Re: Dungeons & Dragons Has To Solve Its Controversial Drow Problem Before A Legend Of Drizzt TV Show Can Be Made

On Tue, 03 Dec 2024 13:25:56 -0500, Ubiquitous <weberm@polaris.net>
wrote:

Dungeons & Dragons has to confront its drow problem so it can finally reward
the adventuring parties loyal to The Legend of Drizzt books with an
adaptation, which has been overdue since 1988. Dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden was
introduced in 1988 in R.A. Salvatore's The Crystal Shard, the first book in
The Icewind Dale Trilogy. Drizzt is the center of a lot of D&D gameplay and
is also important to many who have never played a D&D game in their lives.
Adapting Drizzt for the screen may be D&D's biggest commercial opportunity,
but a drow controversy stands in its way.

This seems a solution in search of a problem.

I get there is a concern, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem
with D&D. Undoubtedly D&D -especially in its earliest years- had
issues with sensitivity to race issues. No surprise; it was a game
aimed squarely at middle-American white males. But the DROW hardly
seem representative of that problem.

Despite their black skin, the drow have never been representative of
black people. Other than their skin tone, NOTHING about them suggests
a black person; their body shape, their hair, their culture. They have
always been an 'evil faery' race. Their skin tone is indicative of
humanity's innate (being a diurnal species) association with darkness
being something to be feared. It was not an association with
black-skinned people. All the more so since the skin tone of Drow
would put even the blackest of black people to shame, and in more
recent depictions their skin tone has taken unnatural grey or even
muave hues.

There are many other areas where D&D can be faulted for its depiction
of people of color. Some of the old supplemental material can be very
cringey to a modern reader! But unless we want to condem every use of
the color black equating to evil, I don't think the drow should
qualify.

That said, any TV series using drow might have difficulties the game
might not. Presumably a live-action show would use a real actor, and
--whether naturally dark skinned or enhanced using CGI 'black-face'--
this depiction /would/ be problematic because it would show a dark
skinned HUMAN as being intrinsically evil.

But in the game, Drow are very visibly not human. They are shaped
differently, typically with much lither and longer body shapes than we
see in homo sapiens, not to mention secondary features such as red
eyes, white hair and long pointed ears. Drow - and elves in general-
often appear more catlike than anything. But unless you go for a
completely CGI character, the obvious humanity of the actor will lead
to mixed messaging.

TL;DR: it's not D&D Drow that have a 'controversial problem', its any
live-action depictions that have to be careful


IMHO, YMMV.