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Welcome to the Crown Upside Down newsletter, a publication about the wokening of the rings and getting your skirts over your head.

The Wokening of the Rings

A few years ago, when Marvel’s first rendition of Thor came out, a big to-do preceded it in the form of various corners of the internet getting their skirts over their heads about the idea that a black actor, in this case Idris Elba, would be playing Heimdall, that character being part of the pantheon of Norse gods, and therefore presumably white as snow.

Of course, certain media outlets like The Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, and Salon reported on the issue in a way that almost certainly amplified the controversy for their own purposes and gave a louder voice to the people they claimed to decry as racists. Conflict gets clicks, after all, which I assure you is completely coincidental as regards this newsletter. If you’re legitimately concerned that someone’s advancing an immoral position, giving them wide publicity is a pretty unethical thing to do. In other words, the controversy was probably never that controversial until it was, and I question whether the motives of the people reporting on it were pure.

Moving on…It ended up being fine. Idris Elba was fine as Heimdall, the color of the actor’s skin made no difference whatsoever, and the supposed promised boycott of the Thor movies never materialized or gained any significance.

Fast forward to Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings Series: The Rings of Power, and the internet is once again supposedly getting the vapors over the idea of black actors playing characters that “are supposed” to be white. Only this time the controversy doesn’t seem to be an overblown creation of the raggier corners of journalism. The Babylon Bee made an entire skit to satirize it for heaven’s sake (which was pretty funny), so we’re beyond the usual grievance mongers plying their trade for clickbait here. So widespread was the idea that Amazon had taken the Lord of the Rings into “woke” territory, that I was genuinely worried we were going to see a real bastardization of the beloved property.

So what did we get?

We have two black actors playing hobbits, one black actor playing a dwarf [n.b. – In the production of this newsletter that went live on Youtube, I stated the actress is black. She is actually Sri Lankan], and one black actor playing an elf. Oh, the queen regent of Numenor is also played by a black actress. This hardly strikes me as the woke takeover of Middle Earth. No one’s gay. No one’s painting rainbows on the streets of Dol Guldur, and CRT isn’t part of Gil-Galad’s new education strategy. Given the controversy that preceded the show, I was legitimately surprised that all the elves, save one, are played by white actors.

I’ve often thought when making any production the part should go to the actor who can play the character the best. When I write characters, I often specifically decline to describe their race for this very reason. Race and other physical characteristics are almost always superficial, but bad writers overuse them as a stand-in for traits that could actually make an interesting character. In this way of writing, something arbitrary over which the character had no control, like skin color or gender, is somehow supposed to convey something special.

I think that’s hogwash.

It’s like giving your character an ostentatious full-face tattoo: far from making the character cool, it just screams, “please think this character is interesting!” It reeks of desperation, and it’s not very creative or clever. Better writers find better ways to make their characters unique and compelling. Hopefully through what their characters do. The color of their skin may as well be as important as the length of their pinky toes for all the difference it makes in most stories, and it’s usually not worth remarking on unless it adds to the story in a way that advances the plot. (Here’s a hint: it rarely does.) Maybe these actors just fit the part the best and deserved to get their roles independent of their skin colors?

I get that there are compelling, good-faith arguments for casting characters a certain way. Tolkien’s Elves are tall and fair-skinned, and that would seem to call for tall and fair-skinned actors. Tolkien intended for the Lord of the Rings to be a kind of mythology for England, and England has been pretty lily-white until fairly recent in its history. At the same time, Tolkien was a strong Catholic; he was partly responsible for C.S. Lewis’ conversion, and he wrote The Lord of the Rings as a Christian allegory. It didn’t start out that way, but by the end he realized that’s what he was doing, and in Christianity there is neither Jew nor Greek; slave nor free (Gal 3:28), something certainly evident in the way various peoples throughout Middle Earth come together to fight a great evil.

Besides which, there are far better reasons to be concerned about the show. Chief of which is that it’s simply not that good. So let’s talk about that.

But wait: we’re not done yet. Didn’t the marketing for the show place special emphasis on the power of Galadriel? Isn’t this indicative of some feminist takeover of Middle Earth?

Let’s remember that in Tolkien’s own lore, Galadriel was the second most powerful Elf after Feanor, though she was known as the wisest. Since Feanor’s dead, that leaves her at the top. It’s not exactly advanced feminism to place her in the role Tolkien assigned to her. (This isn’t to say there aren’t problems with how the lore is being handled; more on that later.) But, let’s have a look at how Rings of Power’s writers decided to depict her power compared to other adaptations.

On the one hand, in Rings of Power, Galadriel defeats a troll, something which I feel like we’ve seen another elf do already in another time and place. Contrast this with what Tolkien himself wrote, and which another writer/director brought to audiences… “In place of a dark lord you would have a queen…” One of these turns Galadriel into solely another action hero, doing something which it seems many elves should be capable of doing. The other makes her formidable with only a few lines of dialogue. I think it’s self evident which of these depictions leaves the audience with a stronger impression.

As for the rest of the show…

A lot of time when I give criticism of a piece of writing, there are specific technical issues and choices that the writers have made I can discuss. There is some of that in Rings of Power. For example, the show violates Chekhov’s Gun at least once. This principal states that if you’re going to have a gun in one scene, it better go off in the next scene. The principal isn’t really about guns; it’s about setting up audience expectations and being deliberate about what you’re writing and why you’re inserting an element. Every object you put in a scene should have a purpose in the plot.

Rings of Power sets up a problem with wolves for the proto hobbits in its first episode, going so far as to show tracks and an ominous presence on a ridge, but by the end of episode 3 that conflict is nowhere to be seen and seems to have been forgotten altogether. At this point even if wolves do show up to threaten the hobbits again, it will be too far disconnected from their introduction to seem anything but a random encounter.

 Despite this example, it’s much harder to criticize specific issues with the Rings of Power, because its biggest issue seems to be a broad one: the pacing.

After finishing episode 3 Friday night, I turned to my wife and said, “This is a show perpetually on the cusp of something happening.” I think that sentiment pretty well captures the show’s issues.

This is reportedly going to be an 8 episode story arch. We had just finished episode 3, and they’re just now starting to hint at the villain at the episode’s end, who despite all the mystery we all know is going to be Sauron. For a show called the Rings of Power, we’ve barely seen anything of Celebrimbor, the elf who forged the rings, let alone any discussion at all of any rings whatsoever, and so much is going on that nothing is really happening.

We’ve got a story involving the aforementioned proto hobbits and Gandalf (they haven’t said that’s who he is but let’s be honest: everyone knows it’s him), Elrond trying to convince the dwarves to do…something, a star-crossed lovers tale involving an Elf ranger and human on the borders of what will become Mordor, and Galadriel herself running around in circles doing something or other with about fifteen different people at any given time. In the midst of all these stories, multiple new characters have been introduced whose names will be familiar to fans of the lore: Isildur, Elendil, and Durin to name a few, and some whose names will not be familiar because as far as I can tell they’re made up for the show, but it’s not quite clear what their role in this specific story is supposed to be. Everyone’s running around frantically doing something, but not much is happening. There are entire episodes where whole storylines are dropped entirely to focus on one or two others (which may be a good thing).

Since I’m finally publishing this newsletter after having watched episode 6, I can tell you that nothing involving a plot starts happening until the end of episode 4 when Numenor decides to send ships to help Middle Earth, but here’s the kicker: the ships don’t depart until the end of episode 5. Even then, Numenor doesn’t get it’s watered down, plot hole riddled Rohirrim’s charge until the end of the next episode.

This appears to be an issue with focus. There are too many stories going on, too many characters, and not enough time in any given episode to really flesh out what any of them are doing or why.

As an example, at the start the show devotes several minutes of narration (one of my pet peeves, but that’s a topic for another time), to blowing through several thousand years of lore in passing, glossing over any number of stories which could each have been a show in their own right. I’m inclined to ask why a writer would bring these stories up if they’re going to ignore them. The destruction of the trees of Valinor by Melkor and Ungoliant (who are never mentioned by name), for example. The lore there is interesting and it’s part of the world building, but it has very little bearing on the present story, if it has any at all.

World building is the kind of thing that’s important for a writer to do, and it can be a lot of fun, but it’s also the kind of stuff you leave in your notes and off the pages of your book unless and until it connects directly to the central plot. Even then, you don’t just narrate history. That’s a good way to put your audience to sleep. Despite the popularity of the Lord of the Rings, I’d wager that most people watching the show have only a passing interest or awareness of the Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales, and probably said to themselves, “Huh, I wonder what that was about,” when those references were tossed into the narrative only to be seen again nevermore.

In other words, there’s so much going on in this show that nothing is happening; or rather, nothing has started to happen until the end of episode 4, more than 50% of the way through the season, and that’s probably its biggest issue.

Various

Apologies that this newsletter is a few days late. I finished it and published it to Youtube a couple weeks ago, and somehow got it in my head that I had already sent it out. As a bonus, since I’ve had the chance to watch a few more episodes, you get to read some things those plebes who only watch this newsletter on Youtube will never get to see.

Speaking of which, you can find the Youtube version of this newsletter here.

The full audiobook for my first publication is up on YouTube now. Go give it a listen. A listen, like, and subscribe there would be much appreciated, and helps me out a lot.

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In Closing

I guess if I was to add a moral to all of this, it would be to try not to get your nose buried so deep in the complexities of your own world that you miss the thread of the plot. You’ll have a much more interesting story that way. See you next time.

David