Just for the record: Tolkien describes a world of European myth, where the races are all distinct and distrustful of each other – for instance, the hatred between elves and dwarves, and even amongst tribes of elves. No, there are no black hobbits, any more than there were any black Brits or Germans in the 1200s.
Tolkien, to his credit, makes it clear that when folks from different races DO get to know each other (specifically, Legolas and Gimli), they come to mutual respect and friendship.
Even the orcs have occasional moments of sympathy – the orcs in Minas Morgul, for instance, complaining about the bureaucracy of the Dark Tower.
And I hate those movies (ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES comes to mind) that arbitrarily stick in a black side-kick, catering to being politically correct at the cost of being historically correct. I understand that the remake of GONE WITH THE WIND will feature several wealthy black plantation owners with white slaves.
Thanks to all that responded. I appreciate your insight and the information provided.
Guess this just means that I need to dust off my books and get to reading, if only to understand all of the things that a 14 year-old might have missed.
Happy New Year.
PS. Thanks, too, autz for the link. And, C K Dexter Haven, I agree with your opinion about the PC pandering in films like * Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves*, which is why I wondered about what I thought was a change that PJ had made.
The sad fact is, most fantasy and science fiction gives itself easily to racist interpretations. Race (or, more specifically, species) is too often presented as a reliable indicator of how an individual will think and act. Orcs are violent and rapacious, elves are intelligent and inscrutable, dwarves are greedy and secretive. You could substitute Klingons, Vulcans, and Ferengi fairly easily. Or, if you’re of the proper predispostion, Africans, Asians, and Jews.
Now, this is not because the authors are racist in any sort of a meaningful, real-world sense. I don’t think that, because R.A. Salvatore writes about evil black-skinned elves, we can draw any sort of meaningful conclusions about how he feels about black-skinned humans in the real world. However, I think that genuine racism and the perceived racism of many works of fantasy and science fiction stem from the same source: laziness. Blaming things on race is an easy solution. Too much crime in the neighborhood? Trying to sort out the welter of social pressures, economic factors, historical precedents, and what-have-you is a lot of work. Blaming the blacks isn’t. Similarly, if you’re writing a novel and need a reason why the Horde of the Crimson Hand is invading the Valley of Gygax, saying “Orcs are evil” is a lot easier than saying “Orcs are members of a tribal society that places a great deal of emphasis on martial skill, and not enough emphasis on industry and agriculture, creating a society that is constantly at the edge of starvation, making them easily manipulated by ruling or religious castes seeking to create strife with foreign cultures to deflect attention from their own avarice and mis-rule.”
In other words, the apparent racism in many sf works is not because the authors are bad people. It’s because they are bad writers.
I hasten to point out that Tolkien is one of the rare exceptions in the fantasy/science fiction field where the above does not apply. Although there are no “good” orcs in LotR, he does make it clear in a few places that the orcs and Southrons are a product of millenia of tyranny at the hands of Sauron, and are as much his victims as the inhabitants of any of the Western lands he is trying to invade. However, it is not surprising that this subtlety was beyond the grasp of someone who apparently spends a fair portion of his free time warning the laity about the dreadful machinations of the Freemasons.
This isn’t completely wrong. Here is the relevant quote from Letters
I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue. Letter 176
So in a very loose sense I think one could say that the Dwarves were based on Jews. But interesting there is no idea of the standard Jewish caricature.
Yes the character, Gothmog, existed in the book. He is shown as the Witch King’s second in command for the battle. And he took over after the WK’s death. However not only is his exact skin color not mentioned, his species was also omited. So Gothmog could easily have been a Nazgul, Human or Orc. The decision on how to portray him was entirely up to PJ. Why he did so in the way he did I couldn’t speculate.
On the Two Towers Extended Edition Design Team commentary, Richard Taylor (in charge of the special effects and costume design) explained why they changed the appearance of the Uruk-Hai over the three movies.
There are various kinds of non-human bad guys in the movies/books, including goblins/Moria orcs, Mordor orcs and Uruk-Hai.
The Uruks are not natural (they’re kind of “genetically engineered” or “manufactured” by Saruman - part orc, part human IIRC), so they (in the movie) decided to portray the Uruks as aging and decaying more rapidly than normal orcs. Normal orcs can’t go in the sun for any extended time, but Uruks are bred to be able to do so. So over the course of the three movies the Uruk’s hair lightens and whitens (kind of a sun-streaking effect at first), their skin becomes blotchy and whiter/pinker, and their eyes were more clouded like they developed cataracts.
I recently read “Tolkien: Author of the Century.” Basically, Tolkien was recreating myths from scraps of ancient lore. In our western culture, white represents truth, purity and good. Black represents evil and corruption. So if you are recreating a myth, a lot of the good is going to be white and a lot of the evil is going to be black. Also, generally Middle Earth represented western Europe. So of course cutures to the south and east were going to be a little “swarthy”. I dont think this represented any racial bias. He just used what was evident in the real world.
Actually, I think in the movie they avoided the issue by having the South men wear a lot of clothes and make up so you can’t really tell their ethnicity.
The clones look hispanic, it must mean [fill in paranoid fantasy here].
Name an ethnic group, and there’s some implied insult you could fit in there.
Culminating, of course, in having white guys as the clones. “Of course they’re going to make the clones white. After all, they’re the master race, what else would they be?”
Nitpick:RE Robin Hood there were Arabs travelling in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages, and though most Arabs were “brown,” some were “white” and some were “black.”
On the OP, Tolkien emphatically rejected the white supremacists and neo Nazis who tried to claim his work for their cause.
First, orcs and uruk-hai are not synonymous in the movies. Uruk-hai are the specific result of Saruman’s cross-breeding experiments, and all of them seem to have the same basic physical type.
Orcs are spread out all over Middle-Earth and have more variety in their features. Look at the orcs in Moria in FOTR compared to the ones seen in Mordor. A few of them have lighter skin tones, that usually run to a sickly gray pallor (The most memorable example I can think of is the “Why can’t we have some meatss?” orc in TTT). However, uruk-hai are bred to be able to function normally in sunlight, something orcs can’t do.
On one of the TTT commentaries, someone mentioned that orcs and uruk-hai were designed in mind with the idea that they had black blood. I’m not sure how explicit Tolkien is about this, but apparently the MPAA is a more lenient in its ratings for violence if hacking, maiming and gushing doesn’t involve realistic-looking red blood.
Anyway, if there’s no red blood in your veins, you will hane no no reddish or pinkish-tinges to your skin. If you look at the orcs in close-up, you can see that even their tongues and the insides of their mouth are black.
The character you are referring to in ROTK is presumed to be Gothmog, Lieutenant of Minas Morgul. In the books, he is mentioned as taking over the armies of Sauron after the Witch-King is killed, but he doesn’t have dialogue and isn’t described in any detail. I don’t think it’s ever clearly defined what race he is. I can pretty surely say that he’s not a nazgul or a man. I’ve thought of him as a kind of intelligent troll, although an exceptional orc could fit the bill, too. PJ could have given him a singular appearance to show that he was a special character and to help him stand out from the crowd of orcs that were always around him.
Just like to mention that the orcs have cockney accents in the movies and it seems obvious to me (and any other self righteous chip on the shoulder types !)that it is the intention of the directors/producers to portray all Londoners as the spawn of evil and i WILL be writing to my member of parliament on the subject and hopefully get all three films banned plus all existing copies of tolkiens work burned.