LOTR called racist

[StyroFoam Man]

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[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Posted by Phantom:

What a load of pig's swill.

My thoughts exactly.

Posted by Steven A.Cook:

What the hell is this nut on about? If anything, this cracker-head is projecting his own racial bigotry on to Tolkien's races.

That's what I tought when I read that article.


Posted by First of Two:

I have to wonder if this mindset is unique, or if it's indicative of a larger problem amongst university faculties, this creation of a 'race problem' where none is evident.

Definitely amongst university faculties. Every single issue is turned into a race problem or a social justice issue.

[Dan Gurden]

Originally posted by First of Two


As I understood it, Orcs were derived from Elves, so his theory can't be accurate.

As I understood it, that was a movie thing, and not in the book. Rather than detailing half the Silmarillian (for another set of films and multi-million $), they put that line in instead...

There are quite a few places where the films deviate from the books in order to abbreviate the film down to a mere 3 hours os simply to edit extrenuous plot...

For example, Aragorn gives the Hobbits short swords rather than them being aquired during the Tom Bombadil/Barrows encounter.

I hear that Sauroman no longer enslaves the shire in the 'Return of the King', simply to close the film neater...

Among other things...

[Capt. Chris]

He is probably the same one that got the African-Amercian/black/colored (or whatever the PC term of the day is) community all upset over Jar jar Binks in star Wars.

[Evan van Eyk]

This matter is almost as old as the book itself. Its always brought up again when some intellectual believes its opinion is wanted and has nothing better to do.

If you rip out these concepts of their context, than they are probably right otherwise they are jsut dumb.
The question is, who is the racist, those you potrait orcs, or those who say, orcs look like black people?

Teh fact that they are ugly and look mean regards the simple fact that traditionally all evil people look ugly just to cause fear - its that way in every story about that topic.


And they even contradict themselves. First they mention all good guys are attractive and the like and then they talk about the dwarfs being the complete opposite.
And when they compare the Dwarfs to Scots - hey they are probably not to far from the truth, because Tolkien actually intended his Middle Earth saga, to be an english legend and Middle Earth itself is Earth. Maybe those critics should read the according books more thoroughly and get a bit more of background information, which one can get at every well sorted internetpage or library.


BTW the ironic thing is, that Tolkien's work was often interpreted as adaption of the WWII - Sauron posing as Hitler and so on, thus it would be complete opposite, it would fight racism. However Tolkien also denied his books being influenced by that idea - it was just a wonderful story about the eternal struggle of good and evil.




( Maybe those people get a bit insulted by the depiction of orcs, because they themselves hve some orcish blood in their veins...who knows )

[Chang]

this means that SW is racist as well. only 4 black guys got leading roles. Lando, Panaka, Mace Windo and the black dude from Ep II.

[prophetsteve]

Take any mega-popular work of fiction - written or otherwise.

Search long enough, there is some academic - renowned or not who claims racism or something else.

Is it true? Did the author mean to do it? Is it coincidence?

Ultimately you have to judge for yourself.

I choose to believe that Tolkien did not intend racism. The reasoning of this academic doesn't convince me of anything because I have heard enough of this sort of stuff to realize that a lot of works can be concidered racist when viewed from a particular (and oft twisted) viewpoint.

[Balok]

There's a great deal of grant money to be had for studying "race relations". Throwing money at problems (without actually checking to see if the cashflow accomplished anything) is characteristic of government. Lawmakers feel good, which is what really matters to them. Following the simple rule "if you devise games, people will play them", it stands to reason that when there's a lot of grant money, the number of research projects will increase to use it all.

If these folks had to produce worthwhile results from their research (as private concerns must), there would be far fewer pointless investigations, and far more brainpower devoted to solving the world's real problems.

[Phantom]

Originally posted by Dan Gurden
As I understood it, that was a movie thing, and not in the book. Rather than detailing half the Silmarillian (for another set of films and multi-million $), they put that line in instead...

There are quite a few places where the films deviate from the books in order to abbreviate the film down to a mere 3 hours os simply to edit extrenuous plot...

For example, Aragorn gives the Hobbits short swords rather than them being aquired during the Tom Bombadil/Barrows encounter.

I hear that Sauroman no longer enslaves the shire in the 'Return of the King', simply to close the film neater...

Among other things...

I'm certainly no Tolkien expert, I am just starting RotK for the first time, but I do seem to re call, somewhere in the story, that the Orcs did come from the Elves as stated in the movie. I could be mistaken of course.

[Ensign Arrgh]

UIDRC (I read the books too long ago to have anything but clouded memories), didn't the Ents tell the two hobbits who met them (Merry and Pippin IIRC) this story...

[Phantom]

Originally posted by Ensign Arrgh
UIDRC (I read the books too long ago to have anything but clouded memories), didn't the Ents tell the two hobbits who met them (Merry and Pippin IIRC) this story...

My we do like our acronyms around here, don't we? Does UIDRC stand for 'You do indeed recall correctly?' Or am I way out in left field?

[Ensign Arrgh]

Sorry, just made that up, UIDRC stands for Unless I don't recall

[RaconteurX]

Originally posted by Phantom
Please point them out to me.

"Evil men" are almost universally depicted as being dark-skinned in Tolkien, Grima Wormtongue being the sole exception that I can recall.

[Pelagius]

Corsairs of Umbar! Although called Black Numenorean does not mean not caucasian.

[Argyle]

David Brin wrote an essay about Tolkien that I found interesting. I got the link off Slashdot, but the version found at his personal website wasn't cut down as much.