Culture African and Black Lore, Mythology and History That Can Be Adapted For Media

[Husky_Khan]

Figured this discussion could use a topic of its own.

the thing is that Africa has a rich history with much to learn from and admire, but they don’t bother to look into it because they believe the narrative they’ve been sold.

Shitty thing is, if they properly tried to reconnect with their African roots, there's a wealth of folklore and myth they could access. There's a reason why books like Rage of Dragons (epic fantasy inspired by African mythology. With Dragons) are runaway successes.

But that would be too hard. And African cultures are not friendly in the slightest to progressives.

It's not even that blacks living outside of Africa are lacking in cool stories about their ancestors, necessarily. American blacks, for example, should be pointing to the likes of the 54th Massachusetts (a regiment of free blacks who fought in the ACW and whose assault on Fort Wagner was made into a movie, 1989's Glory, starring Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington & Morgan Freeman), self-made businessman and philanthropist Booker T. Washington or peanut farmer & agriculturalist George Washington Carver. Canadian blacks have the Black Loyalists who fought for Britain during the American Revolution in exchange for their freedom and ended up settling in Nova Scotia (with some others migrating further to Sierra Leone post-war). Black British have the likes of freedman & abolitionist Ignatius Sancho or, if they must absolutely have an African British protagonist to look up to, Sara Forbes Bonetta (whose tormentors the Dahomey are the ones being lionized in a new movie starring John Boyega & Viola Davis, ironically).

But no, for whatever reason Afrocentrism is popular instead. Why bother researching these actual black heroes from RL history and trying to popularize them into the mainstream when you can pretend the much better-known Hannibal, Cleopatra and Aristotle were black instead amirite? And people like Nomvete & Amazon Studios insist on blackwashing stuff made by the straight white men they hate so much rather than adapting anything from African history & myth, or creating new IPs based on Africa. It's like if modern Jews obsessively worshiped King David, claimed the kingdoms of Israel & Judah weren't just roadblocks for greater regional powers like Egypt or Babylon but actually the absolute pinnacle of human achievement or outright comprised of quasi-divine superhumans themselves with all sorts of fancy super-advanced tech (of which there exists no actual evidence, because clearly those ancient Jewish Star Destroyers were totally erased by anti-Semites or something), and pretended Cyrus, Heraclius & the Mamluks were Jewish while remaining completely ignorant of the likes of Zerubbabel, Nehemiah and Maimonides.

But what really takes the cake in the context of Amazon's Rings of Power IMO is that Sophia Nomvete herself does not appear to be a descendant of slaves nor did she come from a particularly impoverished background. Amazon Studios' website describes her as being of South African and Iranian heritage - but to my understanding the Dutch imported slaves from elsewhere when they held the Cape Colony and the British abolished slavery soon after taking it from the Dutch, so it seems exceedingly unlikely that her ancestors could ever have been enslaved. At worst they would've labored under apartheid, which although obviously not particularly nice either, is not the same as slavery. And in any case she's clearly far from oppressed in Britain, which gave her the opportunity to become an accomplished theater actress before jumping on board Amazon's project. When it comes to racial outrage artists, it always seems like those who bitch the most & loudest are also the ones with the fewest (or no) reasons to complain in the first place.

Hell, you want an area that is possibly rich with culture and legends? Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma. Look through there for a few stories. Heck, how long is the story Journey to the West? It is from Chinese folklore. Be faithful too that story and yes you may be able to market it in China with no alterations.

Another African American hero. Dorris 'Dorrie' Miller. He earned the Navy Cross on December 7th, 1941.

There is also Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

 

[Husky_Khan]

If only there was some place in Middle Earth where you could use the fact your basing all of this Bullshit off of one line references in the Appendices where there were likely regions with large numbers of people with melanin bonuses.



Sadly I don't think any such setting or location exists in Middle Earth where Amazon can base their billion dollar fanfic.

 

[Circle of Willis]

Honestly, even just within the context of Middle-earth there's a lot to play with if you want to do a movie or TV show or game centered around the more 'diverse' groups of Men. I said as much before in the Amazon LOTR thread and I'll say it again, a look into the life & reign of Khamûl the Easterling or a Haradrim king before they were corrupted into Nazgûl would have been worthwhile. Not to mention it's probably the easiest and most obvious avenue to do a 'LOTR but with Asians/Africans' bit of media.

If Amazon or whoever's doing this thinks the audience is too moronic to understand that their new series is set in Tolkien's universe without some obvious Tolkienian stuff like Hobbits or wizards running around, then throw the Blue Wizards (who canonically traveled to the distant East while Gandalf, Saruman & Radagast stayed in the more recognizable parts of Middle-earth) in. Show them trying to talk Khamûl out of taking one of the Nine Rings of Power intended for Men, helping with his problems the best they can and building a faction to oppose him out of his family, court & rival Easterlings as it becomes clear he's going to fall to Sauron's temptations, whatever.

Alternatively, if you absolutely need the more familiar Gondor to feature in your story, just move partway into the Third Age. That War of the Rohirrim anime being narrated by Miranda Otto (Éowyn's actress) is already doing it, for example. The developers of Fourth Age: Total War have seamlessly moved on to making a new mod set in the Wainrider invasions toward the end of the Third Age's first millennium, and I think that'd be a fantastic time period to explore from new, non-Dúnedanic perspectives while still keeping a lot of recognizable elements from the movies around for the more casual audience's benefit. Treat it as Marco Polo in Middle-earth (but hopefully it'll be successful enough to avoid getting canceled after two seasons), centering on the titular Wainriders as they roll over Rhovanion & Gondor like the Huns or Mongols either in TA 1856 or 1944 - the latter date means you can have the Haradrim also invade from the south for extra diversity - while the Gondorians are waging a desperate defense with assistance from the ancestors of the Rohirrim (themselves refugees from the Wainriders' offensive).

With the half-billion dollar budget Amazon's pouring into Season 1 of Rings of Power, you could probably even have a full-blown secondary plot highlighting Arthedain/Arnor's last stand against the Witch-King (more trilogy nostalgia!) and his Angmarim hordes. You could even have Hobbits around and they'd actually make sense in this period, as they've been let into the Shire by the waning North-Kingdom 200 years before the first Wainrider invasion and were noted to have contributed auxiliaries to back Arnor up in its final wars with Angmar. Need a hook with additional memberberries attached at the end for season 2? Show the Nazgûl returning to Mordor in a TA 1856 series, or Arvedui winning a short reprieve from the Witch-King's incursions so he can stake his claim to the Gondorian throne and look all Aragorn-like while he's at it in a TA 1944 one. Done - was that so hard? Didn't even have to crack the books open for this, all this information can be found in the Tolkien Gateway and other online resources.