9 ms·

I really need to get around to reading this. The original LOTR did have a rather "western" bent to it. Looking at things in another way would be pretty fun. Al

I really need to get around to reading this. The original LOTR did have a rather "western" bent to it. Looking at things in another way would be pretty fun. Also related: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html, if Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn watched The Fellowship of the Ring.

hnhg 16y ago
Being non-white myself, I like to jokingly explain to anyone who will listen about how LOTR is all about racial purity and the perils of rampant immigration of brown folk. I certainly can't think of anyone good in it who is 'non-white'. I grew up on the books and I still have a soft spot for them, but I do like to make fun of this aspect of them. My other hobby is outlining the racial stereotypes in sci-fi shows/movies...
- Tycho 16y ago
  But the bad guys aren't 'non-white' in any meaningful sense either, are they?
- patrickgzill 16y ago
  So blacks and Indians (from India) are orcs? Who's the racist again?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - nostromo 16y ago
    No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", who are described as black-skinned men from the south that rode elephants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed from the east (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings). I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.
  - albertsun 16y ago
    There's a deaded comment by nostromo here that I thought was good and don't see why it was killed. The interpretation of LotR as a book about the domination of non-white peoples is really not that much of a stretch. -- No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", men who are described as black-skinned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings). I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description. It's a stretch because Indians and other people live on this Earth and not in some fantasy reality created by an author. Sure if you want to imagine that one species/race in the book is visually akin to a race/group/country of real humans that's fine, why would it matter. This sort of argument to me is like saying that the books stereotype elephants because the great war beast Mamulik (sp?) are elephantine. In short I think you're over analysing it, it's just a yarn.
- knowledgesale 16y ago
  Interesting. As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree. I realize that it is written in the Norse epic style, and Norse mythology is naturally pretty racist, but it still escapes me why an academic linguistic experiment got such a wide audience. Another motif, about a small guy doing things greater than himself, is nice though.
  - gwern 16y ago
    > As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree. It's not just LOTR & fantasy; SF has problems of its own. I mean, there's obviously _The Iron Swastika_, which everyone knows was written explicitly as a parody. But Frank Herbert says over and over again in interviews and whatever* that in _Dune_, Paul was a terrible horrible no good thing to happen to the human race and we were not supposed to be rooting for him - but fans do anyway. Paul is supposed to be a deconstruction of the superhero myth, but instead, even the fans swallow it hook line & sinker. It's no surprise that _Dune Messiah_, which really rubs our nose in this, is one of the least popular Dune books. * He says this explicitly in 2 or 3 interviews, and repeats himself in the mini-essays on the backs of the vinyl LPs of him reading excerpts from the Dune books (which I saw today in the SF public library)
    - jbm 16y ago
      I just finished reading the original Dune two weeks ago, so allow me to digress for a moment... How is it possible that someone could have rooted for any character /other/ than Paul in the original Dune novel? The Harkonnens were portrayed as selfish plotters who nearly bankrupted themselves to murder Paul's father. The Space Guild was mysterious and were shown as being utterly dependent on their prescience. The Bene Gesserit were complete manipulators, to the point where they created religions across the galaxy to further their political points. House Corrino was scheming with the Harkonnens. It's nice that Paul was depicted as being flawed in Dune Messiah, but his being an evil character does not follow from the original Dune, unless you take extreme care to see certain changes in his character (such as the aside about him being worried about spice equipment and ornithopters). Was someone seriously supposed to root for Duncan Idaho or the Mentats? Or the Queen/Concubine? Or were we "supposed to" wash our hands of the book and leave saying "They were all scum"?
- wooster 16y ago
  You're presupposing (jokingly, of course) allegorical meaning behind the work, which Tolkien explicitly rejected. Middle Earth was meant as a foundational myth of the British Isles. A sort of stand-in for the real history. A modern-day Beowulf. If you're looking for parallels with The Real World, you might be better off comparing the war in LoTR to WWI, in which Tolkien served in combat and witnessed some of the most horrific combat in human history, caused mostly by industrial advances. It's a lot easier to see why his nostalgia might be piqued when you think of most of his peers getting mustard gassed, shelled, shot, stabbed, or otherwise dying horrific deaths.
  - loxs 16y ago
    Exactly. Just compare the map of the Middle Earth to Europe and you will see how well it fits in WWI setup. Good Little Hobbits (Britain), some humans (France, Italy), a dwarf (maybe a Scandinavian?), some Elves (Russians?) form the Good Alliance (of Christianity?) and fight against the Evil (muslim?) Empire of Mordor (Ottoman Empire) and its allies (Germany and Austria = Saruman's army?) who are traitors. And also, the good Elves of Eastern Europe migrate to America after the war, because "the world has changed".
    - Symmetry 16y ago
      I think its actually pretty clear, given the geography, that Mordor is Germany. Depictions of Germans in WWI propaganda posters are very similar to how orcs are described.
    - gmac 16y ago
      Interesting analogies. I always thought the most obvious sermonising was about industrialisation and the loss of an innocent rural way of life (as described here, for example: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences.html#indust http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences....)
- wyclif 16y ago
  No, no, no. JRRT completely rejected the charge that his work was an allegory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-D65evOCX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-D65evOCX4 LOTR and The Silmarillion were not about WWII, the Bomb, or "racial purity." You are reading allegory into the stories.

hnhg 16y ago

Being non-white myself, I like to jokingly explain to anyone who will listen about how LOTR is all about racial purity and the perils of rampant immigration of brown folk. I certainly can't think of anyone good in it who is 'non-white'. I grew up on the books and I still have a soft spot for them, but I do like to make fun of this aspect of them. My other hobby is outlining the racial stereotypes in sci-fi shows/movies...

Tycho 16y ago
But the bad guys aren't 'non-white' in any meaningful sense either, are they?
patrickgzill 16y ago
So blacks and Indians (from India) are orcs? Who's the racist again?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- nostromo 16y ago
  No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", who are described as black-skinned men from the south that rode elephants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed from the east (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings). I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.
- albertsun 16y ago
  There's a deaded comment by nostromo here that I thought was good and don't see why it was killed. The interpretation of LotR as a book about the domination of non-white peoples is really not that much of a stretch. -- No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books. Specifically "Haradrim", men who are described as black-skinned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim), and Easterlings, men who are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings). I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description. It's a stretch because Indians and other people live on this Earth and not in some fantasy reality created by an author. Sure if you want to imagine that one species/race in the book is visually akin to a race/group/country of real humans that's fine, why would it matter. This sort of argument to me is like saying that the books stereotype elephants because the great war beast Mamulik (sp?) are elephantine. In short I think you're over analysing it, it's just a yarn.
knowledgesale 16y ago
Interesting. As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree. I realize that it is written in the Norse epic style, and Norse mythology is naturally pretty racist, but it still escapes me why an academic linguistic experiment got such a wide audience. Another motif, about a small guy doing things greater than himself, is nice though.
- gwern 16y ago
  > As an alien to English culture, I always wondered why LOTR is so popular amongst all sorts of non-conformists and bohemians. I had an impression that the essence of the book is racism and classism: how good a person is, is pretty much determined by his birthplace and pedigree. It's not just LOTR & fantasy; SF has problems of its own. I mean, there's obviously _The Iron Swastika_, which everyone knows was written explicitly as a parody. But Frank Herbert says over and over again in interviews and whatever* that in _Dune_, Paul was a terrible horrible no good thing to happen to the human race and we were not supposed to be rooting for him - but fans do anyway. Paul is supposed to be a deconstruction of the superhero myth, but instead, even the fans swallow it hook line & sinker. It's no surprise that _Dune Messiah_, which really rubs our nose in this, is one of the least popular Dune books. * He says this explicitly in 2 or 3 interviews, and repeats himself in the mini-essays on the backs of the vinyl LPs of him reading excerpts from the Dune books (which I saw today in the SF public library)
  - jbm 16y ago
    I just finished reading the original Dune two weeks ago, so allow me to digress for a moment... How is it possible that someone could have rooted for any character /other/ than Paul in the original Dune novel? The Harkonnens were portrayed as selfish plotters who nearly bankrupted themselves to murder Paul's father. The Space Guild was mysterious and were shown as being utterly dependent on their prescience. The Bene Gesserit were complete manipulators, to the point where they created religions across the galaxy to further their political points. House Corrino was scheming with the Harkonnens. It's nice that Paul was depicted as being flawed in Dune Messiah, but his being an evil character does not follow from the original Dune, unless you take extreme care to see certain changes in his character (such as the aside about him being worried about spice equipment and ornithopters). Was someone seriously supposed to root for Duncan Idaho or the Mentats? Or the Queen/Concubine? Or were we "supposed to" wash our hands of the book and leave saying "They were all scum"?
wooster 16y ago
You're presupposing (jokingly, of course) allegorical meaning behind the work, which Tolkien explicitly rejected. Middle Earth was meant as a foundational myth of the British Isles. A sort of stand-in for the real history. A modern-day Beowulf. If you're looking for parallels with The Real World, you might be better off comparing the war in LoTR to WWI, in which Tolkien served in combat and witnessed some of the most horrific combat in human history, caused mostly by industrial advances. It's a lot easier to see why his nostalgia might be piqued when you think of most of his peers getting mustard gassed, shelled, shot, stabbed, or otherwise dying horrific deaths.
- loxs 16y ago
  Exactly. Just compare the map of the Middle Earth to Europe and you will see how well it fits in WWI setup. Good Little Hobbits (Britain), some humans (France, Italy), a dwarf (maybe a Scandinavian?), some Elves (Russians?) form the Good Alliance (of Christianity?) and fight against the Evil (muslim?) Empire of Mordor (Ottoman Empire) and its allies (Germany and Austria = Saruman's army?) who are traitors. And also, the good Elves of Eastern Europe migrate to America after the war, because "the world has changed".
  - Symmetry 16y ago
    I think its actually pretty clear, given the geography, that Mordor is Germany. Depictions of Germans in WWI propaganda posters are very similar to how orcs are described.
  - gmac 16y ago
    Interesting analogies. I always thought the most obvious sermonising was about industrialisation and the loss of an innocent rural way of life (as described here, for example: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences.html#indust http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences....)
wyclif 16y ago
No, no, no. JRRT completely rejected the charge that his work was an allegory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-D65evOCX4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-D65evOCX4 LOTR and The Silmarillion were not about WWII, the Bomb, or "racial purity." You are reading allegory into the stories.