Lord of the memes

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Snacks and some pipe-weed (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by ickplant@lemmy.world to c/lotrmemes@midwest.social

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[–] Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Lol not only that you can Google it and you can find countless sites telling the same thing. I'm being downvoted because all it takes is a single downvote the rest just follow blindly. Another reason could be that people here are mostly white and that's why they don't see it.

Here's one of those articles

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I mean, I'm all for contextualizing Tolkien, and I'll grant that many of his contemporaries were far more overtly racist (cough Lovecraft cough), but it's still pretty hard to justify passages from his private letters that describe orcs as

squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types

Edit: here's the Wikipedia source that describes the issue in fairly nuanced terms

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Him being better than some contemporaries isn't great. Still, the stories are good and generally you can take other messages from them that are decent. Like Éowyn fighting with the men despite being told her duty is elsewhere, despite Tolkien being misogynistic. He wouldn't take out of the story the modern interpretation (even though the story that certainly inspired this is about a woman who literally becomes a man after all of this), but he himself said that readers should and will take things from the story that he didn't intend, and that's good.

I don't have any particular issues with Tolkien besides that he wasn't socially creative enough to see beyond what he knew, but that's true for most people. He wrote fun, interesting, creative tales within that that generally have a hopeful uplifting message. However, we should always be critical of any creator of any work. We should strive to solve issues and point out flaws in order to improve our world. It can't change the past, but it can change the future.

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Him being better than some contemporaries isn’t great.

Yeah, especially since I went back to look at publication dates and his more serious works were published much later than I had thought. Arguing that Tolkien's racist language was just "a product of his time" is a lot less valid given he was writing Fellowship of the Ring in the 1950's, not the 30's like I'd assumed. It seems like even for his time, Tolkien was pretty stodgy and conservative.

I don’t have any particular issues with Tolkien besides that he wasn’t socially creative enough to see beyond what he knew, but that’s true for most people.

Yeah, but then most people aren't famous for creating entire fantasy worlds, so I'd like to think that it's reasonable to hold authors to a higher standard here. His world-building is incredibly complex and innovative in many ways, while also being built around fairly derogatory and one-dimensional characterizations. And IMO, his writing, while entertaining, isn't profound or even note-worthy in many respects compared to many of his contemporaries (I think I'm preaching to the choir, here, but look at the list of significant modernist writers and try to tell me with a straight face that the list should include Tolkien). Personally, as much as I love LOTR, people that argue that Tolkien is a literary genius and can do no wrong are just cringey.

However, we should always be critical of any creator of any work. We should strive to solve issues and point out flaws in order to improve our world. It can’t change the past, but it can change the future.

Well said.

[–] RedAggroBest@lemmy.world -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Mongol-type or Mongoloid are terms that described Down's Syndrome iirc. I don't think it's being used in a racial context beyond the obvious modern problems with those terms.

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I think it's pretty obvious from the rest of the sentence that Tolkien is explicitly using "Mongol-type"as a racial descriptor; "sallow" is referring to skin color, "slanted eyes" speaks for itself, and the fact that he explicitly references European beauty standards are all providing contextual evidence that Tolkien is using Eastern Asians as the physical model for orcs

[–] jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, yeah, you're coming to a small community of LOTR fans and accusing the author of their fandom of being racist. I'm not sure what you expect lol.

But yeah there are some dubiously racist characterizations in the novels. There are also some moments of reflection, like Sam seeing the dead Harad soldier:

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.

I mean, the book is written from a Western POV, and by a white Catholic guy who was born in the late 1800s. I think the chances were pretty slim of him having a modern outlook on race, gender, sexuality, etc.

Edit: omg on midwest.social too hahaha