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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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hexbear tolkein discourse
Just to get ahead of things:
Orcs: not great and Tolkien admits as such and couldn't wrangle a decent solution before dying and it really bugged him. In books orcs do have more dialogue between themselves that pass the orc bechdelle test and the implication is that they're essentially a slave army and while generally hostile against the rest of the people of Middle Earth, they'd mostly rather fuck off from this dark lord shit and just be bandits. Peter Jackson flattened this entirely and also had Saruman breeding orca from some goo pit. Uruk just means an orc who Isa professional solider so to speak and uruk-hai is the plural. He did have different orcs semi implied to.be part man, but also men were a big part of his army who were rightfully pissed off at the rohirrim for colonizing their land, another example in the books comes from my favorite non movie minor character Ghan Bury Ghan who says the rohirrim hunt his people for sport or at least used to and he thinks they still do. Theoden needs to parley with these indigenous people and begin the process of making things right in order to make it to the aide Minas tirith without being intercepted and waylaid making them too late to help and likely too few. Tolkien can have some born in the 1800s white dude stuff but there is some explicit anti colonialism in the text leading me to:
The southrons and Easterlings: in cannon major regions of these areas were conquered by the numenoreans (Roman empire stand in) and the rulers of this places worshipped Morgoth and were doing human sacrifice and were just bad dudes. The troops sent to fight for Sauron had been under the thumb of those rulers for.like 5000 or more years.
My dude could have done better and admitted as such but a LOOOT of the racism is Peter Jackson's not Tolkien's.
oh huh okay this is interesting. tbh I haven't interacted too much with most of the media, outside of watching the original 3 movies, I was just remembering a period of time on the site when Tolkien discourse was very prevalent.
To add a silly post I made on Tolkien reddit a while back that I'm proud of, here's me as Tolkien reviewing the George Foreman Grill:
Draining the fat from meat with this electronic contraption, promoted by a shameless pugilist with no discernible culinary pedigree, is simply a senseless waste of time and human comfort. I'd prefer a four man grill where a giant boar is roasted on a spit over an open flame. The boar requiring two men to rotate over a such a period it would require two other men to turn the spit while the first men rested. They would turn the spit in shifts, two man by two man until the boar was sufficiently roasted and then would be delivered to the local magistrate who would eat it whole. -letter 420 to Guy Fiere
To add a favorite quote
"It was Sam's view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart or what lies or threats had led him on the long March from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace"
-The Two Tower (of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit)
I can recall and there was a major lack of investigation and therefore right to speak or at least speak with authority. Deep Tolkien investigation is fucking hard. Like next guy down from Shakespeare as an academically accepted author to study. The orc stuff mostly exists in LOTR but his issues regarding the orcs with his creation myth and making basically a race of cannon fodder kinda sucked and came from goblins and whatnot from folklore which had their own issues that he struggled with mostly came from his letters and the things regarding the south and east being colonized by asshole numemoreans is a brief mention in part of the silmarillion which is tough enough to read buy greater detail requires seeking out less fleshed out notes and writings and piecing it together. Peter Jackson technically didn't have the rights to most of this stuff but it could have inspired a more vague reasoning for these guys joining sauron in the films. Tolkien was old as hell and British and I'm sure he had some degree of racism to him, but gotta say, from anything personal or fictional I've read, haven't really seen much. I'd say Jackson had a way more racist portrayal of the subject than Tolkien
wasn't there a letter to his son or something expressing opposition to colonialism or something?
'I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust'
Letter to Christopher in 1945 He was also born in South Africa and that colored his views as well
good example of Peter Jackson racism is king kong and his portrayal of the people of the fallen civilization on skull island.
there's no magic or supernatural stuff involved. it's just pure "dark skinned removed savages" that are portrayed as basically demons to be put down violently by a german guy with machineguns
I remember seeing Peter Jackson's King Kong for the first time a while back and the way the natives were depicted had my jaw hanging open
i remember reading they hired maori and actually sprayed them with black paint to make them even darker. also red contacts for extra evilness.
really gross stuff.
a long time ago i actually liked that movie despite it's length because the insect scene was deeply disturbing in a good way and i liked the monster ecosystem of the island. obviously no longer
Holy shit
I was about to add that it was especially egregious for Peter Jackson, a NZ filmmaker who made a big deal about how much he respected Maoris and Maori culture during the making of LOTR and the Hobbit
Also, my dude wrote the first poem that would spark the middle earth legendarium while in the trenches in the battle of fucking Somme, one of if not maybe the bloodiest battle of ww1, I think he was like 1 of 5 or so from his graduating class to survive the war. He knew the absolute horror of war and it affected him immensely, especially being ww1 where the fighting was pretty ficking pointless no nazis to beat or whatever. So he had an incredibly dim view on war in general.