Amazon Prime Video’s new series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is causing a buzz on social media, but not all of it is positive. In fact, some say that a character is pointing out a long line of stereotypes in the Irish community.
No one likes to feel like the target of a joke, like who they are at their core is useful for nothing more than a hearty laugh and a slapstick humor moment. That rings true in our day-to-day lives and when we sit down to be entertained.
So when audiences first sat down to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, some of them immediately took note of a group of characters, the Harfoots, who seemed to take on that feeling entirely.
Who are the Harfoots?
The Harfoots are one of three types of ancestors to Hobbits and they’re described as follows:
“They were shorter and smaller than the other breeds, browner of skin, had no beards, and did not wear any footwear; Their hands and feet were neat and nimble. They liked highlands and hillsides, and lived in holes they called smials, a habit which they long preserved. They were accustomed to settle in one place longer.”
Growing up in the foothills of the mountains, with a smaller stature and shoeless — they’re immediately understood as “lesser”. The Harfoots also don rags in The Rings of Power, and it’s not lost on viewers that they’re not held in the same regard as other characters.
What is their accent?
Leith McPherson spoke with Inverse about the dialect of the Harfoots. Their accent was set to have an “Irish base” but not to sound as if they were directly from a specific part of Ireland. She continued by saying that their accent is meant to be something recognizable but not the same.
“It’s familiar, but different. It’s not like an entirely new dialect never heard on Earth before, but it is intended to have an otherness.”
The “otherness” seems to be where the problem lies, perhaps because it allows a space where the Harfoots can continue to be seen as “others” themselves. It might just set up the punchline for Harfoots to be the joke of The Rings of Power.
The Irish Times points out that the accents seemed to dumb down the characters, and while singing praises of the series as a whole, Power (and many viewers) can’t get past the weight placed upon that accent that seems to signal “merry yet dim” immediately.
“For every high-flown moment – many featuring Morfydd Clark as the elf warrior queen Galadriel – there is one of those awful Harfoot scenes. By the end of the first episode it’s hard not to conclude that they’ve been included partly as a joke – and that we are the punchline.”
A piece in GQ poses the same question by a journalist who is both Irish but not someone who finds solace in the “state of being offended”:
“As an Irish person living in Britain who is used to “potato” jokes being bandied around pretty freely (please, Jeff Bezos, use your money to shoot “Keith Lemon” into the sun), and also as someone who finds the state of “being offended” inherently embarrassing, I initially thought the harfoots’ accents were quite funny.”
However, within a few episodes, they realized that the accent seemed not just a method of speech but something to signify a complete lack of intelligence — but with a lot of heart. It’s sort of like putting a bandaid over a wound in dire need of stitches.
While the idea behind that is all good and well, it gives pause to those who recognize the accent and the stereotype that follows it. Instead of being able to sit down and enjoy the series as a whole, they’re reminded of personal or societal issues they face because of their dialect.
The conversation is also happening on Reddit, and the original post asks Scottish fans how they feel about the accents used for dwarves in The Rings of Power.
While most were okay with the Scottish accent for dwarves, it appears that the Irish-esque accent for the Harfoots isn’t slipping by under the radar — nor is the stereotype it nods to.
