The View blasts racist Lord of the Rings, House of the Dragon fans

House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power feature some actors of color. Some fans don’t like that. They were loud enough that it got on The View.

House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are finally both airing, and so far, both have been hits. Unfortunately, both series (especially Rings of Power) have faced backlash from people upset that the shows have decided to include actors of color in their casts. If you’ve looked at some of the discourse on Twitter or the user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, you know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen people make different arguments — there wouldn’t have been people of color in the books, this is out of step with the historical milieus that inspired the stories — but it comes down to the same thing: these shows have brown people in them and some fans don’t like it.

This kind of backlash is happening more and more as Hollywood gets more serious about encouraging representation in film and TV, something that has been shown to help dispel negative stereotypes and encourage empathy, not to mention employ more people and help find new markets for media. Where you land on this issue basically comes down to whether you think all of that stuff is worth doing, even if sometimes it means a person of color is cast in a part that the original author may not have seen them in, even if we can’t know that for sure and this is all taking place in made-up fantasy worlds anyway.

Discussions around this topic have gotten so big that they’re appearing on daily news news. For instance, the hosts of The View talked about House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power the other day. “They don’t exist in the real world,” host Whoopi Goldberg helpfully reminded us about these two series. “You know that? There are no dragons. There are no hobbits. Are you telling me Black people can’t be fake people too?”

Host Sunny Hostin had a similar take. “What I think is fascinating is like, dragons are okay — fire-breathing dragons — and people with white hair that are born like that when they’re little, and violet eyes, but the Black people in it is just a bridge too far for these folks,” she said.

House of the Dragon star Steve Toussaint, who is Black, said something much like that about his character Corlys Velaryon a while back: “[T]hey are happy with a dragon flying. They’re happy with white hair and violet-colored eyes, but a rich Black guy? That’s beyond the pale.”

Toussaint has said that he was “racially abused on social media” after getting cast in House of the Dragon, and The Rings of Power star Ismael Cruz Córdova said that he woke up every day for years to find his DMs packed full of “pure and vicious hate speech” after getting cast as the elf Arondir. This problem is not going away, although one hopes that it might eventually abate after these racist ding-dongs see that the world didn’t implode because a couple of the Dwarves are Black.

I’ll let Goldberg take us out: “All of y’all who have problems because there are Black hobbits… Get a job! Get a job! Go find yourself, because you are focused on the wrong stuff.”

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