<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->although I would prefer Aishwarya in Galadriel or Arwen type roles..<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Peter Jackson was very kind in casting the Lord of the Rings. Many Maori and other non-European people were in that movie as extras (as Ents, or under layers of orc make-up).
I don't know if you've read The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, but once you read them, you realise the only place for non-white (white as in the actual colour white) <i>human</i> characters is as villains. It is worse than Chronicles of Narnia in that respect.
Don't want to pick on Tolkien, and I won't. He's a product of his time and country. Born in South Africa and moved back to ancestral England, an Anglo-Saxon, Catholic and a professor of Middle and Old-English, I believe (and Anglo-Saxon studies). He is the typical well-read, proper Englishman of his time. An officer in WWI - and one immediately knows his position in the English class system from that. And I'll give him one thing: unlike some losers, Tolkien at least wasn't an anti-semite.
I still like reading his works, some of it rings as true as fiction ever can - except for the bit where he introduces darker human populations and invariably makes them evil. See especially his Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
I once wanted to broach this topic in the AIT thread, meaning to write that the only place the PIE 'White' Oryans have been attested was in Middle-Earth, the northwest thereof. Urheimat being the island of Numenor. Read the book Silmarillion. I won't go into more specifics, else I'll look like a geek. And I'm saving that for my sci-fi craze <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->
But as much as I loved the books (it's the only <i>modern</i> epic of the west that can remotely compare with Asian epics, but even then it does not come out favourably), there is racism in there and it does not sit well with me, nor does it ring true to the rest of the sagas. I could bear it with Narnia, because that is obviously contrived and trivial when re-reading at an older age, at which point I didn't care for it anymore. But the infusion of racial stereo-typing in Middle-Earth stories is like adding oil to drinking water. It wrecks the whole thing eventually and one fine day makes you feel bad about it. I'd have felt bad even had I been European, but as an Indian, one is especially conscious of it and so I can't condone that aspect of the books at all. It's a good thing about the Rings movies that they avoided that facet altogether.
In any case: Aishwarya could never have been chosen for Eowyn or Galadriel, both golden-haired, or Arwen since they're all meant to be untanned northwest European looking. And even if Aish had been paper white, her facial structure is entirely Indian, particularly typical S Indian - which would also have disqualified her, even though Aish has the requisite grey eyes.
When I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I imagined Cox Habbema (70s Dutch actress in German kids' movies - a beauty) as Eowyn - hard to find a good picture and this is rather smallish:
<img src='http://www.freeimagehost.eu/thumbs/cd9609104243.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
And if I were to film the book now, after excising the racist elements, it'd be Dagmara Dominczyk for Arwen all the way.
Never mind though, there are plenty of other movies Aish would be perfect for. Standing by what I said earlier: Aishwarya and Kaneshiro would make a very handsome onscreen couple, and making a romantic but cool police movie with them in it would send people in East Asia and India wild. Of course, Kaneshiro already has a rabid female following in the far-east, don't know if he's willing to add another half a billion female viewers to the crazed list. But, oh man, if I were to make this movie - kaching! - I'd be rakin' in billions$. Nice dream... don't wake me...
I don't know if you've read The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, but once you read them, you realise the only place for non-white (white as in the actual colour white) <i>human</i> characters is as villains. It is worse than Chronicles of Narnia in that respect.
Don't want to pick on Tolkien, and I won't. He's a product of his time and country. Born in South Africa and moved back to ancestral England, an Anglo-Saxon, Catholic and a professor of Middle and Old-English, I believe (and Anglo-Saxon studies). He is the typical well-read, proper Englishman of his time. An officer in WWI - and one immediately knows his position in the English class system from that. And I'll give him one thing: unlike some losers, Tolkien at least wasn't an anti-semite.
I still like reading his works, some of it rings as true as fiction ever can - except for the bit where he introduces darker human populations and invariably makes them evil. See especially his Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
I once wanted to broach this topic in the AIT thread, meaning to write that the only place the PIE 'White' Oryans have been attested was in Middle-Earth, the northwest thereof. Urheimat being the island of Numenor. Read the book Silmarillion. I won't go into more specifics, else I'll look like a geek. And I'm saving that for my sci-fi craze <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->But as much as I loved the books (it's the only <i>modern</i> epic of the west that can remotely compare with Asian epics, but even then it does not come out favourably), there is racism in there and it does not sit well with me, nor does it ring true to the rest of the sagas. I could bear it with Narnia, because that is obviously contrived and trivial when re-reading at an older age, at which point I didn't care for it anymore. But the infusion of racial stereo-typing in Middle-Earth stories is like adding oil to drinking water. It wrecks the whole thing eventually and one fine day makes you feel bad about it. I'd have felt bad even had I been European, but as an Indian, one is especially conscious of it and so I can't condone that aspect of the books at all. It's a good thing about the Rings movies that they avoided that facet altogether.
In any case: Aishwarya could never have been chosen for Eowyn or Galadriel, both golden-haired, or Arwen since they're all meant to be untanned northwest European looking. And even if Aish had been paper white, her facial structure is entirely Indian, particularly typical S Indian - which would also have disqualified her, even though Aish has the requisite grey eyes.
When I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time, I imagined Cox Habbema (70s Dutch actress in German kids' movies - a beauty) as Eowyn - hard to find a good picture and this is rather smallish:
<img src='http://www.freeimagehost.eu/thumbs/cd9609104243.gif' border='0' alt='user posted image' />
And if I were to film the book now, after excising the racist elements, it'd be Dagmara Dominczyk for Arwen all the way.
Never mind though, there are plenty of other movies Aish would be perfect for. Standing by what I said earlier: Aishwarya and Kaneshiro would make a very handsome onscreen couple, and making a romantic but cool police movie with them in it would send people in East Asia and India wild. Of course, Kaneshiro already has a rabid female following in the far-east, don't know if he's willing to add another half a billion female viewers to the crazed list. But, oh man, if I were to make this movie - kaching! - I'd be rakin' in billions$. Nice dream... don't wake me...