All Are Welcome in Middle-Earth.
What we’ve seen so far of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series has racists crawling out of the woodwork. Let’s talk about it — and do better.
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Content warning: Discussions of racism/quotes of racist comments included.
Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, has only even dropped one trailer and a handful of images, and people have already been losing their minds with criticism.
Some of it I empathize with (“Why does Daddy Bezos have to have his hands in everything I love?”). Some of it I could take or leave (“Why don’t the female dwarves have beards?”). And some of it is not only premature, but so needlessly aggressive (“They’re gonna RUIN THE LORE! They’re DESTROYING MY MEMORIES and RUINING MY LIFE”).
And then there’s the racism.
From the expected “not racist but” comments: “I’m just saying, Tolkien said the elves were fair, it’s not racist to say they should be light-skinned, I’m just going of of the established lore.”To the anti-diversity comments: “Why do they have to bring woke culture into it? It’s just forced diversity. God, just make your own stories if it’s such a problem!”
To the blatant racism — I’ve unfortunately seen multiple comments saying things along the lines of “Keep Middle-Earth white,” or throwing hate at the non-white actors for having the audacity to take part in the series.
The sad thing is, if you’ve been paying attention to the world we live in — like, even a little bit, just a tiny occasional glimpse while your head is pulled out of the sand for a breath — this doesn’t really surprise you. And if you read any of those comments and go, “Well what’s wrong with those? That’s not racist, they have a point.”…then my friend, you probably have not been pulling your head out of the sand.
And it goes beyond the awful comments (of which, nonetheless, there have been entirely too many). There is an active fight from racists to keep people from speaking out against racism, acknowledging that the racism is happening, or even from being welcoming to non-white fans.
You can’t argue, as many do, that it’s just a “difference of opinion,” when the racists are actively working to silence anyone who welcomes POC to the Lord of the Rings community, but that’s what’s been happening. Notably, one of my favorite TikTok creators has been having videos mass-reported and deleted for weeks for making such controversial statements as, “Everyone is welcome to this fan community, regardless of race, whether as a fan or as an actor/creator.”
Reports of similar things happening to others who make the same kinds of sentiments have come up a few times since.
Listen, I’m a long-time fan of Lord of the Rings.
It’s been a huge part of my life for over 20 years — since I was only about 11 years old. I still have the replica of The One Ring that got for Christmas in 2002. I care deeply about the lore, have read the books every couple years since middle school, have read The Silmarillion multiple times, and own several books about the history, architecture, weapons, cultures, and languages of Middle-Earth.And any way you cut it — from a fandom perspective, a lore perspective, a “true to the source material” perspective , etc.— there is no excuse for this racism, this adamant resistance to allowing people who aren’t white to see themselves reflected in one of the most influential fantasy worlds in film and literature.
The lore doesn’t justify the racism. And even if it did, that doesn’t mean we as fans should too.
We have to be willing to criticize the things we love.I don’t think any of us would disagree that Middle-Earth is beautiful. Its history is rich; its languages impressive; its geography vast and varied. It is full of music, magic, adventure. It’s a place that feels like home, where even in the darkest times, we know that good will triumph. Where even when victory doesn’t feel like we expected, and the future is complicated and uncertain, there’s still joy and light and comfort.
That does not exempt that world from criticism.
The Lord of the Rings wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t fully representative. Hell, there were hardly any women in it, and that’s been a source of criticism for at least as long as I’ve been a fan, and almost certainly longer. Sometimes the omissions of Lord of the Rings are obvious.
That isn’t an excuse to stand by them. It’s all the more reason to expand the world, to keep building on what we love and sharing it with others.
It’s not forced diversity. It’s looking at the world around you — the very real world full of very real people — and recognizing that every single person in it deserves to have a place that feels like home the way Middle-Earth does for many of us.
Maybe some people are right. Maybe a case could be made that people of color simply did not exist in Tolkien’s original vision of Middle-Earth. It’s unlikely, but let’s roll with that for a minute.
We have carried our love of these books, films, fandoms, and communities for decades. We have shared it with our loved ones, with the next generation. We as fans have made it a world that endures through the changes of our own by forwarding its themes of perseverance, compassion, and a determination to heal the world — themes as old and immortal as the Elves.
It doesn’t matter what the racial demographic of Middle-Earth was. The author wasn’t perfect. There, I said it. So while the “purity of the lore” argument is flimsy at best, it’s also not something the fans should cling to in defiance of the core themes of the story that are as relevant as ever. There’s no room for gatekeeping, especially rooted in racism.
Whether as fans or actors or something else; whether to enjoy the story, to add to it, to make art about it, or even to take part in it; everyone has a seat at the table — for breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, and supper, if they want it.
