Anyway, I found this interesting article on the 'diversity' issue.
Unfortunately, the article is full of lies and false information. I'd gladly go into it, if this had not already been discussed here or in other threads, or if it weren't self-explanatory to anyone familiar with
Tolkien and with a modicum of common sense left.
Only that much:
In any case, the idea that people of color were not part of Britain or Northern Europe in the ancient and medieval past is false.
This is just complete nonsense. In the Middle
Ages, the amount of PoC in Europe was less than 0.0001% in rural areas and less than 0.1% in
cities. Every reasonably educated European knows that: Yes, there have been some PoCs in Europe, but that was an absolute exception and completely rare, especially in rural areas. And most people lived in small villages or single farms back in the Middle Ages. Even if more and more articles by woke activists are popping up that claim the opposite: This is simply fake news and propagandalf 🧙♂️ uh... propaganda.
In antique metropolises, which were more diverse, such as ancient Rome, there may have been a slightly higher proportion of PoC, but even there the proportion of African descent is unlikely to have been more than 2%, and these were usually either slaves, freedmen, gladiators, or mercenaries.
In ancient times, before the Middle Ages, there were larger cities especially in southern Europe, which were culturally more developed than the northern celtic and germanic tribes, and which conducted a lot of trade with other countries. So there was definitely more "diversity" than during the Middle Ages, but that still has nothing in common with the casting decisions of modern series. Of course, there were more tanned people in the south, first of all because it's naturally much warmer there than in northern Europe, but there was also a cultural and economic exchange, especially in the Mediterranean region with Asia Minor and northern Africa like Egypt.
But also in North Africa (near the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea) there were (and are) not many PoC with dark skin according to today's terms, but rather the "Mediterranean" type. And it's very, very certain that Tolkien, in his descriptions of dark or brown skin, meant that Mediterranean skin type when he spoke of
Dunlendings,
Gondorians (who were not of
Numenorean ancestry) or the people of Near(!)-Harad including the natives at
Umbar.
Another problem with the series is that the cast is not really diverse in the true sense of the word. For a series set in the
Second Age, for example, I'd have expected a storyline in
the East (
Rhun), too. Where are the Asian-looking actors in the cast? They don't exist. The sole purpose here is to depict the social conditions of modern US cities, which for me personally, as a European who is not "woke" or completely left-leaning, destroys the immersion from the start. But for an American who is not familiar with European mythology and history, this probably may not matter.
For me (and I'm obviously not alone in this), in any case, it's a form of cultural appropriation. I don't want to see white Europeans playing Africans in the "Black Panther" cast either. And I don't want to see PoC or white swordsmen in main roles in Asian fantasy/Wuxia movies like "Hero" either, just to meet some quota or because these fools think you can only identify with characters who have the same skin color as you. Because that's the real racism. Immersion works through authenticity, not skin color or minority quotas. Otherwise, I'd also have to be upset that left-handed people and people who wear glasses are underrepresented, for example.I want an authentic, exciting, immersive story - and not to be represented by actors who wear glasses or are left-handed. However, if a character is explicitly described as left-handed or wearing glasses in the original / book, it should not be the opposite in the film adaptation. I hope that such banal examples will make the problem a little clearer to some people...
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By the way, here's some more "funny" information about the "superfans":
