Let’s talk about Amazon’s upcoming series, ‘The Rings of Power’.  Recently, we’ve learned more based on a released teaser trailer and a vanity fair promo puff piece.

Naturally, I won’t spoil anything if you aren’t versed in the subject. 

Short Summary

Don’t have time to read my ramblings? Understood. Here is my quick take: It looks like a train wreck. I hope I’m wrong, but wouldn’t bet against myself.

Extended Summary

As far as we know so far, the story is based off of the Lord of the Rings ‘backstory’ referencing parts of the ’Second Age’ and the creation of the Rings of Power. Initially, it was generally understood that Amazon had bought some portion of story rights from the Tolkien estate. At first, it appeared to be parts of the Silmarillion but now there are indications that Amazon only procured rights from the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings.

I’m honestly not sure how much legendarium the show runners have legal access to but I’m guessing it generally amounts to something akin to what is found in the Silmarillion’s chapter, ‘Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age’.

The bottom line though, appears to be that the show will be based off access to some relatively small fraction of Tolkien’s lore.

Mythopoeia

The frame story for Tolkien’s writings are that of a pre-history as opposed to a ‘fictional universe‘. The stories are not meant to be seen as another world, but as a pre-history to our world and Tolkien treats himself as a historian and philologist who is deciphering and translating ancient, pre-history texts. He conceived of these texts as part of a legendarium, or collection of legends.

I’m providing this background, because there is a very significant backlash to the content people have seen so far around this, ‘Rings of Power’ series. Much of that backlash has to do with race. – A third rail of discourse. I’ve also had friends casually mention to me that, anything can go with the story because it’s ‘just’ fantasy and ‘takes place on another planet’.

“I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure. Faërie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

Before I dive in, I need to provide some further context to the casual fan. Much of the conversation stems around the concept that Tolkien ostensibly wanted his writings to provide a, ‘mythology for England’.

As an example of this perspective, a quote from the essay, ‘Tolkien’s English Mythology‘:

J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth are hailed as founding texts of modern fantasy. But his recently published commentary on the Old English poem Beowulf suggests that Tolkien saw his creative writing as a work of historical reconstruction. The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings were conceived as the original stories behind an ancient but long lost English mythology.

~ Simon J. Cook

But there are other scholarly writings that challenge this claim, or at least, take umbrage with the shorthand / simplification, such as found in the paper, A Mythology? For England?

For many years it has been a received truth that what Tolkien wanted to make was (or was initially) “a mythology for England”, a phrase which is always put within quotation marks and never provided with a source.

~ Anders Stenstrom

As much as I love Tolkien’s works, I’m only a fan. I’m not paid to be a Tolkien scholar and so my time to dig deeper is limited. Tolkien was exceedingly subtle in thought and I’m not sure how binary he’d be on this presumption of his writings being created as an English myth, but I’m of the school that more or less, that the concept informed the direction of his writings. Even Anders Stenstrom, who challenges the shorthand version goes onto report that he had uncovered a piece of writing that was a probable derivation for the notion. From a Tolkien draft letter to an unidentified, ‘Mr. Thompson’:

Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging letter. Having set myself a task, the arrogance of which I fully recognised and trembled at: being precisely to restore to the English an epic tradition and present them with a mythology of their own: it is a wonderful thing to be told that I have succeeded, at least with those who have still the undarkened heart and mind.

~ Tolkien, 1981, number 180, paragraph 1

And even such quotes aside, the ‘Englishness’ of the writings is readily apparent, even to a casual reader.

Race and Middle Earth

I’ll cut to my thesis on the subject of race and the Rings of Power show: I have significant concerns with what I’ve seen from the trailer and what I’ve read in articles but the least of my concerns is the depiction of characters by people of color.

That said, because it is such a controversy, I feel I need to spend some time sharing my thoughts on the matter even though I think it is a mountain from a molehill.

The race controversy stems from characters of black elves and black dwarves seen in the promotional materials.

The ‘pro’ black elves / dwarves generally follows these lines:

• Tolkien should be for everybody and will be more relatable if it shows people of color.
• It’s a ‘only’ a fantasy, and if a person can except wizards and dragons, why can’t they except black elves?
• If you have a problem with black elves / dwarves, you must be a racist.

The ‘anti’ black elves / dwarves argument generally follows:

• This is only being done as part of a ‘identity politics‘ and ‘wokeness‘. The Lord of the Rings has sold more than 150 million copies, translated into at least 38 languages, so, it’s already ‘for everybody’. Begging the question: must every race, creed, sexual orientation and more be represented before it can be seen as sufficiently diverse?
• Tolkien wrote his stories as part of his ‘mythology for England’, specifically ancient, anglo-saxon England. (See background references, noted above.)
• Tolkien does not describe any elves or dwarves as black.
• Biologically, it doesn’t make sense for dwarves to be black because they live underground.
• Tolkien did write about people of color, specifically in the realms of Harad, so if they showrunners want to be inclusive, why not expand on stories involving them?

I actually agree with a little from each camp and disagree with each camp.

Pro Multi-Ethnic Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits

From the ‘pro’ team, I’m an advocate of inclusion in life and we need to see a diversity of people in our media. However, ‘inclusivity’ is a broad idea, and it might need some guardrails. For example, if the the new series doesn’t include a deaf, asian who identifies as transgender, then does that mean that the ‘Rings of Power’ was not sufficiently inclusive?

That’s question may be a bit of a straw man fallacy, leading to a slippery slope fallacy, but really, what is the answer there? Are we looking at quotas?

Secondly, from the ‘pro’ camp, although I don’t like the implications in stating that middle earth is fantasy and therefore anything goes, I have to acknowledge that black elves or dwarves really don’t tax my suspension of disbelief more than a halfling. I can shrug, nod my head and accept a black elf.

“The association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the “nursery,” as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories

On the other hand, and for example, if the Lord of the Rings would be reworked to include women in the Fellowship, I’d have a problem because I think that the theme of brotherhood is inherent in the story. – And it should not be forgotten that the depiction of masculinity has been praised.

“But, essentially, the well-written men of the Lord Of The Rings have given us a beautiful example of healthy masculinity; one that allows men to cry without shame, to experience deep love and affection, to treat women and girls with the same thoughtfulness with which they like to be treated, to create and maintain friendships, to express themselves, and to treat all others with the kindness and respect that they deserve.”

~Lord Of The Rings at 20: how the fantasy epic offers up the perfect antidote to toxic masculinity, Kayleigh Dray

Sometimes gender, race or creed, etc. are important (or even fundamental) to the story and the character and sometimes, they are not.

On both sides of this argument, I see too many people who argue canon from the perspective of the Peter Jackson movies. The Jackson movies are not canon. That it is an adaptation. And although I love the movies and generally think them masterpieces, there are liberties taken in the movies that are far more jarring to me than black elves. For example: super-hero Legolas single-handedly taking down a Mumakil in Jackson’s Return of the King. The pigmentation of an actor, really doesn’t change the story at all but Legolas single-handedly taking down a Mumakil most certainly has story implications, not the least being that with dozen or so super-powered elves could single-handedly take down the armies of Mordor. So, if you want to be outraged by Elven variations from Tolkien’s story, let’s start witht that scene!

So, although the idea of creating an ancient English mythology might have been an important driver to Tolkien, such as his desire to create fictional languages, it is not the driver for me, the reader as to why I love his writings. So, the skin color of a character doesn’t change their motivation. (- Unless, *gasp*, the storyrunners decide to bring such race politics into their adaptation and we see black elves not being treated equally to white elves or something similar. In which case: I’d say that is the type of political allegory that Tolkien hated and that would undermine the archetypical monomyth that makes the stories timeless. )

Anti Multi-Ethnic Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits

From the anti-team, I do, generally subscribe to the idea that Tolkien had something in mind like creating an ancient mythology for England. Emphasis on ancient. Because, of course, England’s history is full to the brim with people of color, that said, I suspect Tolkien was more focused on ancient Celtic history.

Because of this, I also think that a more authentic way to be inclusive would be to expand on stories regarding the Haradrim. The Haradrim, or Easterlings, were a dark skinned race of people in Middle Earth and there could be perfectly valid story lines that include them.

Tangentially to these arguments, the people who argue against the idea of black elves and dwarves and ‘forced diversity’ counter by asking, ‘Is it racist to have an all asian cast of Mulan? Or an for Wakanda to be made up of just black people?’ ‘Should we have male Amazons in Wonder Woman?’

They fired their premier Tolkien advisor (Tom Shippey), who was originally charged with keeping the story true to Tolkien. There are rumors that he was replaced with Mariana Rios Maldonado, who was cited in the Vanity Fair article. Few had heard of who her but she is an ‘Equality and Diversity Officer’ and supposedly a Tolkien scholar. (Although we can’t be certain she’s a replacement since Amazon won’t officially indicate who their new Tolkien Scholars are.)

The current theory is that Shippey was a good watchdogs shooting down stupid ideas and was then axed under the pretext of having talked to a magazine about the series.

It is also, rightfully, scaring Tolkien fans that Amazon is spending more time promoting the concepts of cast diversity than, you know, actual stories and characters. The Vanity Fair article got off on the wrong foot right away because it started a preemptive attack on the fans and didn’t spend much time discussing the actual content of the series. Amazon then doubled down on this approach with assinie ‘interviews’ with supposed Tolkien influencer, ‘Super-Fans’ who don’t, apparently, have any content on Tolkien and spend their time doing canned interviews about how great all the diversity was in the sneak peak they were granted.

Diversity Double Standard in Hollywood

Both sides of the argument have massive, breathless hyperbole and there seem to be few calm and reasoned arguments. (Such is the state of debate, these days, I suppose…)

The Vanity Fair article rhetorically and preemptively asked, “Who are these people that feel so threatened or disgusted by the idea that an elf is Black or Latino or Asian?” I think such statements drive home the notion that there was an agenda here that was outside of picking the best person for the role. And then they bait fans who might feel differently about the lore by implying that they are disgusted racists. I thought their goal was to reach more people not to offend existing fans who might have a different opinion on what is authentic to the story?

On the other side, people have spammed the comments board with a paraphrased quote from Tolkien that implies that the creators of the series are evil, “Evil is not capable of creating anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” Having people of color play characters that aren’t explicitly described might not qualify as, ‘evil’.

But I’ll finish up by linking to a video essay that I think does a really good job of highlighting a fundamental question about diversity in Hollywood vs authenticity. The author highlights that there are two sides: that a story needs to be either authentic to its original source and author’s intentions or it needs to be diverse. e.g. Mulan needs to either be authentic to its history, or we should expect a cast of equal parts non-asians whenever the story is depicted.

I could go on, but that rabbit hole keeps going. The idea of inclusivity and diversity are very, very worth considering. But, as I said before, for me, black elves/dwarves doesn’t bother me. I’ve only spent this much time discussing it because it’s the elephant in the room when critiquing the content we’ve seen so far.

Story, Character and Aesthetics

That exhausting controversy aside, I still think that the show is shaping up to be a hot mess. Understanding that this story is, by definition, an adaptation, the more it varies from the source material, the less likely it will be as epic as the original. – That is, unless the writers are as good or better than Tolkien. – And I know where I’m placing my bet.

By definition, this story will be an adaptation and changes will need to be made. But if you start stripping away the underpinnings of the narative and mythology, then I’m not sure you’re making a Middle Earth story any longer and you can’t be too surprised if fans of that story are disgruntled. 

Some quick hits:

• Galadriel now a sword wielding, armor wearing warrior who leads armies. (Not even joking.)  Galadriel was nothing like this in any of Tolkien’s writings. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t strong nor a leader. In fact, she was one of Tolkien’s favorite characters but her strength came from wisdom, not arms who was responsible for an entire kingdom. Now she’s climbing ice-cliffs with daggers.

• In the Vanity Fair article, we’re told that there is an elf and a single mother human have a forbidden love affair. Note: these characters aren’t in any of the Tolkien writings, which have only four elf / human relationships. These stories were a big deals in canon, rife with symbolism of love and mortality. (For the geek record, those relationships were: Mithrellas and Imrazor, Tuor and Idril, Beren and Luthien and Arwen and Aragorn.) These romances were very insignificant to the stories of Middle Earth. – Especially the love of Beren and Luthien, which was fundamental to the Silmarillion and the love between Arwen and Aragorn which was a primary motivator for the actions of Aragorn and all of his undertakings in the Lord of the Rings. I’m highly skeptical of the show-runners interjection of a new such love affair into canon and emphasizing that she’s a ‘single-mom’. This reads as a contrivance to try and imbue the story with modern soap-opera like drama.

• Overall, I’m skeptical of the interjection of new major characters. The idea that they show-runners felt that they needed to generate a new one given the massive amount of lore already available, seems foolish. There are 245 named characters in the Silmarian. And even if they can only contractually reference 20% of them, that is still 50 characters. The second age spans 3,441 years. I think they already have their work cut out for them and they don’t need to create new variants.

• The trailer starts with hobbits (actually, ‘harfoots, a precursor to the hobbits), even though hobbits play no noted roles in stories of those times. – A fact that underpins the concepts of what makes them so remarkable in the Hobbit and LotR. The Hobbits were under the radar of the ‘wise’ before the Lord of the Rings. The events before that book are not their story. Shoehorning them into the events before the Lord of the Rings book robs them of their surprising role from that story.

• Elrond is described as ‘political’ by the show runners. Elrond for president! I suspect that would be very low on the list of adjectives for the character by most fans and scholars. Remember how great it was when the fantasy Star Wars movies were made political in the prequels? Exactly…

• I hate the elf catching the arrow scene. That shot is taking cues from the worst aspects of the Peter Jackson movies. (Like Legolas skating on a shield down steps; not to the absolute mention super-hero level action in the the scene with the Mûmakil.) Yes, the elves and dwarves and men (especially of Númenor), were meant to be exceptional, they were also not meant to be comic book action characters. Christopher Tolkien said, “They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.” As proof to my willingness and openness to accepting adaptations, I’ll say that I disagree that the Jackson movies, ‘eviscerated the Lord of the Rings, but those Legolas superhero action scenes were forerunners to the action scenes in the Jackson Hobbit movies. Those movies most certainly eviscerated that book. If we’re getting more of the same in this new series, we’ll have the same results.

• The series story runners (J. D. Payne and Patrick McKay) are two no-name writers who had no IMDB credits before this. None of their projects had ever come to fruition, but they are known to have worked on the horrible J.J. Abram’s Rebooted Star Trek. (Abrams: the killer of cherished series like Star Trek and Star Wars.) 

• Diretor J. A. Bayona is the no-talent director behind the terrible Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. 

• The CGI graphics look like something from a video game console. A quote from an article, “There’s a certain look shared by many modern fantasy television shows; a glossy, textureless sheen that makes picturesque landscapes look like computer screensavers, and knights in armor look like high-effort cosplay.“

• Thematically, the teaser trailer is not at all evocative. It’s just cobbled together random scenes that highlight non-canon ‘story’. It looks like it was created as a work of fan fiction from someone who only ever saw the terrible, terrible, terrible Hobbit movies and who only ever read cliff notes about the books.

Tolkien On Fairy-stories

I don’t know how to wrap this up with a nice bow. I’m sure I could go on… I think the show looks bad, for reasons that have nothing to do with the skin color of elves or dwarves. That said, I repeat, I sincerely hope I’m wrong and that I’m mistaking the evidence. I’ll leave the last words to the Professor, who, not unsurprisingly, sums up many of these considerations far more eloquently than I can.

“Studies [on the origin of fairy-stories] are, however, scientific (at least in intent); they are the pursuit of folklorists or anthropologists: that is of people using the stories not as they were meant to be used, but as a quarry from which to dig evidence, or information, about matters in which they are interested.

…with regard to fairy stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasent’s words I would say: ‘We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.’

Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folk-lore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien On Fairy-stories