LogFAQs > #967883220

emblem-man posted...

I didn't even note the hostility as a skin color racism thing. I was way more focused on the human/elf racism aspect of it. Similar to the other commentary about elves and non elves that During made, regarding the differences in longevity of time that passes

That's kind of where I was going, though. It makes perfect sense for morgoth worshipping humans to hate elves. Within that scene the fact that Arondir was black doesn't impact at all the interactions, because that's how it would go. At the same time, if you knew nothing about LOTR and watched that scene, you'd instantly "get" it because of how it was presented. None of the hostility was based on skin color, but the writer and casting director still opted in that first episode to show that every village was ethnically diverse except this one, then send the only black elf there to suffer through all that. Combined with the fact that the southlands people could have been Harad, creating an entire village of black people for casting purposes, makes the whole part of episode 1 feel surreal. The parallels to modern racism were all there: the black guy in the all white town, the casual slurs tossed at him in an unfriendly bar, the nervousness around him dating a young woman, the bullying between kids over it... it is all explained by the fact that he's an elf, yet it was explicitly framed in a way that mirrors modern racism, thus the "reverse allegory" comment.