Can o' worms...

[Pitchwife]

Well, since PJ already got away with giving us a fair-haired Boromir and Faramir (contrary to Tolkien's descriptions), I really don't see a problem with a brown-skinned Hobbit, even if you don't want to go all the way to colour blind casting - I mean, looking at the photo of Ms Humphreys on the site davem linked to in his first post, I don't see how she would be particularly implausible as an average Hobbit. The original decision really seems a bit ridiculous.

As for colour blind casting, the only problem I have with that is that I'd like the characters to look more or less like Tolkien described them (which is a problem you won't get so much with Shakespeare - Juliet or Hamlet could be any colour you like for all I care; Othello maybe not, but I could see a white Othello in an all-black cast, or any Othello in a mixed-colour cast, if his outsider position is somehow differently marked [/digression]). So no problem at all with levantine Gondorians or Asian Elves (on the contrary, the Elven style of hairdo PJ used in the trilogy would look really cool on Chinese or Japanese actors!), but a black Éomer or Galadriel is just not how I'd picture them.

The problem with this is, of course, that the only people Tolkien explicitely described as dark-skinned, i.e. the Haradrim, are on the bad side, and thus all gates are opened to allegations of racism (which PJ obviously tried to circumvent with his uncanonically pale Haradrim in RotK) - but as this is a problem which Tolkien fandom has laboured with for some decades now (see e.g. here for a previous discussion on these Downs of ours), I don't quite see why movie-goers should be spared it.

Originally Posted by davem

I wonder where this will go? The Globe thing sounds a bit odd to me. I would have noticed & it would have distracted me. Why do it except to show everybody how you're not 'racist' & above such 'trivialities' as skin colour(which comes across as a bit patronising to me.) - because, well, we're all the same, aren't we?

I'm not!
No, seriously: much as I despise political correctness myself, it's sometimes difficult to resist its tyranny without throwing the baby out with the bathwater and relapsing into the old prejudices it legitimately opposes. Or, to put it more concretely - what difference does it make for an actor/actress whether s/he's denied a role because s/he's the wrong colour or because the producer/director doesn't want to appear to be patronizing? "Oh, of course there's no reason why you, as an Afro-American/Asian/Arab/whatsoever, couldn't play this role, but if I'd cast you for it, it would look like I'm only doing so to avoid seeming racially biased, so I'd rather not. I'm sure you'll understand." - "Yes, sir/madam, of course I do, that's a big comfort, thank you very much."

Originally Posted by davem

The problem with pretending you're colour blind as far as Tolkien's world is concerned is that race is a pretty important theme (the whole Elves & Dwarves thing, the blood of Numenor, the 'racial' division of Hobbits into Harfoots, Stoors & Fallowhides & Elves into Calaquendi & Moriquendi.

Ah, but here you're putting worms from a number of different cans into the same stew:

• Elves, Dwarves and Men. - Yes, Tolkien himself used the term 'race' for the three kindreds of the Children of Ilúvatar, and his use is justified insofar as they were capable of producing fertile offspring with each other (although we only ever read about the products of Elf/Man unions - no Dwelves or Dwarf/Men hybrids, which may have to do with the Dwarves' special status as His Children by adoption only); but looking at e.g. their vastly different life-spans, I don't know that the relationship and differences between them are quite compatible with the terms of modern biology - neither 'race' nor 'species' seem really appropriate here.
• The blood of Númenor. - This is a somewhat curious matter, as many of the so-called Lesser Men with whom the Númenóreans interbred in the Third Age probably were descended from close relatives of the Three Houses of the Edain and thus akin to the Númenóreans themselves. The main difference seems to have been the special longevity which the Númenóreans had been granted by the grace of the Valar for the role their ancestors played in the First Age - i.e. for historical, not biological reasons.
• The three 'breeds' of Hobbits. - These are more or less what we today would call 'races' (i.e., to coin an ad hoc definition, a population sharing the same hereditary phenotype; for a more elaborate definition see here).
• Calaquendi/Moriquendi. - This division is purely historical, i.e. depends on whether or not they went on the Big March and saw the light of Aman, and has nothing at all to do with the biological concept of race.

So yes, the concept of races in the widest sense does play a role in Tolkien's Legendarium, but how important is it really, compared with other themes (such as power and being corrupted by it, or mortality and the various ways to deal with it, or humble folk rising to meet huge challenges and being ennobled thereby)? Not in any way central or crucial, I'd think.