Reflection and Analysis

Rings of Power - Disa - Uh, Nope! (3/7/2022)

So, while I was interested in Rings of Power, I can't help but feel they've done wrong by Disa.

Majorly.

I guess the first thing to address is artistic license which is being used a defense, but the truth is if you're having to use this as your go to defense than the artistic license the person took is wrong, but it means they and those defending them have a very wrong concept of how artistic license works. To quote TV Tropes, "It's about putting the story first – after all, the most important thing in fiction is telling a good story."

Let's start with the beard.

It clearly states that both male and female Dwarfs have beards, right? So why does she not have a beard.

The artistic license argument tries saying this is so it's easier for us to identify her as female, yet as someone in the LotR fandom I've seen plenty of renderings of female Dwarves which show that removing the beard isn't needed, because you simply need to make the female beards look different from the male beards. Meaning that the artistic license wasn't needed. Like, at all.

Yet, what does this mean? It also seems like they're saying someone who is born female who has what society has deemed a masculine trait can not be considered female, that any female who has the genetic oddity of growing facial hair is in fact not female. In other words, the thought process is backwards, as it is relying on gendered stereotypes regarding what men and women are, what male and female are.

Which brings me to the second issue, that fact they selected a Black actress to play Disa, which honestly the only reason to do this was to be politically correct. Making her Black, or I should say colored adds nothing to the story line. Bringing up the fact there were mentions of Hobbits and Elves of color doesn't work either, because skin color isn't just black and white, so why not cast say a Hispanic actress to play her, which is more in line with the demographics of Europe and recognizes that there are places outside of Middle Earth.

A Hispanic actress would definitely be more believable given the fact The Hobbit already sees her brother and sons cast as white, yet we the audience are supposed to believe she's related to them. Or are they also going to be culturally recast just to be politically correct?

And, yes—I do think Tolkien would take issue with the casting despite wanting others to build upon his world, because--

Well, for starters building upon the world doesn't mean tearing it down. It's one of the mistakes I see fanfic writers make that when they're working with another person's sandcastle they can tear it completely down and build a facsimile. Now, having not seen it yet, I wouldn't argue that it's that drastic of an issue.

And to be clear, when I say Tolkien would take issue I don't mean taking issue with casting people of color in certain roles, but more of him taking issue with casting people of color in certain roles just to make a political point, one which didn't stop to think about the message sent to Black women by the casting choice, because as far as I know there aren't any other Black women cast in this adaption and I find myself cringing, because Dwarves have a very specific way of acting which in turn plays into the negative stereotypes set up in media for Black women.

Which, is that the real reason they decided to cast a Black woman as the only known female Dwarf, because Black women best fit that stereotype?

Oh, and there is this "this is how the world is" argument which actually tells me the person making the arguments doesn't know their Middle Earth lore and that Middle Earth represents Europe and that there is an "outside" to Middle Earth, so no—it actually doesn't make sense to have this diverse of casting, but effectively this is like casting a historical piece based on modern demographics. Mind you, I'm saying this not referencing historical pieces which are meant to be AU or meant as satire.

Nor do I buy into J.A Bayona's stance of looking at LotR through the lens of growing up in Spain, "We had a dictatorship for 40 years, so you notice the repercussions of war and the shadow of the past. I think this is all about the repercussions of war. There is an idea that feels very faithful to Tolkien, which is intuition. Galadriel has an intuition that things are not fixed, and there is still something lurking."

This is not a work written by someone from Spain, but something written by someone from Britain. While it is definitely influenced by Tolkien's experiences with war, Tolkien's experiences with war wasn't colored by a forty-year dictatorship in his own country. Instead, the wars which influenced his work were the medieval wards influenced by inheritance scuffles—that's pre-LotR, while LotR is the war influenced by Word War II.

And he doesn't stop to think that the reason Peter Jackson's movies are so well loved is because they chose not to take artistic license with the canon material. He actually recognized that there was an outside to Middle Earth because he was well versed in the canon material, which was why he brought in Black actors in the final movies when the Oliphants entered the picture, which were creatures from outside of Middle Earth, from the equivalent of the African continent.

Me, I was already iffy in picking this up having seen some of the tailor for the Rings of Power and seeing the filming quality wasn't on the level of the Peter Jackson series, yet I was willing to give the series the benefit of the doubt, but given the artistic license taken, license which wouldn't have been taken if those involved actually knew the canon material as they would know that Africa (it wouldn't be called that mind you) exists outside of Middle Earth, as does Asia, that Middle Earth isn't like the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender where what we see is it.

Well, I don't have high expectations for Rings of Power anymore. And the world isn't beloved because of Peter Jackson. It's beloved because of Tolkien.

Which, why take an issue with the casting? Isn't that racist?

Actually, what is racist is token representation, or representation just for the sake of representation. When Tolkien talked about building upon his world, he meant the time periods he didn't cover and the places he didn't cover, yet those options are being ignored in favor of what we're actually getting. Because as someone who knows the lore, a Middle Earth where there is no place representing Africa, no place representing Asia, that tries to instead represent the entire world's population within Middle Earth is just not believable.

And I'm really tired of token representation, but--

I guess the best way to sum up my distaste for what's going on is when I originally saw Disa I didn't think it was Disa because there's no beard, but an original character created to help flesh out the story line a bit, a character who was actually from the Southern Lands that aren't mentioned that much, which to me was exciting! And now I've learned it's not and I find myself majorly let down.

And yes, that original character would have been artistic license, but she would have actually existed to actually help further the story along rather than artistic license for the purpose of being politically correct. And those praising the Rings of Power for it's diverse casting—would they be doing this if they knew there was another option, a better option? Would they be saying this if they knew that what they're doing is actually erasing the diversity Tolkien already created?

This is no improving on what Tolkien did, not when it's so obvious they don't know Tolkien canon in the first place. So, how can I actually trust Rings of Power to get other things correct when it didn't stop and think about some super important things regarding race and how it should be represented in Middle Earth. Because give me those humans from the Southern Lands. Give me those creatures from there as well. Don't pretend they don't exist.