As to the response, “It’s fiction, you can do anything in fiction—if you accept dragons, you can accept black elves,” this argument is predicated on the idea that art is a freestyle activity in which you “express yourself” and “do anything, no rules”. The general sentiment seems to recall an arts teacher I never actually had at school, yet I feel I should have had—perhaps he appeared in a Hollywood film—who says, “This is your chance to be creative. No rules! It’s not like maths! Do anything you want!”. I feel that this stereotype—if it exists—comes from California, and it is also wrong. It strikes me that while art does not have rules like maths it does have some rules—and any art, even drawing, takes place within the context of some basic rules of thumb. Otherwise, why would there even be an arts teacher? Indeed, if art means “do whatever you want” it is, by definition, nothing—it is everything and therefore nothing.
In reality, art has rules—and that includes fiction. Children are usually the most sensitive to the rules that exist in fictional universes and quickly become upset if character developments and storylines defy story logic. You cannot just have the turbo-sword, strictly established as only usable by Knights of the Blue Dragon, be used by an assassin from the Shi’tu tribe. Children will notice, children will be upset—it will be posted about on Twitter. Big children, known as nerds, are also very particular about what they call “canon” in their substitute religions, in Star Wars and Star Trek. They will also put down their Dr. Peppers, comb the Cheeto crumbs from their straggly beards, and dash off an irate post on Reddit—before they pop off for an IPA at their local pub into which their neck beard will be duly dipped as they drown their collective sorrows.
The fact such tendencies exist indicates that fictional worlds have a logic to them and that if the logic is infringed upon suspension of disbelief fails. Hence writers should be very careful that the turbo-sword is only used by Knights of the Blue Dragon—this is just a basic requirement for storytelling.
Ergo, the Lord of the Rings series occurs in an archaic legendary Northern European world—a world described in the Eddas and perhaps alluded to in Hyperborean legend. This world has a consistency to it, a logic to it. Within this logic there is the notion that it almost exclusively features Europeans and mythical creatures from European folklore (we being about to infringe on the idea that mythical beings are, in fact, real). Can you have another character from another race in this series, if we assume Tolkien included no other races? Actually, yes—if done in good faith, you could have a distant wayfarer from far, far away wash up in Middle Earth as a minor protagonist. There is no reason why this should not happen—humans have moved all about the earth throughout history, and an extraordinarily adventurous character could be conceived of who ventured from Africa to Europe.
However, this will not happen and it will not happen because the “inclusion” is not done in good faith—hence it is not done in accordance with the internal logic of the story, a logic that would support a distant wayfarer who arrived from “the burnt lands in the south”. To be logically consistent would not be egalitarian—the series could sustain one such intrusion at most; and perhaps one intrusion from an oriental venturer in the next series, and one intrusion from a Muslim Arab (semiotically coded indirectly) the next. In fact, so far as I can tell, this was how television programs and films used to handle these matters until the early 1990s—at which I point I presume legislation was passed that made it impossible to show discretion in casting decisions.
The result is that the story is inconsistent and illogical. If I want to watch a story about Anansi spiderman, the old African legend, I actually don’t want a blond-haired blue-eyed protagonist to appear in the film—I just want to see black Africans. “But you’re not represented!” I don’t care, the effectiveness of the story relies on me not being represented—if I watch that story, it is because I want to experience an African myth. Of course, in the current environment, such a film would probably enjamb a “great white hunter” villain who tries to “swat the spiderman”—he’ll never succeed, have no fear; the black spider-body is very resilient to the predations of white supremacy. The same applies to any other race or religion with an interest in Lord of the Rings; if they enjoy it, they enjoy it for its integrity—and that includes its European character.
The same applies, in a situation of racial parity, to those Japanese tourists with a fetish for Pride and Prejudice—their interest in the drama would be significantly diminished if the next series made half of the cast Japanese; it would ruin the suspension of disbelief, with half the reason they like it being precisely that it takes them “to another world” that is not Japan—just as multiracial LotR doesn’t take you to another world, it takes you right back to the world you live in now (back to the ghetto). Is the latest LotR Brechtian? Is this the “alienation effect”?
Sad to report, given that he Marxisant inflection in pop culture, it probably is Brechtian. For those not au fait with Brecht: the basic idea is that you shove the audience into a warehouse and make them sit on crude plastic seats in a circle—actors appear on “stage” in ordinary clothes, wander about the audience and chat with them. The audience might be invited to rise from their chairs to chant slogans or participate in the action—the hierarchical division between audience and stage has been elided, the audience, no longer passively entertained, has their consciousness raised as they see that theatre itself is a bourgeois illusion to be overcome, its opposites reconciled, in action.
The director and actors have served their true purpose, in line with proletarian consciousness: they have helped the audience see how theatre itself promotes bourgeois consciousness. “Um, mate, I just wanted to be entertained. Why do I have to sit in a cold warehouse on this wobbly chair and shout slogans?” “Entertained!? Entertained!? Entertainment is a bourgeois illusion. You have just experienced a critical moment in the world-historical class struggle.” “Erm, can I go home now?”.
No “escape from reality” for you, comrade—oh no, you will be made quite aware that you watch fiction and you will also be made aware of the racialised and gendered hierarchy of power in which the ring of power is pursued. “But I just want to escape from my mundane job!” “Comrade! Escapism perpetuates the oppressive system of white supremacy, even an Amazon series is an opportunity to consider your role in an exploitative system that particularly subjugates women of color. When you look at these elves, this is a chance to ‘do the work’!”. Aye-aye, cap’n!
Look, this isn’t a joke. No, indeed: it’s desecration and iconoclasm—state-sponsored iconoclasm against European civilisation. The fact they can do it to you lowers your status—and that is the point. It is just the same as when the Bolsheviks blew up the cathedrals or when the monuments to the Red Army are toppled by the Ukrainians today. This is war: a man is judged by his thumis—his spiritedness; if the left can topple European cultural artefacts it diminishes the Western core, dents the status of European men. We can destroy your heroes and stories, you cannot destroy ours. This is straight out war, and it has been like it for a long time. Back in the 1990s there was a UK objet called “Piss Christ”—it was Christ dunked in the artist’s piss. State sponsored and supported, of course—just like the way Norte-Dame burned.
Not new, no: it has merely accelerated as more generations have grown up in the cultural distortion field and as the last serious Christian and aristocratic elements have been extirpated from the West. The cause is that the West is controlled by the US empire, and the US empire is controlled by Judeo-Masonry—especially its media operations—and Judeo-Masonry serves the antichrist and wishes to destroy the West. Europeans are enslaved by Satan and his representative on earth, Judeo-Masonry. There are many more acts of iconoclasm to come—unless, that is, we see the return of the king.