How We Read Rings of Power

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

*** Does Tolkien's Arda include POC? Of course, absolutely. The Haradrim very clearly are. What cannot be the case is Amazon's multi-ethnic communities: something which at the technological and commercial level depicted simply would not have been possible (and that's even before getting to a queen of the House of Elros....)

Just a brief reply to this: I don't think that by casting POC as Elves, Dwarves or Númenóreans the makers of RoP are trying to say anything about the 'actual' ethnic make-up of these communities. They're casting actors to play people, regardless of what colour they're supposed to be. Sadoc Burrows is obviously meant to be a member of the same ethnic group as the other Harfoots (many of which are probably his relatives), never mind that he's played by a black actor and the others aren't. It's no different from an Afro-American or Asian actor playing Hamlet, or Kenneth Branagh casting Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves as brothers in Much Ado About Nothing.