h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over the last three decades I've read The Lord of the Rings countless times. I've also read all the posthumous volumes. It was Tolkien that led my to become a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. Tolkien has been a formative influence on my life, first with his imaginative fiction and poetry and later with his scholarship. But even in my youth I approached Tolkien's works as a scholar, not as a worshipper, as so many seem to do today.

Before the release of Peter Jackson's first instalment of the film version, I read the Lord of the Rings for (probably) the last time. I found myself deeply troubled by certain elements of the book.

Last night I finally got around to watching the DVD version of Jackson's Return of the King (I'd not seen it in the cinema). My discomfort was magnified.

I imagine a viewer who hasn't read the book summarising the film for a friend:

It's a story about a bunch of white men in a quasi-Mediaeval world fighting the forces of evil who are mostly represented by a bunch of genetically engineered monsters (sort of like the evil-mutants from old post-nuclear apocalypse sci-fi movies).

Later in the movie, the evil characters are inexplicably replaced by evil humans, all of whom are either African or Arabic looking. While there are white men in the films who do evil, they ar solitary agents, not the faceless mobs of painted and turbaned men who ride the rather strange elephants. Later there's a token gesture to the fact that women can be fairly good warriors. Then the hereditary monarch gives a rousing speech about "Western Men" standing firm against evil. Then the western men destroy the (single) tower of the Evil Land (they destroyed the other one in the previous film). The tower collapses in flames and a huge plume of grey ash sweeps out over the horrified people watching.

I've discussed this briefly with co-workers and, of course, the argument that it was thus in the book as well came up. Somehow, I find that more disturbing than if Jackson had just made up the War on Terror allusions on his own. It is very disturbing to think that a story conceived prior to the rise of the Nazis, a story which contains an underlying assumption of the moral superiority of one "race" and of the desire to maintain racial segregation can become such a block-buster film with apparently no discussion of these problematic aspects of the story.

Has anyone else felt disturbed? If not, then I find that lack of disturbance the most disturbing thing of all. These films seem destined to become pop culture icons, like Star Wars and Star Trek. One might expect that worshippers of Illuvatar will one day rank beside Jedi on the British Census. I find the racial teachings of the Lord of the Rings frightening, most particularly for their subtlety.

anhaga, I am interested in what you have to say. I first read LotR when I was 16, and then again in 2003, when I was studying linguistics (and because of the films.) I prefer the book, but I also love the films.
Living in NZ as I do, I am very aware of racial issues. (It's impossible not to be!) But I have to say, I didn't notice any racial references at all in the books, and it was only tangential in the film. (I have little or no visual memory, and totally lack the ability to visualise - when I read, characters have voices, but I don't "see" them at all. I sledom if ever, read descriptions or even notice them...) Maybe that's why. But I don't see it as a racial thing at all!
The orcs (genetically engineered from elves) are not *necessarily* as Jackson portrays them at all. (Dark or darkish skinned.) I don't even know why he has all the elves fair-skinned! Tolkien was writing about an alternate Earth (not our world at all) and as far as I know, a small part of it at that. The human 'enemy' are called the Southrons, and I think he was thinking Mediterranean.
In short, I personally don't have a problem, While I understand that you do, I am not sure it's warranted.

The orcs are pretty clearly just evil in both the books and the films and (while I find them morally problematic as well) not really relevant to my point here.

The men of the south and the east are distinctly other than white in the books and the depiction in the third film is of African and turbanned Men.

I didn't notice this aspect of the books until I'd read them all quite a large number of times.

I admit that I have difficulty with the idea that there are no moral grey areas in large parts of Tolkien's landscape: The Orcs are Evil (is there no orc who just wants to go home and be with his wife and kids?); the Elves are pretty much pure goodness with a huge dose of world-weariness; the Hobbits are good, but simple and easily led astray. Sure, individuals have moral depth, but there are moral signs attached to races as a whole. I find that a troubling idea.

I've just done a bit of a google search (probably should have done it first). I guess I'm not alone:

http://forums.iagora.com/posts.html::message_id=130462

http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle2.html

http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/8/1042475537

Orcses don't have wives and kiddies, and they're (now) 'spawned' and presumably 'educated' to obey Sauron and Saruman...
In the Silmarillion, there are 'bad' elves galore, including Galadriel, who in LotR is a saintly woman! (I found it interesting that in Silmarillion, she and her brothers are bad to the bone!)
I really believe Tolkien didn't give race a thought - and that Peter Jackson and New Line are responsible for a lot of the problems you mention, in the films. (It must not be underestimated how *American* influenced NZers are, especially those who are as "Hollywood" as Peter Jackson is...)
I'll check out the links soon. (I have time probs right now).

Just a quick addition... My son is adding his comments - the "guys who fight on the side of Sauron are not any race, they're just guys in costumes." (As an aside, many of them were played by Maori, as are some of the Rohirrim... look closely, and you'll see what a lot of "white men they are" (not, in other words.)
Also, I think Eowyn is a bit more than a "fairly good warrior". Jackson took credit in the NZ media for her being a warrior, and earlier, for her being in it at all! (Until he was rumbled by those familiar with the book.) What annoys me about the films, is that Jackson left out so many other female characters, though he claimed credit for the few he put in! He really is such an egotistic litte man, and the media helped by giving him credit where he didn't deserve it!
Not, the more I think about it, the more I think that you don't have anything to worry about.
My son wants me to add a question - Is he racist (or sexist) because the main character in a set of linked stories he is writing, is a white woman?

I think Eowyn is more than a fairly good warrior, too. I was thinking of someone coming to the film without any experience of the books and how they would describe the film.

The films throw into sharper relief troubling ideas that take a long time to notice in the books. It's not that Tolkien was particularly racist or sexist for his time. I suspect he was less of both than most. But the prejudices of his time crept in. And they are in the film but not acknowledged and in some ways accentuated.

http://www.theonering.net/perl/newsview/8/1042475537

<>

Inasmuch as you are right, I feel the film did accentuate any such elements that exist - as I said, New Line may well have seized the opportunity to put an America the great view - but I am still of the opinion that race is irrelevant in Tolkien's vision!

1.Nearly everything about an individual is defined by their race.

2.The story features different races and they are races trying to wipe other rcaes of the face of middle earth.

Have you been reading the same

one love

<>

Do you really believe that, Blickybadger? Isn't it contrary to your insstence that there is no such thing as race?

I've had some of these same concerns about Tolkien in particular and fanasty literature and games in general. The notion that beings of a certain race/species have certain personality traits seems to be a given in fantasy, especially in LOTR. I disagree that Tolkien is racist though, in fact the arguement could be made that He makes the case for race-mixing (Aragorn and Arwen) racial cooperation (Elves, Men, Duinedain, Hobbits and Ents collaborating to kick evil butt) and racial reconcilliation (Aragorn reconciling with and calling on the ostracized Woads to come to the aid of Minas Tirith - left out of the movie if memory serves)

I don't think that Tolkien was himself racist. I'm sorry I haven't made that more clear.

I thank you for the clarification, anhaga...

Anhaga, you are far from alone. Michael Moorcock, China Mieville and other writers have long complained about racism and elitism in Tolkien, but I think they are missing the point.

Tolkien's intention was to write a mythology for Olde Englande, so of course the good guys are white. The people of the far South and East are only in the book because they come to war, and they are the enemy because they follow Sauron, not because they have slanty eyes or black skin and ride elephants.

Significantly, these people are background. The baddies Tolkien dwells on, fleshes out, are all of the same races as our heroes:

Saruman and Grima, Denethor and Boromir, the nine kings of men who became the Nazgul, Smeagol who was once a creature much like a hobbit,
the Mouth of Sauron who was of Numenorean blood like Aragorn, just about every bad guy who gets a line is as white as Frodo.

Nor is the message as simple as all black people and some white people are bad: Tolkien inserts some musing into a scene where the hobbits see a Southron soldier killed, and they wonder what dragged him north from his home to fight and die in this war, a very humane observation.

Even the Orcs, when we hear them talk, are clearly people who would rather not be fighting in Sauron's wars: they'd rather be off in the mountains living as bandits, the way we saw them in _The Hobbit_, but Sauron, Saruman and the Witch-King have them enslaved.

As for parallels with Nazism, Tolkien specifically denied that the tale is an allegory of WWII, saying that if it were one of the Good Guys would have seized or made a Ring of his own and come to Rule the World.

Of course, any reasonably complex work is open to analysis regardless of whether the author intended to comment on the subject of that analysis, but I think it is much easier to make a case for Tolkien including his WW1 experience of the horror and waste of war than to bend the text to refer to WWII.

I think it is really a stretch to try and read "War on Terror" references into the movies since the scripts predate 9/11, and the two towers of the movie are strongholds of evil, not places attacked by the turbanned bad-guys.

The other element of Tolkien which is commonly attacked by modern critics is the hostility to modernity and industry, the respect for monarchy, aristocracy and feudalism, and even the master/servant relationship between Sam and Frodo (much toned down in the film).

Personally, I am no fan of such ideas in the real world, but I think a fantasy set in a deliberately primitive society like Middle Earth would be ridiculous if filled with elected representatives, Human Rights Commissioners and heroes seeking research grants from the Science Council to do ring research.

Zube

Zube:

as I've remarked to others previously, I agree with most of what you say.

I've not been suggesting that there are parallels with Naziism and I've not been suggesting that a tale such as the Lord of the Rings should be modernised in the way you allude to, nor that the Lord of the Rings should be changed at all.

As for the war on terror bit in the film, I mentioned the collapse of the Barad-Dur specifically, which was heartily reminiscent of the collapse of the World Trade Centre. It looked to me like an opposite parallel, particularly after Aragorn's Men of the West speech. My point was the impact the scene would have on an ordinary moviegoer unaquainted with the book. Again, I was not saying that Jackson 'should' have done it differently; I am saying that the way he did it has an effect on an audience, whether it is intended or not. The same is true of the book: it affects readers in certain ways whatever the author's intentions may be. To argue that the author didn't intend some particular reading is to claim a rather remarkable insight into the author's intentions, as well as being irrelevant to an appreciation of a work of art: if the work is not greater than the artist, then people should probably not be bandying about words such as 'classic'.

If I read you right, you think that a popcorn-munching audience may see the movies as "Old Whitey Kicks Arab Butt and smashes THEIR Two Towers to dust Ha Ha!".

Perhaps so, but equally even the movies (and more so, the books) have a lot to say about mercy, and pity, and resisting the temptation to do the obvious but immoral thing in the fight against evil, and the danger of pride, and the importance of co-operation, and the inadequacy of brute force alone, and the necessity for even the least important of us to do what is right even when it is hard, and the value of friendship, and hope, and the possibility of redemption, respect for the environment and the fact that Elves are gorgeous.

Zube

'If I read you right, you think that a popcorn-munching audience may see the movies as "Old Whitey Kicks Arab Butt and smashes THEIR Two Towers to dust Ha Ha!".'



Yes, Zube. That is something I dread.

As for the rest of your post, I agree, particularly the bit about "more so, the books." I found (and I understand a number of others found) that the battle scenes dominated the films in a way they don't in the books. It is much harder to express in film the moral bits you mention than it is to do so in text, and, sadly, I suspect it is less easy to hold a mass audience's attention with friendship, hope, the possibility of redemption, etc. than it is to grab them with "Old Whitey Kicks Arab Butt."

and another





Maybe it was late in New Zeland so I'll explain in simple steps.


In the book the Lord Of the Rings, you say you have read it, that big mythical fantasy trilogy by JRR Tolkein. They made some films based on the books, very popular Hollywood blockbusters made in New Zeland.

That book. Well in the book it describes various races.

Now even though I know race, in real life human terms, is a fallacy I willingly suspend my disbeleif in order to immerse myself in the authors world.

As I hope you understand by know Tolkien by dint of his imagination "creates" these races. It is these races that are one dimensional in that practically all individuals in each and every race posses chracteristics that are controlled entirely by their racial origin.

All the good guys are white and the really good guys have good looks blue eyes and blonde hair! The white guys who turn evil are seduced by the love of power and end up controlling horrific looking, dark skinned, slant eyed, murderous, savage warriors.

These are not unpopular stereotypes for fantasy and older mythical fiction that you havent noticed them does not mean they are not there.

one love

This whole thing was a big mistake wasn't it?



can we all go off somewhere and drink beer and have a nice quiet discussion about the Americans or the French or something?

The good guys are not in general blond(e)-haired. A bunch of Hobbit children are born blond(e) after the end of the adventure, when Sam chucks magic Elf dust to the winds in the shire, but until then the Hobbits are dark-haired. The Dwarves are dark-haired. Galadriel is an extremely rare blonde among the Noldor, who are dark haired elves. The Numenoreans tend to be dark haired too, it's the Rohirrim (who are basically AngloSaxons) who are fair haired.

Again, this is a tale of Olde Englande, you can't expect racial types other than those present in Olde Englande to appear except as Dodgy Foriegners.

Zube