John Boyega decided it was time to call out fantasy fan favorites Game Of Thrones and The Lord Of The Rings during an interview with GQ for a lack of diversity in their casting choices.
“There are no black people on Game of Thrones. You don’t see one black person in Lord of the Rings,” Boyega said “I ain’t paying money to always see one type of person on-screen. Because you see different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, every day. Even if you’re a racist, you have to live with that. We can ruffle up some feathers.”
Boyega does have a point, there is a lack of diversity in media in general.
With Game Of Thrones there is only a handful of POC characters, but most of them can described as ‘savages’ or were former slaves brought to freedom by a white woman.
Kind of sketchy, huh?
The only defense we can put to that is that HBO show does not cover everything like the book series does, Game Of Thrones the show is missing lost of characters and exploration in the different lands. More south there are more characters that are described as having darker skin, sadly we will probably never meet these characters on screen.
This is partly due to the fact to the fact that the show couldn’t extend its already long episodes, there’s only so much that could fit considering that we’re already switching to see how the other characters are doing so often.
It also explains why the hardcover books are big enough to crush a medium size cat.
In regards to The Lord Of The Rings, they’ve had issues in the past about not casting POC actors. They do have Lawrence Makoare, a non-white actor, but he isn’t exactly a good example considering he’s completely covered in special effects Orc makeup and bulky armor.
The Hobbit movie was actually under fire for posting advertisements looking for extra’s with ‘light skin tones,’ they also reportedly told a potential actress that “she was too dark to appear in the movies.”
Well this isn’t looking too good for Hollywood, in the past we’ve had many POC actors over looked in favor of white ones, there’s a lack of diversity because of it and most of us don’t really pay too much attention to it because of how use to it we are.
Television and movies have been white for years, with POC only showing up with stereotypes and exaggerated accents. They were used as pawns for entertainment.
It’s not until recently that many have been given larger roles in media, but even then they receive hate for ‘ruining’ something.
John Boyega being a fine exactly, especially because of all the backlash and hate he received after the first Star Wars teaser was release.
Maybe this really is a conversion the word needs to have, and thanks to Boyega we can finally have it.
