Fellowship of the Fans

Hobbits - Dirty Multiracial Tribe? (9/7/2022)

So, here are the questions I want to answer.

- Is the diversity we see within Tolkien's work?
- Is what Lenny Harry said about the Hobbits being a tribe true?
- Is there any negative connotations to the way the Hobbits are portrayed?

I'd originally planned on separating these questions out, only to find myself realizing that—um, the questions are really to interlinked with each other to not discuss at one time.

And—to make it clear, they are Hobbits no matter how much the cast and crew claim otherwise.

So, one of the things I want to make clear. As I've said in other places, Tolkien – He Said What He Proposed to Say.

The basis for the multi-cultural tribe as Lenny Harry said is this—Harfoot were described as "being browner of skin" and thus from there the conclusion was made that they were brown in skin color, completely ignoring that the comparison was "browner of skin" than another Hobbit type which was obviously white to a "fairer of skin" for the third and final Hobbit type. Tolkien never said they were brown of skin, but this is one of those cases Tolkien clearly described the Race.

Yet we've skin colors ranging from white to Black, because they envisioned the Hobbits as tribe of people that came together. Let's not forget that in Britian that Black people only make up 2% of the modern population and that they wouldn't have made that kind of dent, but there are others of color mixed in there to try and snag from the native peoples of Australia and India, although I don't think they were given speaking lines like the white Hobbit and our Sadoc Burrows was.

But, calling this a tribe is insulting to actual real life tribes which haven't gone extinct. You've got them in Africa, in Eurasia, in the Americas, in Oceana and while they are super diverse from tribe to tribe they are not super diverse within a given tribe. The only tribes that are super diverse like that are ones that have come together in modern times where there has been a melting pot of people, such as homeless groups--

Ah. Yes. Maybe that explains the dirty Hobbits.

They're trying to touch upon homeless people?

I mean, they did say they were making this relatable to a modern audience.

Is this, if this were their intent a good move?

I mean, these Hobbits are dirtier than Homeless people

But you've also got the message that tribal people are dirty.

You've got the message that Travelers (which includes Irish Travelers who are white and the Roma/Romani (Gypsy) who aren't) who are now dirty, and I as am American came to that conclusion because Lenny Harry described the Hobbits as a nomadic tribal group and this is the nomadic tribal group of Britian, which ironically didn't see anybody on the show from this group.

And you've got the Irish people who picked up on the horrible Irish accent and remember the prejudices levied against them historically by the British people and feel like they're being called dirty, while again noticing no Irish cast and crew.

This is why you don't simply hit check boxes for diversity when you diversify the cast, you think it all the way through.

And this – um. Yeah. The fact stuff like this happens is why when I start hearing the diversity card—virtue signaling from the cast and crew, that I go nope, I'm going to get racist stuff like this and other not so great messages that were never intended to be in there.