Counter-Currents
1,480 words
Tolkien world experienced two huge events this month.
Amazon announced last week the diverse cast for its new Lord of the Rings series. Shortly thereafter, Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien’s editor and the guardian of his father’s legacy, died. (Hopefully, there was no connection between the events.)
Both events signal a change for Tolkien’s mythology.
Christopher Tolkien has closely guarded his father’s legacy for years and insisted that all media based on Middle-Earth must accurately represent the author’s intention. With Tolkien’s death and the cast announcement, it appears the new series may differ a lot from the classic film’s series. The Tolkien family may relinquish its tight control over LOTR-media and let the poz in. The descendants no longer worry have to worry about the old man’s misgivings.
The cast of the show is very different from the films’ Nordic cast. At least three of the actors are non-white and another handful are racially amorphous. Hardly any of the actors look Anglo-Saxon; nearly all of them look ugly.
‘The Lord of the Rings’ has found its fellowship!
Robert Aramayo, Nazanin Boniadi, Joseph Mawle, Owain Arthur, Ismael Cruz Cordova + more make up the cast of the upcoming Amazon series: pic.twitter.com/UtA9VpGtk6
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) January 14, 2020
This is the natural result of journalists hyperventilating about the lack of diversity in fantasy media. The original film series featured an all-white cast of protagonists battling inhuman Orcs, Uruk-hai and other assorted uglies. Critics were uncomfortable with the implications.
“`The Lord of the Rings’ is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour,” Guardian columnist John Yatt wrote in 2002. “The races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a BNP leaflet. Dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced – it’s amazing he doesn’t go the whole hog and give them a natural sense of rhythm.”
Liberal writer Andrea Lewis complained that LOTR pales in comparison to the diverse majesty of The Matrix series in a 2004 column highlighted by the great Sam Francis:
The “Rings” films are like promotional ads for those tired old race and gender paradigms that were all the rage back in author J. R. R. Tolkien’s day. Almost all of the heroes of the series are manly men who are whiter than white. They are frequently framed in halos of blinding bright light and exude a heavenly aura of all that is Eurocentric and good. Who but these courageous Anglo-Saxon souls can save Middle Earth from the dark and evil forces of the world?
Journalist David Ibata wondered whether the films were actually the “‘Lord’ of racism.”
“Certain scenes in ‘[The Two] Towers’ remind me of some of the most pernicious images of the cinematic past, from ‘Beau Geste’ to western serials to John Wayne war flicks: that of faceless brown hordes hurling themselves against a band of white heroes,” Ibata wrote for the Chicago Tribune in 2003.
Peter Jackson tried to placate this criticism with the inclusion of multiple non-white extras in his disappointing Hobbit series. Controversy surrounded that project after a Pakistani actress complained a casting director told her the film was only looking for light-skinned thespians. The casting director was fired and Jackson assured the press that they didn’t just want light-skinned actors. However, all the Hobbit stars were white.
It’s surprising to read the reactions to the Hobbit controversy. Some critics argued it was okay for the film to only request light-skinned actors and that this was a whole lot about nothing. If this incident happens with the new show, it would be a major controversy for months, every critic would denounce the show’s producers, and more heads would roll than a mere casting director.
LOTR’s unbearable whiteness—and that of the fantasy genre as a whole—still agitates critics.
“There are no black people on ‘Game of Thrones.’ You don’t see one black person in ‘Lord of the Rings,’” Star Wars actor John Boyega said in a 2017 interview. “I ain’t paying money to always see one type of person on-screen. Because you see different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, every day. Even if you’re a racist, you have to live with that. We can ruffle up some feathers.”
This criticism has increased since the release of the last Hobbit in 2014. Game of Thrones was a far more pozzed creation than the LOTR films, yet critics still could not cope with the nearly all-white cast. The show had a legion of STRONG WOMEN characters and upheld AWFL (affluent white female liberal values) values. In contrast, LOTR expressed a right-wing worldview based on a pagan-Christian synthesis. Regardless of the differences, critics frowned upon GoT for the same reasons they disliked LOTR.
The criticism got to GoT’s producers. The canceled prequel series was set to have a very diverse cast led by female showrunners.
Newer fantasy shows try their best to start off with diverse casts. The Witcher features several non-white characters, even though the book series and video games depict only white characters. A redheaded female character is portrayed as a frizzy-haired mulatto in the show. Other white characters are played by Africans. The changes were praised by critics but despised by fans, particularly in China.
Films and TV series that are supposed to be based on actual history now include anachronistic diversity. The 2018 film Mary Queen of Scots depicts the tragic monarch surrounded by non-white courtiers and servants. BBC historical dramas are now likely to feature black English kings and queens. Left-wing scholars and writers insist that this is actually historically accurate and this is necessary to push back against the “fallacy” that “Great Britain is predominantly a white nation.”
“A multiracial Britain existed before revisionists and colonialist apologisers began white-washing books and tomes,” British journalist Hanna Flint argues.
Historical dramas that lack sufficient diversity can expect a serious lashing in the press. 2017’s Dunkirk was lambasted for its depiction of an all-white British military. 1917 made sure to include South Asian soldiers in the trenches to ward off this assault.
Fantasy’s more progressive sibling, science fiction, is more advanced in featuring non-white stars. The original Star Trek was a pioneer in diversity and liberal elite values. The aforementioned Matrix was replete with racial and gender diversity. The new Star Wars trilogy was extolled for its non-white stars—such as John Boyega—and powerful female leads.
However, the new Star Wars flopped in part due to its obsession with satisfying the dictates of left-wing journos. Chinese audiences hated Boyega’s character and promotional materials made sure to keep him in the background. The Asian character Rose Tico was so hated by fans that her role was dramatically reduced for The Rise of Skywalker. Nearly everyone thought the main character Rey was one of the worst examples of a Mary Sue in human history.
Boyega himself thought the movies sucked and continually mocked the Rey character online after the latest film release.
In spite of Star Wars’ failures, the Marvel Cinematic Universe plans to move in the same direction with more non-white, female, and transgender super heroes.
The new LOTR series is coming out at the worst time for a reactionary fantasy series. Media outlets spend all their time pondering whether a show validates left-wing dogmas and producers fear online hate mobs. The film series was blessed to be produced at a simpler time where these factors didn’t really exist. Its huge profits drowned out the few critics who called it racist and nobody demanded Aragorn be black.
Amazon has the power to ruin LOTR like Disney destroyed Star Wars. Considering the garbage Amazon produces—such as a show about a team of black women and Jews hunting down non-existent Nazis in 1970s America—this is a likely possibility.
There’s still a chance that the Amazon series will still be good in spite of the intrusion of diversity. The Tolkien family still keeps an eye on the product and demands it conforms to J. R. R.’s vision. We may get some black elves, but at least they won’t be gay or transgender elves. This is one positive sign it will not end up like the new Star Wars trilogy. George Lucas had zero say over the new movies, likely making them worse.
Fantasy is a right-wing genre that inspires readers with a world of epic heroes and legendary tales. Readers love the genre because it offers an escape from our fallen age full of false heroes and cringe. Many people like that LOTR and other fantasy works are rooted in European traditions and values and uncorrupted by the stench of modernity. They don’t want to read about obnoxious female soccer players and morbidly obese models fighting against the patriarchy for bedtime reading.
If Amazon decides to emulate Saruman and scour Tolkien’s lore, viewers may be greeted with such abhorrent protagonists in medieval armor.
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23 comments
Bring it on, there’s nothing more red-pilling than blatantly seeing something you love hijacked to promote white replacement, and it’s not like we don’t have the original movies. I’m loving how they’re playing their hand so fast.
Indeed. Our enemies are our greatest recruiters. They know this, which is why they use censorship and demonization to create a TINA situation. Otherwise, we’d be getting converts in droves.
My stomach is already churning and my teeth are grinding!
FS
Adaptations always reflect the current reception of the original work: thus in the present dismal epoch any filmic or televisual essay at Tolkien is certain to be a travesty. And how much more so when produced and marketed under the aegis of ‘FAANG’, as the malign but ‘woke’ pentopoly of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google is known in the IT trade!
Christopher Tolkien was wise never to sell the rights to the Silmarillion, a work of which he was as much co-creator as editor. Perhaps he foresaw that the archaic tone and lofty spiritual vision of that masterpiece were simply incompatible with the compression and over-simplification required to create a filmable screenplay.
Is it not time for us step back from the present age’s obsession with superficial and distracting fireworks of visual media? Let us re-energise our imaginations by returning to the written word: in this way our culture will again be come capable of truly new creations, not mere adaptations or spiteful ‘reimaginings’ at the behest (and for the enrichment) of those who, in the final analysis, despise us.
I wish Peter Jackson would do the Dune series, I am halfway through the “God Emperor Of Dune,” and I think the series is brilliant. But, maybe Peter Jackson would not be a good choice, look at what he did to “The Hobbit” (I did like the dragon though).
Why do they need to appropriate our culture like this? Why do they have to foist themselves into our thing? Why don’t they just create their own fantasy tradition, say perhaps Unga Bunga from South the Sahara, and make a competing diverse or nonwhite fantasy tradition? Would we want to see fat white dudes in Crouching Tiger for example? Of course not. Surely Africa has something of a rich folkloric tradition to draw upon. No talented writers perhaps. Fantasy/sci-fi actually require the most superlative talent in all literature, despite its ghetto status.
Tolkien is so great. When I think about how many levels and dimensions are in his works, all the fine subtleties, all woven together so effortlessly, it’s just breathtaking. What a gift to humanity he was. He is the Dante Vergil homer of our age. What Augustan says about the Aeneid is what I feel about Tolkien.
Say, do you guys think I comment too much, say too much pointless stuff?
Your comment is interesting and I read it. The comment format here is not as conducive to easy interaction with other commenters as a platform like Disqus, where one can give a quick upvote to signify acknowledgement of existence. And once you’ve made your own comment, your screen is tossed back to the top of the article and it takes some effort to keep scrolling down to reply to others. I wouldn’t take a lack of replies here as disinterest in your comments.
I meant more to the moderators. There’s also some weird reasons it may cause trouble.
Right, what if whites were shown cumbering the soil as slaves in civil war movies? The need to protect victim status would provide a major obstacle to any African fantasy story. They don’t want to break free of an oppositional culture in which all their problems are blamed on whites.
@ Orcish. You make a very valid point. If white people were to make an all-white movie about the culture or history of Africa, we’d be accused of cultural appropriation. Rightly so.
White nationalists could work with black separatists to make sure that BOTH of our cultural traditions are protected from ahistorical one-worldism.
In the past, black separatists like Marcus Garvey – and even Malcolm X to some extent – understood that multiracial societies weren’t in anybody’s long term interests. I’m not sure whether there are any black community leaders on this tradition today..
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You know, I could actually stomach the diversity and wokism if the quality of the plot and dialogue would be good, but one knows it won’t. The offering to the diversity gods always presages poor product. It’s a kind of defense or spiritual blackmail.
No. Quite the opposite. I could take bad dialogue and a weak plot if the work were free of diversity and wokeism.
This is in fact how we need to approach things on the dissident Right, if we wish to build our own body of filmic and literary works. We need to be able to accept some initially glaring lack of technical or artistic polish from our own writers or fillmakers — who will inevitably lack the experience and budgets of Hollywood and New York — in favour of praising them on the grounds of their noble intentions.
Only through learning by doing will we improve. And we must, above all, be able to reject the superficial, technical quality of slick Hollywood productions that carry with the coronavirus-like anti-white messages.
Or to put it another way, Marvel movies poison us, whatever their superficial high-budget quality, whereas an unpolished independent adventure film made with pro-white values improve us.
Fortunately, I have my full LOTR DVD set. Won’t need this new series.
Where is the brave director who will cast a white blond-haired chad as Mohammed Ali, MLK or Malcontent X?
When someone makes a stink that LOTR or other such films are too white-cast, here is simple question to ask: would a white Mohammed Ali be the same film?
If you like something, take strength from it, or it is relevant historically or culturally to you . . . it will be turned to dirt.
Destroyers of history, fantasy, and ultimately the soul.
“There’s still a chance that the Amazon series will still be good in spite of the intrusion of diversity.”
I hope the author was being sarcastic because after an entire column pointing out how this is impossible, this seems like a far fetched hope.
The ugly inauthentic cast choices is another example of the hatred the anti-whites hold for us and our culture and their commitment to white erasure.
I won’t be watching it.
The thing is, The Lord of the Rings is indeed thoroughly racist (in a good way).
The good guys’ main city, Minas Tirith, is known as The White City. It’s symbol is The White Tree. Gandalf the White is also known as The White Rider.
The bad guys live in The Black Lands, behind The Black Gate, where they speak The Black Speech. They are lead by The Black Riders.
It gets even better though. The good guys keep their races separate: Elves, Dwarves, Men and Hobbits don’t interbreed. But the bad guys practice race-mixing: orcs and Uruk Hai are the ugly result.
You can even interpret The Lord of the Rings as an alternate version of WWII.
Gondor is very reminiscent of The Holy Roman Empire of the German people, so Gondor would be Germany.
The people of Rohan speak a language similar to old Anglo Saxon, so Rohan would be England.
Mordor is a giant, evil slave state in the east, so Mordor would be the Soviet Union.
Isengard is a race-mixing industrial power, led by a guy who calls himself “Saruman of Many Colours”, that allies with Mordor, so Isengard would be the United States. (The alliance of the Two Towers is the alliance between Washington and Moscow).
So in Tolkien’s fantasy alternate WWII, England (Rohan) throw off the malign Jewish influence (Wormtongue) emanating from the United States (Isengard) and then ally with Germany (Gondor) so that England and Germany together (the Rohan-Gondor alliance) march out to confront and defeat the Soviet Union (Mordor).
Which would mean Aragorn is You-Know-Who.
I have non-ironically never loved LOTR more than I have now.
That is as inspiring an interpretation of the works as I have ever read.
Actually, I’m not certain of any allegorical interpretation of Lord of the Rings, but if you have ever read William Morris’s Well At World’s End, sort of an ur text of LOTR, there is a dark tower surrounded by a wasteland inhabited by an evil sorcerer. William Morris was an ardent communist, and the sorcerer represents the uber capitalist who has sucked all the wealth of the world from the lands around him into himself. Tolkien took the image, but I think it lacks the original allegorical aspects.
Before I even read the story, I was struck by the photo of the ‘new cast’ — about how almost all of our millennials have ‘the same look’ today — focused on their place in the agenda. And I can immediately attach the faces to thin bodies dressed in body-hugging black clothes. I don’t want to be here with them.
I still remember back in 2001, when The Fellowship of the Ring was released in theaters, a certain obnoxious black liberal columnist caterwauling about the lack of so much as a single black hobbit loitering in the background of the shire. “Would it hurt so much, to include just one black hobbit as an extra” was the question raised. Although I was still a good decade away from being red-pilled, I still found the notion of a black hobbit repugnant. Back then, my conscious reasoning would have been the overt non-authenticity of a token black anything appearing in Tolkien’s magnificent fantasy realm of Middle Earth, but perhaps my folk soul was already sub-consciously revolting against the already two decades long stream of anti-white propaganda constantly shoved down my throat via the various forms of entertainment I only wanted to enjoy in peace.
Thankfully, Peter Jackson did not bend the knee and managed to give us high fantasy fans two amazing, diversity-free trilogies. They were the greatest of their like that were ever made and nothing made from then on will ever be as good.
Even if this new Amazon LOTR series were not going to be contaminated by the forced and shoe-horned inclusion of diversity and degeneracy, it would still suck just as much as it will, because it is a prequel series that is going to attempt flesh out and pad timelines presented only in bullet point by Tolkien, himself. None of the writers involved in this new series are up to the task adding anything to the LOTR lore that could come close to measuring up to Tolkien.
I used to be a fanboy, obsessed with the make-believe on-goings of many fantasy realms, but as I have become red-pilled, I am also disillusioned with the genres of super-hero and science-fiction. Good writing and thought provoking story-telling has been sacrificed on altar of agenda and every story produced today can be reduced in theme to Mary Sues punching nazis.
Still, even in these desperate times, there is still nothing categorically wrong with entertainment and escapism, so long that that it is only occasional, not degenerate, and not enlarging the coffers of our enemies.
What we really need is more art and entertainment from fellow like-minded Whites, which promotes our values and beliefs.
After all, is that not one reason why things have gotten so bad of late? Hollywood has always been subversive, but once upon a time they were capable of producing an entertaining vector to deliver their subtle malignant messages. This no longer the case, though, as today’s talentless writers, directors, and producers deliver their poison with the subtly of a defenestrating dumbbell.
Music, movies, books, video games, graphic novels, etc. – if you are dissident White with time and talent, I highly encourage to produce art and entertainment that it is so good that even our enemies cannot help themselves but to consume it. If you are not one for this, then be sure to at least support those of us who are financially by purchasing their products when you can.
I never liked the LotR films. Now seeing people all worked up about this is very amusing.
They are as good as we will get, but I agree with you, for various reasons.
The books and one’s own visions from reading, nothing better.
A single darkie will ruin the entire effort and I wouldnt want to give a single dollar to pedowood anyway
Reddit scum can subsidize this dumpster fire, I wont
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