Fellowship of the Fans

Diversity - The Double Standard (9/6/2022)

Did you know that Tolkien's Middle Earth was meant to serve as an origin story for the British people to replace the origin stories they lost when they were oppressed by the French.

Which brings me to one of the problems with diversifying Tolkien's work, in that Tolkien's work—while it does fall under the genre of fantasy with The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings being prime examples of where his work falls into those categories, Middle Earth is also a mythology, which is particularly true for the first and second age, but this holds true for the appendixes which is the material they've the rights for.

People jump to the question of whether one would cast a white actor to play the role of Black Panther in part I think because Black Panther was meant to replace what many African Americans had lost—their mythology, yet it's also the African narrative most people happen to be familiar with when it comes to African lore.

And instantly people jump to, "but it's not the same thing. Black Panther being race changed is wrong because of what happened in the past—look at all these characters that were race swapped."

Yet two wrongs don't make a right.

There's no getting around the fact this is a definite double standard, but perhaps it should be framed this way.

Someone wants to make an adaption of either the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. Someone comes along and says, "we need to modernize this for a modern audience, to represent how the world really is." So then they start casting not only Indo-Aryan and the other ethnic groups which have historically been in India from the beginning of India's history.

And I'm not talking just white people. In fact, white people would get left out of this because white people have enough privilege that white actors and actresses don't need roles anymore. I'm talking Blacks, Asians from Korea, China and Japan, Native Americans, Hisapnics.

They then they go and tell people, "well, we stayed true to the Mahabharata" or "well, we stayed true to the Ramayana," while saying they've modernized these classics from India so that a modern audience could relate to these works. Except the only resemblance is the names of characters and locations, small Easter eggs here and there. It's not even meant to be a modern retelling—you know, an adaption of the work that takes place in a modern city, and since it's in English it would be set in America, or Britian.

No, we're talking about the story happening at the time was told, because whoever created the Mahabharata or the Ramayana was wrong for not including people that weren't like them in the work and because of our modern sensibilities we need to diversify to readdress the balance.

"But Yemi, this is different. They didn't persecute Black people."

Ah, but one can argue they did as historical figures like Ghandi was indeed at one point racist to Black people, thinking them inferior to himself and because of that there are people arguing statues of him should be destroyed, taking completely out of context the fact his understanding of race was a reflection of how white people saw the people of India as inferior to them, but superior to Blacks. And eventually, Ghandi realized this was wrong.

"But Yemi, we're talking about changing the race of white people?"

So, two wrongs make a right now?

It's a double standard, hands down, but again we're going back to blaming a generation of white people for the wrongs done in the past. And people understand better now what effect changing a character that reps a minority group does. It's also not a matter of lacking diversity, because we've got works like The Wiz, and The Dragon Prince, and ElfQuest.

And fans also like Wizard of Oz Brakfast at Tiffany's and Gone With the Wind. Of course, the three I just mentioned—the female lead these days would get slammed for not being a strong woman when they were. People also like Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU, Xena from Xena: Warrior Princess, Eleven from Stranger Things, but apparently they don't exist do they?