I have to pushback on Wheel of Time because one thing outraged me beyond belief. When I saw that Thom Merrilin didn't have his famous moustaches I was so outraged I folded my arms beneath my breasts and gave my braid a sharp tug!

Nothing about rings of power was "careful" the show shouldn't exist. Period.

The thing that bugs me is that when they show some small isolated population, be it Edmonds fielders, hobbits or elvs and there are different POCs with no explanation of why they’re different. In order to have white Edmonds fielders and black Edmonds fielders, they have to be segregating themselves and only marrying white to white, black to black. Otherwise, within a few generations, everyone would be mixed. The only places you would see diverse populations is in large ports and trading cities where people from geographically diverse areas would come together.

When the teasers were coming out for Rings of Power, we saw they intentionally focus on diversity as a marketing strategy. They released that super fans video with people that were not really fans and had no focus on the lore. They talked much more about how they were revolutionary and things like that and Tolkien actually felt secondary. This relationship with their audience was one of the main things that started what I could call a war. This is something sometimes lefted out but is important for context, specially for those watching from afar. I felt people wanted something Tolkienian and they started by focus on something that now have become clear is a shield to avoid criticism. In the last Hollywood Reporter's article they did it again, they start by saying the showrunners are tired of being accused of this but in the sequence they speculate about Tolkien fans being more far-right and associated them with fascism. And is pretty clear the diversity in this show is lazy and done only to complete a checklist, they didn't make any effort to actually adapt it, to make sense of it, they pretty much dropped random POC actors without thinking much of it. Consistency and coherence is important. They could have done it differently trying to be more close to what we know, for example, the Harad could have been explored and should be filled with POC characters. We could see Númenoreans oppression and imperialism and Haradrim people that didn't had many options or allies. Rhun is another example. And we must not forget that Tolkien is not only about telling a story, but also about creating a whole universe. Details are important, the construction of different people are important, even if one can argue that it doesn't really matter in the end in his story. Another thing people miss a lot is that representation must be considered within the whole industry, people try to isolate this or that movie/show and sometimes forget the big picture.

My problem with the swaps in WoT, was simply that a place like the Two Rivers, which many times is talked about as an isolated region, with strong ties to the blood of their ancestors, managed to have the kind of defined racial diversity, you’d really only see in modern cities today. A town that’s remained isolated so long, all sharing the same ancestry, should be much more homogeneous, white or otherwise. They could’ve been entirely Asian or middle eastern for all I care, and it would’ve only done a better job showing Rand as separate from the community. As it stood, he just blended in like the 15th color on a palette. Red hair barely even stood out, because with all the diversity in appearance, it would be unsurprising to see a second tall redhead in that town.

The one point I give to those pushing back against recent casting is the laziness angle, where diversity in shows like Game of Thrones is used to accentuate culture and give depth to the world, and in other shows is just randomly throwing different skin colors together to get the right ratios on screen. Great video once again! You sure pick the light, fluffy topics.

Some people here have expressed how I feel about this topic but I’ll add my 2 cents either way: So, if you think about it we’ve always had diversity in media. I remember seeing shows and movies were non white people and cultures were present, and I was fine with it cause a) I’m not racist and b) the representation was organic. It wasn’t forced, no one made a big deal about it, the story was what mattered, as it should be. What happened is that people made race in media matter now, so now we have non white characters being included just to fulfill diversity quotas and mark off checklists, and that has taken precedence over story and good writing. Not all media is like that of course, but today diversity is used as a marketing tool, and often times it’s used to mask meh writing and even bastardization of already established IPs and lore. What genuinely disgusts me is the notion that I have to champion and worship diverse media because of my ethnicity, and I refuse. Not that I don’t or can’t enjoy diverse media(which I certainly do), but story will always come first for me. Especially since I’m an aspiring fantasy writer. Great video as always Hillary. Thanks for being willing to talk about topics such as this. Keep slaying queen.

i think race matters when it affects the lore. for example, in WOT I am okay with switching races for the characters. However, it was done poorly. What would be wise is to make everyone in Emond's Field POC (including Matt), and the only white person should be Rand. Then, when we are introduced to Aiels, we as a viewer would understand that Rand is different from folks in his hometown because he is different nationality. But it doesn`t make any sense why in a small CLOSED town there are so diverse populations. It makes sense for big cities like Tar Valon or Cairhien, but not for the such small and closed community that is Edmond Field. Also, I saw the casting for Aviedhna and from a lore perspective, it doesn`t make any sense why she is not white. She and Rand are Aiels, they are very similar in the books. So making her a different race than Rand is just plain stupid and breaks the lore.

One of the biggest problem with the showrunner's explanation that diverse casting reflects the world we live in today ignores *most* of the world. If you go to Lima, Nairobi, Seoul, or Mumbai, you will see a less diverse population than depicted in their shows.

Was writing a big comment and lost it. Basically, I used to love diverse casting/stories. Now I'm immediately hesitant. It often hints at terrible storytelling. It seems there is a very shallow quota filling and soulless way they are being put together nowadays, with talent and writing often put on the back foot. There are loads of people who are actually more offended by what they consider tokenised representation than by a lack of representation. In the end people want the release that complaining offers, one way or the other. But its like whining at Google to stop stealing and selling your data, it does nothing, you have to use or invent another search engine (Brave perhaps). Like the real deal is make your own. Make your own African/Polynesian/Native American etc. mythology based media. Make your own true to character European based media. I mean look at Japan, India, China, Korea and Russia. They all have booming local media industries. Do you see them in the US? Not much. Why? Its in their language, they made it for them. Is it diverse or representational? Most of the time no, and that fits the local cultural story better. Black Panther had two white guys in it and you could have removed them from the story and it honestly might have been better, they weren't very memorable. That is why I don't think it is bigoted to want white characters to be white (and if they aren't and you make a good show, who cares, that's awesome) just make more of the other stuff if you feel the balance is off.

One thing that I think can be important (& you kinda touched on it) is that having a mix of races should be done in an internally consistent way. It' can be a little bit jarring if you're in an entirely culturally homogenous society with little in the way of interacting w/ the outside world (e.g., sleepy rural towns, societies built in harsh areas, etc as opposed to areas/societies like a bustling trade city or the capital of a continent spanning empire) and then just a spackling of the major & minor characters are diverse but none or very few of the background characters are and there's never any mention of it or reason for it. And that jarring effect can be useful if done well/for a reason (e.g., Rand), but otherwise can just scream lazy virtue signaling. Now, yes, it's fantasy, race may not matter in terms of social dynamics, but somebody being a different race is still going to signal that they come from somewhere else unless there's a specific reason given in the world that that's not true. Melanin is still a thing unless said otherwise and people of different cultures that live in different places are generally gonna have different skin colors 🤣

As a Chinese I don't want to see a Chinese elf in Tolkien's literature....

It matters because of aesthetics and authenticity. 1) Aesthetics. Many fantasy works have an established aesthetic outlook. For Tolkien it is works of Ted Nasmith, Alan Lee and John Howe, as well as Scandinavian/British medieval and antique aesthetics. 2) Authenticity. We should consider real historical, social and economical processes. In the USA there are black people mainly because of proto-capitalism and colonialism of the 17-18th centuries, due to technical progress of constuction of big ships, etc. There are no black people in the Eastern Europe because of different colonial processes (internal colonisation and serfdom of their own people), etc. If you are in pseudo-medieval fantasy, then you don't have great social mobility, you don't have vessels to massively transport people of other nations, you don't have airplanes for comfortable mirgant labour, you are not even in the Age of Explorations and don't have a map of your world. So it's quite impossible for people of other races to pop up in the middle of an isolated village and pretend to be native, for example.

I like how you mention that race comes with history. So often race is talked of as “just the color of someone’s skin” but race isn’t simply aesthetic. I live in Korea and I’m constantly asked, “Where are you from? What are you doing in Korea?” They can ask that question because my race and their race have different histories attached to them. For the majority of these cases where the world building isn’t as detailed, there’s no issue at all. Star Wars and Little Mermaid don’t have inconsistent world building with diversity. But yeah the Aiel diversity hurts my brain as there should be a shared ancestry right? I feel weird with diverse Numenor for the same reason. These are things I look past because I support the motivation behind it, but it does make me say hmmm….

Love how you quickly Brush over Mulan being set in China as though there are no other races in China, so its ok to race swap European stories but not Chinese stories (Mulan) or African stories (Frog Princess) Lots of holes in your reasoning it appears.

No, Tolkien wouldn't re-evaluate it, the purpuse of the books was to make a mythology for anglo-saxons and other races living on the British Isles at the time, his intentions for writing it can't change with time.

The very fact that there is a "Representation Project" should tell you right off the bat what its biases and agenda are. Not once as a Mexican kid growing up did I feel like I couldn't relate to Star Wars, LotR, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Iliad, Clash of the Titans, or any other book, movie, or tv show that I was exposed to. I did more than relate; I became OBSESSED with fantasy and scifi and it mattered less than zero that there were no brown people in them. The whole concept of "representation" (that in order to identify with art it has to match some skin deep physical characteristic) was pretty much unheard of until the mid-2000s. If it actually was a thing, then LotR would not be the 2nd best selling book in the world behind the bible. Works by Chaucer, Homer, Twain, Tolkien, Shakespeare, etc would never have been know outside of their home cultures if it were a requirement for the readers to share skin color or XX/XY chromosomes with the characters. Good art reaches people on a human level, not on trite superficial physical levels

To me, it's simple. Most fantasy, primarily classic fantasy, can't be entirely separated from the folklore and mythology it's based on/draws inspiration from. Your point Is valid in the sense that a lot of adaptations have been nonchalant with those aspects, but to me, this only shows that you aren't from Europe. I don't mean to insult you, I'm just pointing out that fantasy stories like Witcher, LOTR, and much more are pretty popular here because it draws from European history and mythology. Like, have you ever been to a Slavic country, its cities and people are not at all what Netflix's Witcher is supposed to be, and it's kind of a big thing there. I think it's much better to accept that most older fantasy stories intended the worlds to be mostly white. That is not because the authors didn't want any black people in the stories or were racist(some were of course), but it's mostly because they drew inspiration from certain parts of the world. The thing is, diversity is important but not as much and as in many contexts as the media makes people believe. Yes, it is important to see ourselves represented on the screen, but does that mean we have to alter fantasy adaptations because of that? That's not diversity. Diversity would be diverse content and fantasy adaptations based on different books. Fantasy is in its golden age right now, and there is so much stuff out there that isn't inspired by European mythology. Just look at Sanderson, Fonda lee, etc. Hollywood has plenty of stuff to adapt that's not white, but instead they alter well-known characters in terms of its casting. Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy is white. It's supposed to be that way and there is nothing wrong with that. Those films made billions and resonated with so many people, despite their white cast. Do you think only white people went to those films and are fans of Tolkien? Hell no. Now I know a lot of history and older movies have been whitewashed, and it's wrong. What is also wrong is how the showrunners of recent adaptations have been promoting their shows obsessively on their diversity and all. And guess what, most of these shows are mediocre. In the long run, we're gonna look back at Witcher and Rings of Power and shake our heads. It's gonna be viewed negatively in the future. Those shows aren't about giving fans what they want or art, they're mostly to push an agenda. Diversity would be a Slavic Witcher, all the while some other streaming service adapts The Green bone sage for example. Diversity is not what you're seeing right now. It should be about representing different cultures and allowing the entertainment landscape to do just that. Throwing in different ethnicities in some random fantasy show isn't diversity. And lastly, you have to understand that most backlash doesn't solely come from racists or what have you. It's a deeper issue. People are tired of all those diversity discussions and the way Hollywood treats its audience. Showrunners are eager to call out racists, while in reality most of the shows aren't really being ambushed by racists, it's just that they are bad shows and promote diversity while people aren't watching LOTR or Witcher for that reason. Just because Hollywood did a lot of whitewashing, doesn't mean we can accept any form of washing to simply happen nowadays. Do you think people in Poland look at Netflix's Witcher and think: 'damn, I feel represented.' Of course not. That's pretty sad if you ask me. We are all so eager to have diverse content, but forget where most of these stories actually come from. It has become the norm to call out legitimate criticism as racist, and no matter how you look at it, it's wrong. Most of the audience is smart enough to realize that diversity is a good thing, but most audiences are also smart enough to call out when it is done wrong and that LOTR, for example, is mostly white because of its inspirations. It's simple. And let's face it. It's mostly a political discussion that is very complex if you ask me. People say certain parts of the world are becoming more right-wing, which is a response to the radicalization of the left. If we can look at media and be aware of those two extremes, it helps us to see objectively. And we all know Hollywood is on the radical left side, and we must not ignore their dangerous obsession with identity politics if you ask me. Some people may call this nonsense, but I urge anyone to do some digging on the subject, you'll see that those people there are mental. I mostly watch foreign films, such as South Korean ones. They are amazing and I'm invested while watching them. I don't see myself in them, and that's not a problem.

Here's a much tougher question and a good topic for another video essay: *Does race matter in historical fiction?* I say yes, and nobody can talk hold that opinion without being instantly fired (unless you're literally the most famous people in Hollywood). Because you cannot be nominated for awards without having "diversity," and I put that in quotes because the version we talk about is a double standard. All white women? Diverse. All black? Diverse. I can write a period piece about Japan or Africa, only cast Japanese or Africans, and nobody bats an eye (as it should be), but no longer can we do a show about Medieval Europe, without adding in non-white characters. I find this to be abjectly insane, and it's an instant non-starter for me. The double standard is one thing, but it's the erasing of actual historical reality that kills me.

1. By calling for representation, you call on a piece of fantastical art to reflect earth, specifically often the USA. There is a core conflict to fantasticalism. 2. You add an external piece of message to a piece of art. Yet art is supposed to thrive on focus on its core elements. You very much risk feeling forced.

Probably about 90% of the time, I want the adaptation to look like the source material. The other 10% is me wanting to have the best actor for a role. Sometimes those things don’t coincide, and in those instances, I’d rather have the “right actor”, even if they don’t necessarily match exactly. Still, I’d prefer them to match. I think a good-ish example of this is the new Percy Jackson show. Walker Scobal was cast as Percy, and I think that’s a great choice acting wise. But hate that they aren’t dying his hair black. (I haven’t seen anything that the Annabeth Actress is in, so I can’t and won’t comment on her potentially being the “best actress for the roll”). Faithfulness, in all aspects, is a trait that I feel is extremely important. -T

"Fairy tales...have no ties to any European counties." I must disagree with your statement. Fairy tales like Cinderella, Snow White, and even Little Mermaid are very much part of the cultural heritage of Western Europe. Yes, vairants are found all around the world, but those fairy tales as we know them have a very distinct cultural and historical heritage. To take that away from Western Europe is to dismiss their ties to their own cultural heritage. Think of it this way: would you say the same if we were to take East Asian folk tales (such as Cow Herd and Weaver Girl) and cast Nordic people in the role and say that those folk tales have no connection with China and Korea so it's OK? This is why the diverse casting in RIngs of Power is an issue. Tolkien specifically wrote LOTR to be a fictional mythology of Western and Northern Europe, based on actual Anglo-Saxon, Nordic and Celtic mythology. In that context, race (as it pertains to skin colour) matters. However, Middle Earth is very racially diverse, and race plays a huge part in the interactions/relationships between Elves, Men and Dwarves. (Having said all that, Rings of Power had so many other writing issues that people's skin colour actually became the least of its criticisms.) By the way, I'm saying all of this as a Chinese-Australian who struggled with representation in media growing up. Representation is vital, but it must be meaningful and logical (especially in fantasy or when dealing with stories that have specific cultural heritage).

I have to completely disagree with your point on the two rivers diversity in the WOT show emphasizing Rand being different and causing him to stand out more. If the village would have been relatively homogenous THAT would have emphasized Rand being different and 'other'. However, since there are a smattering of all sorts of skin and hair color in the Two Rivers scenes, Rand's 'otherness' just gets lost in with everyone else's 'otherness'. It doesn't really matter what demographic you go with...just make Rand noticeably different to that and it works better. I do think him not standing out like a sore thumb probably helps their "who is the dragon" mystery they were trying to really push. So maybe it was a correct choice from that perspective specifically.

And there are cases like Rue from The Hunger Games, who is described as black in the books but people got mad when she was casted as a black girl

Obviously this is a tough topic. Something I have a lot of conflicting feelings about. I think what makes adding diversity tough is that sometimes it seems insincere. Sometimes it seems like shows are just trying to score political points or that an actor or actress gained a role in large part because of their diversity. Personally, I would want to earn a role based off merit and not my skin color (people often forget this can be racism too). If people think I need help or assistance because of my skin the underlying message is that someone is better than me and has to reach down to help me. As an example, I think most people don't blink an eye when actors like Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Michael B Jordan are cast in a role because no one doubts the are cast because they are the best person for the role. What makes the entire situation worse is that there are certain shows that go too far and make make minority group characters flawless. Anyway, I have a lot more thoughts, but I'll stop for now haha. I wish all people were more represented, but in a natural way. I wish we lived in a perfect world where people were chosen based off character and skill and not race. Thanks for the fantastic video! We need more honest, respectful discussions about tough topics like this!!!

I don't agree with TWOT take at all, it's quite the opposite imo, with all the diversity in the Two rivers having there Rand didn't feel strange at all as well as there can be darker people there can be lighter people. Let's be clear here, diversity and representation are just to meet with the trend of political radicalism that we have now. Saying that people need to be represented to enjoy a show is a VERY bad and racist message to make because it tells people that the only important thing to see about a character is race, not values, not personality, they need to see their color. This is so wrong and i'll give you some examples: -The squid game, it isn't diverse, and people loved it without being korean. -Anime/manga in general, most of them are not diverse and many people enjoy them without having to be asian. -Black Panther, do you need to be a black man to enjoy this? No, was there "diversity" in Wakanda? Not at all. -I grew up with the Fresh Prince of Bel-air, all of them were black (no diversity) and i enjoyed it a lot despite being white. -I grew up watching the NBA, most of them black and there was no issue with me being white to support and want to be like MJ or Kobe. Also in other regions like India, China, S.America or African countries THEY DONT HAVE DIVERSITY in their shows, are they racists? No, they just use the people that their stories depict. I understand you americans think the world begins and ends in USA but in most countries there's not much diversity in terms of population and calling them racist for not representing the diversity of XXI USA imho is quite pathetic. Changing an original character race is being racist, because you do it with a political purpose not for a narrative one, so turning the blame on the ones pointing at you after your racist move imho is despicable. Why not instead of changing an original character's race the people encourage to CREATE new diverse characters stories instead? Would a black Mulan be ok for chinese people? Then why should a black Ariel or Snow White be for northern european countries? A white Black-Panther?...

I wouldn't click on a video with this title 99% of the time. but I did for you, because I knew you would treat the subject thoughtfully.

I don't agree with you on everything, but I really appreciate that you're point is too have a conversation about it and I absolutely feel far more warm to your points because I know you're trying to discuss them not attack anyone.

What frustates me in these conversations is that nobody talks about how remakes and crap are at fault... like why cant we create characters who are poc rather than throwing an actor on them

12:32 Thats a bit of a lie tho... the list doesn't go 'on and on and on' the list kinda stops there. And also 'the ancient one' was race swapped in Doctor Strange became they though his character was like an asian stereotype or something like that.

I personally believe race matters in fantasy if it is going to go against internal consistency or undermine a character's arc. I thought adaptations like the Wrinkle in Time used race swapping really well, as the character description did not overly matter except for Meg's glasses, and being black further explored the Murray's feelings of otherness in their small town. It was well done diversity that actually made sense within the world. I also like how the live action Little Mermaid movie included a Caribbean setting that reflected the ethnicities of the characters in a way that made sense, as there is a lot of mixed people there. However, a lot of times I feel like race swapping is done just to check a diversity box and it either just doesn't make sense that two characters of the same ethnic backgrounds are different (WoT I'm looking at you) or it fails to account for inconsistencies it will create in the story. For example, I was quite frustrated in Percy Jackson both when Annabeth was casted as black, but also when they wouldn't give either that actress or Percy's actor a wig or colored contacts. These specific descriptions were important to distinguish their godly parents and her blonde hair was something Annabeth deeply internalized. I wouldn't mind her being black if they altered that, except that there is a black character in later books whose racial identity is deeply explored and add tremendously to her arc and struggles, so it feels odd that we would still have that plotline with the main character being black but it not terribly affecting her story. If Hazel was not a character I would feel better about it, for example I wouldn't mind a black or Indian Hermione at all, but if there are already plots related to race in the story I don't believe you should race swap unless those pre existing pieces are problematic. Sorry about the long paragraph, but I figured I would give my two cents :)

I think a reason why people are angry is the DEI movement hires actors based more on filling a color quota as opposed to hiring the best talent. Because of DEI, you know if a straight white male actor is hired these days, you know they were hired because they are very talented and skilled, not just because someone felt good about themselves hiring them.

I grow up with tv shows like friends or fresh prince of bel air. In the first one all the main characters were white and in the second black. I liked both and I watched everything I could from both of them, and we have more examples... When we talk about representation I don't think we need to have that representation in all shows or movies, you can tell stories where most of the characters are black and that's ok, the same happens with all whites or asian if that feets your story. The problem is that it is becoming more of this kind of things rather the story and that's why so many shows are failing. When you adapt a book you are not telling your story, just adapting someone else's story. In the case of WOT you even have that representation for free, some of the main caracters like Egwene, Mat, Perrin and Nynaeve share the same race and they are not caucasians... so I don't understand the mix of races that aftect the story you are trying to adapt in this case. As I said, you have important characters in WOT with all races already, why change it?

I have to disagree. These worlds were meticulously crafted and built often to reflect a version of Earth injected with magic and new beings, so when you feature 3+ races in an isolated village of 200 people, it’s really jarring and it pulls me out of it completely. I absolutely encourage the exploration of stories of existing people of color in fantasy but I do not believe in color blind casting when immersion is crucial to enjoyment. It’s world breaking.

I mistook from the title the point you were trying to make. My initial thought was of course it doesn't matter if genders or races are changed if the story stays true or it's not critical to the plot, see your Rand and Nynaeve examples. I enjoyed the research you did and the well thought out points you make. I'd end with this on the "they'd never change a character to white" argument, the fact that there's a name or phrase for it, "white washing", it clearly is something that has happened LOADS of times before. Great content. It's stuff like this that I want to show my kids, especially my daughter, when they get old enough to understand more complex societal things. Thanks Bookborn!

This isn’t meant to be “aggressive” or “insulting” towards you in anyway, I think there are misunderstandings about diversity Vs Woke. Disclaimer, I’m a moderate and an Atheist. You have to be realistic to what people don’t like, which is “Woke”, the rules of “Woke” are really racist, far more racist than the fans they call racists and bigots. “Woke” will put a Black guy in the movie, but because of intersectuality, the Black male always has to be subservient to a White Female. “Woke” also strips these Black Male of really any agency and relegates them to side characters who’s actions aren’t meaningful to the main plot, Finn & Arondir are perfect examples of this. They are there, so WHITE liberals can show off their “Person of Color”, what does that remind you of? “Woke” also has rules about Female characters which tend to make the Females “Gary Stu’s”(see Rey) or completely insufferable(See Holdo) or sometimes both(see ROP Galadriel). Straight White Males are relegated to being Beta Males or Evil Characters, they’re not allowed to be “Heroes”. The general public and “Fandom” have been fine with diversity for a long time now, despite what the media tells you, I’ve lived it. That is why, decades ago no one had a problem with Lando Calrissian, or Mace Windu, or James Earl Jones voicing Darth Vader or being the primary antagonist in Conan the Barbarian. You’re too young to remember and probably think the Civil Rights movement didn’t start until 2010, but Conan the Destroyer had not only a strong Black Warrior woman, but also a Black Man and an Asian cast member with a prominent role(unlike Rings of Power, who relegated Asians to extras, because Asians don’t carry the same “Woke” currency). Virtually everyone was fine with diversity in Fantasy, even back in the 80’s, before you were even born. If your fantasy is set in an Ancient Africa, you’d expect the characters to be Black. Feudal Japan, you expect the characters to be Japanese. Things like King Arthur, Robin Hood and yes, Tolkien are set in a Northern England/European setting which was and still is very White, despite what you’ve heard. Nearly 87% of the British Isles is still White, then 6% Asian, then Black, then Middle Eastern. Contrary to popular belief, straight people don’t hate gay people, Rob Halford(Judas Priest) felt comfortable enough to come out as Gay, the Heavy Metal community accepted him with open arms, in the 80’s! Straight White Males(even conservatives) mourned the death of Freddy Mercury and celebrated his life. The “Woke” media will take fans asking “how is Finn a Stormtrooper”, because after the Prequels, many thought they were clones and turn it into the fans being “Racists”, because that gets clicks. Tarantino will NEVER be called “Woke”, All kinds of White people and “People of Color” love his films, and he’s cast more diversity and given more screen time, speaking roles, agency, great dialogue, etc. to more POC and Women than ANY recent film, especially EVERY “Woke” film. Why does no one care? Because his films aren’t marketed as their sole purpose for existing is to cast a “Girl Boss and a POC”, that’s what people don’t like, because it’s a red flag, they don’t care about the story, just about sucking their own d!ck$. Kill Bill is the greatest Female Revenge Film of ALL time. Tarantino had to fight with the Hollywood Elite(who are now Woke) so he could cast a 40 year old Black women as the star of Jackie Brown, Tarantino refused to back down. Tarantino does have a couple films that are very White cast and one very Male dominated casting, because those were the stories he was telling! He didn’t force someone into a film to “check a box”, he cast who was the best actor for the role, sometimes that means turning down huge stars, because they don’t fit what he wants, sometimes that means having an incredibly diverse cast, sometimes it means not having a diverse cast. Tarantino isn’t “Woke”, he’s a filmmaker. If every filmmaker made films and cast like QT, we’d have more actors of color with better roles, & better “strong” female characters in totality. Checking boxes ends up being tokenism, and actors being forced to play crap roles in crap shows like Rings of Power, who on the promotional circuit are forced to discuss the most superficial and inconsequential things about themselves. Individuals are important. How much do sit around thinking about being white? What does being White even mean? Irish, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, Canadian, Californian, Italian, Swedish, Texan, Northern England, Southern England, etc. these are all very different things with lots of very different people, all lumped together as “White”, like that tells anyone anything about YOU! A Black person & a White person growing up in Manitoba will have far more in common with each other, than a White or Black American would have. You see how racist it is, to think a Black person from Nigeria and a Black person from Oklahoma are the same, because they’re Black, right? It’s two entirely different cultures!

The issue I have with for example the rings of power is just how forced it feels, like they have one token black dwarf, one elf, one human and one hobbit, so it takes you out of the world because it’s so obvious. I have quite liked the wheel of time and haven’t had any real issues with the casting, but then I haven’t read the books. I think a lot of the issues stem from the fact that in a lot of fantasy shows the writing and acting is just bad, so because people aren’t enjoying it as much as they’d hoped they latch on to these other issues more. If the acting is good and the writing is good and the characters story involvement is good then 90% of people wouldn’t care if the character is white/black/Asian.

8:28 here I disagree, in TLOTR, middle earth is isolated, with other peoples not coming as a common deal. You have to remember : it is based on nothern Europe, and middle earth is caught between Mordor from a side, and an unforgiving sea on the other that only elves managed to cross. There are other folks, for sure, like the easterlings, but they live really far, and that's normal. So my point here is, what's upseting with the "representation" in modern fantasy, is that it represent our modern days, not an accurate representation of the past, because in those times, inmigration was far less easy, and racisme was quite a thing. So when TRoP tries to put representation in this way, it is at the cost of the "fantasy realism" that made Tolkien's World so great. Conclusions : representation should be made in regard of the historical period and geography of the place it takes in, if your doing something in modern days Scandinavia, you will have MUCH more diversity than in 1200 (don't get me wrong, there were people of colours, but a lot less in those times, since traveling was so hard).

My only real disagreement is about the Rings of Power. Numenor is a remote island that for centuries has been isolated from the rest of Middle Earth. Everyone on that island is of Numenorian ethnicity and because they haven't mixed with other populations, the same race. So, how is it that Numenor looks like a multi ethnic and multi racial society in the show? It doesn't make much sense.

​ @Bookborn I must disagree. A character is a some of all their parts. Even the superfluous defines them. As such race swaps are not acceptable to me. white to black, black to white, asian to latino whatever the flavour. Elves are referred to time and again as fair. In the context of the English language at the time the book was written that afforded certain qualities. In the case of Tolkien that means pale and beautiful/handsome. Historical context for a narrative can change meanings and understanding how a word would have been used in the time and place it was written is immensely important. For example and early 20th century novel describing a man as gay would not infer homosexuality and rather a joyous persuasion. Distinction of language in context is incredibly important and just as relevant to a character as technical descriptions of physical appearances. Middle earth could have had a diverse narrative and more creative freedom had they ventured to lands such as Harad then dark skin could have been included without altering characters of middle earth and stories could have been told without conflicting with existing lore and scripture. Taking things to an extreme casting Theseus as an asian would be a bad choice. Not because a Theseus is described a certain way or because his appearance is relevant to his narrative but because his character is a greek. Expectations and knowledge of a region/setting dictates a certain expectation. Altering that detracts from a narrative by merit of distraction. Additionally and ultimately it disrespects the creation of the narrative one is exploring and the ideas that founded that narrative. Rather than taking predefined western narratives which seem dated by todays political standards find narratives to embrace those views or, perhaps, create new stories entirely. A side point but one I feel needs mentioning; if you are insistent on race swapping a character, make sure to include that race elsewhere. For example RoP fails to have a single other elf or dwarf that is black. This makes inclusion feel even more like a box ticking exorcise and further detracts and distracts from a defined world.

I agree with some of what you said, but disagree with most of your points. Yes, the racist comments about race-swapped characters are disgusting. I don't stand for that. Yes, as a kid, I wished there were more positive Asian representation in Western movies. However, it's just pure laziness from Hollywood with their recent "diversity" inclusion. They just throw people of different races together to meet their diversity checklist. It's pandering and insulting.

My problem with the Disney live action movie is that they keep making them rather than doing something new. But then I’ve also significantly aged out of the target audience and would have probably been excited about all of them if I were still 10!

I’m way late to this discussion but I think you have a few things quite wrong when talking about Tolkien in particular. I believe that his world is canonically homogenous when referring to his human society. He clearly stated that LOTR is a historical society based on giving Great Britain a fantastical history. In that sense, black people exist in the world beyond our viewpoint but not in the general space of his writings. This would also make black elves highly improbable in his world as well. Secondly, the city in the Rings of Power is a melting pot like NYC when again the likelihood of that is highly unlikely. The city of Numenor was almost exclusively made up of halfbreed ancestors. In this case I believe they creatives overreached. You can disagree, as is your right, but facts in this case lean against your assumptions. Also, nuance matters. You nor I can assume that Tolkien would be okay or not okay with people of color in his fantasy society. To assume he would change his mind would make us equally wrong..

Of course it matters. Otherwise they wouldn't race swap characters on purpose. I disagree with you on many levels. About Tolkien elves for example. They are described as tall and fair, light skinned.Also very androgynous in appearance. Stronger than humans and almost demigod like in their abilities. Their appearance only varies in hair and eye colour. They are a very homogenious race. Only 2 or 3 times they mixed with another race, humans. If people want black elves they should take a look at D&D for example. But in Tolkiens world they do not excist. As for humans in middle earth. They are just as diverse as in the real world. So i couldn't care less. If it doesn't matter what skin colour a character has, why change it then. You are contradicting yourself as do many others when talking about this subject.

I think another aspect of race-swaps is that it can hurt immersion for the viewer. For instance, if a parent is cast as a different race than a child, it is harder to see them as being plausibly related while watching. With that said, the best reason to change a character's race in my opinion is because of an actor that is the great for the role (like Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury).

You didn't convinced me at all. If you want me to trust your arguments don't give me clearly wrong ones. I have seen this over and over again when talking about diversity, smart people just forget how to think. You are all just repeating the same things again and again carefully avoiding facts and analysis.

If you mean for skin color to matter more than the color of someone’s shirt, then yes. For a great writer, everything about a character is intentional, and in fantasy, lineage tends to be especially important. You can cast in a race-blind way, if and only if you are going to have no racial or demographic commentary in your adaptation, because then skin color simply does not matter. But if you want any commentary on prejudice, demographics need to be maintained, or the entire story needs to be rebuilt from the ground up (and few-to-no writers are capable of ground up rebuilds that even come close to the quality of great originals).

Yes. It matters. It's part of world building. I write as a hobby. I put a lot of effort in the different peoples, cultures, their general looks etc. Anyone arguing that "fantasy should reflect our real world" is ignorant. That doesn't even make sense. Fantasy is ESCAPISM. The point is that it should be different from our world. Yes sure we can tackle social issues within that framework. But when your entire supposed story consists of you trying to "reflect the real world" regardless if it fits or not it ruins the story it just ends up ruining whatever story there is left, if there is any. It's ok to put some value that you have in your story. To nudge people into a more compassionate direction etc but if your story is nothing but virtue signaling. When the characters identity is all there is. When anyone and anything in that story is just an excuse to further virtue signal it completely ruins the story, franchise etc. Can't be saved by the best prose, best acting, best visuals. This does NOT mean that minorities shouldn't be represented in fantasy! But that the idea, that every fantasy, every movie, every show should have some quota or obligation to have people of color etc is ridiculous. I'm a minority myself. It doesn't feel inclusive or representative when you just take an already existing character and your big inclusive move is to change their skin color, gender or sexual orientation. Most adaptations suck, they intentionally miscast people just to virtue signal. So they can pretend like they care about minorities by yelling about how they are groundbreaking for having a black actor for some role, hoping that will attract more black viewers since they reached their market cap. The quotas and checkmark characters at this point have become so obvious it's frustrating. There seem to be so many marks to check there isn't even anything left. Every adaptation does the same. There is tons of diverse fantasy. Every single popular and big modern fantasy book is diverse af. Does anyone adapt those? No. They adapt tolkien, make the cast look like a bunch of upper middle class people from a modern cosmopolitan world city. It's TOLKIEN ffs .. I've I'm watching Vikings. I'm not waiting to see a black female Jarl. That fkn doesn't compute. Like I'm not expecting to see a Viking woman rule an African kingdom. Or a Arab woman rule Japan. Why does one watch Japanese samurai movies? To see white people? How the F does it make sense, that 4 kids from the same village, a village with near zero contact with the outside world. Kids who's families have lived there for generations. How the hell is it possible that one of them is White, one Mediterranean, one Indian and the other is Black, married to a white woman. There are mixed couples in the village. Absolutely no one cares about race or color. Everyone is equal and ladidadida. All great and well. How come if these people don't see color and stuff that they still look so absurdly distinct? They look like they come from 3 different continents at least. Overtime they'd just turn into a melting pot and they'd all start looking like each other. these types of things matter. Ethnicity is a thing. Culture is a thing. Skin color affects your life. Whether you like it or not. Depending on the country it can make your life worse to be the wrong color. If the majority of people is one color, there is almost a guarantee that there will be racism. It's human nature. It's tribalism. Want to remove that quality of humans fine. But then they'll just quickly melt together. And to keep it constantly super diverse you will constant large amounts of migration. So E.G. a good way to write a very diverse city in a fantasy book would be to make it some large trading city, maybe a city state with a massive harbor. Or a slavers bay / city. Maybe some pirate town. Or a town that is on some extremely vital trade route (like the silk road), maybe some town recently got a large amount of refugees from a neighboring people who have a completely different phenotype. But even then there will be locals, migrants, racism, exclusion etc etc "euuhhhh everywan differen kolor ant everywan FREENDSZ" does not fkn work. I've been discriminated too often to pretend like it wouldn't exist in some preindustrial society ffs. And I'm not even a different color. I'm fkn pale AF with green eyes and still I was discriminated beyond comprehension esp as a child. But yes please tell me how your quasi medieval village that believes cow dung cures the crabs and hung two girls for being witches, are ok with this supposed multiracial harmony.

The most of villains are white and blonde males or females. In WoT the Red is evil sister, the leader of White Cloacks is also white man. Most of villains also have blue eyes. So when you talk about misrepresentation, you can also observe, that villains are often blondes.

I'm a firm believer of the philosophy of "I'll accept this character [regardless of race, gender, etc.] if the writer makes it make sense in the world the fiction is in." I am willing to change my mind regarding fantasy fiction, especially when it's fantasy fiction that I adore; just make it make sense within the world (or universe). As of late, most swapping of genders and race is often to fulfill a quota and I think that's just as bad (if not, worse) as calling the audiences of that fiction -ists and -phobes. Race does matter, but only if it contributes to the story or deepens the world that they inhabit.

Compare the representation of diversity in Game of Thrones vs Rings of Power. GoT has diversity spread by region. People from one area look the same and people from other areas are different, but look similar within their region. This makes sense and is a smart way to do it. Rings of Power (also WoT) makes less sense. Why is there so much diversity In a small town or remote area? They aren’t trading hubs or places you would expect diversity to survive over many generations. It should homogenize over time. It’s sloppy and stupid.

This was a really interesting video and your arguments are well presented. I think a lot of the reason the push back happens is not really about the race swapping of characters itself but about the marketing surrounding that swap. I didn't notice it as much in WoT advertising (admittedly I had not read the books before seeing the show), but RoP marketing puts Desa front and center in a lot of their marketing campaign even though she's a very small (though important) role in the show itself. And in that marketing it's all about pointing out the diversity she brings by being both the only dwarf of color in the show and also the only female dwarf of any significance on screen, rather than being about her character in anything other than the surface level features. This is done with a lot of newer adaptations. Where the marketing after the swap occurs is all about the character being the first black this or latin that, or the first gay or trans character in this role, etc. I think it is the marketing, more than the swap itself, that really brings out the response. This also explains why your hair color example isn't really pushed back on as much. Because the character isn't marketed as the first brunette or blonde to play the role. Though I do think if the Weasleys hadn't been made redheads, you might have seen more furor.

The only time the Race Insertion got a little confusing to me in Rings of Power was with the mom and dad of She-Frodo... It looked like an Interracial marriage but the daughter was definitely white? I mean the Harfoots were described in LOTR (or the Hobbit, I forget) as being darker complexion so fine, they can have Black people, I don't really care... But when you have parents that don't match the race of the kid it just gets confusing. If you're going to insert diversity then it still needs to make sense. You can't break Genetics just so "The Message" can be presented. Otherwise any controversy the Race Stuff could have caused was drowned out by how horribly written the whole thing was. Bad characters (Galadriel was insufferable), bad writing (everyone knew the end by the first episode and no, the Orcs are not just "misunderstood"), bad tension building, bad scale (the Final Battle was a couple hundred orcs attacking a village with 6 buildings for... some reason... That's B-Film in LOTR)... Bad everything.

A black elf in Rings of Power isn't the end of the world. But, he's the only black elf anywhere, for all time, and its never addressed or acknowledged within the show. Make the character half-elf, with Harad parentage. Use the character to explore the Harad culture, something rarely shown in other LoTR media. Show how Sauron manipulated the Harad, and humanize a race of Men typically seen as "villainous" within the lore. Build dramatic tension with this character and other elves due to his cultural background. Instead we got "generic elf soldier is black". Such a wasted opportunity for engaging storytelling. Multiracial hobbits/harfoots isn't such a big deal either, until they are shown to be xenophobic, and exile one of their own (and their family) for "helping a stranger". One of the harfoots even suggests sabotaging Nori's family's cart to prevent them from keeping up with the group! How does a group of ppl, who actively avoid contact with others, and shun/exile those who interact with strangers become multiracial? Contrast this with "diverse casting" done well, like in GoT or HotD, where it is just one aspect of fully developed 3 dimensional characters, matters to the plot, and helps orient the viewer (ex. a scene could shift from Dorne to the Northlands and the viewer knows where they are because of how ppl look) The issue is silencing legit criticism with accusations of bigotry.

Great video on a difficult subject. The only thing that bothers me, but is in no way a dealbreaker, is having isolated cultures that are somehow very diverse. Two Rivers is supposed to be a tiny community that has been isolated since the fall of Manetheren, but somehow they have black people (Nyneave and Perrin), mixed Australian aboriginals (Egwene), and white people (Mat and Tam al'Thor). Obviously Rand's hair and look are still distinct, but the place and people don't feel that isolated with that diversity. Diversity within the Aes Sedai makes a ton of sense, since they're from all over the world, and I can still kind of understand the diverse looks within the tinkers, the Aiel or the Seanchan, since they're much bigger communities and haven't been isolated for that long, but for me at least it did take away from the "Shire-like" feeling of Emond's Field and the Two Rivers.

The problem with Tolkien's universe is that forcing US racial percentages on it is peceived as an "Americanisation" of a pseudo-ancient British tale. It makes imagined ancient Old World populations look like that of modern New York. That is the equivalent of making them use cell-phones - out of place and of out time for the story told. And as it is viewed as American cultural colonisation on non-American tales when seen outside of the US. [And an author' description is not "head-canon".]

Having a diverse cast is great, but it should be done in a way that makes sense with the worldbuilding and characterization. If a character comes from a region populated by a specific race then you'd expect them to also have their own unique culture, and if instead they're part of a minority race in the local area that should also probably shape their backstory. So it can be a red flag when an adaptation changes someone's race, because its much more likely that they're just trying to pander to a given audience demographic rather than actually thinking through all the details and deciding the change would improve the story. Of course sometimes it really is an improvement, but I think that's usually when the original author just never put much thought into it in the first place. Also, I think its a mistake to try to make shows match the demographics of the US. People have moved here from all over the world, so unless the fantasy country in question has a similar history of large-scale immigration they should probably be a lot less diverse. Which isn't to say they should all be white, and more diversity would make sense in a large-scale story including multiple nations or regions. But even if we travel around the entire world, there isn't really any reason why some fantasy world should have the same population breakdown as the real world. I think what we really need is just more stories set somewhere besides generic european medieval land and focusing on groups we don't usually see represented, rather than trying to make every individual story diverse by throwing in some token minorities.

New follower to your channel. Great piece on an difficult but important topic. I like that you emphasize that what we bring into a story can effect that story. An example I've seen of this is theater, one of my other nerdoms. The play Proof is about a formal mathematical genius who is now suffering from severe dementia, and his daughter, who has inherited the genius but fears the same future. One of the plot points is a relationship between the daughter and a former student of the father. This relationship is looked down upon by the family. The play itself does not indicate race. I've seen it done twice, and one of those times the daughter and student were different races. A mixed relationship not approved by family is something culturally that automatically takes the story somewhere else, except since the playwright didn't write it with that intention, there is nothing within the script to really deal with that cultural intention, and in the end it almost takes away from a story of a man suffering from what he's lost and a young woman that at once wants recognition for what she is, but fears what she could become, because the cultural implications of race are left unaddressed.

I applaud you for taking on an important issue. We need to normalize having rational and dispassionate conversations about the issue, and your clarity here is a step. May all of the conversations born of it stay civil and of the sort that strive toward better understanding. Kudos.

Rand wasn't the only redhead in the village in the show. So they couldn't even get that right.

Look, as a minority, the sheer fact that we are trying to change everything to suit the minority is a issue. I am a Polynesian of heritage and if Moana (which means ocean if you didn’t know) was played by a black white or Asian person than i would be upset. Stop vertual signaling and trying to tick boxes. As again. I am brown and of a huge minority in this world, and don’t appreciate ya’ll trying so dam hard. Wheel of time was a flop. No question s asked. I actually re read the books after the series and can 100% say that this was a flop. Nuff said. You are truly virtual signalling and you should be looking at true minority positive event’s.

In a medieval or medieval-ish society, people generally didn't mix like that, outside some cosmopolitan cities. In a farming village, all people should look racially similar, unless that region specifically had seen the recent influx of a new ethnical group. In Tolkiens world, we have a full description of all elven tribes, with physical characteristics, so keeping with the canon, there just isn't any room for black elves (we only ever see dwarves from 3 out of 7 tribes, so presumably the other tribes could have been black, brown or asian-looking). But IF they were dead-set on having black elves, then they should have been consistent and decided that in show universe, ie the Noldor tribe is black. Just giving characters different skin colors at random breaks immersion, except maybe in a work that doesn't take worldbuilding very seriously in general. GoT also swapped the skin color of a few characters, but then they always explained that they were originally from the Summer Isles, and they were always people who could realistically have moved across the world, like merchants or mercenaries. GoT is not a great example to follow as they had the whole Dothraki and Mereneese peoples represented by very few named characters, they couldn't even be bothered to create a new Dothraki character as leader/spokesman for the huge horde that Danaerys gains in S6. But for the characters where they did swap skin color I think they handled it correctly.

The answer should be simple. Does the race or appearance of the characters impact the story? If not, cast whoever. If yes, cast accordingly.

I don't think many people are offended by diversity... I mean in fantasy we beg for entirely different species and races beyond our own world... I think people are offended by forced diversity when it serves no purpose other than to satisfy some desire to plug in diversity everywhere we turn. The offense is the forced nature of some of it, not the actual diversity. If the author had intended on diversity being a driving force they would have added it. In LoTR there is mentioned many peoples that aren't pasty white in that world... but the story simply *wasn't about them*. The diversity in WoT(amazon) is jarring for the storyline. How are we supposed to know what people mean by Rand "not looking like a Two Rivers type" when a two rivers type is 30 different races? makes zero sense for Mat to be a pasty white guy.

it should make sense within the lore , i dont care how much people cry racism and such bullshit if it doesnt make sense within the lore you dont do it and oftentimes its hamfist for dumb reasons when the goal of bringing more black people in the lore is just move to another Location where it makes sense.

Strong disagree on Rand sticking out more with a multicultural Two Rivers. I genuinely think the opposite. He's not "different" bc literally everyone is different. That's "diverse casting" and you really can't have it both ways imo :P The show even leaned into this with the "dragon mystery" Nynaeve's backstory was even altered to try and push this. All of the EF5 were "different" in the show. That's a choice for adaptation (a bad one imo) but I think it's VERY hard to argue that Rand "stood out" as he is genuinely supposed to. Also strong disagree on Nynaeve's braid. Zoe is stunning, she's definitely got the dramatic chops for the job and she COULD absolutely carry off Nynaeve's look... but the show runners went with "Zoe's natural hair." That's a choice, for sure. A defensible one. But it's NOT "true to the book" :P Zoe actually released an artistic rendition of herself as Nynaeve prior to release and it looked amazing. It ALWAYS bothered me... especially as she's worn her hair all manner of ways in the past. This is a significant point of culture within the two rivers and should be represented as such. Not "everyone has their own version of the braid!" Add in the later narrative for Emmond's Field becoming culturally diverse... and I REALLY do think it damages that theme. It might not be HUGE, but it's still a point against the show. I STILL think a "homogenous" Two Rivers is the answer. Doesn't matter what flavour either. Have them be black, latino, Asian or all obviously mixed race... then cast Andor as majority white to make that culture shock *visible* on screen, then show more cosmopolitan populations where it makes sense. It builds the world and USES diversity for a purpose. I'd also add that they were ALREADY solving the need for diversity with a focus on Aes Sedai. An institution that IS multicultural and multiracial and they did REALLY well!

When you speak vicariously of racial diversity in films, which skin colour are you talking about directly? Black. Isn't that a bit too black and white? Where does that leave the other non-white peoples like Mongolians, Indians, Peruvians, Mexicans, Indunasians, Chinese, Turks, Japanese? Where does that leave the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America? Where does that leave the Inuit, the Iroquois or the Hurons? Where are the indigenous inhabitants of other regions of the world, such as Maori or Aborigines? Has the research ignored these peoples or should they feel that they are being addressed by proxy? Aren't we talking more about the "US-American original sin" of white Americans? When I look across the Atlantic, I see two continents that were conquered in the past, whose indigenous people were exterminated or subjugated, and when cheap labour was needed, the new inhabitants of America went "shopping" in Africa. My thoughts on this topic... Greetings from Bögitz (a German village from the former Eastern Bloc, if that means anything to you). By the way, the percentage of foreign residents in my district is 3.7%, most of them being Turks. Shouldn't Arielle be Turkish no? Andy 🙆🏼‍♀️💞

This comment section gonna be interesting. Representation is important, but race of a character also does matter, it brings immersion to the story and affects the lore. I like to look at it through historical and regional lenses. If it's more futuristic or todays story it's good to see diversity in characters as it makes perfect sense (like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Dune, new Spiderman), but still I would not want white people in China or Japan without very good reason. But if it's set up in past like medieval times then I look at it and compere it to our medieval time - people didn't have easy means of transportations and were offten separated by geography - there wasn't much diversity in our history (even in Roman times) until colonisation and slavery kicked in in America. Now Wheel of Time, as it has good and bad diversity in my opinion. All northern borderland kingdoms is shown as monoracial represented by far east Asian - fits soo good. But than there is Two Rivers that is just a mix-mash of all races living together, village that supposed to be the most isolated place in the world. It immediately broken my immersion. It not only took away from Rand's uniqueness but also gave me questions of how they managed to stay so "racially separate" from each other for thousends of years of living together (no good answer for that question tho). Wheel of time books has great and diverse characters already, Amazon could play with it, like Asians in the north, darker skin people in the south or Seanchans, with caucasians in the middle - with people like Padan Fain that could be any race as they travel, and big cities like Tar Valon mixing everyone together. The race of characters could tell viewers where they came from and what is their nationality, but we can do it only with 1/3 of the world. Netflix's Witcher is another example, it just gives us diverse (only black and white) in a world rooted in and inspired by slavic culture which was invisible in series. On top of that, they had even bigger challenge as Witcher was already adapted in games, massively popular, imprinting image of certain characters in people's mind. Yet they decided to go with black Triss, that in season 2 was looking little whiter with more intense red hair than in season 1. It was hard for me to immerse in that story, and the race was just small part of it. In terms of animations, Netflix's "The Sea Beast" gives us diverse characters as it's set up in 16th/17th century - fully immersive. Pixar's "Luca" placed in Italy tells great story about tolerance and acceptance between people and sea monsters, without diverse characters. Disney's "Princess and the Frog" is just great, it took known story, and based on that created completely new one, in new place, with new culture and black characters mainly. That's how you retell and remade movies, not by just changing the skin color of an character and calling it diversity. Not to mentionig movies like Coco, Encanto, Moana or Raya - all focusing on different places in the world, with different culture and races. Having white Mauri in Moana would just break that movie for me. And on top of that I'm the guy that likes adaptations to be as close to source material (the one that I'm familiar with at least) as possible - I quited GoT after season 5 because they butchered Dorn, Stannis, Selmy and logic. I treat changing race or sex of the characters the same way. Remaking movies and changing race of an character is just an cheep and lazy way of "being deverse".

I understand your argumentation concerning the wheel of time and it is true. However both the book and the series discuss how the two rivers is a remote place from one bloodline. In my honest opinion these statements do not fit with the representation that was shown in the two rivers. In that case to me it feels like forcing representation onto a story. In the case of Lan and the people of the borderlands I think using a actors of Asian heritage definitely adds to the show. When Neil Gaiman started on his Netflix adaptation of Sandman he took a critical look towards his nineties work and made changes to characters. However he really took the time to consider individual characters and if they really needed to be the same as in the comics or could be different. There the changes I noticed did not distract from the story. Possibly I disagree with their choice for death but even there the changes are not really influencing the story. If Wheel of Time knew for sure they were allowed to adapt the whole series they could have taken their time and think about all the countries and decided on the different people living there and what races could best represent them and create your diversity there. I think the biggest problem is that they are adapting thirty to seventy years old books written by white men in this day and age of diversity. There is a miss match between source material and new product. I would really respect creators who would instead create their own original story in which diversity and representation were included from the start. Than it feels natural to see all the different people walk around and interact since that is how that world is meant to be. Nowadays there are so many writers who try to create diversity in their worlds, base them around the Asian cultures or African cultures or other non European cultures. Yet those are not adapted at the moment since they are not yet popular. That is something you should change if you want diversity, work with storytellers that bring diversity. Your mention Tilda Swindon as the ancient one is I think a bad example of white washing. The character of the ancient one in the comics was a really stereotypical character based on Indian stereotypes. If you remained true to the source material you would have created a old fashioned character. Maintaining the heritage of the character and trying to get the stereotype out can be very challenging and possibly still biased. So they decided to change both gender and race to avoid creating a bad character. The other examples of Avatar the Last Airbender and Scarlet Johanson I completely agree with. There are enough actors of Asian heritage to cast characters from that background.

I have a couple of questions: 1) I think you said this in the video, just want to confirm. By representation you mean "We should strive for population percentage equivalence in the casting"? 2) Is the goal of having better representation important enough that when casting we should make "get at least this percentage of characters from this race" more important than "lets get the best actors possible whatever the race" ? Sorry if the questions may sound strange worded, English is not my first language. Also, I'm not trying to imply anything here, just want your honest take.

I’d like to say no it doesn’t matter. But it has to make some logical sense. For the case of rings of power it doesn’t make sense to have a black dwarf as dwarfs specifically live underground so they’d be no reason to develop dark skin to protect from a hot sunny climate. If we’re looking at medieval themed story’s then it’s pretty much a giving that immigration of a high level and far distances wouldn’t really exist so your cast would have to represent the climate in which the story takes place. If they’re gonna break this realist aspect for “diversity” then they’re breaking the immersion of whatever they’ve made. In the case of Star Wars people initially thought Fin was a Clone trooper which didn’t make sense for him to be black as the clones where all clones of a single person who was not black (although I know he wasn’t white) but as soon as it was explained he was not a Clone trooper but a conscripted Storm trooper there was no issue and in fact he was a great character to start with and everyone was upset when they ruined his character with bad writing.

I have to humbly disagree with this entire argument. Racism is a worldwide idea that has been around since the beginning of time, and not just a colonial slavery issue. People have been using their majorities since creation to create advantages in life whether that be race, gender, religion, social status, monetary value, etc... Acting confused on why people do not like their stories adapted and changed to a different medium shows your own ignorance. People loved the works of Robert Jordan and J R R Tolkien and to change those masterpieces to suit personal agendas is an outrage. Did you do any “research” on what an elf is and what a black elf would mean, as one example? Acting confused on why people like or dislike something is silly. There are many different thoughts around the world and because someone decides to not like something that was changed from an original concept to someone’s idea of what should be doesn’t make that person opinion invalid. And as I do not approve of racism I can understand how it exists in this world. I also don’t agree with a lot of religious beliefs but I also understand how some people do.

Just for reference. Prior to the end of the cold war, there was only a handful of countries with enough gdp to be considered important in the movie business(USA, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Japan). Pretty much every film was made with that audience in mind, which was primarily white-European looking. A lot of that started to change since the cold war ended, other countries got richer and demographics are quite different now and movies/tv should and will reflect that. Btw, I am old enough to remember the time when a "British" actress in a Hollywood movie was always an American..

I want all Asian cast in Stormlight Archives except Shin people :D A southeast Asian Lirin trying to make Kaladin a doctor would be priceless.

For the most part, no it doesn't matter. In the country I live in the entire concept of race is seen as junk science. Not saying people here are all "race blind" or whatever, but we typically referred to people by their nationality as opposed to their race. I know America is different though, so I'll use the terms you are used to. I don't mind when they change race of fictional characters. Considering the worldwide audience of many of these series and films, it is to be expected they all have diverse casting. What I do find annoying though is the discourse that sourrounds it, and especially arguments like "Oh, the story isn't really European anyway" or "it's not an essential feature of the character anyway". So often these assertions are patently false. Elves are, for example, very much a part of Northern-European folklore and mythology. They're described as very fair of tone. Even the word itself connects to this idea. The proto-germanic word for "elf" directly translates to "white being". I think this is where many mythology enthusiasts are confused by the changes of skin tone in Rings of Power and other American adaptations. That doesn't mean it can't be changed. In fact it's almost a tradition in itself to change how European mythological creatures look. Take this example: There are so many regional variants of elf-like creatures, from elves in the Icelandic Sagas to fairies in Britain. They're all slightly different from each other. In Norway there are myths about solitary elf creatures with tails, called Hulders (or Huldra) living in the forest. In Sweden they're called Skogsrå and have hollowed out backs. In Denmark they look more like elves in Americanized folklore, but they're not noble or kind. They will trick humans to dance with them until the humans die of exhaustion. There's two things to take from this: 1. Elves are very much tied to European folklore and identity, 2. but ironically it's almost a tradition to change the characteristics of them. So instead of trying to disconnect this lore from the roots (which I find quite offensive, tbh), Americans should just make the changes they see fit and don't overthink it. Unfortunately this isn't really how most Americans choose to go about it though. So many progressives have a penchant for revisionism. Over the past few weeks I've seen tons of claims that "actually the mermaid is green in the original HC Andersen story". A claim solely based on the sentence "her skin was fragile as a rose-leaf". Nevermind that it's described as white everywhere else in the original story. These types of blatant lies grinds my gears much more than the actual changes to the characters in modern adaptations, because they literally try to disconnect the modern adaptations from the original folklores. Please stop it with the "Oh, these stories aren't set in Europe" or "they' have no connection to Europe". Just like Mulan has a connection to China, as Aladdin has a connection to the Middle-East, a lot of these tales are closely connected to centuries old European lore and mythology. And that's OK. Rather people should just say "We want to change some of the features of the characters because representation is really important". That I can get onboard with. Edit: I'll add one more thing, because you seem to be completely unaware of this when you talk about the power dynamics. A lot of this lore stems from Eastern Europe. But EE hasn't historically been a privileged region at all. Where do you think the word slave comes from? Slav. As in the Eastern-European Slavs that was used for forced labor in the Ottoman Empire. These people have always been mistreated by the empires they border, and as we all know, they still are.

I think game of thrones show is good at making characters race identifiable of their origin and background. It did not look forced. In my own interpretation if there is some kind of racial discussion around the character, making that choice should be handled carefully, if there is none, it should be fine. With rings of power it did no bother me because that discussion is about being dwarves, elves, human and harfoots, not color. I feel indifferent with little mermaid, because her physical distinction (aside from being a mermaid) is not really important.

I disagree on Nynaeve's defining physical trait. She's a short woman among Two Rivers giants. That and the fact that she's young and in a position of power told me that the braid (was it a coming of age thing?) was a symbol of self-reassurance, throughout the series. Hence the tugging and the diffuculty she has with shaking the habit.

You can diverse representation, they just need to make their own crap instead of changing existing IPs or revisioning historical characters.

The whole issue is very simple: they are doing race swaps for political issues, therefore it matters very much. If it was a genuine artistic decision would be different, but the reality is that all these streaming services put out guidelines as of how many people of such and such demographic should be hired. Kinda like with the whole insanity of pronouns, it is one thing to ask something private if they're OK with it, but it is a different thing to make it into a public thing

Personally, I have no issue with race swaps for characters when they aren't relevant to the plot (or setting), get the actors who will do it best. However, I do see the valid criticism from a world consistency point of view that it doesn't make sense for these diverse populations in insular medieval settings. Ex, 1 black hobbit makes 0 sense in a community that doesn't interact with the outside world. They should all be the same race of choice. WoT is a bit of a special case given the setting is thousands of years ahead of today, so you could argue the diversity occurred then and simply persisted, though I think more likely the communities would still trend towards a middle common appearance over the generations. Game of Thrones probably did it the best by having each region have a distinctive racial or appearance difference. You can get the diverse casting without glaring consistency issues. Would humans really vary as much from Dorne to Winterfell given the continent was said to only be about the small size of the British Isle? I dunno, but it's easier to accept and it worked well in a visual medium.

12:34 It is weird how they say that people do not get angry because of those other ones---but they _do_ get angry, and that is exactly why this discussion exists. They themselves are the ones getting angry, and they seem to lack even the minimum amount of self-awareness.

So i agree with alot of the video but have a couple points of disagreement. Regardless of the potential for change Tolkien was very explicit in his hate towards the change on his charachters even more so that the lore in his letters. The finn thing was stupid in my opinion and may have been brought on by confusion between clone and storm troopers. White actors are put in bipoc roles because they are markatable and studios aren't going to back a project without a bankable lead. Though alot of the time they just get lazy with their choices and want the in actor. Contraversy with changes in race, face backlash because they are percieved as the studio having an agenda which tends to leads in porely written stories and characters like those in the Rings of Power. Finns charachter was entirely abandoned in Star wars when he had soo much potential. The Backlash tends to die down when the movie or tv show is actually good, take house of the dragon for example. The biggest problem i have with race swapping is it gives studios the excuse to abandon the stories we want (original bipoc stories with bipoc leads) for well established franchises then when things go bad becasue they forget to order a good script they call the audience all racist or sexist and every other ist under the sun. The bad writing and marketing towards diversity and bad writing just makes the bipoc community look bad making us look like the enemy when we just want to be seen. We don't want hollywood crumbs so the studios can fill a quota. Give us the stories we want, there are soo many stories that are deserving of screen adaptation but big studios wont touch. We can tell when a story is written with us in mind, the Hulu comedy Ramy is a great example of a bipoc story thats authentic and well written. It's these stories that have the greatest impact, tv shows like the cosby show, fresh prince and x files lead to significant changes because they were examples of bipoc children and girls seeing good role models worthy of emulating leading to higher rates of those children going into higher education. If you want the greatest impact for good give us stories that speak to us and our experiances, that humanise us and give us worthy role models, not this marketing rubbish thats just empty pandering.

Hey! First of all, thank you for offering a reasonable and considered perspective on this subject. I don't always agree with you (which I'll get to in order to contribute to the conversation), but I've so often heard incoherent screaming about this from both sides, so this take is very refreshing. I have a few thoughts, some things I definitely agree with, and some I do not. First of all, I definitely agree that race in media matters. There are often a lot of disingenuous arguments made by both sides saying, "Why do you care?" But both sides clearly care, so it definitely matters to everyone. My main point here is to say that I think some of the opposing arguments that you dismiss as being targeted only at racial differences between characters and their adaptations are perhaps a little more genuine than you admit. Specifically Lord of the Rings comes to mind. Whether we know what Tolkien would have said or not, it is clear that what he made was a mythology for England. With middle earth being a parallel to that, out of respect for the lore and the background of the idea, it makes sense to have most characters be white. I think this is also the case with many of the fairytales that you mentioned. These ideas come out of a European tradition and heritage. I do not think it is right to take a heritage tradition with no respect to its context. Similarly to how I would react very negatively to white people in an adaptation of a Jewish parable, I think it's reasonable to react the same way with an adaptation, even a modern one, of a European fairytale. Now, I said earlier I agree that racial representation is important, and I do agree with the self esteem and public image points you made. But I would submit to you that the solution for this, say particularly for black people in america, is not to import other heritages into European traditions, but to import African traditions, and those of any other minority, into our media culture. To believe that we need to put colored people into stories of distinct European tradition in the name of diversity strikes me as similar to saying that the stories of distinct African or any other tradition aren't worth bringing in so if we want diversity, we must shoehorn diversity into things that don't spawn from that tradition. I don't intend to imply that you or anyone else particularly was thinking along those lines, but I think it can have that effect. Why not keep stories from European tradition looking European, and bring in stories of African tradition and make them look African? In short, the solution for diversity to me is not to put diversity into stories from a si gle heritage, but rather tell stories from a multitude of heritages, giving us REAL rather than forced diversity. What are your thoughts?

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had about statistic information regarding Race/Ethnicities being represented and on the ground reality. Looking through statistics one might say "there is a gross injustice - we need to correct the situation" then later, "we have achieved a greater representation due to the mitigations we put in place, hu-rah" "hang on..people are upset at the ways we have improved representation? they must be the problem, they just want to keep representation down." Yet on the ground the issue many persons have is to do with the combination of 'Forced' representation (which isn't really a big problem) coupled with bad movies or poorly told stories. When that becomes a pattern, they very simply blame the representation for the bad story. The statistics are not lies, but they frame the conversation, the drive he goal. Yet, most viewers/readers won't research the percentages. They go by feeling, then deduce that the new thing is why there is a problem. Solution is seems quite simple, be creative and produce good new stories! (Which, of course, is the hard part.)

Appearance matters, hence race matters. Targeryans were not black and black panther is not white

I think you have completely missed the point of race in fiction. I utterly despise it when they race swap or gender swap characters. The issue is not with having black characters in movies or other media. If you want black characters, either use characters which were black to begin with or create a new character. Changing the race of a character is disrespectful towards the lore and the property that you are adapting. Also, people are emotionally attached to the characters and race / gender swapping is messing with that and that is wrong. If representation matters, then again, just create new characters. I believe that they seldom turn characters white and that there is a tendency by producers and directors to say: "Look, I got this black character. See, I am not racist." In your section, "you'd would never turn a character white tho", I was only familiar with The Prince of Persia. In that case, it would have been better if they had cast a middle eastern actor as that would have made more sense in the context. I do remember Prince of Persia mostly as a pixelated game I played in the 80s. In the game, the character was white. But again I would have been fine with it in that case. If you feel the need to turn a white character into a black one, that means either of two things. It means you are not competent enough as a writer to create a black character from scratch. Or, you make a tacit acknowledgement that the white character is superior. If you can only put black characters in movies by changing white ones, that undermines the whole point. Your points about the research and why representation matters are fair enough but those state why there should be black (and other) characters in movies. None of your points justify changing the race/gender of existing ones.

The stories and characters should matter and race should be an incidental detail.

I'm a little surprised you didn't bring up the casting of Anabeth for the Disney+ adaptation of Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan's response to those who where upset by the casting.

My problem is when the races (or genders or sexual preference, etc.) are changed in order to check a box. When it feels forced, it feels disingenuine.

Diversity done properly is fine, the problem is typically it's done poorly. Wheel of time is a perfect example. The world is MASSIVE, there are tons of different races of people, BUT, they are largely from their separate countries (like most of the world today even still). The reason mixing the races of all different areas makes no sense is you lose your sense of immersion because everywhere looks the same. The irony is that wheel of time is set up better than many fantasy stories to portray the importance of differences in casting. There are so many characters that are non-white, if only they had been willing to wait to insert them naturally. Like Tuon and the ruling Seachan, the Domani, the Aiel, the Northerners, diversity is everywhere. The problem is that humans still instinctively know differences, and we see them, and when every small tall has ALL races in it represented even though we know it wouldn't be that way, it pulls us from the storytelling. If you read the Wheel of Time you see how ALL the time when the main characters go to places they are not from, people comment on how they look different, in fact, many places are kinda racist to them. Why is this, and why is race important? Because it heavily dictates background, your history, culture, and mannerisms. To remove that from the characters confuses the audience and pulls from disbelief. You can have a rich diverse cast, and when done properly it really adds to the world-building. When done poorly it detracts.

Like you, I want to see more diversity in adaptations. However, it makes me sad that so much of this push for more diversity is done at the same time as what appears to be a real decline in writing, storytelling, and character-building. Moreover, as is the case with Rings of Power, we now often see writers' rooms where almost no one is an actual fan of the original work. I also understand some of the outrage when inserting diversity into a world is done poorly and illogically, as it was in Rings of Power. House of the Dragon came out at the same time and provided a perfect foil for how to do diversity well. The cast diversity makes sense in HotD, whereas it doesn't in RoP. They were intentional with how diverse characters were inserted by using the geography of the fantasy world to make these decisions. Thus, not only did the diversity fit the world's inner logic, but it actually made it easier for the audience to follow the story, especially if they were less familiar with the world. A character's race tells you something about where they come from in the fantasy world, which family they are linked to, and so on. It never felt like token diversity or a throwaway to appease a certain audience. In RoP, no such logic was attempted. Thus, every race and even species is a random mix, as though before these medieval times, there had been a massive bought of globalization where every nation across the world mixed. Even Bridgerton took the time to provide an explanation for the highly diverse casting, which differs from the historical context. They made sure the world they created had some degree of internal logic.

My _one and only_ complaint about something like The Little Mermaid is, we really just don't need a reboot of an already really hashed out story, just for the sake of diversifying it, when there are _so many_ original stories out there being shelved in order to do so. You want diversity in stories, bring us original content....PLEASE! I do want to comment on the author's intent subject a little, and how it definitely could lead to problems departing from it. Unfortunately, unlike you, I'm lazy so I won't have examples here, but there are many fantasy novels/series I've read where the author makes a rather huge effort to parallel the problems of racism and the need to overcome this issue within their story in order for the protagonists to prevail, but instead of it being BIPOC people, it's dwarves, elves, humans etc. So now, if you adapted one of these stories to film but felt you had to further diversify all of these races, the story would have a hard time keeping the same parallel the author was actually making with our real world situations because you're inserting the real world into this fantasy one. With the possible exception of ex: making all the elves Asian, the dwarves black, the humans white etc. Crazy thing is, if they made each race a singular ethnicity, the flack in media would be outrageous, even though this is _the very thing_ the author was exemplifying in their parallel.

How are dwarves getting so much melanin? Elves are described quite extensively.

Wonderful video-essay! Absolutely subscribed to the channel - you are the best!

And I always thought Ariel's most striking feature was that she is half fish. Also, the one time I got upset about casting choices versus the character on page was the Cruise "Reacher" movies. Thank goodness it is corrected with the Amazon series.

I have often thought that H.P. Lovecraft would still write racist stories now. Comparing his Mythos to Tolkien's work suggests that Tolkien could have adapted his inclusion of race within his stories were he here today. Also, I'm willing to bet a large majority of audiences care about height change, eye color change, and hair color change. However, we should also see that while our attention to detail encourages our appreciation of certain stories, humanity has the capacity to increase its ability to pay attention to a higher number of details within a single moment. With the advent of the internet, we now have the ability to learn more about people's preferences for eye color and hair color. Once audiences develop familiarity with each other the capacity for all of us to see each other within a single cohesive story will increase.

Before watching the video, here are my thoughts: We should push back generally against the notion that every show/movie/whatever must reflect attitudes on race in 2022. This means I'm against the change for house Velaryon on House of the Dragon, but its much better implemented than on say Rings of Power where race is random. But even there it strains credulity with Rhaenyra's children.

Do you think the Representation Project is non bias? I think I would be suspect of their data and would suggest that if you need people to look like you in film for you to watch it, then you are a little bit racist and we shouldn't cater to you. I think this is more about giving diverse actors and writers parts, rather than making a good coherent story. It's not about making sure their is diversity of characters on the screen, it's about the actors themselves which is terrible. I don't care about any actors, I care about characters. I wouldn't want any character of any race changed for a quota or for politics. The problem with left wing people is they don't see their world view as political amd they blindly trust any data presented to them from a left wing source. The Representation Project is clearly bias and thinking that we need media to match the racial percentages of the country is weird. If black people can't enjoy Lord of the Rings, then that's their own racial hang ups, and we should help them move past that, not change things for them to reinforce that.

Thanks for this discussion. What's more important to me is finding people who can bring the characters to life in the adaptation. Zoe as Nynaeve and Madeleine as Egwene have some of the physical traits mentioned in the books but, more importantly, really bring out the personality traits that are the heart of these characters. Also, in WOT, look at Lan. I'm reading Winter's Heart right now, but Lan was never a fully flesh-out character to me up to this point. I learned more about his character reading New Spring than in the first 9 books. Daniel Henney is really helping to bring that character to life on screen with more aspects and as a dimensional person. Marcus has the look of Perrin for me too, although I'm still waiting for them to do more with their character in the show. I also understand your point on the Aviendha casting and really need to meet a lot more Aiel in the show to understand where they're taking that culture. I'm wondering if they're going to give Ayoola redder tinted hair to make that characteristic stand out. Look at the recent The Sandman adaptation. I personally have never read the GN, but the show makes a great many changes to characters' ethnicity and gender, and in that world, those changes are working well. I think the more chances you have to include people of color in fantasy worlds, the better those worlds are and the greater the chance that the world is going to have wider appeal. Also, as a white, hetero male, having people of color in these shows opens my eyes to learning more about different cultures and communities. I wish people would take this as an opportunity to have more heartfelt conversations about this topic rather than just attacking it for not fitting the box they've assigned to it.

I am totally on board with most points of the video. But I don not agree with some of your case stuies, especially WoT. WoT has diversity. It didn't need other diversity injected in to it. I was very upset when they changed they changed Aryas hair color in Eragon. I didn't care about the twins height change because that is not a Character aspect thats very present in my head.