The following comments by science fiction writer Andy Duncan have once again sparked the debate regarding racism in J.R.R Tolkien's works.
"It's hard to miss the repeated notion in Tolkien that some races are just worse than others, or that some peoples are just worse than others,"
"I can easily imagine that a lot of these people that were doing the Dark Lord's bidding were doing so out of simple self preservation and so forth. A lot of these creatures that were raised out of the earth had not a great deal of choice in the matter of what to do. I have this very complicated sense of the politics of all that."
Originally said in Episode 336 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
https://www.newstatesman.com/cultur...bout-orcs-not-important-new-front-culture-war
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/n...-racist-george-lucass-stormtroopers/#comments
He isn't the first to accuse Tolkien of racism. Dr Stephen Shapiro also said the following in 2003:
"Put simply, Tolkien's good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate and a psychologically undeveloped horde.
Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings because he wanted to recreate a mythology for the English that had been destroyed by foreign invasion. He felt organic English culture had been destroyed by the Normans. There is the notion that foreigners destroy culture and there was also a fantasy that there was a solid homogeneous English culture there to begin with, which was not the case because there were Celts and Vikings and a host of other groups.
One can read the book as a kind of ideal of Great Britain. For instance, the dwarves were his notion of what Scots were like. It is like a southern England clich of a dour, muscular race and that represents the Scots in the book.
"We have a pure village ideal which is being threatened by new technologies and groups coming in. I think the film has picked up on this by colour coding the characters in very stark ways.
For instance, the fellowship is portrayed as ber-Aryan, very white and there is the notion that they are a vanishing group under the advent of the other, evil ethnic groups.
The Orcs are a black mass that doesn't speak the languages and are desecrating the cathedrals.
For today's film fans, this older racial anxiety fuses with a current fear and hatred of Islam that supports a crusading war in the Middle East. The mass appeal of The Lord of the Rings, and the recent movies, may well rest on racist codes."
Terry Pratchet and George R.R Martin have also commented on this subject:
"By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?" - George R.R Martin
"I disagreed with Tolkien about orcs," he said. "In Lord of the Rings orcs are bad. It's a given…[But] why couldn't there be an orc that wanted a nice job, involving kittens or flowers?"
"I was thinking, 'hang on a minute… we can have fun with these concepts." - Terry Pratchett
Michael Moorcock and China Mielville too have critiqued Tolkien's works.
In light of these comments where do you stand on the issue? Was it simply the zeitgeist of that period in which Tolkien lived, or something more nefarious on Tolkien's part?
"It's hard to miss the repeated notion in Tolkien that some races are just worse than others, or that some peoples are just worse than others,"
"I can easily imagine that a lot of these people that were doing the Dark Lord's bidding were doing so out of simple self preservation and so forth. A lot of these creatures that were raised out of the earth had not a great deal of choice in the matter of what to do. I have this very complicated sense of the politics of all that."
Originally said in Episode 336 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
https://www.newstatesman.com/cultur...bout-orcs-not-important-new-front-culture-war
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/n...-racist-george-lucass-stormtroopers/#comments
He isn't the first to accuse Tolkien of racism. Dr Stephen Shapiro also said the following in 2003:
"Put simply, Tolkien's good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate and a psychologically undeveloped horde.
Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings because he wanted to recreate a mythology for the English that had been destroyed by foreign invasion. He felt organic English culture had been destroyed by the Normans. There is the notion that foreigners destroy culture and there was also a fantasy that there was a solid homogeneous English culture there to begin with, which was not the case because there were Celts and Vikings and a host of other groups.
One can read the book as a kind of ideal of Great Britain. For instance, the dwarves were his notion of what Scots were like. It is like a southern England clich of a dour, muscular race and that represents the Scots in the book.
"We have a pure village ideal which is being threatened by new technologies and groups coming in. I think the film has picked up on this by colour coding the characters in very stark ways.
For instance, the fellowship is portrayed as ber-Aryan, very white and there is the notion that they are a vanishing group under the advent of the other, evil ethnic groups.
The Orcs are a black mass that doesn't speak the languages and are desecrating the cathedrals.
For today's film fans, this older racial anxiety fuses with a current fear and hatred of Islam that supports a crusading war in the Middle East. The mass appeal of The Lord of the Rings, and the recent movies, may well rest on racist codes."
Terry Pratchet and George R.R Martin have also commented on this subject:
"By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?" - George R.R Martin
"I disagreed with Tolkien about orcs," he said. "In Lord of the Rings orcs are bad. It's a given…[But] why couldn't there be an orc that wanted a nice job, involving kittens or flowers?"
"I was thinking, 'hang on a minute… we can have fun with these concepts." - Terry Pratchett
Michael Moorcock and China Mielville too have critiqued Tolkien's works.
In light of these comments where do you stand on the issue? Was it simply the zeitgeist of that period in which Tolkien lived, or something more nefarious on Tolkien's part?
Last edited:
