Why did the producers of the hobbit and LOTR scrap out black people in the movies? They made use of no black characters. There was a rumor that people were advised not to audition of the “extra” roles if they are not white skinned.
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Why did the producers of the hobbit and LOTR scrap out black people in the movies? They made use of no black characters. There was a rumor that people were advised not to audition of the “extra” roles if they are not white skinned.
The lord of the rings was written a very long time ago by an English white man. In those times, there was so much more discrimination towards black people. This discrimination is reflected in the lack of representations of them in the media. The normal thing was for all the characters to be white and a white writer would probably not even think of adding black characters just for the sake of representation because that would have been abnormal, and there had been the chance it could accidentally have been attributed with political instances that the author himself might or might not have defended.
There were no black people in Europe (which is not entirely truth if you think about the Moors in Spain and many testimonies of groups of black people living here and there, but let’s say there was not) but we’re talking about fantasy. There were no elves, or hobbits, or orcs, and following this line of reasoning, the thought that a black character seems more unlikely than any of them is just illogical.
Tolkien’s writings, from top to bottom, are based purely upon European myths, stories, and legends. Tolkien felt that Northern European/Germanic/Baltic/Finnish mythology was sorely under represented in the world’s literature of the time; owing to the fact that most of it was lost in the Christianization of Europe. He wanted to compose a “fictional” mythology to represent and amalgamize what had been before.
So yes, there is an almost complete lack of any darkskinned non-European people in the Lord of the Rings. The story itself is fundamentally North European and white. Before anyone decries this as “racist” or “Eurocentrist”, pretend for a moment that the Lord of the Rings were an African or Asian story and the characters and people portrayed in the epic were entirely black or Asian. Would anyone object to the absence of white Caucasian people? Would anyone claim that the writer was somehow racist or prejudiced in anyway? I think not. That said, is there any reason why people of all races cannot admire and enjoy the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien? Are the stories for the enjoyment of only one group of people? Absolutely not.