Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

"Dark-skinned LoTR baddies mean Tolkien was racist!" (Barf alert)
The Guardian ^ | 2 December 2002 | John Yatt

Posted on 12/02/2002 5:11:44 PM PST by Tomalak

Wraiths and race

What with the dark skin, broad faces and dreadlocks, it's a wonder Tolkien didn't give his baddies a natural sense of rhythm, says John Yatt, examining Middle Earth's suspect racial undertones

Monday December 2, 2002

It was the same with The Phantom Menace - I had no choice. When part of your childhood is playing down the road on a big screen with surround sound and popcorn, there's no escape. But as the wonder of discovering that there was more to New Zealand than sheep wore off, something began to worry me.

Maybe it was the way that all the baddies were dressed in black, or maybe it was the way that the fighting uruk-hai had dreadlocks, but I began to suspect that there was something rotten in the state of Middle Earth.

Perhaps Dubya's war on terror is making me a bit uneasy, or maybe it's just good old-fashioned Guardian-reading imperial guilt, but there was something about watching a bunch of pale faces setting off into the east to hack some guys with dark faces into little bits that made me feel a little queasy.

When I got home I dug out my copy of The Lord of the Rings from a box somewhere - okay, so I pulled it straight off the shelf - and found there was worse to come. The Two Towers is the story of the battle between Isengard and Rohan. In the good corner, the riders of Rohan, aka the "Whiteskins": "Yellow is their hair, and bright are their spears. Their leader is very tall." In the evil corner, the orcs of Isengard: "A grim, dark band... swart, slant-eyed" and the "dark" wild men of the hills. So the good guys are white and the bad guys are, erm... black.

This genetic determinism drives the plot in the most brutal manner. White men are good, "dark" men are bad, orcs are worst of all. While 10,000 orcs are massacred with a kind of Dungeons and Dragons version of biological warfare, the wild men left standing at the end of the battle are packed off back to their homes with nothing more than slapped wrists.

We also get a sneak preview of the army that's going to be representing the forces of darkness in part three. Guess what: "Dark faces... black eyes and long black hair, and gold rings in their ears... very cruel wicked men they look". They come from the east and the south. They wield scimitars and ride elephants.

Perhaps I'd better come right out and say it. The Lord of the Rings is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour. Orcs are bred to be bad, they have no choice. The evil wizard Saruman even tells us that they are screwed-up elves. Elves made bad by a kind of devilish genetic modification programme. They deserve no mercy.

To cap it all, the races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a BNP leaflet. Dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced - it's amazing he doesn't go the whole hog and give them a natural sense of rhythm.

Scratch the surface of Tolkien's world and you'll find a curiously 20th-century myth. Begun in the 1930s, published in the 1950s, it's shot through with the preoccupations and prejudices of its time. This is no clash of noble adversaries like the Iliad, no story of our common humanity like the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's a fake, a forgery, a dodgy copy. Strip away the archaic turns of phrase and you find a set of basic assumptions that are frankly unacceptable in 21st-century Britain.

But it's the same with The Attack of the Clones - I've got no choice. Maybe the fizzy pop will go to my head, maybe the Pearl and Dean music will be able to work its magic, but I'm worried that the popcorn is going to taste a bit wrong - I'm worried that childhood isn't going to be quite so much fun the second time around.


email: johnyatt@yahoo.com



TOPICS: Music/Entertainment; The Hobbit Hole
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021 next last




1 posted on 12/02/2002 5:11:44 PM PST by Tomalak
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
First of all, this person needs to get a life. Second, he needs to take some courses on how to write.
2 posted on 12/02/2002 5:16:01 PM PST by Paul Atreides
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Yatt needs to cut down on the fizzy pop.
3 posted on 12/02/2002 5:16:48 PM PST by k2blader
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
If I remember The Two Towers right (and I do) Tolkien was very sensetive to the Harradrim (people of the south with dark skin) When Sam came across one that was dead he commented on how young he was and wondered if he really believed what his leaders were doing was right. Tolkien always looked at humans as equal...but some that have been corrupted by Melkor or Sauron or Saurman. They were the evil not the humans.

4 posted on 12/02/2002 5:18:04 PM PST by Conan the Librarian
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Essays with similar criticisms of Tolkien's "closet racism" were published last year and posted here at FR...............just before The Fellowship of the Ring went on to become a mega hit among theatre-goers worldwide.
5 posted on 12/02/2002 5:21:15 PM PST by DoctorMichael
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
It's supposed to be a fantasy! There are no orcs, elves or dwarves!
6 posted on 12/02/2002 5:21:22 PM PST by Eternal_Bear
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
He ignores the religious beliefs of Tolkien and goes straight to the race card.

There are those who looked at the WTC towers on 9/11 (and the people falling out of the buildings) and saw the plane flying full throttle into the building and saw undeniable evil.

Here's an example of those who would question just what they saw. There is no black and white, only shades of grey. What happend on September 11th, 2001 was bad but... < /sarcasm >

7 posted on 12/02/2002 5:22:20 PM PST by weegee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Already posted here.


8 posted on 12/02/2002 5:25:44 PM PST by Notforprophet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Weren't the barrow wrights pale white skinned creatures.
9 posted on 12/02/2002 5:25:46 PM PST by Hodar
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Notforprophet; Tomalak
If you had searched on the original title of the article, rather than post it under your own, you'd have noticed that.
10 posted on 12/02/2002 5:26:11 PM PST by Notforprophet
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Hmm. Could it possibly have anything to do with JRRT's purpose in writing? which was to write a mythology for his own part of the world, i.e. northwestern Europe? I haven't read the Indian epics recently, but my recollection is that the heroes are all, well, Indians.

Please, this politically correct bs has already gone way too far. I suppose you are one of those who labels HUCK FINN a racist book?
11 posted on 12/02/2002 5:27:29 PM PST by docmcb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
This is the same thing as wondering why there weren't any black people in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It's a story based on ethnic folklore. But this moron feels the need to impose twenty-first century standards on it.

Words cannot express my total contempt for this kind of racist stupidity.

12 posted on 12/02/2002 5:28:12 PM PST by denydenydeny
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Conan the Librarian
Let's see; the fellowship consisted of 2 men (3 if you count Gandalf), 4 hobbits, a dwarf and an elf. Sounds like a multiculturalist dream team to me...
13 posted on 12/02/2002 5:28:19 PM PST by xlib
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Sauruman the WHITE was evil.
14 posted on 12/02/2002 5:34:41 PM PST by FReepaholic
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Eternal_Bear
"It's supposed to be a fantasy! There are no orcs, elves or dwarves!"

That is true, but liberals and the "lookin to be offended" can find racist dwarves, racist elves, racist orcs, racist wizzards, racist hobbits, racist Numenorians, racist Gondorans, racist Riders of Rohan...et. al...even in a fantasy.

Snow White was probably a racist, and Cindarella was probably an elitist, Robin Hood was a liberal Democrat, Pinochio was making fun of Al Gore as a boy...and on it goes

15 posted on 12/02/2002 5:38:41 PM PST by KriegerGeist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
This is a duplicate thread.... FYI

Wraiths and Race: A Guardian Columnist says LOTR is "racist" ^

16 posted on 12/02/2002 6:01:49 PM PST by HairOfTheDog
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
What a....


17 posted on 12/02/2002 6:02:03 PM PST by big'ol_freeper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tomalak
Beat you to it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/799358/posts
18 posted on 12/02/2002 6:59:26 PM PST by The Iguana
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: weegee
He ignores the religious beliefs of Tolkien and goes straight to the race card.

Given that Tolkien was a devout, orthodox (pre-Vatican II) Catholic, I doubt that would help Tolkien's case in this court of opinion.

19 posted on 12/02/2002 7:00:47 PM PST by The Iguana
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: The Iguana
My point is that if this critic is going to look for symbolism in the subtext, there are larger issues at play in the story (or so I've been told). Best to look for the intended symbolism than the modern context reapraisal.
20 posted on 12/03/2002 12:38:21 AM PST by weegee
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson