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Amazons 'Rings Of Power' First Look And 'South Park's' Name Change Of 'Token' Stir Up Simultaneous Discussions On Race

February 10th, 2022 - 6:13 PM EST by Brandon

17 comments

Dwarven Queen from Rings of Power lotr amazon show and a meme about Tolkien Black's Name Change from south park.
(Dwarven Queen from "Rings of Power" and a meme about "Tolkien Black's" Name Change)

Amazon Studios revealed "first look" pictures for its new Rings of Power show that is expected to come out in November 2022, and in doing so, sparked a massive debate online relating to creative choices. Because the story takes place separately from Lord of the Rings, there was, as explained by the showrunners, a bit of blank canvas space for a story that features new, original characters created by the network.

These choices ended up coinciding with a big hoax and controversy back when the show was first teased in 2018, known as the Elves of Color Hoax that was started on 4chan and eventually proved to be true. Because of the potential for characters being made that weren't as expected based on the books, the reaction on social media was very charged, with people both defending and attacking the creative choices made by Amazon.

The main cause of commotion comes in the form of two characters that are both originals, Arondir, a Black elf character, and Disa, the dwarven queen. Despite the initial displeasure shown by some longtime fans of Tolkien, who for years had been speculating on this moment to happen, there were plenty online who were very happy at this new creative direction being taken by the studio.

For decades now, the calls for Lord of the Rings to be more inclusive have been noticeably cast aside, with this being the first time several females and people of color were cast as characters of great importance and given center stage.

While this was going on, another conversation revolving around JRR Tolkien and race was taking place, this time spurred on by South Park. The episode that came out last night revolved around the character Token Black, who for years was seen as being a stand-in for Black stereotyping with the character's name even being a reference to having a minority character for the sake of having one.

The crux of the episode is that Token, who has been known by this name for decades, is actually named "Tolkien" and that both the audience and Stan Marsh have been racially mischaracterizing him as a stereotype instead of an individual. The impact this had on the South Park online community was profound, with many posting about the episode immediately after it aired.

This name change wasn't entirely without its own set of issues, however, as many fans pointed to other points in the series where Token's name was explicitly spelled out, by the character himself, multiple times.

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Comments 17 total

Chewybunny

Feb 12, 2022 at 05:36AM EST

Tolkien based the Dwarves off the Jews. A people without a homeland, strangers in diffirent towns they visit, but with a tight knit community. Even the Tolkien Dwarven names for places and locations are semitic in origin. Yet they are always portrayed as a bunch of Scots/Vikings. If you're going to go for "diversity" and woke points you'd consider maybe, MAYBE, portraying the dwarves a bit more how Tolkien intended? Kind of uh, do Jackson one better?
Naw, let's just throw a black beardless dwarven princess into the story because we want Game of Thrones but in Arda. "we gonna fix what Tolkien did wrong". We know the reality here, that behind the whole "Let's put black people to play non black characters". They will never ever take the risk to create a story around an African mythos. It's racism with a smile.

4

AtlasJan

Feb 11, 2022 at 07:19PM EST

GIVE ME MY MASCULINE FEMALE DWARFS OR GIVE ME DEATH

4

Ua_Potato

Feb 14, 2022 at 02:24AM EST AtlasJan

I demand dorf women, with BEARDS

0

Sumarios

Feb 11, 2022 at 12:10PM EST

I'm just tired of the way anything based on European culture/mythology has to be depicted as a modern ethnic melting pot while things based on non-European culture/mythology are allowed to be ethnically homogeneous.

If you want to disregard race and cultural context then do that. But you have to do it to everything.

18

the hentai critic

Feb 11, 2022 at 10:18AM EST

this is so fucking stupid just all of it. like its a fuckign shitshow

1

Sir Trollsalot

Feb 11, 2022 at 08:15AM EST

Lord of the Rings: Far Harad

2

kraas

Feb 11, 2022 at 06:02AM EST

do we even know who this is?

and at any rate, it was expected that there would be more prominent not-white characters and i am totally fine with that.

in fact, you know what change im still big mad about? how they turned Smaug into a god damn WYVERN in the Hobbit movies.

1

greenhowie

Feb 10, 2022 at 11:30PM EST

These fucking nerds, I swear.

1

Molemanninethousand

Feb 10, 2022 at 09:43PM EST

I don't get it, what's the controversy about LotR; what preexisting characters are being shown as black in contradiction with previous depictions?

2

ed

Feb 10, 2022 at 10:05PM EST Molemanninethousand

One person notes that Tolkien's female dwarves are supposed to be nigh-indistinguishable from male dwarves. Other than that, I think it's just people being angry that black people exist.

-4

Rynjin

Feb 10, 2022 at 10:09PM EST ed

Didn't people decide that was dumb like 30, even 50 years ago already? It's been memed to death and was never really relevant to the lore anyway, it always just seemed like a funny quirk Tolkien thought up and put in there because it amused me.

2

ed

Feb 10, 2022 at 10:14PM EST Rynjin

Just pointing out something that Molemanninethousand seemed to miss in the article.

I personally could not possibly care less about any of this nontroversy to be honest. The show looks cool as-is, but I'll wait for reviews before watching.

0

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