D&D Movie/TV (Yet another) D&D Movie Speculation thread.

[dave2008]

Would it be racist if the heroes were black and the drow white? If not, why not?

Racism is contextual based, so it depends on the context

 

[Jester David]

I don't want that film. In fact, it reminds me a bit too much of the previous crappy D&D movies - a kind of wink-wink nerd humor that I, and I think most people, don't find all that funny.

The success of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jumanji: Enter the Jungle and similar films I mentioned suggest otherwise. People like meta humour.
Even gamers like it, as shown by the continued popularity of Order of the Stick.

I don't mean to pick on you, Jester David, but I really hope we aren't submitted to this sort of dialogue. One of the ways to guarantee a(nother) crappy D&D movie is this sort of very non-immersive dialogue. I don't want to ever feel like I'm watching a movie about D&D players playing D&D characters. I want to see a movie that is immersed in the worlds of D&D. It is a subtle but very important difference.

The problem with "immersive" dialogue is that 90% of the time it comes off sounding like bad actors at a renn faire. It's corny as hell and feels forced and unnatural. Because people don't actually talk like that, and it ends up sounding like a bad high school production of Shakespeare.

And playing the movie entirely straight just makes it seem pompous and overly important. Unless it has Oscar calibre actors like Lord of the Rings did that's just not going to work. That just leads to unintentional comedy.

A D&D movie just won't work done entirely straight. Because making a movie based on a game is already somewhat absurd and trying to treat it as a serious high art film is even more absurd.

 

[Jester David]

Saying there is racism is "inherent" in dark skinned evil elves is different than saying that it is "problematic." I would disagree with you that it is "inherent racism." Problematic? Sure, although mostly because of how people might interpret them, not because of anything inherent in the idea itself.

There is very much racism inherent in portraying the evil groups of people as being dark skinned. Having "the other" that is evil and demonized be non-white. That's basically the foundation of racism and xenophobia.

And there's a long history of that in the world and in cinema. Having the bad guys be foreigners or "the other". You can see the roots of that in the modern day with every alien invasion movie, which taps into the same primal fears of "an other" coming to our land and killing our people.

Making that "other" dark skinned taps into a long, long, long history of racism. Which was used to justify the slave trade.

Oh yeah, aren't there plenty of non-white people in the FR that aren't evil? Or Greyhawk? I could understand this if all non-white peoples of D&D worlds were evil, but that isn't the case.

Are they? Are there really?
What non-evil PoC are there canonically in Greyhawk? Heck… what canonical PoC are there in Greyhawk…?
What illustrations in 1e and 2e books feature people of colour?

Plus, the evil subhuman "other" races are universally dark skinned. Orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, drow, duergar, etc. Even the yuan-ti have an "orientalism" around them.

Anyhow, the drow shouldn't be dark-skinned, because they're subterranean. They should be pale. Now did Gygax design them as black-skinned and white haired because he was racist? Probably not. He probably designed them that way because they look cool.

Yeah, he probably did not design them that way as intentional racism. He did so because they were "dark elves" in the myth.
But he also didn't decide NOT to make the evil races black because that could be seen as racist. And he also didn't try to make a pale skinned evil race to balance that out OR a generally good dark skinned people.

Oh man… discussing Gary's views on race...
This is not going to be comfortable because he is so beloved. (And, y'know, dead and not here to defend himself.)

Was Gary a racist?
Well, he was life long Christian who was initially a Jehovah's Witness who voted Republican most of his life before switching to Libertarianism near the end and was born and raised in the midwest in overwhelmingly white Wisconsin (it's around 90% white now, but would have been whiter in the 1980s of D&D and even more so in the 40s and 50s when Gary grew up).
I don't think Gary would have identified as "racist". But he was almost certainly a product of his era and area and wouldn't have been particularly aware of racist stereotypes or knowledgable or concerned about black issues.
He'd be the kind of person who would say things like "I'm not racist, but…" or ask "don't all lives matter?" or wonder "why must everything be about race?"
So not racist per se. But very much unaware of the issues. Not woke.

I really don't want to get political, but I think we all know the kind of hat Gary would be wearing if he were still alive, and whose rallies he'd be attending...

Let's gets some quotes as examples.
How about The World of Greyhawk follio. Which has in its introduction:

"less still is known about the savage inhabitants of the other continents, but such knowledge is, of course, of little use anyway, and of no importance to humanity."​

So right away we the other continents being "savage" and implied to be inhuman (or subhuman) as what happens there doesn't matter to humanity. Unintentional, but to a modern reading… wow. That's not comfortable.

Not everyone in the setting is white. The darker skinned Flan people are present, but are really more akin to the First Nation than African, while the Baklunish are very much Arabic.
The Flan description reads:

"The Flan tribesmen were hardy and capable hunters but not particularly warlike, and their small and scattered groups made no appreciable civilizing efforts."​

Using "tribesmen" to refer to a people who were conquered a century ago would raise some red flags in a modern book. As would "civilizing efforts" which is pretty ethnocentric.
And when discussing their dress:

"Flannae once wore brightly-hued body paints, with yellow ochre and vermilion being the favorites. While the Rovers of the Barrens still use considerable body painting (where theri high boots, loincloth and chest and arm leather don't cover them), the more civilized Flan dress in the mode currently fashionable in their portion of the continent."​

Again, emphasis on the word "civilized".

I think Gary would very much just not have understood the racism (and sexism) of having the drow be evil. The problems of having the only dark skinned elves (and dwarves) in Greyhawk be evil.

Would it be racist if the heroes were black and the drow white?

No.

If not, why not?

Because there's not a history of two centuries of active oppression with systemic racism that continues to this day.
It's all about the context.

 

[cmad1977]

I think the best question to ask is: What lessons can we learn from Marvel Studios' treatment of comic book movies in bringing these stories to even people who are not comic book readers? I know the markets are somewhat different, because there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS more people who have read comics in their lives, from actual four-color books to newspaper strips, but they have succeeded in turning these stories into something that appeals to more than just the "superhero fan" crowd, and managed to tell the deeply human and powerful stories behind these funny-books in a powexcitederful way.

However, we also know that fan power is not the answer, as we've seen plenty of terrible superhero movies, from the 70s schlock to big-budget modern movies with paper-thin plot. So, the lessons are there for popular genre filming -- but do we learn them, or do we fall yet again back into schlock and waiting 15 years for another shot?

Yes. The reason the marvel movies are huge hits are not because of fans. It’s because they’ve gotten people like me(super casual ‘super heroes are cool I guess’ type) and my WIFE, who has never read a comic book, excited for the next avengers movie.

 

[Parmandur]

There is very much racism inherent in portraying the evil groups of people as being dark skinned. Having "the other" that is evil and demonized be non-white. That's basically the foundation of racism and xenophobia.

And there's a long history of that in the world and in cinema. Having the bad guys be foreigners or "the other". You can see the roots of that in the modern day with every alien invasion movie, which taps into the same primal fears of "an other" coming to our land and killing our people.

Making that "other" dark skinned taps into a long, long, long history of racism. Which was used to justify the slave trade.


Are they? Are there really?
What non-evil PoC are there canonically in Greyhawk? Heck… what canonical PoC are there in Greyhawk…?
What illustrations in 1e and 2e books feature people of colour?

Plus, the evil subhuman "other" races are universally dark skinned. Orcs, goblins, hobgoblins, drow, duergar, etc. Even the yuan-ti have an "orientalism" around them.


Yeah, he probably did not design them that way as intentional racism. He did so because they were "dark elves" in the myth.
But he also didn't decide NOT to make the evil races black because that could be seen as racist. And he also didn't try to make a pale skinned evil race to balance that out OR a generally good dark skinned people.

Oh man… discussing Gary's views on race...
This is not going to be comfortable because he is so beloved. (And, y'know, dead and not here to defend himself.)

Was Gary a racist?
Well, he was long long Christian who was initially a Jehovah's Witness who voted Republican most of his life before switching to Libertarianism near the end and was born and raised in the midwest in overwhelmingly white Wisconsin (it's around 90% white now, but would have been whiter in the 1980s of D&D and even more so in the 40s and 50s when Gary grew up).
I don't think Gary would have identified as "racist". But he was almost certainly a product of his era and area and wouldn't have been particularly aware of racist stereotypes or knowledgable or concerned about black issues.
He'd be the kind of person who would say things like "I'm not racist, but…" or ask "don't all lives matter?" or wonder "why must everything be about race?"
So not racist per se. But very much unaware of the issues. Not woke.

I really don't want to get political, but I think we all know the kind of hat Gary would be wearing if he were still alive, and whose rallies he'd be attending...

Let's gets some quotes as examples.
How about The World of Greyhawk follio. Which has in its introduction:
"less still is known about the savage inhabitants of the other continents, but such knowledge is, of course, of little use anyway, and of no importance to humanity."
So right away we the other continents being "savage" and implied to be inhuman (or subhuman) as what happens there doesn't matter to humanity. Unintentional, but to a modern reading… wow. That's not comfortable.

Not everyone in the setting is white. The darker skinned Flan people are present, but are really more akin to the First Nation than African, while the Baklunish are very much Arabic.
The Flan description reads:
"The Flan tribesmen were hardy and capable hunters but not particularly warlike, and their small and scattered groups made no appreciable civilizing efforts."
Using "tribesmen" to refer to a people who were conquered a century ago would raise some red flags in a modern book. As would "civilizing efforts" which is pretty ethnocentric.
And when discussing their dress:
"Flannae once wore brightly-hued body paints, with yellow ochre and vermilion being the favorites. While the Rovers of the Barrens still use considerable body painting (where theri high boots, loincloth and chest and arm leather don't cover them), the more civilized Flan dress in the mode currently fashionable in their portion of the continent."
Again, emphasis on the word "civilized".

I think Gary would very much just not have understood the racism (and sexism) of having the drow be evil. The problems of having the only dark skinned elves (and dwarves) in Greyhawk be evil.


No.


Because there's not a history of two centuries of active oppression with systemic racism that continues to this day.
It's all about the context.

The Greyhawk Folio bits you quote are in-character and at least the bit about other continents reads as a joke. I think it is unfair to say that Gygax would have supported or not supported a given modern figure: that's another sort of bias right there.

He was, however, definitely a product of his time and place. As are we all.

Notably, the Forgotten Realms doesn't have the same issue: phenotypically non-Caucasian people are normal and typical in "The Heartlands" of Greenwood's game proper, though other writers added more... products of their time.

 

[dave2008]

And playing the movie entirely straight just makes it seem pompous and overly important. Unless it has Oscar calibre actors like Lord of the Rings did that's just not going to work. That just leads to unintentional comedy.

I don't know, the LotR movies made a lot of money, but the were, in total, kinda meh IMO. I don't think they were great movies or great performances. It seems entirely reasonable I think to make a D&D movie of that quality.

A D&D movie just won't work done entirely straight. Because making a movie based on a game is already somewhat absurd and trying to treat it as a serious high art film is even more absurd.

A movie can be straight without being 'high art." I think there is as much danger in making a movie a bit tongue-in cheek as there is playing it straight. The import part is that it is good (good writing, good production, good acting, good editing, etc.), not whether or not it is humorous or serious. I think both options can work and both can fail.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't know, the LotR movies made a lot of money, but the were, in total, kinda meh IMO. I don't think they were great movies or great performances. It seems entirely reasonable I think to make a D&D movie of that quality.



A movie can be straight without being 'high art." I think there is as much danger in making a movie a bit tongue-in cheek as there is playing it straight. The import part is that it is good (good writing, good production, good acting, good editing, etc.), not whether or not it is humorous or serious. I think both options can work and both can fail.

Dungeons & Dragons is not an extraordinarily "serious" experience, so why make a "serious" movie tie-in?

 

[dave2008]

Dungeons & Dragons is not an extraordinarily "serious" experience, so why make a "serious" movie tie-in?

Serious was not the right word, just straight (as in not humorous). About 90% of the time I've played D&D it has been straight, humor has rarely been apart of our games in the past 30 years or so. So, to me, D&D isn't particularly humorous either.

 

[Jester David]

The Greyhawk Folio bits you quote are in-character and at least the bit about other continents reads as a joke.

The joke of the other continents being uninteresting and not the centre of the world would have worked without using terms like "savage" or implying the inhabitants are inhuman.

I think it is unfair to say that Gygax would have supported or not supported a given modern figure: that's another sort of bias right there.

I'd love to think that Gary wouldn't have voted for the modern GOP candidates, like he had voted for them the rest of his life. Despite having grown up and lived in a county that predominantly voted for Trump, Mitt Romney, McCain, and Bush.
That'd he'd defy the stereotype of the cranky conservative grandfather.
But I doubt it.

Regardless, it doesn't change my impression or opinion of him. I still respect him for his contributions to the hobby.
Much like I still respect Lovecraft for his contributions to horror and weird fiction despite him being fantastically racist.

I just think Gygax—like some other posters on this thread—would look at the drow and say "What's the big deal? They're not human and are based on mythology." And just not get the concerns.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

Would it be racist if the heroes were black and the drow white? If not, why not?

No. Because there isn't the context of several centuries of outright slavery, insitutionalized racism including both state and private violence, grossly negative stereotypes used to justify said racism, and huge volumes of popular entertainment reinforcing and celebrating those stereotypes. This isn't a subtle or tricky difference.

Also, using white-skinned makeup doesn't have the history that black-skinned makeup does; there wasn't an era where white people were oppressed and whiteface was used to celebrate negative racial stereotypes against those white people. So there isn't an equivalence between 'whiteface' the hypothetical drown and the 'blackface' the standard drow extras would be painted in, because only one of them has that particular history. Quite simply, if you use actual white-skinned drow (not the 'caucasian' skin tones that are typically called white) you're not coding to anything in the real world, whereas black skin very much does.