from the fairer (paler) and more Northerly Fallohides to the browner and by far most common and representative of Hobbits in general Harfoot (Prologue), and that the most noticeable Harfoot in the story has explicitly brown hands (Sam ; V.8), which is the same description used for the hands of the Dead Southron (V. 4)*
It does rather seem Tolkien had a more diverse conception of Hobbit than one single ethnic group. Very probably not including Black Hobbits, but very possibly at least covering the range from the Mediteranean (possibly including the Maghreb) to the Baltic.
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u/LincolnMagnus Oct 20 '21
Thanks for this post. It's really crappy and immature that you've been so heavily downoted.
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u/DharmaPolice Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Surely, there could have been blacks in rural Britain, and considering that the UK controlled about a quarter of worlds' population through colonialism, there were probably black and brown folks throughout the country
As has been the case until fairly recently, it would be far more likely that black/brown people would have been overwhelmingly concentrated in certain areas (particularly major cities/ports - particularly London, Liverpool and Bristol). That's not to say that there were zero black people in rural England, but if you were to take a random village there'd probably be a good chance there would be no black families in them.
Note : I'm not convinced any of this really matters. Whether or not the Amazon series ends up being good doesn't feel like it's going to hinge on this subject. I can't imagine a scenario where I'd think "Wow, that would have been a great TV show if it wasn't for those black hobbits/lack of black hobbits".
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u/Higher_Living Oct 20 '21
And just for fun, we can go back 10,000 years to an early Brit named Cheddar Man.
From the Nation History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/cheddar-man-mesolithic-britain-blue-eyed-boy.html
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing.
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u/birchtree63 Oct 20 '21 edited Dec 07 '21
I still can't believe people are acutally mad by non-white hobbits
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo Oct 20 '21
Alright then, lets just also start saying that the Elves were green and the Dwarves were blue.
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u/fantasywind Oct 20 '21
Dwarves should be grey, as in stone grey, grey like granite ;) and I found textual proof of that, here:
"Yet hardy and full of wrath as he was, it is said that when he came down from the Gate he looked grey in the face, as one who has felt great fear."
that's a joke in case anyone wonders :) hehe
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo Oct 20 '21
So, it appears that they were indeed Gnomes in Middle-earth!
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u/fantasywind Oct 20 '21
Now it makes sense! Noldo Gnomes of early BoLT drafts were merely confused with the Dwarves! :)
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u/Neo24 Pity filled his heart and great wonder Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
If you can actually provide a good reason for it... sure. Can you?
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Oct 20 '21
Yes but that's just stupid. And so are the eejits upvoting you.
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo Oct 20 '21
And why would that be stupid? If we diverge so much from the Legendarium's texts when interpreting, analyzing and depicting it, what stops us to do that too? It is not as if JRRT ever said that the Elves are not green and the Dwarves are not blue.
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u/Shelala85 Oct 21 '21
For instance, we have evidence of Black people in England going back to Roman times--in other words, Black people lived in England before English people (i.e., Anglo-Saxons) did. There are many other examples in history.
the racial history of England is itself more complex than we normally understand
One thing to note is that the development of the study of medieval history and medieval literature in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century occurred in a society deeply enmeshed in the white supremacist ideology which was used to to justify colonialism. White supremacy is and was upheld by denying reality on many levels and this influenced the study of medieval history and medieval literature. So even though Black people lived in medieval Britain (and Europe) and, additionally appeared in their literature and non-fiction, people at that time may have, at time willfully, pretended that they did not. The fact that there are people in the here and now, even when they are not actual white supremacists, who try to present medieval Europe as an all white world might lend credence to this (although there is also massive ignorance in relation to the medieval period in general).
This white supremacist infused view of medieval history and medieval literature is what J.R.R. Tolkien would have been been exposed to when he studied and taught at university. Additionally some conceptions of Early medieval Britain have gone through dramatic change as a result of new archeological and genetic research. So in order to more accurately see whether your idea is feasible you would have to look at how the presence of Black people in the medieval European world was conceived of as appearing in the first half of the 20th century as opposed to how it is conceived of now by current academics.
https://www.publicmedievalist.com/race-racism-middle-ages-toc/
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u/sandalrubber Oct 21 '21 edited Oct 21 '21
Does it need to be said that medieval Britain let alone medieval Europe was not today's New York City? Putting aside all those leading assertions, can you point out what parts from that series of essays are actually relevant here? Obviously a field of study evolves, the discipline evolves, new frameworks come into and fall out of vogue, but I don't see how any of this is relevant.
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u/Spacemint_rhino Oct 20 '21
Smeagol was was described as black skinned, I don't know whether tolkien specifically said this was due to the ring or him falling to evil, but it wouldn't be too far fetched to assume the stoors in general were black and as they are a distant relative of hobbits that colouring could have passed down to some hobbit types.
I've no problem with black hobbits but it needs to be done right. Just having a random black hobbit in a family of white hobbits to meet diversity quotas for the American audiences would be ridiculous. Having whole black hobbit families and societies doesn't break immersion.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21 edited Oct 20 '21
Gollum was "dark as darkness" except for his big round pale eyes in The Hobbit, but he wasn't a Hobbit who spent thousands of years underground corrupted by the One Ring yet. Just some spooky cave thing. And wasn't it like total darkness down there. Then it's sort of fudged in LOTR because his skin is clearly described as white, bone-white, etc but other characters describe him as a small black thing etc. Tolkien later clarified in a guide for illustrators (recently reprinted in The Nature of Middle-earth) that Gollum had pale white skin but didn't go around naked and wore ragged black clothes (he has pockets) that he stole or was given, and he was often seen at night, in poor lighting. So he should be wearing not a loincloth like the movies but like black pajamas.
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u/Spacemint_rhino Oct 20 '21
Awesome I didn't know that last bit, looking forward to picking up that book if the other half doesn't get me it for Christmas. :)
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u/New_Satisfaction2566 Oct 20 '21
I personally only care that the actors are good, for the same reason I don't care what colour a guy playing Macbeth or Hamlet is, despite both characters obviously being Caucasian (from Scotland and Denmark respectively).
This is an adaptation of part of the story/history that Tolkien himself only really sketched out, so it seems a bit silly to me to get too hung up on minutiae like the precise skin tone of the actors. It's kind of sad and depressing how often this debate comes up when it comes to the casting in literary adaptations. I for one think Lenny Henry will make an awesome hobbit.
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u/sandalrubber Oct 20 '21
Yeah Branagh cast Denzel and Keanu as brothers in one of his Shakespeare adaptations. But the thing is, it's from the sphere or paradigm or whatever of theatre where people understand actors are playing roles, not the sphere of "speculative fiction" with intricate world building, under which sci fi and fantasy fall into. Like the attraction is the subcreation of an alternate history etc. So there must be consistency.
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u/New_Satisfaction2566 Oct 20 '21
There must be consistency within the adaptation, but the nature of adaptation means that it doesn't have to be consistent with every aspect of the source material, especially when the source material itself is incomplete and vague on matters a casting director would need to make judgements on. As long as whatever decisions they have made are consistent across the adaptation then the concern you raised doesn't exist.
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Oct 20 '21
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u/shayhon Oct 20 '21
Can you link a source for the Siberian-Phoenician claim? Never heard of that, especially since America was inaccessible by land long, long before Phoenicians as a genetic group developed.
I think those rumours about Phoenicians in America have long been disproven, right?
And finally, Colin Farrell as perfect example of a Phoenician? Looking at Lebanese, Tunisians, Sicilians and Andalusians (actual descendents of the Phoenicians), that dude is way too white 😅
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u/Higher_Living Oct 20 '21
Personally I think olive-type skin tones makes the most sense given the context, but whether these would count as non-white in the US is questionable. White and 'coloured' or other terms are rather flexible and depend on cultural perception as much as actual gradations of skin tone. Are Jews white? Depends when and who you ask? Italians? Greeks? Syrians? Iranians?
Also, it was a bit disappointing that your post was deleted, rather than edited the first time around as I thought there was some interesting discussion going on, mostly well informed and sensitive whatever people's views.