Is anyone else really angry that Amazon has the rights to LOTR?
Content warning: mentions of genocide, slavery, and sexual assault.
A lot of people have expressed concerns that Amazon’s LOTR TV show will be bad, which I understand, but this is about something else which I haven’t seen any discussion of online. The show could be good—although I doubt it will be—and I will still be angry that Amazon is making it.
Amazon profits from the forced labor of Uighurs in China and has ties to a Chinese company that is directly involved in the Chinese Government’s ongoing genocide against the Uighur people (ASPI, LA Times).
Amazon treats its employees like slaves, forcing them to work in unsafe conditions, paying them poverty wages, preventing them from unionizing, and surveilling them around the clock (The Guardian, New York Times).
Amazon has supplied facial recognition technology to US law enforcement and helps ICE and the Department of Homeland Security track and lock up immigrants (ACLU, The Guardian).
Amazon has a huge carbon footprint that has been growing every year, along with the waste it generates, even as Amazon tries to portray itself as environmentally friendly (AP News, CNBC, Forbes).
Amazon has paid a fraction of the taxes that it should have paid over the past ten years, allowing it to become even richer and more powerful (The Guardian).
Amazon has done so many terrible things that it would take me too long to list them all.
Online discussions about the LOTR show, from what I have seen, have focused on whether or not it will be good, whether or not it will follow canon, whether or not it will have a diverse cast, and to some degree, concerns that it will be like Game of Thrones, with tasteless sex scenes and gratuitous violence. I understand why many Tolkien fans care about these things, and I do, too. We want the source material portrayed respectfully; we want a diverse cast; we don’t want an adaptation of Tolkien that feels like Game of Thrones. But since Amazon is making it, I think focusing on these issues risks losing sight of the bigger picture.
Even if the show is diverse—as many fans have been hoping—Amazon is still harming people of color in real life. Even if the show has beautiful visuals—and it probably will, since it’s being filmed in New Zealand—Amazon is still destroying the earth. Even if the show respects fans’ wishes and refrains from gratuitous sex scenes, Amazon is still helping the US Government lock up immigrants, many of whom are sexually assaulted by guards while in custody (Texas Tribune, New York Times). Even if the show follows LOTR canon, Amazon represents things that Tolkien and his heroes fundamentally opposed: cruelty, violence, destruction, and the acquisition of power to dominate and control others.
When the show comes out, there will be articles about whether it follows canon; articles about how fans are reacting to it; articles making predictions about the plot. There will be controversy about this or that writing choice. Some people will be upset that it’s not diverse enough; racists will be upset that there’s any diversity at all. People will talk about what they liked about the show and what could have been done better. And Amazon wants this. Because these headlines—even if negative—will distract from everything else Amazon is doing.
Amazon wants to use the popularity of LOTR—the nostalgia of it, the comfort of it, the fact that so many people all over the world love Middle-earth—not just to make money, but to make you forget what Amazon is. Don’t we all want to let our imaginations take us back to Middle-earth, just for a little while, and forget about the real world’s problems? Amazon’s LOTR show will let you do that. And no doubt some people reading this are already thinking, “Why can’t you let people enjoy things?” Amazon is counting on you feeling that way. But real life is more important than fiction.
If you understand why the peoples of Middle-earth resisted Sauron, you should see that Amazon is the Sauron of our world: it enslaves, exploits, and dominates vulnerable people, it increases the power of the surveillance state, and it destroys nature, all with the goal of amassing even more power so it can destroy, control, and enslave. That may sound melodramatic, but Amazon invited the comparison by doing what it does. In fact, I find it absurd that Amazon has the rights to LOTR at all, when it is so obviously the villain of the story it is now adapting.
Amazon profits from genocide and slavery and the destruction of the environment, and I find it grotesque that this company now wants to profit off of Tolkien’s works, when he would have abhorred Amazon and everything that it stands for, and when the values at the heart of LOTR are diametrically opposed to everything Amazon does. I am furious that this company, with all the blood on its hands, is allowed to touch the works of my favorite author. And I am furious that Amazon is going to use LOTR as a shield from all the negative press it deserves for all of the issues that I listed above, and more.
It doesn’t matter if the LOTR show is “good” or “bad” because Amazon is evil. If you want to enjoy things, then reread the books or rewatch the movies. I will not give Amazon a single penny for their LOTR show and I hope you won’t either. I don’t know if boycotting it will make a difference—I just know that I hate Amazon and they don’t deserve the money or press they may get from LOTR. So we shouldn’t give it to them.
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