“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

—Somebody

Yes, yes, we’ve all heard the aphorism above and we’ve all recognized the truth of the statement that there are a lot of people who have limited tools at their disposal and they therefore have limited problem-solving abilities. But I’d like to offer a variation on this shop-worn phrase. And since I’ve spent many years a-carpentering, I think I’ve earned the right to make an observation or two on hammers and nails.

“When all you see are nails, you only reach for your hammer.”

—Me

Toxic. No, not the Brittney Spears song – btw, that song has violins, so I think it’s technically classical music…

Toxic is a word that gets thrown around with reckless abandon, nowadays. Why? Because it seems to be the slightly less obnoxious replacement fallacious ad hominem for “racist”. And, like the term racist, there certainly are actual versions of what the mudslingers claim. There is, in fact, toxic masculinity (there’s also toxic femininity, too). There are toxic relationships. There are all kinds of things that are “toxic”. Now, I, personally, hate buzzwords. Not just the website, that’s buzzfeed, although I generally hate that too, but I hate words that become common expressions that “everyone” uses. I have always hated them. Maybe because I was never popular as a kid. Maybe because I resented people who knew all the right slang and seemed so effortlessly cool. Or maybe because, even from an early age, I recognized that buzzowords and hip slang are the cheapest and most dishonest form of pseudo-personality there is. I think 8 year old me was right. The slang and buzzwords of the hep-cats is just a lazy way of pretending to be an individual. It’s also the cowardly way. It’s a way to act cool and cutting edge while also being eminently safe and taking zero risk! At least Gretchen Wieners tried to make fetch happen! But nobody was going to let fetch be a thing. And, sadly, I could write a whole essay about that – but then you’d all know how deeply uncool I am.

Now, when you start throwing around buzzwords in a quasi-intellectual setting it’s not long before people who are actually intellectuals (or people who aren’t but who are paying attention) notice that you never say anything unique. You never have your own insightful take on an issue. You just throw the same tired phrases around at every problem in a predictable and formulaic way.

Granted, predictability is a sign of a systematic mind. So predictability is not bad. But applying the same buzzword phrases to any and every situation seems more like someone reciting a creed than someone thinking through issues.

Granted, sometimes we can simply recite a creed – when it’s appropriate. But when we do that we consciously recognize that we are making dogmatic statements of faith. For instance, if someone tells me that the Holy Spirit’s ministry is not necessary to be born again, I might quote the creed reminding them that “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the Giver of Life.” You can’t be a Christian and deny that. Sure, you can deny it, but you forfeit your right to be a Christian.

Well, the same thing is true for people who call everything they happen to not like “toxic”. They use this expression because they lack intellectual depth, they lack unique personalities, they are weak and shallow people with weak and shallow minds, and they see everything they don’t like as being toxic and so they throw the term around with abandon. Again, sometimes they’re right. In the same way that if you throw claim to be trying to rid the world of child-abusers and you commit terrorism at the Superbowl, you’re pretty likely to hit a child-abuser.

Casting

Sometimes race matters when casting characters. Sometimes. Sometimes it is crucial to the entire project! Now, I’m not just talking about individual roles here, although that matters. But I’m talking about casting an entire production. The racial makeup of the cast matters…sometimes. In pretty much any modern movie taking place in the West, it would make sense to have a racially diverse cast because our societies are racially diverse. Once you go back in time, it gets a little trickier. And if you’re going to have people who racially don’t fit in to the place and period you have to give an explanation. For example: Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. It made sense why there would be a black guy in pre colonial England. But note bene, that it was just Morgan Freeman. His character was there because he gave Robin Hood a different perspective on things. He gave the character a friend who stood out and set him apart. He reminded Robin of what mattered. Most of all, because he owed a life-debt to Robin, it reminded Robin of his commitments and obligations.

While Azeem is not, as far as I know, in any of the pre-film stories or adaptations of Robin Hood, his character makes sense. Stories from Medieval Europe often have Moorish, Saracen, Musselman, Turkish, Arabic, Seljuk, Ottoman, or other non-white characters. Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur and Le Chanson de Roland stand out as obvious examples.

So, putting Morgan Freeman in Crusade-Era Europe is easily explained and is well within the literary tradition. Also, Morgan Freeman is a great actor who makes everything he’s in better, and he provides a needed balance to the cocky, brash, Kevin Costner.

So, it’s totally cool to have people who’s race wouldn’t normally make sense in a production if there’s a good reason for it.

But there are also reasons to totally transgress expectations. For instance, Denzel Washington playing Macbeth. Spoiler alert, Denzel is not ethnically Scottish. But it doesn’t matter.

Why?

Because Macbeth’s Scottishness is accidental to the play – not intrinsic. Indeed, most of the settings of Shakespeare’s plays are accidental. Juliet and her Romeo do not have to be Veronese – they could be from…ummmm…LA for example. As long as the location is known for having feuds the setting works. You could do Romeo and Juliet in Appalachia – as the song, The Martins and the Coys, already did.

Macbeth is Scottish because the previous works that Shakespeare developed were from a Scottish legend about a Scottish noble who usurps the kingdom. Again, a lot of Shakespeare works because his stories are deliberately archetypical. Indeed, you could tell…uhhhh….Hamlet in…uhhh…..Africa, with the characters being…uhhhhhhh…..lions. Yeah. You could do Cat-Hamlet. I would call it…The King of the Lions. No, that stinks…The Lion Prince…no…The Lions’ King…yeah, that’s the ticket.

Moreover, in Shakespeare it not only doesn’t matter because the stories are archetypal, but also because there is a long tradition of using people of different races and sexes to play different characters. Remember all the women’s roles in the Bard’s day were played by men!

It doesn’t matter whether Denzel plays Macbeth or Daniel Day Lewis. Denzel is an incredible actor, whose body type, age, and delivery are perfect for the play.

Casting and Canon

However, sometimes race in casting does matter. And it matters as often and to the degree that it matters in the source material.

And this is why all the toxic fanboys are being so toxically toxic about the random introduction of black people in Amazon’s new LOTR series. And I must say, that while I haven’t seen the new series, I’m very unlikely to actually watch it. If I were convinced, or could reasonably believe, that it would be well done, I might be inclined to spend the money on a Prime subscription and watch it. I like LOTR. Not to the point of being a fanboy, but I have read LOTR 3 or 4 times, including the appendices. I’ve read the Hobbit once or twice and the Silmarillion once. Again, not a fanboy, but I do like the stories. And I understand them well enough to speak intelligently on the topic.

What Tolkien was doing was inventing a European mythology. It was mythopoeia, but in a European context. I mean the name Middle Earth is just a translation of Midgard. So, let me say this gently but firmly: the book characters of middle earth, the elves, men, hobbits, and dwarves – are white. There are non-white men: the Easterlings. There are non-white creatures: orcs. There are non-human people for whom skin color is irrelevant: ents; maiar; and valar.

The point is that in the books Tolkien wrote race and races did, indeed, matter.

Let’s consider why this actually matters.

First, it matters because of the nature of fantasy and fantasy fandom. Fantasy is ENTIRELY about world-building. Well, that’s not strictly true, but it’s what’s uniquely important about it. Fantasy does not start with a stock world that it can fill-in-the-blanks with. It starts with nothing and has to build everything. And so, in fantasy, the world is not the world we live in, or the world we would like to live in, but the world created by the author.

Now, in fantasy, there are often, especially in High Fantasy and Sci-fi, multiple races, not simply the skin-color kind, but races in the sense of species. In LOTR they are called the Kindreds. Now, follow me here because this is going to get technical.

Fantasy ONLY works when the audience is able to accept the world as it is. When the audience is scratching their heads because of internal inconsistencies, fantasy falls apart. Remember, it’s not working with the world as it is, where incongruent things don’t ruin the whole project (normally). In fantasy, one snag unravels the whole sweater. And this is the entire point of fantasy. It’s escapism at its finest. But that escapism isn’t a sweet escape when internal inconsistencies and incongruences force the audience out of the flow of immersion and into their own heads questioning why things are the way they are. It defeats the whole purpose.

Now, why does race matter in LOTR?

Because race matters in LOTR. In the entire Legendarium we only have a handful of interracial marriages: most famously Beren and Luthien, and Aragorn and Arwen. Now, this in itself ought to be reason enough.

But there’s another reason. A reason you might not be aware of consciously but an example might make clear.

Let’s say we’re watching myth about precolonial Africa. Let’s say the Masai. And as we look at the warriors getting ready to go lion hunting, there in the group is a lily-white Norwegian looking tribesman. And then you look around and randomly there are Chinese and Aboriginal and people scattered in – not enough to throw off the overall racial balance, but enough to make you wonder…”umm who are these people?”

Because you do have to wonder! What is a Chinese person doing in Africa in the 700s? And if he has a family, how have they not been racially integrated? Is there a Chinese colony that only intermarries with other Chinese people? If so, why? And when did this happen? And is the author of the story even interested in telling us why this is here?!

You see good authors and storytellers don’t just put crap into stories for no reason. In storytelling literally everything is deliberate. Nothing HAS TO BE there. It’s all there by choice. So why, would you put a Han Chinese character in Africa at a time when he has no business whatsoever being there!?

If we were watching Black Panter, and at least one of the important Wakandans looked like me, and at least one person in every crowd is not ethnically Wakandan, then the casting director has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do! Why are non-Wakandans here? I thought Wakanda was an isolationist, monoculture? Why are there white people, incredibly handsome white people (if they look like me), but white people nonetheless in positions of power and influence in Wakanda.

It doesn’t make internal sense, and therefore needs to be explained. Maybe, like Azeem in Robin Hood, it makes perfect sense and is a useful addition to the story. Maybe it’s just a bunch of woke box-ticking!

Genesis

LOTR is a story with a creation myth. Now, biblical creation and modern evolutionary theory agree that human beings all come from 2 ancestors. The Bible calls the Adam and Eve and science calls them Y-chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. But the point is that whichever way you go, these two had sufficient melanin in their bodies that the whole skin-tone spectrum was possible given: time and isolation. With time and isolation, recessive and dominant genes work themselves out so that you can have people who look like Don Cheadle and people who look like me. We all are human and we all share the same parents – which is pretty cool!

But notice the necessary things. Time and isolation.

If there is racial diversity, that diversity can continue to exist if A) there isn’t enough time for the skin-tones to find a happy medium or B) there is time, and there is isolation and so dominant and recessive traits do their thing and Laotians look Laotian and Laplanders look like Laplanders.

Now, in the Silmariallion, the Elves are created in a mass event, there are no Adam and Eve – but there were 144 elves awoken from whom all the clans of the elves come from. Now. Let’s presuppose, just for funsies, that Ilúvatar created dark-skinned elves. That’s not canon (which we’ll come to later) but let’s just suppose.

If there is a small number of dark-skinned elves, how are they to remain dark-skinned? If they intermarry with lighter-skinned elves, their offspring will have lighter and lighter skin (most likely) with each successive generation. That’s how genetics works. So either the story has to take place at a time close enough to the awakening that racial mixing hasn’t had enough time to lighten the skin of the elves with dark-skinned ancestry, or the dark-skinned elves have to live in racial/ tribal isolation with no intermarriage. Neither of these options seems especially likely!

And just like in the above examples, this causes you to wonder, how this happens. How is it that there are dark-skinned elves just doin’ their thing when the vast majority are light skinned. If you see someone who looks like me in prehistoric Nigeria you’re gonna have some questions. If someone who looks like me is Shaka Zulu’s chief lieutenant, you’re gonna have a problem with that!

But these are the internal problems that cause the story to not work from a genre level.

But there’s another more significant reason why this is a bad idea.

It’s because it violates canon. And I’m against violating canon. Now, there are some legends and myths that are more clusters of stories than tales with a definitive canon. Arthurian legend is a great example. Mallory just took a whole host of Arthurian stories and piled them together. And lots of people have taken different looks at Arthur. And that’s OK. There’s the political take in The Once and Future King and the Feminist take in Mists of Avalon. The story can be turned and adjusted and made to fit into different genres. There are spinoffs like Taliesin Through Logres, by Williams and Tristan and Iseult, by Tennyson. The point is that there is no canon. There is just a core of related legends that form the backbone or the backdrop of a cohesive story that we’re all relatively familiar with. So there really isn’t a canon to break.

LOTR is not like that. LOTR has a clear cut and ludicrously detailed canon. Tolkien invented languages for his stories for heaven’s sake! The stories work BECAUSE they’re detailed and complex and intricate. And the whole fun of fandom, of getting into the debates and conversations, is fun because of the internal consistency of the myth.

I and my friend have had a long-running debate about an obscure character in the LOTR books who isn’t even in the movies. We can have this debate because Tolkien’s writing was so consistent and thought out that we can treat the LOTR universe as a coherent universe that follows rules and can be predicted.

But when you start violating canon to suit your political or artistic whims ALL OF IT GOES AWAY. Just like one snag can wreck a sweater, one piece of lazy or politically interested inconsistency can bring the whole thing apart. People who love investing in stories will not invest in stories that are inconsistent because it becomes unpredictable and incoherent.

Now, at this point, the confederacy of dunces will pipe up about representation. How can you be a fan of LOTR if no one looks like you?! They ask. Ummm, I’m not a horse-riding blonde king, but I love Theodin. I’m not an immortal, magical, forest-dweller, but Arwen is one of my favorite characters. The idea that you have to look like someone to put yourselves in their shoes is preposterous and unimaginative.

Or, they might ask, “why do you care?” And this is a common trick that people use when they ruin something. The wokester forces people who don’t cogently fit into a story into a story for political reasons and then says, “why do you care?!” Well, if it’s so unimportant why do you force a character that doesn’t fit into the story in the first place. You can’t do a thing and then ask people who complain about that thing why they cared! If you care enough to do it, they can care enough to dislike it.

Theology

But all of this has a point. It’s not just me complaining about another franchise that is doomed to destruction by wokery. It’s also theologically significant.

Why?

Because our cultural overlords don’t care about canon they only care about their preferred view of things – or more to the point, foisting their preferred view of things on others so they can form people’s cultural and theological imaginaries to suit their purposes.

Now, this is bad enough in literature, but, of course, it doesn’t stay there. This affects our theology and theological method.

If a culture doesn’t respect its own cultural artefacts, why should it respect those of other cultures? If a culture can’t respect the canon of fantasy stories, why should it respect more important canonical literature?

Let me be a little more on the nose.

This whole thing boils down to authorial intent. The author of LORT created a certain world. That world was a certain way and operated a certain way because Tolkien was telling a certain kind of story. LOTR is not all things to all people. It’s a fixed thing that works a certain way, has internal logic and consistency, has a detailed and intricate universe, has specific themes that are developed, has a specific theological and moral imagination, and portrays truth, beauty, and goodness the way Tolkien viewed them (at least for purposes of that story).

And people have resonated with JRR’s vision for a very long time. Characters like Frodo and Aragorn and Eowyn teach us about courage and leadership, as well as self-control and the sacrifices necessary to be a hero. Characters like Sam and Faramir teach us about service. Characters like Boromir and Saruman teach us about the dangers of giving in to our fears and desires. Characters like the Noldor teach us about the dangers of selfishness and pride. And Melkor and Sauron teach us the dangers of a non-Trinitarian deity. I could go on and on, but my point is that all these characters work within a specific universe and that universe is controlled by Tolkien’s theology.

When you just start changing things because you don’t like the politics, then you undermine the entire story and it no longer is Tolkien’s story, but someone else’s story superimposed on Tolkien’s characters. Although they are no longer Tolkien’s anymore, but doppelgangers.

And this is extremely dangerous because when we do this for little things it suggests that we will do this for big things. If you’ll rearrange high fantasy when it doesn’t suit you, because hobbits and elves are too politically incorrect, then you’ll certainly rearrange more important canonical stories for the same reasons.

Are you beginning to see the danger?

You can have black Macbeth because Scottishness is an accident to the story and nobody who played Macbeth at the Globe was likely Scottish either! If Billy put men in drag to play women then it’s clear that the racial and sexual features of the actors were irrelevant to the story.

But that’s not the case for LOTR. It matters in LOTR. It matters enough to Amazon for cram dark-skinned elves into the story, anyways.

This means that our culture will now change the canon whenever it doesn’t suit us.

This means that the same impulse that has black beardless dwarf queens in Amazon’s LOTR will also cause us to change and rearrange and jettison portions of other canonical lit when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Like, say, the Bible.

Back in the olden days when someone wanted to give us, Liberal Jesus, or Communist Jesus, or Feminist Jesus, they stuck with the Bible and said we were misreading the biblical text. They pointed to proof-texts and tried to force everything into the thematic mold they created.

But some of the data wouldn’t go in. And, ay, there’s the rub. What do you do when the data don’t fit? Well, the OG libs just ignored the data. What a bunch of chumps. Why ignore it when you can change it and then call everyone who points out that the changes are non-canonical are “toxic”. Liberal Christians have done this for a while now, although, instead of “toxic” they called people “fundamentalists”. I don’t mind because I am a fundamentalist. But for many, the pejorative use of the term was enough to scare them away.

Now, you might think that my claim seems a bit strained. How can I assert that people putting black people into LOTR means that people will rewrite the Bible? Doesn’t that seem like a coincidence at best?

No.

Culture doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And the way we read and interact with literature and other media is universal. Most people are fairly consistent, even if unconsciously, about how they treat culture. And most people are going to handle stories about Jesus the same way they handle stories about Frodo – sure they may take the Jesus stories more seriously, but the tools they use and the approach they take will be the same or similar.

In short – if we can’t keep politics out of our reading of Tolkien we certainly can’t keep politics out of our reading of the Testaments. I for one want Tolkien to stay true to his vision. If we want a multiracial, multicultural, egalitarian, pansexual high fantasy universe then we can make one. But if we lack the wisdom and restraint to not destroy Middle Earth, then we certainly will not have the wherewithal to resist the temptation to tamper with the Bible.

Storytelling matters. Canon matters. Not just because art matters because it teaches us about the transcendentals, but because it is inherently theological. It ought to be treated seriously. And I fear for a culture that cannot respect canon. I don’t think it can survive.