Rings of Woke Power?
Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power, the long-awaited Lord of the Rings prequel, opened on September 1 to near-universal praise… Yeah, maybe in an alternate universe that isn’t plagued by our never-ending culture wars battling over everything from pronouns1 to tacos,2 but in the real world, it’s been another flurry of frivolous controversy.
A Rotten Tomatoes screenshot captures the conflict. For too many current pieces of controversial art, either the critics love it and the people hate it or vice versa, depending on where the socially woke3 chips fall.
This Rotten Tomatoes trend makes me a little sad. I used to rely on the critic aggregation site to give me a hint as to whether a flic was any good. I didn’t pay attention to the “Audience Score” (which was a later addition to the site) because the people are uncouth louts who snort mayonnaise and think Adam Sandler is funny.
That was then, but today is insane. I don’t know when the social justice trend in judging films took off, but I remember a Richard Brody 2018 New Yorker review—“The Silently Regressive Politics of A Quiet Place”—spending endless paragraphs arguing that a horror movie was a blow for white supremacy.
“Whether the Abbotts’ insular, armed way of life might put them into conflict with other American families of other identities is the unacknowledged question hanging over A Quiet Place.”
No it isn’t, not for normal humans, who just came to the movies to get royally scared. It’s just you Richard, you self-righteously good white man. (For even more fun, read Brody on The Joker.)
Brody was an outlier on this film. Most critics liked A Quiet Place, more than the audience actually. (Critics 96% to Audience 83%). It was with Dave Chappelle’s 2018 Sticks & Stones, that we saw the new trend on display in full moralistic mode. Audiences awarded the standup special 99% gushing approval, the critics gave it a pursed-lipped 35%.
No subject matter is truly off-limits if — and this is important — the joke is constructed correctly. The late George Carlin bellowed out entire acts revolving around this idea. But the question is whether the shocking statement a comedian makes is ludicrous enough to signal to the audience that he is actually kidding.
— Melanie McFarland, reviewing Sticks & Stones for Salon.
McFarland is saying you can tell jokes, but you have to make sure that you don’t really mean them, that you signal to your audience that you’re actually on the side of the godly. It’s the pernicious idea that humor has to be virtuous to be acceptable.
The social justice critics versus the fascist audience trend is well-illustrated by the contrast between the different receptions given Dave Chappelle: The Closer, (Critics 40%, Audience 95%), and Hanah Gadsby’s Nanette (Critics 100%, Audience 26%). One gets critic adulation and audience contempt, and the other the reverse. Or do they?
It’s not that the people are correct and the critics wrong, it’s more that we can’t trust either bunch anymore. I liked both The Closer and Nanette, although Chappelle was funnier. Of course, I actually saw them both. A fair chunk of the positive reviews for Chapelle and a ginormous percentage of the negative reviews for Gadsby almost certainly came from folks who hadn’t seen the stand-up specials. It’s called “review bombing,” where armies of trolls pour in to claim the movie is the best/worst thing since Vegemite, depending on its perceived culture war virtues or crimes.
Tolkien it to the next level
In this cultural moment, of course, there’s been a modest shitstorm of noise about The Rings of Power (less acrimony, however, than Star Wars films usually receive).
Looking at the negative user reviews, a lot of folks hated it for being woke or politically correct.
Just another pile of politically correct rubbish for the mindless masses of entertainment starved half-wits to devour. Astonishingly bad. — Mark S
Others were angry that it wasn’t loyal to J. R. R. Tolkien’s source material. Heaven save us from angry nerds when their Precious has been violated.4
No efforts to incorporate the lore or any of Tolkien's work beyond the taking of names. The names they take aren't even on the correct characters. Galadriel and Elond are essentially swapped, neither acting as they are written. To many lore contradictions and too poor of a delivery. The costumes and character aesthetics are vomit inducing. Buzz cuts, permed hair and emo side parts. This is not middle earth. — Ryan L
I didn’t see any Rotten Tomatoes complaints about the multi-racial cast, although I’m sure they were there. I’m relieved that they weren’t as common as I’d been told! Still, they could be found. Like all vile things, either deep in the depths of Moria or on Twitter.5
Or from this right-wing British activist and TV personality.
So how is the show really?
I got issues, but I liked it.
The Good
I’m a semi-Tolkien nerd but not a purist. I own The Silmarillion but I’ve never read it. I’m only vaguely aware of all that Elvin history. (“Is Celebrimbor really a Tolkien character? Holy crap, yes he is.”) This makes me almost the perfect victim for this kind of story. I like all those dwarves and balrogs but I don’t know enough to know that Finrod would never have parted his hair that way.
The first two episodes of The Rings of Power necessarily do a lot of set-up and world-building. In ye olden times the ultimate baddie, Morgoth, was defeated, but his lieutenant Sauron survived and is lurking in the backstory. The elves run the show but dwarves, humans, and hobbits are popping up everywhere providing their own character arcs while keeping a suspicious eye on “the pointies.” (Yes, that really is how one human character refers to the elves.)
This is a big multi-character story à la Game of Thrones. By my count, among the leads, we have three separate elf stories (Galadriel, Elrond, and Arondir), two humans (Bronwyn and Halbrand), a dwarf (Durin IV), a hobbit (Nori), and a mysterious [REDACTED]. (I’m sure other character paths will be centered in future episodes.)
This all might start to drag, but so far I’m in. Part of this may be simple curiosity—Where is all this crap heading?—but I was never bored, and that’s a good sign. There were a couple of minor battles to keep me awake and the ominous foreshadowings of Bad Things Up Ahead™. (Kids, whatever you do, don’t pick up that old mystical device entwined with evil runes. It’s never a good plan.)
There are also some subtle moments that charmed me. Nori the hobbit teaching a [SPOILER REDACTED] how to interact with the world was magical and also made sense in light of what I know of the Tolkien canon. (Although, chronologically [NERD QUIBBLE REDACTED].)
The look of the thing is decent, sometimes quite good. No real gasps of joy but no winces of pain either. I could believe in this version of Middle Earth. (As a history guy, I appreciated the occasional cuts to a map so I could get a sense of where all this stuff was going down.) There was even one scene that made me smile with delight—it involves fireflies—and despite wishing there were more of those, this is a respectable vision of Tolkien’s landscape for those who don’t demand utter fidelity to the Master.
The Bad
The dialogue has issues. For The Lord of the Rings trilogy, director Peter Jackson was lucky enough to inherit three fully fleshed-out volumes and the writing in his films rang true to those books. The Rings of Power is rooted in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, which are rich in philological footnotes but missing a lot of witty repartee. The series’ dialogue is mostly fine, even achieving a touch of poetry now and then, but there are too many clunkers. Galadriel, “Why Elrond, you really have become a politician,” “Are you just going to stand there breathing like an orc,” and “Letting it lie is not an option.” Winces all around. And the worst, “After all you have endured, it is only natural to feel conflicted.” “Conflicted”? Oy. What’s next? “C’mon Galadriel, you need some you time”? This is the language of therapy or management seminars.
Luckily, while the clunkers are there they are not constant. Like Gloria Gaynor, I will survive.
The acting is mostly good. Nobody has made me cringe yet, but the show suffers in comparison to Peter Jackson’s casting. Morfydd Clark is solid, but she’s no Cate Blanchett, who played Galadriel in the films. The only characterization that stands out for me so far is Ismael Cruz Córdova’s Arondir, a Silvan Elf warrior. He has an intense style that makes his elf seem, well, more inhumanly elvish than the rest. He will probably upset the purists because Arondir is not part of the Tolkien canon, the role was created for the series.
The Orcish
What also might upset the purists is that Córdova is not white, he’s Puerto Rican.
This is where we enter the woke wars and I start to get a throbbing sensation two inches behind my left eyebrow. Let me lay out where I stand on this: I don’t care about the race of the actor, I just want them to do a good job.
I understand this can be tricky. Color-blind casting might be weird in a historical biopic. Abraham Lincoln played by Idris Elba could look odd on screen. Then again, Lincoln was 6’4” but Spielberg cast Daniel Day-Lewis to play him, even though Day-Lewis is only 6’2”. Blatant height erasure?6 Actors don't have to look like the people they play! Out of Sight is a great Steven Soderbergh movie even though Buddy, played by Ving Rhames in the film, was white in Elmore Leonard's book.
Tolkien, however, was not covering an American history deeply scarred by racism. This is a fantasy world. The “races” that exist are otherworldly creatures of Tolkien’s invention. If we really believe in a color-blind future—and I do—casting should be on the basis of talent.
And the woke wars? I am hostile to some of what is called “woke,” (or social justice, or Critical Annoying Theory, or…). What I dislike about it, however, is not pushing for more diversity in society (that’s a good thing), but the constant hunt for some incredibly minor nothing burger that somehow offended a horde of modern Puritans who need to get outside and see sunlight a lot more. I didn’t notice any of that preachiness in The Rings of Power.
Being human, I’ll admit to a few seconds of “wait, that hobbit is black?” probably because my brain needs to recalibrate from “white actors are the norm” assumptions, but that’s a me issue, not a Rings of Power problem. And your brain adjusts. As the show went along, quickly all I saw were elves, dwarves, hobbits, and really freaky looking… [COOL CRITTER REVEAL REDACTED].
Some hobbits being black shouldn’t be a concern. The hobbits edging a bit too close to twee territory might be a concern.
I’ve also heard some folks are upset at all the women who have become central characters. To them I say, don’t get your knickers all in a twist. Tolkien wrote in a sexist time, we’re not there anymore. Even Jackson's trilogy ‘ahistorically’ made Arwen a lot more kick-ass to make those movies slightly less of a guy’s night out. Adding more strong female characters is good. What’s that you say? Galadriel is a woman and shouldn’t be a deadly warrior? So you can buy her being a multi-thousand-year-old elven wizard but the sword swinging seems unrealistic? Ok Skippy.
One show to rule them all?
Just finished Episode Two of Rings of Power, and it was 77 percent better than Episode One. And I liked Episode One a ton. I’m all-in.
— David French, writer at The Atlantic and total nerd
Sorry, David, this is not the best thing since sliced lembas7 but I’m going to keep watching. It's maybe a cut above workmanlike (which isn't a bad thing to be), at least for now. It could all fall apart, the characters could ramp up their quota of clichés, or it could lose its expository training wheels and start to fly. I was drawn in enough to want to find out which direction it's going to go. It's already better than most of what's out there.
Should you watch it? You be you, Galadriel. If you liked the movies but don’t correct Quenya grammar mistakes in your spare time, you might enjoy it.
The Rotten Tomatoes audience score? Ignore it. Look, you might hate the show. I don’t think every bad review is coming from an anti-woke troll or someone who played Dungeons and Dragons wayyyy too much back in the day. (No judgment. That was me.) I just think there’s an awful lot of misguided hate coming from all sides in our current cultural moment and we need to collectively take a chill pill.
The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.
If you haven’t caught it on Twitter, the actress Jameela Jamil, who came out as queer in 2020, has gotten into hot water over accidentally misgendering someone. As Pink News reports, “Jameela Jamil slammed for telling trans people ‘how to stop being misgendered’.” Whatevs.
There’s always somebody getting grumpy over tacos or burritos. From Portland in 2017 to a TikTok viral video in 2021. I prefer burritos, but don’t tell anyone.
What do we call this ideology that changes hourly? I’m with Freddie deBoer in asking, “Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand.”
And even I have my offended nerd side. The TV series’ main hobbit character is Nori, whose name is a shortened version of “Elanor.” The problem is, Elanor was not a name used by hobbits! When Sam names his first daughter Elanor, at Frodo’s suggestion, it’s after a flower they found in Lothlorien. “Elanor” is Elvish, not Hobbit, and did not become a common hobbit name until far later in “history.” In other words, THIS IS NOT CANON. (But it’s ok. It’ll just bug me a little every episode until I die.)
Calm down. I don’t think everyone who has an issue with the multi-racial casting is vile (just wrong). It was a throwaway joke. Also, some of them really are motivated by racism, so maybe not entirely throwaway.
Idris Elba is also 6’2”.
Do you really not know that lembas is Elven bread, called waybread in the Common Tongue or coimas in High Elvish? “One will keep a traveler on his feet for a day of long labour, even if he be one of the tall Men of Minas Tirith.”
Stop agreeing with me so much
And what do you have against Vegemite!!