The Racist Tapestry of Lord of the Rings�!

Yeah. Right. First, the headline with the exclamation point? Definitely screams "take me seriously."

My favorite part:
"Can you imagine how people of skin color, of Persian, Arab and East Asian ethnic background feel when they come out of these films where all the heroes are white and all the "evil doers" are of dark skin."

As they are not of Hobbit, Dwarf, or Elf heritage, I think they'll probably say, "look! An entirely different world from the one I live in! This must be why they call it fantasy."

Also? The second biggest baddy (you know, other than the one who was a GIANT EYE) was called Saruman the WHITE, and certainly looked it. And Sauron's army? The trolls looked a bit greenish-grey to me, and the commander of the army (Uruk-Hai, I think -- Ryan?) looked like a very pale, bloated cadaver. And the Nazgul? No faces.

Connecting LoTR to "Rap/hip-hop culture" was also... really fucking random. Counterbalancing effect? What the shit does that mean? Your artificial dichotomy befuddles me, dude. Some opposites: large -- small; short -- tall; hot -- cold. Explain to me in 1000 words or less how "Tolkien -- Hip-hop" fits in there.

I think the main problem I have anytime this comes up regarding a fantasy world is that there are plenty of "realist" films in which darker skined people and women are tokens, but they tend to not have overt portrayals of good and evil, so we don't rant as much about it. Problem is, racism is more likely to look like this these days -- unstated, invisable stereotypes rather than outright "black people are evil" statements.

I tend to be pretty concerned with racial issues. This doesn't concern me. What concerns me is that there is HUGE discrepancy in realist films' representations of racial composition in modern life. Let's worry about that, and leave the denizens of Middle Earth to their own fictitious problems. Using a hyped up "controversy" surrounding a fantasy world seems to water down an important issue of media representation.

Edit, because this just keeps bugging me:
I think my snark at the author of this article had the unfortunate side effect of bringing my response down to his level of analysis. On further consideration, his arguments are still more problematic for me because they don't really look at the films (or books) themselves -- they only really consider the casting, perhaps touching on artistic choices, though in a completely decontextualized way. The overall theme of the story for me has been very basic: power currupts, and absolute power currupts absolutely. Throughout the films we see members of the Fellowship (the "good guys") battle with themselves to resist the power of the Ring -- the temptation of absolute power. They fight it off, for the most part, though we see in Gollum what would have become of the hobbits if they had not, in Saruman what might have become of Gandolf.

The story never seemed to be about evil people, or evil peoples, but rather about how choice affects who we are, and about how choosing against rational self-interest is necessary for peaceful co-existance. (Why, yes, I am a peace-nik.) The article above seems to completely ignore the content of the movie in order to critique the visuals, and ignores inconvenient visuals that argues against the author's thesis.

And frankly, I always thought the Uruk-Hai more closely resembled the celtic warriors depicted in "Robin Hood" than any Native American tribe...