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~Ping from the temporary pinger!
Posted on 01/03/2003 3:54:49 PM PST by DaveCooper
I wanted to write about the latest Lord of the Rings movie today. But as I scoured the Web reading what other people had to say, I realized I had nothing new to offer. I love Tolkien. It’s a good movie. A bit too long, I thought, but I will see it again, regardless.
Anyway, while trying to figure out what to write, I kept stumbling on articles about how Tolkien was a racist and/or about how The Lord of the Rings is pro-war propaganda. Both of these ideas have dedicated adherents. For example, John Yatt says in the British newspaper, the Guardian:
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 ragbag of nonwhite 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.
And as for the war-propaganda thing, well, that’s really all over the place. For example, Karen Durbin recently wrote in The New York Times:
[I]t’s impossible not to experience Peter Jackson’s Two Towers as war propaganda of unnerving power. The scene in which ranks upon ranks of enemy Uruk-hai warriors march in perfect order seems like a spine-chilling tip of the computer-graphics hat to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will…. On the intentional level, The Two Towers is a grand adventure tale, in which good and evil are comfortingly clear. But even without the accidental echoes — evil or “Evildoers?” Sauron or Saddam? And how many towers? — the movie would have its own double edge. Dehumanizing the other guy is the first step in training soldiers and fighting wars. The danger is that this is what makes not just warfare palatable but extermination itself.
Sigh. Okay, yes, it’s true. Many of the Orcs (and the super-Orcs) are dark-skinned and have slant-eyes. They are also — how shall I put this? — Orcs! Ya frickin’ idjit!
One is tempted to ask who is the real racist here? On the one hand we have people — like me — who see horrific, flesh-eating, dull-witted creatures with jagged feral teeth, venomous mouths, pointed devilish ears, and reptilian skin, and say, “Cool, Orcs!” On the other hand we have people, like Mr. Yatt, who see the same repugnant creatures and righteously exclaim “black people!” Maybe he should spend less time vetting movies for signs of racism and more time vetting himself if, that is, he free-associates black people with these subhuman monsters.
Now, as for the war-mongering stuff, a similar point can be made. In fact, I have this theory that many movie critics need to imagine themselves as Right-wing morons in order to criticize films. Ms. Durbin is probably quite smart herself. But her criticism of The Two Towers is premised on the idea that other people can’t figure out what is apparent to her. So while she probably understands that The Lord of the Rings “on the intentional level” is a “grand adventure tale” wholly separate from our own reality, she — like many other sophisticates — frets that other people might be swept up by the excitement of it all and confuse Sauron with Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the dictator of Iraq is not currently a giant flaming eye. If he is, The New York Times will have major egg on its face.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
To cap it all, the races that Tolkien has put on the side of evil are then given a ragbag of nonwhite 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.
And Goldberg is right when he says that the charges of racism and war-mongering are literary Rorschach blots, the projections of their accusers, not anything inherent in the matter under scrutiny.
Ring Ping!! |
~Ping from the temporary pinger!
The suitably outraged author is wrong. The orcs are not a race; they are an artificial and predatory species. They must be killed (or contained) for the same reason as any other natural predator.
If he bothered to read any of Tolkein's other Middle Earth writings, he would see that there are good and evil members of each of the races -- elves, men, dwarves. Furthermore, the men who end up on Sauron's side are considered misguided, rather than inherently evil. I believe there is a quote from Faramir to that effect after his ambush of the Haradrim.
Only pin-headed anal-retentive lefty show-offs could or would politicize and racialize Tolkien.
(I hate using the trendy expression "anal-retentive", but it applies perfectly to our nit-picking leftist brethren and cistern).:^)
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