Hobbit Casting Agent Fired For Dismissing Non-White Hobbits

[KarmicToast]

Why is it impossible to get an Escapist article without the opinions of the author infused in the news. I guess everything is an editorial here. Normally it doesn't bother me, but "understandably outraged?"
Listen, you can call it discrimination if you want, but honestly, directors and filmmakers should be more concerned with their visual aesthetic and universe than political correctness. Watch the trilogy again...there were only white hobbits (as well as I can remember) and just because some person of color didn't complain during casting NO ONE CARED. Maybe in Middle Earth you only have white hobbits? Why is that so hard to believe? What if it was a pixar movie about foxes in the arctic? Would you be so incensed that there were no orange foxes and only white ones? If you think "no, that's different," then you admit by extension that you feel like people and races need to be taken care of differentially. And by thinking that way, you are putting political correctness over vision in an artistic medium. I think this is ridiculous. Of course the agent got fired over PR.

 

[darthzew]

I hope tall people are outraged by this as well. I cannot believe they would discriminate both against dark-skinned people and tall. Tall people have rights too!

Editor's Note: I hope my point is made.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

Ok, so it's perfectly acceptable to have a bunch of White guys pass as middle eastern nobility in that Prince of Persia film but a non-white hobbit is somehow completey unacceptable?

Would you listen to yourselves?

Its a freakin fantasy film, SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS IMPLIED.

 

[JDKJ]

So, what? Does this mean that in the interest of equal opportunity employment they aren't gonna cast some Jewish guy as Gollum? That's ridiculous! Everyone knows that Gollum's Jewish.

Ahem, that's Golem you're thinking of. Golem is Jewish, Gollum is named after his own vocal sounds.

Ahem, there's a library full of scholarly research that suggests Tolkien's Gollum was inspired by the Golem of Jewish folklore.

See, for example, http://www.taylor.edu/dotAsset/57599.pdf

 

[Elburzito]

Agence France-Presse reports "video footage showed the casting agent telling people at the 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.' The agent also placed a classified advertisement in the Bay of Plenty Times listing essential requirements for potential hobbits, including age, 16-80, and height -- below 170 cm (5 foot 7 inches) for men and 158cm (5ft 2in) for women. The additional demand for light skin tones applied only to women.' Naz Humphreys, a woman of Pakistani heritage, waited three hours in line, only to be told that she would not be considered for casting. Humphreys was understandably outraged, saying "It's 2010 and I still can't believe I'm being discriminated against because I have brown skin."

To be honest, I think this is her fault. She could've read the requirements before auditioning. Also, if she considers something as small as this a major act of racism, then I am head of the KKK.

 

[Octorok]

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

uh.... In all fairness, this idiot is from the Middle East....

OT : I agree with my quotable friend here. Fuck this PC garbage. This person has no malicious intent or discrimination, they're staying true to source material. You don't get "brown" Hobbits.

There's a reason that actors try their best to look their roles. They will don glasses/wigs etc that are not theirs naturally so as to further take on their appearance. Race is a part of appearance. There's a reason that, even if you cut my hair, beefed me up and put me in a suit I couldn't play Martin Luther King. Apart from the fact I can't act, obviously.

And yet the OP seems on Naz's side, from the tone of writing. I'm sorry the casting officer lost their job. Fuck Naz and fuck everyone like her, white or non-white who will say things like, "A black/Asian person was _______. MUST BE BECAUSE OF TEH RACISM. EVERYONE, LOOK AT THE BIG DIFFERENCE IN RACES. MUST BE BECAUSE OF THAT."

It's actually more racist to be PC than it is to greet my black friend, against whom I hold no grudge based on race, with a casual, "Nigga pleez!"

 

[sir.rutthed]

And that's what you get for staying true to your source material. It actually says in the intro to Fellowship that the Hobbits inhabit what is now Scandanavia, a place peopled very heavily by whites as white as they come. This is such bullshit.

Ok, so it's perfectly acceptable to have a bunch of White guys pass as middle eastern nobility in that Prince of Persia film but a non-white hobbit is somehow completey unacceptable?

Would you listen to yourselves?

Its a freakin fantasy film, SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS IMPLIED.

Suspension of disbelief is very hard to achieve if a film actively goes against its own world. It's not racist to say a black hobbit would take you out of the film world, it makes sense because there are no black hobbits in the literature it's based on.

 

[Diligent]

Arrg, I hate hearing stories like this, and I feel for the guy who lost his freaking job, and now has to have "fired for being a racist" on his resume. (I know he would put that there, but you know what I mean).
Perhaps I should have tried applying for a role and raised a big stink because I'm 6'2. Discriminating against tall people? This is 2010 and we have the technology to make anybody look short on camera!

 

[Elburzito]

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

Try not to swear so much! You can easily make your point without heinous writing!

Nawh swearing emphasises the point better than just saying it.

Good point.

 

[JDKJ]

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

uh.... In all fairness, this idiot is from the Middle East....

What are you even talking about?

The better question is to which idiot the "idiot" refers. At least, that's what I'm asking myself.

 

[Octorok]

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

uh.... In all fairness, this idiot is from the Middle East....

What are you even talking about?

Pay for a ticket back to Africa. That'd be OK if she was black, but she's not really "African" black. She might fit in Egypt or something, but you'd be better off buying a ticket to the Middle East.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Ironically Middle Earth does have locales that generaly mirror's earth, and that whole area thurr is based off the English countryside. Soo...yeah, hobbits are caucasionish.

 

[Woodsey]

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

Try not to swear so much! You can easily make your point without heinous writing!

Nawh swearing emphasises the point better than just saying it.

Fucking load of mother fucking horse shit. If they did a film about Africa and they where asked to find Africans it wouldn't be racist. THIS IS FUCKING HORSESHIT. You need white people to play the hobbit you need fucking black people to play black people.

You're not being discriminated against, if discrimination is such a big problem for you why don't you fuck off back to Africa I'll even pay for your fucking ticket.

Whilst I agree that if Hobbits are always described as white then it makes sense to have that in the outlines (I didn't know they were, but whatever), the way you've put across your point - and especially the sentiment in your last 2 lines - leave the impression that you're a total pig.

I would go over the whole thing about how you can be black (or any colour) and British but I get the feeling my virtual breath would be wasted.

OT: I think the issue seems to arise from the man having done this himself when perhaps the director/producer's intention was to simply have multi-racial Hobbits (burn them, they're deviating from the books ever-so-slightly, etc.).

It's not about being British at all. So I don't know where you got that from.

Oh, I dunno, maybe it was the "I'll buy you a ticket back to Africa" part, which you so charmingly phrased. It doesn't even make sense to write that after talking about a director searching for Africans to play Africans (surely they'd do that in Africa then?).

I seriously wouldn't have been surprised if the next thing to come out of your mouth was about them "taking our jobs".