It was announced as the series of all excesses. Since 2017 and the announcement of the purchase of the rights to adapt part of the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973), the new series around the universe of the British author, the Rings of Power, has aroused expectations at the height of Amazon’s investment (250 million euros for the rights, approximately 450 million euros budget for the first season, according to Hollywood reporter).
But the producers perhaps did not expect to see the controversies swell as quickly as a hobbit in front of a food table. Already bitter when the first images were released in February, some fans have become more virulent since the first episodes were broadcast on the platform.
The reason for their anger? The presence of actors of color in the cast. A heresy for many Internet users: “Amazon has wokized the Lord of the Rings “, “this series tramples on a masterpiece of fantasy”. And the (pseudo) arguments multiply: a fan of Nordic and Germanic mythologies, Tolkien would have liked to create a mythology specific to England; his universe would supposedly represent a medieval Europe, in which people of color had not yet appeared, the Elves would all be blond with blue eyes…
Amazon “betrays” JRR Tolkien with The Rings of Power ? 20 minutes takes stock of these reviews in very dubious taste.
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“We can count a great diversity of skin, hair and eye colors in the universe created by Tolkien”, explains Vincent Ferré, professor of general and comparative literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris 3), considered as the greatest French specialist of the British author.
According to the academic, the characters of color are numerous in the “lore” (fictional universe in which a plot takes place) of Tolkien. The Pievelus, present in the Amazon series, for example, form a tribe of hobbits described by the author as “more brown in skin”. “Some elves, far from the image of platinum blond often depicted, are described with black hair and eyes. Night elves, for example, are dark-skinned.”
Tolkien is not talking about races, but about personalities
Above all, the idea of races, often put forward when talking about Tolkien’s work, has no place, according to Vincent Ferré. Because the term “kindred” used by Tolkien is often mistranslated and rather refers to the family, the lineage. It would be the passage of these universes in role-playing games, then video games, which would have simplified this term to “race”. “Tolkien used several varieties of English, which complicates translations. »
Most important in Tolkien’s construction would be the idea of peoples, each representing facets of Man. The Hobbits are small, petty but funny, and fight against the destruction of their territory (an analogy of the English countryside, dear to Tolkien and ravaged by industrialization). Men are ambitious, but weak and corruptible. Elves inspire purity and nobility, but are reactionary and live in the past. The Dwarves are genius creators… too greedy for wealth. Even the Orcs, representation of evil, are Elves who have been hijacked and corrupted.
A work on migration and evolution
For the specialist, Tolkien’s world is a work on migration: “What interests him is the evolution of the characters. How beings meet, confront each other, then unite beyond the differences to face the tensions born of the maneuvers of the enemy. »
The argument of a universe centered on medieval Europe, inspired by Nordic and Germanic mythologies, and in which people of color would have no place, is also swept away by Vincent Ferré. Yes, the author was fascinated by these universes, but his inspirations were not limited to them: “He went looking much further, in different mythologies and traditions. He even winks at the Illiad. Did he want to create a mythology specific to England? If he mentioned this idea during his student years, it would be more of a challenge between friends, before they died during the First World War.
Another fallacious argument appears, as we have said, in the criticisms of certain Internet users: that according to which in the Middle Ages, in Europe, there was no people of color on the mainland (and therefore on Middle-earth). “It’s stupid, scientific research has proven for a long time that people of color are present in Europe well before the Middle Ages “, explains Vincent Ferré. Which bounces on this argument to explain the origin of these controversies: “The extreme right has always tried to recover the work of Tolkien for its ideology”.
The universe of Tolkien fantasized by the far right
“The American extreme right, in particular, has long tried to appropriate Tolkien’s work,” adds Vincent Ferré, “while originally Le Lord of the Rings was rather a popular work and claimed by the progressive left. The analogy of Elves seen as Aryans, and Orcs as populations coming from the South, repeatedly advanced by the slayers of the Amazon series, collapses… “Many cling to the iconography used by Peter Jackson in his movies – The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The king’s return (2003) – but these are Manichean chromatic choices that do not correspond to the original work”.
A “fanfiction” more than an adaptation
If JRR Tolkien arouses so much debate, it is also because of his complex personality. Because if he said he was a conservative, attached to his English countryside and to the Latin Mass, he also presented a great open-mindedness, in particular religious, remarkable for his time, according to Vincent Ferré. “Without going so far as to make him a progressive icon, his work has always spoken of ecology, of the refusal of war… His son, Christopher Tolkien, who died in 2020, said that he never hesitated to question the rules “.
Like several Twittos, Vincent Ferré is surprised in the end that Tolkien’s self-declared “purists” are moved to see a black dwarf princess, but without noticing that she has no beard, unlike the books. . Or that the elf Arondir is mixed-race… whereas he does not exist in Tolkien’s books and was created by the production. “Anyway, it’s more fanfiction than an adaptation, since they had to make up a very large part of the story.”