Post 2/2
2) Pakistani woman from the UK shrieked "discrimination" when some casting director told her honestly that she didn't look European enough to play a hobbit extra. She gave some sermon on discrimination and 'why can't I play fantastical characters even though they're based on historical European-type beings'. The director - Peter Jackson, not being Tolkien himself, but a more human person - fired the casting director and for some impregnable reason declared that any and all can try out.
Oh here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business...5963898187
Apparently, the Pakistani woman's never read sufficient Tolkien to know there are not only reasons she is not meant to be in it, but also reasons she doesn't *want* to be in it (not if she is against racist stereotyping of particularly the Oryanist variety). She should read all of Tolkien's output on Middle-Earth and she'll get the whole picture. There *is* most definitely a place for the "coloured" people in it, but Peter Jackson et al and even the long-standing tradition of Tolkien art have merely been very kind in leaving them out:
Underneath the thick veneer of a heathen NW European fantasy-history that the Middle-Earth tales (like LOTR) *try* to be, lies the invariably christian concoction of "white history", the japhetic-hamitic dichotomy. Tolkien can't help but infuse the latter into the former and ruin it: he is a devout catholic after all, though with a fascination with (and invariably subverted understanding of) pre-christian NW European religion/literature which he christianises (and which christian fans of his work therefore imagine is a work of christianism. True only in that all the junk in it is indeed christian - the japhetic hamitic stuff. But the rest - the best part of his work - is his attempt at imitating NW European heathenism: everything from Finnish to Germanic religion is present. Some poor clones of Germanic and other heathen Gods are seen at the start of Silmarillion.
The same is true with the Narnia series: best parts are directly lifted from Hellenismos - Fauns, Bacchus literally mentioned, etc etc, but are yet cheap shadow copies of the real thing - the worst parts of the Narnia series are the christian doctrine nonsense meant to be drilled into readers. Shows that no one can swallow the christian pill without the tasty heathen coating.)
The LOTR is a very very good yarn - the modern pseudo-historical/mythical fantasy epic for Europe - and it's only just borderline when it comes to racialism owing to too few mentions of the southern and eastern peoples (the armies of Men who join to swell Sauron's ranks in undermining the free Men of NW Middle-Earth). Few as these mentions are, their import is hard to mistake when you encounter them. But the Unfinished Tales and Silmarillion leave no doubt about Tolkien's racist notions. Tolkien's whole back story in Silmarillion and UT is based on the idea that the dark people - of the south and east :hand-waving: - were a separate class of men who were born evil and invariably born for evil. Even their *language* - note language, such an important defining feature in such thinking patterns that concern racial/inherent superiority and inferiority - is uncouth. As for their creativity - what creativity? when they were a by-product of creation that brought only destruction. They were admittedly not the Great Evil themselves - they had not the power for it, only the pettyness and *propensity* - they just merely naturally aligned with the Great Evil. (As they did again in LOTR.)
Apparently they had a knack of destroying everything the fine, fair-of-colour Houses Of Men of the west had constructed with hard work and intellectual and creative genius (sound familiar?). The dark people were moreover the kind inclined to easily side with Evil: easily lured by it, having neither the will to resist it nor the remotest inclination. And best of all: the dark men loved nothing better than the fair women and abducted them for their wives/harems at regular intervals, and kept the fair men as slaves. (Shades of Birth of a nation/KKK)
Tolkien was just a product of his time - of the heady thought patterns prevalent in his time, especially among the intellectuals.* A "product" of his time - with obvious predilection - being the telling word. Moreover, Tolkien wasn't the kind to be immune to anything - other than anti-semitism (despite being catholic, he spoke well of Jews as a people when asked about them by the nazis sent to decide whether or not to publish his fantasy books in their oryan reich.)
CS Lewis with his Narnia series was no different, though slightly more toned down. But Lewis' manner of racism was more modern christian in its approach than the (typical of the 19th and first half of 20th century) Oryanist which the *more* devoutly-catholic Tolkien was: Lewis' "ethnic" arabian-persian characters could *become* good, heroic characters - *if* they converted to christianism I mean aslanism. And 2 characters of the 7 books do just that.
(You see the same two streams - the two christian patterns of thinking - magnified in the churches of nazi-era Germany: the confessing churches that would accept converts among Jews but would hate inconvertible Jews just like the rest of nazi Germany hated them, while the mainstream churches insisted that all Jews - converts to christianism or no - were an *intrinsic* evil, just like Martin Luther had insisted before. The 2nd class of arguments - "inherently evil/depraved, christian or not" - are still implicitly made about "Gypsies", by the way.)
2) Pakistani woman from the UK shrieked "discrimination" when some casting director told her honestly that she didn't look European enough to play a hobbit extra. She gave some sermon on discrimination and 'why can't I play fantastical characters even though they're based on historical European-type beings'. The director - Peter Jackson, not being Tolkien himself, but a more human person - fired the casting director and for some impregnable reason declared that any and all can try out.
Oh here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business...5963898187
Quote:Agent fired for light-skinned hobbit casting call Anne Barrowclough
From: The Times December 01, 2010 1:04PM
7 comments
NEW ZEALAND: It has been beset by budget blowouts and strikes and now the casting agent for The Hobbit has been fired over accusations of racism.
Naz Humphreys, a Briton of Pakistani origin, was in New Zealand on holiday when she decided to try out for the part of a hobbit in the pounds 320million prequel to The Lord of the Rings films.
After travelling 80 miles (130km) and queueing for three hours to audition Ms Humphreys was told that she was not white enough to be a hobbit.
"The casting manager basically said they weren't having anybody who wasn't pale-skinned," Ms Humphreys, a social policy researcher, told The Waikato Times.
"It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin."
(Hobbits are supposed to be miniaturised versions of English country folk: aristocrats and rustics. It's Just The Way It Is.
"The Men of the West" in Middle-Earth's history <-> Oryans: pre-PIE western populations are the Men of the West before some of them went to Numenor, the Numenoreans are the PIE Oryans in the Oryan Urheimat of Numenor, and the immediate and late post-PIE Oryans, being the descendants of Numenorean lineages after these had returned to western Middle-Earth. This last is the point where the LOTR is set late in the timeline.)
A video of the auditions taken by the newspaper reportedly shows a film company representative telling the crowd: "We are looking for light-skinned people. I'm not trying to be - whatever. It's just the brief. You've got to look like a hobbit."
A casting agent had also placed newspaper advertisements seeking extras with "light skin tones".
The advertisements listed the requirements for potential hobbits, including age (16-80), height - below 5ft 7in (1.7m) for men and 5ft 2in for women - and the requirement that women should have light skin.
A spokesman for WingNut Films, the production company owned by The Hobbit director Sir Peter Jackson, said that no such instructions had been given to the casting company and described it as an unfortunate error.
"The crew member in question has been dismissed from the show," he said. "It's something we take very seriously."
Ms Humphreys said that she was a fan of the Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy and, with a height of 4ft 9in, had thought that she was perfect for the role of a hobbit.
"I would love to be an extra," she said. "But it just seemed like a shame because obviously hobbits are not brown or black or any other colour.
"They all look kind of homogenised beige and all derived from the Caucasian gene pool."
A spokesman for Sir Peter said: "All people meeting the age and height requirements are welcome to audition."
The two-part film is scheduled to begin filming in 3-D in February with Martin Freeman, a star of The Office television comedy series, playing the lead role of Bilbo Baggins.
In the meantime Ms Humphreys has started a Facebook group called "Hire hobbits of all colours! Say no to hobbit racism!"
Apparently, the Pakistani woman's never read sufficient Tolkien to know there are not only reasons she is not meant to be in it, but also reasons she doesn't *want* to be in it (not if she is against racist stereotyping of particularly the Oryanist variety). She should read all of Tolkien's output on Middle-Earth and she'll get the whole picture. There *is* most definitely a place for the "coloured" people in it, but Peter Jackson et al and even the long-standing tradition of Tolkien art have merely been very kind in leaving them out:
Underneath the thick veneer of a heathen NW European fantasy-history that the Middle-Earth tales (like LOTR) *try* to be, lies the invariably christian concoction of "white history", the japhetic-hamitic dichotomy. Tolkien can't help but infuse the latter into the former and ruin it: he is a devout catholic after all, though with a fascination with (and invariably subverted understanding of) pre-christian NW European religion/literature which he christianises (and which christian fans of his work therefore imagine is a work of christianism. True only in that all the junk in it is indeed christian - the japhetic hamitic stuff. But the rest - the best part of his work - is his attempt at imitating NW European heathenism: everything from Finnish to Germanic religion is present. Some poor clones of Germanic and other heathen Gods are seen at the start of Silmarillion.
The same is true with the Narnia series: best parts are directly lifted from Hellenismos - Fauns, Bacchus literally mentioned, etc etc, but are yet cheap shadow copies of the real thing - the worst parts of the Narnia series are the christian doctrine nonsense meant to be drilled into readers. Shows that no one can swallow the christian pill without the tasty heathen coating.)
The LOTR is a very very good yarn - the modern pseudo-historical/mythical fantasy epic for Europe - and it's only just borderline when it comes to racialism owing to too few mentions of the southern and eastern peoples (the armies of Men who join to swell Sauron's ranks in undermining the free Men of NW Middle-Earth). Few as these mentions are, their import is hard to mistake when you encounter them. But the Unfinished Tales and Silmarillion leave no doubt about Tolkien's racist notions. Tolkien's whole back story in Silmarillion and UT is based on the idea that the dark people - of the south and east :hand-waving: - were a separate class of men who were born evil and invariably born for evil. Even their *language* - note language, such an important defining feature in such thinking patterns that concern racial/inherent superiority and inferiority - is uncouth. As for their creativity - what creativity? when they were a by-product of creation that brought only destruction. They were admittedly not the Great Evil themselves - they had not the power for it, only the pettyness and *propensity* - they just merely naturally aligned with the Great Evil. (As they did again in LOTR.)
Apparently they had a knack of destroying everything the fine, fair-of-colour Houses Of Men of the west had constructed with hard work and intellectual and creative genius (sound familiar?). The dark people were moreover the kind inclined to easily side with Evil: easily lured by it, having neither the will to resist it nor the remotest inclination. And best of all: the dark men loved nothing better than the fair women and abducted them for their wives/harems at regular intervals, and kept the fair men as slaves. (Shades of Birth of a nation/KKK)
Tolkien was just a product of his time - of the heady thought patterns prevalent in his time, especially among the intellectuals.* A "product" of his time - with obvious predilection - being the telling word. Moreover, Tolkien wasn't the kind to be immune to anything - other than anti-semitism (despite being catholic, he spoke well of Jews as a people when asked about them by the nazis sent to decide whether or not to publish his fantasy books in their oryan reich.)
CS Lewis with his Narnia series was no different, though slightly more toned down. But Lewis' manner of racism was more modern christian in its approach than the (typical of the 19th and first half of 20th century) Oryanist which the *more* devoutly-catholic Tolkien was: Lewis' "ethnic" arabian-persian characters could *become* good, heroic characters - *if* they converted to christianism I mean aslanism. And 2 characters of the 7 books do just that.
(You see the same two streams - the two christian patterns of thinking - magnified in the churches of nazi-era Germany: the confessing churches that would accept converts among Jews but would hate inconvertible Jews just like the rest of nazi Germany hated them, while the mainstream churches insisted that all Jews - converts to christianism or no - were an *intrinsic* evil, just like Martin Luther had insisted before. The 2nd class of arguments - "inherently evil/depraved, christian or not" - are still implicitly made about "Gypsies", by the way.)