LoTR, Racism & Historical Analologies

[Alyrium Denryle]

What exactly differentiates ethnocentrism from racism? They're both forms of bigotry, and they both relate to heritable conditions no one can control.

I am a hair-splitter by nature

That having been said, there is a definite distinction in context. In the context of history, while ethnocentrism is undesirable in the abstract sense, there was also legitimate conflict between those different groups. Land, water, control of trade-routes etc. You cannot avoid it when writing about two cultural groups at war with eachother.

Racism has no such... I wont call it moral legitimacy, but cultural/historical sense-making. Racism transcends the boundaries of those conflicts. While neither are desirable, the one is inevitable whenever two cultures are in conflict.

In terms of Lord of the Rings, this would have been true regardless of what physical race the various mercenary groups that followed Sauron were. They still would have been "group X who work for the Evil One". What their skin tone is does not matter. I suppose the waters definitely get muddied when you toss in metaphysical evil instead of a conflict over who gets what river system. In the context of the story it certainly means that the one group is evil. But they are not evil because of their race. They are evil because they work for Sauron.

As a result of that, i am not sure how far analogizing to history can really go, because I dont know how to evaluate a system where good and evil are actually properties of the universe.

[Rogue 9]

So, I heard the original Star Wars trilogy is racist against Caucasians because all the Imperial officers are British.

Seriously, this is fucking retarded. The heroes of the story aren't even all the same species. I'd say that's just a tad bit more of a difference than skin color. To my knowledge, the skin tone of dwarves isn't even described (though their hair is), and orcs run the gamut of human skin color in addition to several that do not appear in humans. The villains of Lord of the Rings comprise a vast variety of ethnicities and species, ranging from the, yes, dark-skinned inhabitants of Far Harad to the decidedly Western European-form inhabitants of Dunland, and even to a fucking angel analogue (Saruman). The subjects of Gondor were varied as well, though less so, which makes a great amount of sense when you take even two seconds to consider the fact that they were from a vastly smaller geographic area in a setting where travel and therefore population integration is extremely difficult. Besides, the protagonists and their allies are far from all Caucasian humans, because they're not all even human. Yep, those Rohirrim and men of Gondor sure are flaming racists, which is why they absolutely hate elves, dwarves, and hobbits for being different from themselves. Oh wait.

[Formless]

What exactly differentiates ethnocentrism from racism? They're both forms of bigotry, and they both relate to heritable conditions no one can control.

I am a hair-splitter by nature

That having been said, there is a definite distinction in context. In the context of history, while ethnocentrism is undesirable in the abstract sense, there was also legitimate conflict between those different groups. Land, water, control of trade-routes etc. You cannot avoid it when writing about two cultural groups at war with eachother.

Racism has no such... I wont call it moral legitimacy, but cultural/historical sense-making. Racism transcends the boundaries of those conflicts. While neither are desirable, the one is inevitable whenever two cultures are in conflict.

In terms of Lord of the Rings, this would have been true regardless of what physical race the various mercenary groups that followed Sauron were. They still would have been "group X who work for the Evil One". What their skin tone is does not matter. I suppose the waters definitely get muddied when you toss in metaphysical evil.

And considering anti-Semite attitudes prevalent in European culture for hundreds of years, I still fail to see a functional difference between racism and "ethnocentrism."

...

What? You didn't think I was going to tapdance around the issue because of Godwin's law or something?

[Alyrium Denryle]

And considering anti-Semite attitudes, I still fail to see a functional difference between racism and "ethnocentrism."

A case of definite co-relation. Jews are not a single race, but rather a cultural group comprised of everything from blacks to white europeans. Depends on where they ended up and who they married with.

Though I will say that religious conflicts are odd, as there was little actual conflict between the interests of the europeans and the jews that were interspersed throughout europe. That was a different form of bigotry completely I would say. Religious bigotry that transcended race and geographic cultural resource conflicts.

See above for post-edit BTW

[Elfdart]

Don't mush together history and fiction.

Why not? So-called "historical fiction" is usually just as unrealistic as something like LOTR.

Precisely what kind of evidence are you looking for? Are you saying that someone must actually come out and say "they are evil because their skin is dark", and that nothing less than this standard will convince you that there are racist overtones in the movie?

This is sophistic horseshit. You are saying that there are no racist overtones if there is no explicit racial message. In short, you reject the concept of an overtone; you want it to either be an explicitly stated message or you will conclude that it is nothing at all.

It should be more substantive than villains who just happen to have dark skin and fight for the opposing side. Being a movie and all, the inherent evil of the orcs and others would be expressed -oh, I don't know- in imagery or through sound. Feel free to show either images or sound from the movies where these overtones are found.

And yet, I fail to see how this oh so important linguistic analysis means the elves had to be depicted as white. Fuck, how many people even know what that word means anyway? Its not like anyone would care if you changed that in the movie.

They don't have to be depicted as white. It just helps with SoD. Robin Hood is a fictional character and they didn't have to hire a white actor to play him. It just might have shot SoD to shit if they had cast Wesley Snipes in the role.

By the way, I doubt the producers of LOTR would want to rip off the Drow, which were created by Gary Gygax. Before Gygax came along, elves were always depicted as either fair angelic creatures or like little pixies and brownies.

[Formless]

See above for post-edit BTW

Aly, its precisely the attachment of metaphysical evil and metaphysical good to race that I protest. Hell, one of my main problems with the entire modern fantasy genre is the way it tends to do this. Almost everywhere you look there is "good" races (elves, humans, dwarves, etc) and "evil" races (goblins, orcs, giants, etc.). And no small coincidence, they almost always use the same few "races" as Tolkien. Its borderline obscene.

[Alyrium Denryle]

See above for post-edit BTW

Aly, its precisely the attachment of metaphysical evil and metaphysical good to race that I protest. Hell, one of my main problems with the entire modern fantasy genre is the way it tends to do this. Almost everywhere you look there is "good" races (elves, humans, dwarves, etc) and "evil" races (goblins, orcs, giants, etc.). And no small coincidence, they almost always use the same few "races" as Tolkien. Its borderline obscene.

I have the same complaint to be honest. Which is why when I write, I tend not to use that particular trope. Unless of course that evil is a result of actions that make one evil (for example, the use of black magic corrupts one's soul). Tolkien though basically started the genre, so I think we can excuse him for it. It was a decision he made that is not necessarily bad if done just the once. A fallen angel creating a race to serve him for example makes sense. There are IIRC evil men, dwarves hobbits etc in Tolkien.

It is inexcusable however in later fantasy where they are just "evil" for no particular reason (like being created as a servitor race)

[Channel72]

I think a lot of the good versus evil dynamics in LotR is more a result of Christian dualism than race. Christianity has adversely affected Western epic storytelling, in that it has enabled story-tellers to portray the world in terms of simplistic good-versus-evil dynamics. The earlier, pre-Christian epics, such as the Iliad, never had clearly delineated lines of good versus evil. The Trojans were often portrayed just as sympathetically as the Greeks, and in the Odyssey the bad guys were "bad" because of their outrageous behavior, not their nationality or race. The idea of an entirely evil race fits nicely into the Christian paradigm of viewing the universe in terms of good-versus-evil. The fact that the "good" races in LotR were all white is just a reflection of the European perspective of the author, who was a product of a much less politically-correct time.

Also, while Lord of the Rings is obviously not historical fiction, it does not exist apart from European history and Germanic mythology. Middle Earth is obviously just a fantastical Medieval Europe with wizards and dragons. It would be jarringly out-of-place to see, for example, a black or Asian elf in Rivendell. It would be just as strange to see a Caucasian warrior in a movie adaptation of The Mahabharata, or a black Samurai in some mythological epic based on Japanese mythology. Like it or not, certain mythological traditions are strongly associated with geography and race, and to pretend otherwise for the sake of political correctness is pointless.

[DudeGuyMan]

Also, while Lord of the Rings is obviously not historical fiction, it does not exist apart from European history and Germanic mythology. Middle Earth is obviously just a fantastical Medieval Europe with wizards and dragons. It would be jarringly out-of-place to see, for example, a black or Asian elf in Rivendell. It would be just as strange to see a Caucasian warrior in a movie adaptation of The Mahabharata, or a black Samurai in some mythological epic based on Japanese mythology. Like it or not, certain mythological traditions are strongly associated with geography and race, and to pretend otherwise for the sake of political correctness is pointless.

This is the only apologist argument that carries any weight with me, though it doesn't really help the whole "evil army of orcs, trolls, and darkies" thing.

[Bakustra]

I am not saying that a work that features a monoracial cast is necessarily racist. I am saying that having a monoracial group of heroes and a multiracial group of villains is racist.

Do orcs count as a race for this purpose?

Would Lord of the Rings have been nonracist if all the good guys came from one monoracial bloc and all the bad guys came from another? That would give the villains a non-multiracial cast, but I find it hard to imagine it would be less racist.

Whoops, my apologies for using a comparison that directly encompasses the situation in LOTR and the strawman version people keep throwing at me. Next time I shall be sure to encompass all situations possible within fiction. Yes, that would also be racist.

No, it has overtones because of the fact that nigh-upon all Sauron's other servants are non-white, including all the black people within LOTR. Do you see how using black in its negative sense gains racial implications in this scenario, now? The pejorative wouldn't be a problem except for the context surrounding it.

The problem for me is that I'm not sure the context is there unless you go looking for it. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but... there's also what Alyrium just said. The white/black good/evil imagery dates back at least to medieval times in Europe, into areas where there was no significant contact with nonwhite (or at least nonpale) people at the time. The only reason it's stopped being applied today is because today, now, in this era, we associate it with racism against dark-skinned people.

Tolkien was writing on the tail end of the period before that application stopped, about an era so deep into the period that it couldn't easily be removed from it. I'm not sure how much hay can be made fairly of the idea that he should have rejected the black/white evil/good imagery as we have.* Or of the associations it raises in the mind of some of the audience. Because I don't think Tolkien was trying to raise those associations: I don't think he deliberately played up a theme of "these people are dark-skinned and therefore inferior."

Now, it is a problem if we talk about the movie, where everyone on the good guys' team is chalk-pale. But the movies are not the books, and were written sixty years and a couple of major cultural upheavals later.

*Except, of course, that we haven't; I mean hell, look at Magic: the Gathering cards if you don't believe me.

My god. With your post below, this becomes a thread trifecta! Ignoring what I actually said in favor of an easily torn-down strawman, denying arguments that nobody ever made, and declaring that you have the key to the symbolism in LOTR. Here, let me make this simple.

The use of black-as-a-negative to describe people gains overtones when you realize that they are aligned with the people who are described with black-as-a-skin-color, and so the two become associated within the context of the text.

Nobody who is claiming LOTR contains racist overtones is saying that Tolkien did it deliberately. There is no need to charge forth against that giant, for it is more a mirage than a windmill.

They're grass-skirted, pidgin-spouting, drum-playing, blowdart-using stereotypes. Do they have to have a neon sign labeled "Bushman/Pacific Islander stereotype" attached to Druedain Wood?

I don't remember the blowdarts, but it occurs to me:

You do realize that there were Neolithic people in Europe, right? The Iron Age did not emerge fully formed in those areas. To me it seems perfectly obvious that in the mythos Tolkien was actually writing from, the wildmen in the woods were white wildmen in the woods. I certainly never imagined them as Polynesians.

I defy you and Alyrium to prove that the Druedain are indubitably Neolithic-man inspired. I will admit that they are not necessarily Bushmen or Polynesians specifically, but they still are the European image of "grass-skirted primitives who speak solely in pidgin" and so I wanted to use examples of the people who the stereotype was applied against. They could be Tierra del Fuegians, they could be Andaman natives, but I sincerely doubt that there is evidence that Neolithic European man wore grass skirts. You might have a point, but it becomes drowned in the presence of the grass fucking skirts.

But if you prefer, then suddenly even the token non-white characters vanish, to make the cast even more Wonder Bread in makeup!

It should be more substantive than villains who just happen to have dark skin and fight for the opposing side. Being a movie and all, the inherent evil of the orcs and others would be expressed -oh, I don't know- in imagery or through sound. Feel free to show either images or sound from the movies where these overtones are found.

You mean, apart from fighting on the side of absolute evil, which, as people are ever-fond to remind me when they start to cry at the thought of orcs being anything other than cannon fodder, is present within Middle-Earth? You seriously don't see any overtones in all-white heroes fighting diverse villains?

They don't have to be depicted as white. It just helps with SoD. Robin Hood is a fictional character and they didn't have to hire a white actor to play him. It just might have shot SoD to shit if they had cast Wesley Snipes in the role.

By the way, I doubt the producers of LOTR would want to rip off the Drow, which were created by Gary Gygax. Before Gygax came along, elves were always depicted as either fair angelic creatures or like little pixies and brownies.

1. Elves are non-human, oddly enough. This gives a wide range of appearances they could have without things suddenly falling outside your puny ability with SoD.

2. I don't think making darkskinned elves inherently evil is any less racist, so I doubt they want to rip off the Drow too, but not for the reasons you're thinking of.

So, I heard the original Star Wars trilogy is racist against Caucasians because all the Imperial officers are British.

Seriously, this is fucking retarded. The heroes of the story aren't even all the same species. I'd say that's just a tad bit more of a difference than skin color. To my knowledge, the skin tone of dwarves isn't even described (though their hair is), and orcs run the gamut of human skin color in addition to several that do not appear in humans. The villains of Lord of the Rings comprise a vast variety of ethnicities and species, ranging from the, yes, dark-skinned inhabitants of Far Harad to the decidedly Western European-form inhabitants of Dunland, and even to a fucking angel analogue (Saruman). The subjects of Gondor were varied as well, though less so, which makes a great amount of sense when you take even two seconds to consider the fact that they were from a vastly smaller geographic area in a setting where travel and therefore population integration is extremely difficult. Besides, the protagonists and their allies are far from all Caucasian humans, because they're not all even human. Yep, those Rohirrim and men of Gondor sure are flaming racists, which is why they absolutely hate elves, dwarves, and hobbits for being different from themselves. Oh wait.

Way to not read the thread, champ! It starts a few pages back.

The point is appearances, you idiot. You manage to put your finger on it briefly, but then lost it in your belief that somehow the invisible ethnic diversity of Gondor, never appearing beyond your head and perhaps those of a few others, makes up for the fact that an ethnically diverse group is associated with evil, and the light-skinned elves, dwarves, hobbits, and humans are associated with good.

PS: Your astoundingly braindead attempted analogy would have a point if only the Imperials were white and British.

Also, while Lord of the Rings is obviously not historical fiction, it does not exist apart from European history and Germanic mythology. Middle Earth is obviously just a fantastical Medieval Europe with wizards and dragons. It would be jarringly out-of-place to see, for example, a black or Asian elf in Rivendell. It would be just as strange to see a Caucasian warrior in a movie adaptation of The Mahabharata, or a black Samurai in some mythological epic based on Japanese mythology. Like it or not, certain mythological traditions are strongly associated with geography and race, and to pretend otherwise for the sake of political correctness is pointless.

Yeah, except for the presence of non-white groups within the story, which somewhat ruins your fantasy of LOTR being solely Germanic myth. Meanwhile, given that people can immediately identify elves as such when they seem them, having Elves "stick out" by being East Asian, or black, or South Asian, or Native American in appearance would not really be that out of place, unless you have a personal investment in the whiteness of elves.

Edit: Added name to a quote.

[aieeegrunt]

Getting back to the movies, with the exception of Boromir and Faramir, the Gondorians all looked very Italian/Roman to me, particularly their architecture. Most of the Rivendell elves cowardly buggering off were dark haired as well. The elves that reinforced helms deep, a lot of them were blonde, but they all came from Galadriel's little fiefdom, where we saw mostly blonde elves as well. ZOMG racially diverse aliens!!!!!!

The only blonde aryan human race I can recall seeing in LOTR are the Rohirrim, who's "Great Hall of Meduseld" is basically a large wooden hangar, and who's majestic capital city is a collection of dirty people in huts. Their only significant structure was Helm's Deep, that they inherited from earlier greater people.

I'm really not seeing Triumph Of The Will here.

Meanwhile the Big Bad's chief henchmen, the Nazgul, the pure embodiement of evil that can break men's spirits merely with their presence because that is how evil they are, when you see them as men in the flashback they are Pure Kingly Whitey to the max. Wow, so much for pureblood white Numenorian aryan supermen being full of holy incorruptable white light. I would also like to point out that the amoral traitor is also the whitest looking dude in middle earth; Saruman.

The orcs are far too inhuman to be an analogue to any human race unless you deliberately go looking for it. They don't even walk upright for frack's sake, they shamble along like ape human hybrids and demonstrate many other animalistic traits.

Moving along to the other member's of Sauron's forces; the Easterlings look Eastern/Persian. They also put up a good fight, essentially ruining the Aryan Super Cavalry until they get saved by the Deus Ex Machina Ghost Army. They don't appear or act subhuman or intrinsically evil, unlike the Orcs, and Peter Jackson even goes out of his way to put in Faramir's little speech about how they're just soldiers like us. Who knows what inducements were used to get them to enlist, and perhaps they would have been happier staying home. Yep, pure evil I tell's ya.

The Corsairs look like Gondorians that are trying to look badass and emo with eyeliner and tattoos, which is a pretty good summation of who and what they were in the books too.

I suppose we could, if we really wanted to avoid offending those actively seeking to be offended further butcher the story by having gigantic stand out Saturday afternoon special walking Diversity Poster characters. Perhaps we could make Gandalf a black guy, put Legolas in a wheel chair, make Gimli an asian etc, etc. but man what a crappy movie that would make.

[Samuel]

They don't have to be depicted as white. It just helps with SoD. Robin Hood is a fictional character and they didn't have to hire a white actor to play him. It just might have shot SoD to shit if they had cast Wesley Snipes in the role.

Except he is a fictional British character and a British man of that period would be white.

By the way, I doubt the producers of LOTR would want to rip off the Drow, which were created by Gary Gygax. Before Gygax came along, elves were always depicted as either fair angelic creatures or like little pixies and brownies.

The drow are a really bad example. Come to think of it, why do they have dark skin? Shouldn't it have breed out due to living underground? Or is the correct answer "don't expect D&D to be coherant?"

So, I heard the original Star Wars trilogy is racist against Caucasians because all the Imperial officers are British.

That is because the British make the best "what do you mean they aren't Nazis"?

[Anguirus]

Or is the correct answer "don't expect D&D to be coherant?"

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: They have played with various explanations.

One is that their dark skin is a curse from the elven god they betrayed. That sounds pretty bad...well, it is...but it's worth remembering at least that their skin is more of a flat, charcoal black than what the skin of black people actually looks like. No pass for perpetrating old negative connotations, of course.

The better explanation is that they started off as "jungle elves" who stalked people at night and so their dark skin was an advantage in sneaking up on prey and enemies.

It still makes no sense from an evolutionary standpoint (even considering their long generation time...which BTW ought to have severely hindered the splitting of elves into "subraces" that is ubiquitous in D&D settings because Tolkien did it), but as a matter of fact no D&D race makes any biological sense to me except as some sort of magical twisting of humans. But that's kind of ok since gods more or less explicitly created the races, so "intelligent (arbitrary?) design" should actually hold as a philosophy in D&D.

So...yes, don't expect D&D to be coherent.

[Jade Falcon]

The orcs are far too inhuman to be an analogue to any human race unless you deliberately go looking for it. They don't even walk upright for frack's sake, they shamble along like ape human hybrids and demonstrate many other animalistic traits.

I wouldn't say the Uruk-Hai, which are more like Orcs + have as many of those traits. They're not exactly the embodiment of civilisation but appear tougher, smarter and far more adaptable than the normal Orcs.

Moving along to the other member's of Sauron's forces; the Easterlings look Eastern/Persian. They also put up a good fight, essentially ruining the Aryan Super Cavalry until they get saved by the Deus Ex Machina Ghost Army. They don't appear or act subhuman or intrinsically evil, unlike the Orcs, and Peter Jackson even goes out of his way to put in Faramir's little speech about how they're just soldiers like us. Who knows what inducements were used to get them to enlist, and perhaps they would have been happier staying home. Yep, pure evil I tell's ya.

Slight nitpick, those aren't the Easterlings. The only glimpse we get of the Easterlings are the guys in heavy scale armour that march up to the Black Gate in The Two Towers, despite that they look like formidable opponents. There's apparently scenes which did show them in action. The guys you're referring to are the Haradrim.

The Corsairs look like Gondorians that are trying to look badass and emo with eyeliner and tattoos, which is a pretty good summation of who and what they were in the books too.

Well they should since the Corsairs are basically the descendants of the Usurpurs forces that fled Gondor in the Kin Strife civil war. With years of acclimatising to the local climate in Umbar, and intermarrying with the local populations they do look a bit different, but not much.

[Rogue 9]

So, I heard the original Star Wars trilogy is racist against Caucasians because all the Imperial officers are British.

Seriously, this is fucking retarded. The heroes of the story aren't even all the same species. I'd say that's just a tad bit more of a difference than skin color. To my knowledge, the skin tone of dwarves isn't even described (though their hair is), and orcs run the gamut of human skin color in addition to several that do not appear in humans. The villains of Lord of the Rings comprise a vast variety of ethnicities and species, ranging from the, yes, dark-skinned inhabitants of Far Harad to the decidedly Western European-form inhabitants of Dunland, and even to a fucking angel analogue (Saruman). The subjects of Gondor were varied as well, though less so, which makes a great amount of sense when you take even two seconds to consider the fact that they were from a vastly smaller geographic area in a setting where travel and therefore population integration is extremely difficult. Besides, the protagonists and their allies are far from all Caucasian humans, because they're not all even human. Yep, those Rohirrim and men of Gondor sure are flaming racists, which is why they absolutely hate elves, dwarves, and hobbits for being different from themselves. Oh wait.

Way to not read the thread, champ! It starts a few pages back.

The point is appearances, you idiot. You manage to put your finger on it briefly, but then lost it in your belief that somehow the invisible ethnic diversity of Gondor, never appearing beyond your head and perhaps those of a few others, makes up for the fact that an ethnically diverse group is associated with evil, and the light-skinned elves, dwarves, hobbits, and humans are associated with good.

PS: Your astoundingly braindead attempted analogy would have a point if only the Imperials were white and British.

I did read the thread, and at no point in it have you been any less wrong. Claiming that the protagonists are all Caucasian is what's braindead, because Caucasian is a variety of human, which well over half the members of the Fellowship of the Ring are not. Claiming that those opposed to Gondor and Rohan are depicted as evil because they're not Caucasian is also braindead because some of them are. And in case you missed it, the overarching plot point, in fact what the entire book is about is that Sauron (hey look, another angel analogue) was out to literally enslave the world. This isn't a matter of Gondor being right because they were the Pure Aryan Supermen™, but because they as a nation were holding back a malevolent opposing nation from overrunning all of Middle Earth beyond their borders; they're not the good guys because they're white, but because of the consequences if they fail. Even leaving race aside, saying that favoring Gondor over the assembled forces of Mordor is ethnocentric and therefore bad (as was done upthread) requires an astounding ability to draw moral equivalency where there is none; I'd compare it to saying the same thing about being glad the Allies beat Nazi Germany except it would be even worse; this is nothing comparable to a resource war or some other morally gray conflict, but a war of conquest by a genocidal (actually more like omnicidal) ruler against a large chunk of the world.

[Oskuro]

All that the movie needed to do to break the racist overtones would've been to have a few short scenes where Haradim or even Orcs are shown rebelling aganist Sauron, or maybe just a few lines of dialog mentioning just that. The racial distribution is coherent with medievalish Europe, so just adding a few token non-white characters wouldn't have meshed well, but of course, Elves are supernatural beings, so they could be blue or green, not to mention Dwarves, who needed not be short stereotypical scottsmen. And heck, elves would look nice with Asian features, instead we got absent-faced Liv Tyler.

I'll say it again, we can excuse Tolkien because, quite frankly, he was a man of his time, and even the most progressive people of his era would come up as reprehensible today. Peter Jackson, on the other hand, dropped the ball on this issue, probably because him, being white, didn't even notice it, unlike how he did notice the sexist tones of the book, wich were fixed somewhat by having Arwen do something besides being a piece of self-propelling furniture (And yes, Eowyn was awesome in the book, and my favourite character, but she was quite understated still).


As for open_sketchbook, its not the first time he mentions his disdain for art, so his viewpoint is not surprising, but, to be fair, even when the original work is sacred (as any original version of anything, including Mein Kampf, is), the story it tells, specially when re-told, is not.

[Bakustra]

I did read the thread, and at no point in it have you been any less wrong. Claiming that the protagonists are all Caucasian is what's braindead, because Caucasian is a variety of human, which well over half the members of the Fellowship of the Ring are not. Claiming that those opposed to Gondor and Rohan are depicted as evil because they're not Caucasian is also braindead because some of them are. And in case you missed it, the overarching plot point, in fact what the entire book is about is that Sauron (hey look, another angel analogue) was out to literally enslave the world. This isn't a matter of Gondor being right because they were the Pure Aryan Supermen™, but because they as a nation were holding back a malevolent opposing nation from overrunning all of Middle Earth beyond their borders; they're not the good guys because they're white, but because of the consequences if they fail. Even leaving race aside, saying that favoring Gondor over the assembled forces of Mordor is ethnocentric and therefore bad (as was done upthread) requires an astounding ability to draw moral equivalency where there is none; I'd compare it to saying the same thing about being glad the Allies beat Nazi Germany except it would be even worse; this is nothing comparable to a resource war or some other morally gray conflict, but a war of conquest by a genocidal (actually more like omnicidal) ruler against a large chunk of the world.

No, I'm saying that they're all white, as shorthand for lightskinned. Saying that they're not human is particularly odd, given that they are humans with minor phenotypal differences, excepting the Ents. In addition, you still haven't convinced me that you've read the thread, because your vision of it is one totally at odds with what people have actually been writing. The point is not related to any of your half-baked attempts to hijack this argument into "LOTR isn't Nazi propaganda!" It is about the queasy implications produced by a purely light-skinned force of good warring against a multitoned force of evil. It associates the darker skin tones with evil, mainly because apart from a single scene in the extended edition, we get no sense that we are supposed to sympathize with them, and because they are exclusive to Sauron's forces, they become associated with the externalized evil that he is. This is something that can be fixed easily by making Gondor more racially diverse, and it only butchers the story in the same sense that removing Tom Bombadil did. Of course, if you really believe making Gondor more racially diverse (this would primarily be in extras) is a butchering of the story, please explain why Gondor being all-white is necessary to LOTR.

[Channel72]

Yeah, except for the presence of non-white groups within the story, which somewhat ruins your fantasy of LOTR being solely Germanic myth. Meanwhile, given that people can immediately identify elves as such when they seem them, having Elves "stick out" by being East Asian, or black, or South Asian, or Native American in appearance would not really be that out of place, unless you have a personal investment in the whiteness of elves.

Please, the fact that there are non-white groups in the story doesn't change the fact that LotR is indisputably European-Germanic-centric. Again, Middle Earth is basically a fantastical Medieval Europe; the fact that there are far-off non-Caucasian peoples is a reflection of this. Really, LotR doesn't seem any more or less racist to me than any of the various national epic stories which revolve around a certain people or nation, from The Mahabharata to any of the various Miyazaki flicks based on mythological elements from Japanese epics like Heike Monogatari. You can argue that the entire genre of regionally-based epic mythology is inherently racist due to its exclusionary nature, but everyone understands that to an extent.

Modern fantasy (like Star Wars, or various LotR-inspired high fantasy stories) often attempts to transcend the old regional/national motifs by weakening the association with any particular historical period on Earth, but Tolkien remains the product of a much less politically correct era, where elements from Germanic mythology (like elves, forest spirits, etc.) were inextricably tied to European history. The idea of a non-Caucasian elf would probably seem bizarre to most readers in Tolkien's time.

[Rye]

It is about the queasy implications produced by a purely light-skinned force of good warring against a multitoned force of evil. It associates the darker skin tones with evil, mainly because apart from a single scene in the extended edition, we get no sense that we are supposed to sympathize with them, and because they are exclusive to Sauron's forces, they become associated with the externalized evil that he is.

So even though all their evil is, at every point it is reasonable to state, being narratively associated with Sauron's diabolical supernatural tyranny, the fact that only some of them are white while all the goodies are white is enough to accuse it of being categorically racist? It's actually a "reprehensible film" on account of such racism? Are people watching it having their notions of human race informed by it? Is the audience too stupid to trust with such subliminal correlations running against the actual stated narrative? It's a good job we proles have open_sketchbook actively supporting the war against artistic expression that has any danger of showing a bunch of white people without ramming home the fact that every other race is equal to them. In case we might forget or something.

[Channel72]

This is the only apologist argument that carries any weight with me, though it doesn't really help the whole "evil army of orcs, trolls, and darkies" thing."

It does if you realize that LotR is heavily associated with European history. The traditional, historical external enemies of Medieval and Classical Europe actually were far-off, non-Caucasian peoples. I think the problem here is that LotR is a lot more associated with regional history/mythology than most people realize. In today's world, the high-fantasy genre has exploded (largely because of Tolkien) into all sorts of wonderous, mythical realms that are only loosely connected with any actual time or place. But LotR was written before all that; in context, LotR is more of a Norse epic with Christian overtones.

So if you look at LotR as heavily-mythologized historical fiction, similar to Beowulf, the Arthurian Legends, or any of the Norse eddas, the only racism you'll find is the same sort of default racial-exclusionism inherent in any national/regional epic mythology.

[Bakustra]

Yeah, except for the presence of non-white groups within the story, which somewhat ruins your fantasy of LOTR being solely Germanic myth. Meanwhile, given that people can immediately identify elves as such when they seem them, having Elves "stick out" by being East Asian, or black, or South Asian, or Native American in appearance would not really be that out of place, unless you have a personal investment in the whiteness of elves.

Please, the fact that there are non-white groups in the story doesn't change the fact that LotR is indisputably European-Germanic-centric. Again, Middle Earth is basically a fantastical Medieval Europe; the fact that there are far-off non-Caucasian peoples is a reflection of this. Really, LotR doesn't seem any more or less racist to me than any of the various national epic stories which revolve around a certain people or nation, from The Mahabharata to any of the various Miyazaki flicks based on mythological elements from Japanese epics like Heike Monogatari. You can argue that the entire genre of regionally-based epic mythology is inherently racist due to its exclusionary nature, but everyone understands that to an extent.

Modern fantasy (like Star Wars, or various LotR-inspired high fantasy stories) often attempts to transcend the old regional/national motifs by weakening the association with any particular historical period on Earth, but Tolkien remains the product of a much less politically correct era, where elements from Germanic mythology (like elves, forest spirits, etc.) were inextricably tied to European history. The idea of a non-Caucasian elf would probably seem bizarre to most readers in Tolkien's time.

So why is it necessary for a film adaptation to adhere strictly to this? Also, Miyazaki films and the Mahabharata don't, say, associate white people with absolute evil, funnily enough. Maybe that's why people aren't criticizing them? If LOTR was all-white, then the associations we are bringing up will vanish altogether.

It is about the queasy implications produced by a purely light-skinned force of good warring against a multitoned force of evil. It associates the darker skin tones with evil, mainly because apart from a single scene in the extended edition, we get no sense that we are supposed to sympathize with them, and because they are exclusive to Sauron's forces, they become associated with the externalized evil that he is.

So even though all their evil is, at every point it is reasonable to state, being narratively associated with Sauron's diabolical supernatural tyranny, the fact that only some of them are white while all the goodies are white is enough to accuse it of being categorically racist? It's actually a "reprehensible film" on account of such racism? Are people watching it having their notions of human race informed by it? Is the audience too stupid to trust with such subliminal correlations running against the actual stated narrative? It's a good job we proles have open_sketchbook actively supporting the war against artistic expression that has any danger of showing a bunch of white people without ramming home the fact that every other race is equal to them. In case we might forget or something.

Firstly, fuck you for associating me with open_sketchbook. That is particularly aggravating, annoying, and insulting for somebody who argued against his moronocity. Guess you can't be bothered to read the thread without categorizing people into sides. I find that very telling, given your arguments. (I do apologize for that last statement, but if somebody goes below-the-belt, I will respond in kind.)

Secondly, my point is that by having the set-up that I have described many times over and will not describe again, we have an implied message of "monoracial good, multiracial bad" as well as associating nonwhites with evil. Meanwhile, you find it impossible to read what I am saying, which is that there are racist implications, not that it is "categorically racist" or "like The Triumph of the Will" or whatever you drooling slime-molds vomit out next in order to avoid addressing my actual argument. I am not saying that it is necessarily reprehensible, but that it has racist elements to it, which is something that should be acknowledged rather than justified or avoided by putting one's hands over one's ears and singing "la-la-la". Also, I have produced a potential solution that shouldn't offend your delicate sensibilities about "political correctness": changing the makeup of Gondor to be multiracial. Now, I am being optimistic here, since people have shown that they are so emotionally invested in the whiteness of Gondor that they consider such an idea butchery, but I have a right to.

Speaking of rights, your final sentence indicates you are on the verge of shrieking about how you have a right to be racist and no political correctness police can take that away from you. Oddly enough, nobody is telling you "stop that" or saying "don't enjoy the movies or books". I'm not going to embark on an Annie Wilkes-esque plot to chain you to a desk until you stop whining about how the PC Police are infringing on your right to write racist stuff in the name of art. Nobody is. Nobody.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Given LotR was obviously always going to have this issue of purity of the source material conflicting with the more liberalised worldview of today when talking about race, what do people think when films like Avatar tread on the same territory, yet have no excuse of following classic literature? Is there no leeway in this, or because of political points scoring/appealing to historical atrocities, is it actually valid? I've heard arguments from both sides about Cameron's film being racist or the total opposite, but equally demeaning.

[Balrog]

To this discussion, you idiot.

Which is about racism, and how the heroes are a mixture of different races...oh wait...

In the face of a message that makes up a pretty big overall theme of the story, wrongly-derived implications are just that.

In fact, you don't seem to get that this is about the implications of a group of lightskinned people being associated with good, and all the darkskinned people being associated with evil.

And you're making the same damn stupid mistake the racists make. They see "brown people working for the bad guy, they must be evilz!" and run with that impression because they don't examine the material critically and realize, no, the brown people aren't evil, and the Fellowship makes pretty crappy rolemodels for budding young Neo-Nazis. You can't hold an author responsible for stupid people reading their work the wrong way and coming away with a bad conclusion, unless you want authors to hold the readers' hand for the entire way story, and I believe they already have children's stories for that.

Now, I find it interesting that you seem to believe that it's impossible for a work targeting racism to be racist itself.

Because racism, by its very definition, is about promoting one race as being superior over another. And if the crux of your book is about racial harmony in the effort of getting together to defeat evil, then it is not a racist book. Politically incorrect and/or racially insensitive, perhaps, depending on how you write it, but that's different than actual racism.

No, I'm pointing out that the Appendixes should not have to make excuses for the story or carry the whole weight of the story upon themselves, and Tolkien did not think that they did so. The casual reader is not necessarily going to tackle the appendixes, nor would they be included in any movie adaptation. Therefore, they cannot be used to effectively justify the work. Got it?

Backtrack much? For someone going on about racism in the background of the story, your effort to now distance from the story's background, which effectively promotes a "racists are bad" message, is pretty funny. Whether or not Tolkien thought the book could be trimmed in translation is unimportant (unless you're now saying he trimmed those parts specifically because he didn't want that message in there), for a book which is already decidedly anti-racism, they are an extra cudgel for people who just don't get it.

And BTW, the story of the Kin-Strife appears in Appendix A, the one he didn't want lost in translation.

Proof?

Have you tried examining the quote in question?

degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

So what does this tell us?
A) Asians are, to Europeans, unattractive
B) Orcs are based in part on this, taken to extremes
A is Tolkien's acknowledgement of something we already know, that Europeans of that time were racist, but the fact that he distances himself with that qualifier means it's not necessarily a notion he supports, otherwise he would have just said so. If you're a racist, your probably don't word your sentiments as "Those Mexicans are, to Americans, dirty smelly job-stealers." B means that Orcs aren't meant to be a direct copy of them, but rather influenced in appearance in reference to European racism. It's no different than basing a fictional culture in part on a real-life culture, if it's not an attempt made to associate that culture by implication with your fictional race.

Wow. When confronted with a stereotype, just deny the stereotype even exists, especially in the case of a stereotype commonly known in Tolkien's day, and indeed beginning to pass into cliche. Wahey, but there's something vaguely like them in the folklore of England, so let's pretend the stereotypical aspects (which Tolkien added) don't exist so we can ignore uncomfortable aspects of our favorite books!

And I denied it...where? Pretty much the only thing about the Woses' (whose name is even a direct lift from the 'real-life' Woses) description that could be specifically related to Bushmen are grass skirts, and even Bushmen don't have a monopoly on that. Never mind the implication that you can now never show a primitive culture wearing grass skirts, otherwise it means you think Bushmen are an inferior race or some stupid schtick And forgetting again the fact that they are good guys and that their persecution is pretty much spelled out as being wrong.

I don't think anybody's claiming what your sentence currently says. All the overt racism in LOTR involves the Rohirrim (who mysteriously happen to be known for blond hair, persecuting on the basis of blood, and wantonly killing those they consider less than human. A marvelous coincidence.) in some way or another, or else is Elves and Dwarves.

[/quote]
Wow, so much wrong with this. They did not "persecute on the basis of blood" like some Aryan wannabes, their abuse of the Woses came in part because they did not understand them and thought them to be goblins. When they were shown the error of their ways, they became friends with them. Yes, that's a horribly racist message indeed.

[Rye]

Firstly, fuck you for associating me with open_sketchbook. That is particularly aggravating, annoying, and insulting for somebody who argued against his moronocity.

I didn't associate you with him. I associated him with hellish art control and both of you with underestimating the morality and intelligence of the audience. If you wish to dispute that, perhaps relying on the actual narrative of the films instead of, you know, subliminal coincidental associations, might be a better way to go about it?

Secondly, my point is that by having the set-up that I have described many times over and will not describe again, we have an implied message of "monoracial good, multiracial bad" as well as associating nonwhites with evil. Meanwhile, you find it impossible to read what I am saying, which is that there are racist implications, not that it is "categorically racist" or "like The Triumph of the Will" or whatever you drooling slime-molds vomit out next in order to avoid addressing my actual argument. I am not saying that it is necessarily reprehensible, but that it has racist elements to it, which is something that should be acknowledged rather than justified or avoided by putting one's hands over one's ears and singing "la-la-la". Also, I have produced a potential solution that shouldn't offend your delicate sensibilities about "political correctness": changing the makeup of Gondor to be multiracial. Now, I am being optimistic here, since people have shown that they are so emotionally invested in the whiteness of Gondor that they consider such an idea butchery, but I have a right to.

Pahahah. Yeah, that's it. I definitely have "something to lose" by Gondor having a bunch of dark skinned people in it. Like, uh... I don't know? What the Hell would I even lose? Implied, coincidental racial issues from the real world that neither the author nor director intended when crafting a world of fantasy? I even already said that I wouldn't care if they had done it that way, for all your complaining about not reading the thread. I wouldn't have cared, but I don't think it was necessary to make it not racist anymore than a school full of white kids needs a black one to be not racist.

Speaking of rights, your final sentence indicates you are on the verge of shrieking about how you have a right to be racist and no political correctness police can take that away from you.

Why should I even respond to the conversation when you're ready and willing to dictate my own thoughts and speech for me? Oh sorry, comparing you to open_sketchbook is so un-called for, isn't it?

Oddly enough, nobody is telling you "stop that" or saying "don't enjoy the movies or books". I'm not going to embark on an Annie Wilkes-esque plot to chain you to a desk until you stop whining about how the PC Police are infringing on your right to write racist stuff in the name of art. Nobody is. Nobody.

Blah blah blah. I'm not saying that, I'm mocking the arrogant liberal paternalism. I'm as much of a Nietzschean overmang that detests the common fool as anyone, but the difference is I don't think that the creators were underestimating them as much as you are. I think they crafted a work of fantasy and assumed that you and I could tell the difference between a bunch of heroic white people fighting evil that contains various different coloured humanoids and actual racist content. Like I said from the beginning, the racist interpretation is an eisegesis by over-sensitive types with an agenda, be they KKK recruiters or lesbian feminists or Mike. I put it to you that a black person can identify with only white people running from the nazgul as much as a white person can because of human kinship, interestingly, the exact same kinship that marks people as "good" within the narrative instead of evil, and the same kinship that allows good to prevail.

Compared to that... the coincidence of white people in medieval europe as a condemnation of the character of the setting seems weak and contrived oversensitivity.

[Murazor]

Also, I have produced a potential solution that shouldn't offend your delicate sensibilities about "political correctness": changing the makeup of Gondor to be multiracial. Now, I am being optimistic here, since people have shown that they are so emotionally invested in the whiteness of Gondor that they consider such an idea butchery, but I have a right to.

Well, actually, Gondor is supposed to have some ethnic variety with three different ethnic groups mentioned in the text. We have the Numenorean exiles, the Northmen mercenaries (whose 'lesser blood' triggered the Kinstrife when the racist elements of Gondorian society tried to prevent the rule of a king of mixed ancestry) and the 'short and swarthy folk' of the mountains who are mentioned in the first chapter of Return of the King.

The townlands were rich, with wide tilth and many orchards, and homesteads there were with oast and garner, fold and byre, and many rills rippling through the green from the highlands down to Anduin. Yet the herdsmen and husbandmen that dwelt there were not many, and the most part of the people of Gondor lived in the seven circles of the City, or in the high vales of the mountain-borders, in Lossarnach, or further south in fair Lebennin with its five swift streams. There dwelt a hardy folk between the mountains and the sea. They were reckoned men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them whose sires came more from the forgotten men who housed in the shadow of the hills in the Dark Years ere the coming of the kings. But beyond, in the great fief of Belfalas, dwelt Prince Imrahil in his castle of Dol Amroth by the sea, and he was of high blood, and his folk also, tall men and proud with sea-grey eyes.