Final Fantasy War Of The Visions New Characters
Anfos Sin
"I was embarrassed for you about your review of Rings of Power," the message read. The author contended that author J.R.R. Tolkien created the world the TV show is based on as mythology inspired by English history. "Your 'discomfort' at fantasy being at [sic] Eurocentric and white centered betrays a profound ignorance of the material and smacks of irrelevance and narcissism. The story isn't about you and doesn't have to be."
I got similar feedback from a few sources on social media after my review was broadcast. In the piece, I admitted toward the end that the series still felt awfully white-centered to me, despite a few key characters portrayed by performers of color.
More recently, after the trailer dropped for Disney's live action reboot of The Little Mermaid, racists complained about Halle Bailey bringing her Black Girl Magic to the role, making boneheaded hashtags like #notmyariel and #gowokegobroke trend on social media.
But as columnists and late night hosts craft their snarky insults about pop culture racism, it's worth noting why so many fans are reacting this way: the original works that they love were super white-centered in the first place.
Frankly, as a Black TV and media critic who speaks out often on race issues, it's not new to find some audience members severely triggered whenever the topic comes up. You can try to place your comments in perspective, but all they see is a beloved piece of media "tarnished" by the observation that it was created to elevate white culture in a way that should be interrogated and changed.
But read the stories highlighting how young Black girls reacted to seeing a non-white Ariel in a beloved children's story, and you get a sense of how much power comes from seeing someone like yourself at the center of such a moving pop culture property.
Even Elon Musk weighed in, providing a criticism of the show that seemed more like a dog whistle to his tech bro fanbase. "Tolkien is turning in his grave," Musk wrote on Twitter. "Almost every male character so far is a coward, a jerk or both. Only Galadriel is brave, smart and nice." This comment, unsurprisingly, ignores Cordova's character, who is also pretty heroic.
But dunking on people who think a fantasy about elves, wizards and hobbits can somehow be made less "realistic" by casting some characters with Black and brown performers, misses an important part of this discussion.
These new visions of classic fantasy worlds and characters are simply a reflection of our new, more multicultural world. And that's probably what most scares fans who are used to white-centered fantasy.
Producers of the TV versions of Lord of the Rings and the HBO Game of Thrones spin off House of the Dragon are trying to figure out just how much of the world's current attention to multiculturalism they can feature without upending the series. (In a previous column, I wrote about how the sociological dynamic called Group Threat Theory explains many of these negative fan reactions.)
Why doesn't our exclusion feel inauthentic, given that some experts say non-white people have existed in Europe back to the Roman era? How does including a wider range of character types ruin a story which already features new characters and expanded storylines?
Will future stories explain why there are elves and hobbits of different skin colors? Does Ariel's skin color matter in the world of this new Little Mermaid, and will the film explore why or why not? In Rings of Power, we see human prejudice against elves, but what other prejudices or cultural differences may be at work? Can any of those characters among the dark villains, the Orcs, move toward heroism or be redeemed?
It may sound like I'm asking a lot from these venerated works. But if the Game of Thrones prequel can spend time dissecting sexism in its world, surely they can find some space for racial issues as well. Now that producers have opened the door, they should take advantage of all the new storytelling opportunities they have created, echoing the debates underway right now in real life.
Placing a few actors of color in key roles doesn't fully challenge the thinking that's led so many fans to assume franchises like The Lord of Rings and The Little Mermaid should always be the exclusive province of white characters and white culture.
A current magazine ad features a handsome man in a white linen suit, a light straw hat tipped rakishly across his brow, leaning casually against a palm tree, holding a cold drink. Above him lush green palm fronds bend to frame his debonoir pose, behind him the brilliant blue sea pounds golden sands. In the shadows a binkini-clad blonde awaits. Below, ad copy touts the advertiser's product. This happens to be rum but it could be an airline, a clothing manufacturer, a bank charge card, an investment counseler, or the U.S. Army. Nothing in the full page photograph discusses qualities of rum. No logical arguments explain the benefits of one brand of rum over another or of drinking rum rather than, say, Hawaiian punch. But if you are hot and tired and trapped at a desk by long rows of numbers that don't balance, it may stir in you a great longing for cool breezes and empty hours, a longing that, oddly enough, you may satisfy with rum and Coca-cola in a fat glass with a pineapple chunk on the rim. The ad is operating on a principle elucidated by Ernest G. Bormann: "We are not necessarily persuaded by reason. We are often persuaded by suggestion that ties in with our dreams" (Ernest Bormann and Nancy Bormann. (Speech Communication 171).
Most commercials use the literary device of the pseudo-parable as a means of doing their work. Such "parables" as The Ring Around the Collar, The Lost Traveler's Checks and The Phone Call from the Son Far Away not only have irrefutable emotional power but, like Biblical parables, are unambiguously didactic. (131)
A McDonald's commercial, for example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It is a drama, a mythology, if you will, of handsome people selling, buying, and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good fortune. Is this a claim? (5)
In the age of television, the ideas of political leaders are not expressed as subjects and predicates. They are not subjectable to logical analysis and refutation any more than is a McDonald's commercial. (qtd. in Benderson 14)
Images, whether verbal or visual, are powerful. In the television-magazine era, visual impressions take on special power, but they could as well be told in words. Consider an example. The night is dark, cold, threatening; but in the house, safety and warmth prevail. A warm golden lamp throws soft light on the child's bed. Beside it, Mother stands, smiling with love. This is an image you may recognize, either because you have seen it before or because you long for it. In either case, if I can connect it in your mind with my product, my product can represent mother-love and safety too. All an advertiser has to do is put the right words below the picture or into the story: "At three in the morning when my son has a fever I give him Children's Tylenol." "Ethan Allen Galleries. A good home lasts a lifetime." "Feather soft pillows. For the one you love." "Bill Gardner knows your home is important to you. Vote Gardner for City Council. For a city your family can love in."
Fantasy theme analysis is a methodology designed to examine such messages. It helps you unearth the force of stories and dramatic elements which operate like stories, such as the escapism suggested in the rum ad, and determine how these influence you. The method presumes that inherent in every drama are values and that through the stories people tell, we get a glimpse of their values. Our response to their stories can be a key to our beliefs; if we cheer a hero's action, for example, we support that action; if we laugh at a character's antics, we define his behaviors as deserving laughter. Typically we do this without giving it much thought; analysis involves bringing the process into conscious awareness.
The words "drama" and "story" may be misleading at this point. Many people have a tendency to equate drama with theater or television shows and to equate stories with long stretches of speech beginning "Once upon a time." Story is used in the fantasy theme context in a much broader sense. In essence it refers to how individuals cast events when recounting them to another or to themselves.
Let me give you an example from the Sacramento Bee which describes a situation undoubtedly familiar to you--the junior high school classroom. The Bee ran a series on public school teaching. In the course of the discussion one teacher described her view of teaching. The following week several people responded to her. These people were not "telling stories" in any entertaining sense. They were attempting to describe a very important situation so that others could sense what it was like. However, in order to convey those images, each created his or her own drama--describing a setting, putting characters into it, and giving them action.
I am supposed to be at school at 7:30, a half hour before class, in case a parent wants to drop by. I think one did, once. In December and January, the temperature in my room at 7:30 varied between 50 and 57 degrees. It reached 68 by lunch--on good days.
I always go to the restroom before my first class. Women have one stall, one sink, one mirror and no heat. In December and January the temperature does not rise to 68 by noon--or at any time during the day. There is no hot water, but we do have some soap to go with the cold.
My class walks, runs, jumps and stumbles (these are junior high kids) into the room. All four walls and the ceiling are composed of glass and other equally hard surfaces. We have glaring florescent lighting. The floor is asphalt tile over concrete. The desks that scrape on it have metal legs. . . .
I stand or sit at my desk. It is metal with a battered plastic top. It has two drawers. My chair is metal; it has no arms. I made a cushion that I use on it to avoid further deterioration of my varicose veins.
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