Casting fail incident in The Hobbit.

[mijan]

This is relevant to our interests:

(Taken directly from THIS article in Entertainment Weekly)
"A casting agent working on director Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was fired from the production after placing ads in a regional New Zealand newspaper seeking extras with “light skin tones,” according to Agence France-Presse."

The issue was brought to light when a woman of Pakistani heritage wanted to become a background extra as a Hobbit, and was told succinctly that they were only looking for (quote) "light-skinned people."

"...video footage shows the casting agent telling people at an audition, 'We are looking for light-skinned people. I’m not trying to be … whatever. It’s just the brief. You’ve got to look like a Hobbit.'"  (So, the casting guy was caught directly on tape saying this.  His words.)

And a more detailed article on Google news.

And on the Atlantic Wire.

This... shall be interesting.  They're saying the casting agent was NOT told to discriminate by race, and he's been fired.  I wonder - was he really acting on his own?  Was he sacrificed for the PR?  What were his instructions for casting?  What does a Hobbit look like anyway?  (Yes, we have the description from the books, which describes short folks with big feet and curly brown hair, but no specific racial indicators beyond that.)  I wonder how fandom will react.  Thoughts, anyone?

(Edited title to avoid misinterpretation.)

Comments

[zauzat.livejournal.com]

Are there any actors of colour in the Lord of the Rings films? And to wade into controversy - homogoneous groups tend to share the same skin colour. As noted across the planet before rapid movement of people began from one location to another. The hobbits - for better or for worse - have been established as very fair-skinned - look at the five principle hobbit actors. No dark faces at Bilbo Baggins farewell birthday party that I could see.
So two points I guess, movie canon had already chosen to establish racially homogenous groupings (elves, rangers, riders of rohan) and they are all fair-skinned. (Does the book canon do the same? I can't remember but I suspect it does.)
And how would racially mixed populations have come about?

I suspect the casting director was acting on an unspoken assumption shared by all the crew and in that sense he has been hung out to dry. They might have done better to stand up for their unspoken position than to simply fire him.

[(Anonymous)]

Are there any actors of colour in the Lord of the Rings films?

Yes, but their characters are all on the side of evil. You could blame JRRT for that, but I think the movie producers should have changed it, just as they expanded Arwen's role.

[zedmeister.livejournal.com]

That was me above, I forgot sign in.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

No problem, re: not signing in. It happens.

From my understanding, Tolkien structured the world loosely around old Europe. The "mercenaries from the south" as portrayed in the movie (from the books) were mercenary soldiers who would hire out to whoever was willing to pay - not specifically FOR either side, just simply for hire. The "south" in this case was the Mediterranean and North African regions. The "north" held no other major populations. The story was built on Celtic, Norse, and other old-European cultures. So... I see the story as being a myth, yes, but designed within the setting of a real place and time.

And really, Sauron, Sauroman, Wormtongue, and all those... were based in the same European-type populations.

I wish they hadn't taken liberties with the stupid love story stuff with Arwen, too, but if there was wiggle room there, they certainly could have made some very basic modifications in casting.

[zedmeister.livejournal.com]

I'm at work, so I can't look up the exact descriptions used in the books for the southern armies, but I seem to recall that the language used was rather racist. I'll check when I get home.

I wish they hadn't taken liberties with the stupid love story stuff with Arwen, too, but if there was wiggle room there, they certainly could have made some very basic modifications in casting.

Yes, I agree. The purist in me would also have preferred that no deviations from the books were made, but if they tried to reduce the sexism, why not the racism? I was very put off by their decision to use actors of colour to play the Uruk-hai.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that the language in the books had more than just hints of racism. Look at when it was written. I won't put Tolkien on any sort of PC Pedestal. He created a marvelous fantasy world, and was a brilliant linguist, but he was no saint.

But yeah, they could have removed some of the old-fashioned attitudes without diminishing the spirit of the story itself.

As for the actors playing the Uruk-hai... I mostly saw a metric fuck-ton of makeup. I actually was thinking of them the same way that I'd see an alien on Star Trek and see the alien species, not a human ethnicity. I get lost in the makeup, costumes, and the fiction when I'm watching a movie. I admit that this is a fail on my part - I didn't even recognize how they'd cast the actors for the Orcs. I just saw makeup and prosthetics. I should have been more aware.

[mijan.livejournal.com]

From my knowledge, the whole thing was set to mirror Northern Europe. As you said, isolated populations in the days before intercontinental travel was common... would tend to have a homogeneous appearance.

At the same time, it could be easily argued that it's fantasy, and anything within the strictest description of the books is fair game. As copied/pasted by featherynscale above:
[Hobbits] are (or were) a little people.... [they] have no beards.... They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colors, chiefly green and yellow; wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers..."

That doesn't strictly preclude the possibility of darker skin tones.