Markup View

Author: Vidor

Mar 8th 2012 at 9:32:47 AM

''TheLordOfTheRings''.  PeterJackson got into a little bit of trouble in some quarters when he decided to cast the dudes riding the elephants as dark-skinned and looking vaguely African, which was quite a contrast with all of those white Gondorians and Aragorn's "Stand, men of the West!" speech.  I know JRRTolkien conceived of his books as Anglo-Saxon myth but I'm not sure if this was as obvious in the books.

Then there's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' and the associated ''Series/GameOfThrones'' television adaptation in which the Dothraki, while not strictly the bad guys, are savage dark-skinned tribesmen, kind of Mongol-style, while the folks of Westeros are lily-white and have "West" in the name.

I think there is a trope here but I would not limit it to aliens.  It would seem that in fantasy settings the good guys, or at least the dominant society, are going to be portrayed by white western European actors, while the "other" society is often going to be a different, darker-skinned race.  Not sure how to boil that down into a trope name.