{"id":698374,"date":"2026-07-18T12:17:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T12:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/698374\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T12:17:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T12:17:19","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-the-lord-of-the-rings-not-a-weapon-in-the-culture-wars-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/698374\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on The Lord of the Rings: not a weapon in the culture wars | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is trouble in Middle-earth \u2013 again. So far, all of the actors announced for the latest The Lord of the Rings film instalment, The Hunt for Gollum, to be released next year, are white. Kate Winslet, Jamie\u00a0Dornan, Anya Taylor-Joy and Leo Woodall join\u00a0a cast that has already been criticised for its lack of diversity. \u201cTolkien himself was influenced a lot\u00a0by\u00a0Norse mythology,\u201d the film\u2019s director, Andy\u00a0Serkis, who plays Gollum, said<\/a>. \u201cThe Shire feels\u00a0very white.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, Serkis invokes fidelity to Tolkien to defend the casting, yet his \u201cmodern film version\u201d of Animal Farm<\/a>, which came out this week, plays fast and loose with Orwell by replacing the novel\u2019s crushing conclusion with a hopeful one.<\/p>\n

The hugely successful (25 million global viewers on its first day<\/a>) 2022 Amazon TV series The Rings of Power, a prequel to The Hobbit, cast actors of colour. Their absence in The Hunt for Gollum is a backward\u00a0step. Elon Musk\u2019s rants against the Kenyan-Mexican actor Lupita Nyong\u2019o playing Helen of Troy in Christopher\u00a0Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey are part of a wider pushback against \u201cwokeism\u201d.<\/p>\n

Andy Serkis. Photograph: Phil Walter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Such objections seem particularly egregious, if not absurd, in relation to an imaginary world populated by hobbits, elves and talking trees. But questions over racial stereotypes and hierarchies (fair elves and\u00a0dark orcs) have long stalked Tolkien\u2019s work. CS\u00a0Lewis\u00a0defended his friend against such readings in\u00a0a\u00a0review<\/a> in 1955.<\/p>\n

Attitudes towards inclusivity and equality have shifted profoundly, not just since Tolkien embarked\u00a0on The Hobbit in 1930, but also in the 25 years since the first Peter Jackson film. Thanks in no small part to the phenomenal success of the films, The Lord of the Rings has become one of the most influential stories of the 20th century. Guardian readers recently voted it No 1 in the list of 100 greatest novels of all time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tolkien firmly resisted any interpretation. \u201cI cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations,\u201d he wrote. But his tale of the triumph of the underdog, written in the shadows of two world wars, has inevitably been appropriated by various movements. Today, its Christian sensibility, suspicion of industrial modernity and attachment to home chimes with parts of the far right<\/a>. Giorgia Meloni <\/a>and JD Vance<\/a> are admirers. Tolkien devotees will also recognise the names of Vance\u2019s former venture-capital firm, Narya<\/a>, and Peter Thiel\u2019s defence and surveillance company, Palantir.<\/p>\n

The Lord of the Rings<\/a> should not become a weapon in today\u2019s culture wars. That would be to misread its final message: evil can only be defeated by different peoples coming together. This is a drama of friendship, courage and the dangers of power. The books and films have been beloved companions for young Tolkienites as they set off on their own journeys to become adults. The Shire is the safety of childhood, a place of beauty and innocence. Who has not felt more hobbit than human along the way?<\/p>\n

As the success of Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey proves, great art can be reinterpreted for a new era. Children, regardless of race, already see themselves in Middle-earth. Cinema should reflect this. As Bilbo Baggins says to Frodo: \u201cDon\u2019t adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story.\u201d We owe it to Tolkien and future generations to take his story in the right direction.<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is trouble in Middle-earth \u2013 again. So far, all of the actors announced for the latest The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-698374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}