Fantasy Genre, especially Lord of the Rings is racist according to this article

[minute bull]

I don't know why it hasn't occurred to people but we REALLY need, as a populace, to start calling out pushy garbage like this as "Troll articles" and Troll tweets.


Identify them and call em out as "trolls", because that's what they're doing and they've been getting away with it with no consequences.

Different culture, hard to judge.

 

[Mr. 4K]

God damn Elf privilege.

 

[salamander]

They tried to do the same thing with Warhammer 40k not realizing how insanely diverse the Imperium is. The feminists got on about it as well.

PETA also started kvetching because some of the characters were depicted wearing animal furs. (They were strangely silent about the characters wearing skulls and human skins...but they were probably going to get to that eventually.)

Anything good in the past is always subject to the critical assessment of the present folkway. There seems to be a faction in western culture that seeks to reshape all cultural icons to their own agenda....secular takferi...but this is probably better discussed in the war room. I like the vibe here lol

 

[Der Eisbär]

Lmaooo

 

[pinger]

Shots fired

 

[Osculater]

That is clearly a White Nationalist.

StormFront

 

[Hog-train]

That's pretty well summed up in the first movie of LOTR. The fricking narrator talks about the weakness in the hearts of men. The head elf sez... "Men are weak, the race of man is failing." and then continues to bag on humans, blaming them for everything. Gandalf has no comeback at all, he know it's true. Watch it again, read it again, whatever.

It's there to be seen, but men are weak and see what they want to see. Results may therefore vary.

Yea but the other "races" like Orcs, Trolls and Goblins are all one-dimensionally evil and ugly.

 

[Kframe]

I'm not racist but...

Khajiits are bringing rapists, they're bringing thieves... And some I assume are good people.

Well according to the Jarls and surrounding lore in Skyrim they are bringing thievery and Skooma. Which is why they got banned from towns.

 

[aus101]

Where in Europe is middle earth? I wanna visit!

lol this article is dumb trash

It IS Europe, from ages past. Presumably before the ice sheets flooded Doggerland.

The shire is England. Minas Tirith is Constantinople/Istanbul, although in Tolkien’s world it was never lost to the hordes of 100,000s of orcs, whoops I mean ottomans.

 

[chickenluver]

That's pretty well summed up in the first movie of LOTR. The fricking narrator talks about the weakness in the hearts of men. The head elf sez... "Men are weak, the race of man is failing." and then continues to bag on humans, blaming them for everything. Gandalf has no comeback at all, he know it's true. Watch it again, read it again, whatever.

It's there to be seen, but men are weak and see what they want to see. Results may therefore vary.

This is not said in the novel, it was written for the movie. The whole anti-humantiy attitude of the elves and others is completely absent in the novel.

 

[tru3f4n]

They didn't have black slaves during the middle ages dumbass
Also, racism didn't exist in that time period. It was all about Feudalism.

what you mean by they? You just talking about Anglo-Saxons or everyone because the Ottoman Empire had them.

 

[Spoken]

It IS Europe, from ages past. Presumably before the ice sheets flooded Doggerland.

The shire is England. Minas Tirith is Constantinople/Istanbul, although in Tolkien’s world it was never lost to the hordes of 100,000s of orcs, whoops I mean ottomans.

I never saw him make a reference to what minas tirith is based of. Considering he’s catholic, I’d imagine his imagination is more western. France’s Mont St Michel, perhaps.
The shire, however, is based off of warwichsire.

 

[Spoken]

I have some academic articles exploring this stuff if anyone is interested. Even conservative readers of Tolkien will admit that he plays with problematic tropes. It’s an issue. But it doesn’t ruin shit. We read everything critically

 

[aus101]

I never saw him make a reference to what minas tirith is based of. Considering he’s catholic, I’d imagine his imagination is more western. France’s Mont St Michel, perhaps.
The shire, however, is based off of warwichsire.

Constantinople held back “the east” from the west for nearly a thousand years. It was a fortress city with greater defences than any other on the planet at the time, including the famed Theodosion walls, a mighty curtain wall, although numerous towers and other defences protected the city as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Constantinople


The power of the once mighty eastern Roman’s however shrank back through centuries of war with the ottomans until a few miles from the walls was the only territory the eastern romans held. Finally a massive army of ottomans, said to be up 200,000 strong, faced off against a paltry force of 7,000 or so defenders, barely enough to man the walls. (Battle of Minas Tirith cough).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

You can add the battle of Vienna to the inspirations however, the largest Calvary charge in history was western horsemen riding to the aid of the besieged imperial city of Vienna (again by the forces of countless thousands of ottoman orcs), when a heroic charge of 18,000 polish hussars and german knights ended ottoman encroachment into the west once and for all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

 

[Spoken]

Constantinople held back “the east” from the west for nearly a thousand years. It was a fortress city with greater defences than any other on the planet at the time, including the famed Theodosion walls, a mighty curtain wall, although numerous towers and other defences protected the city as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Constantinople


The power of the once mighty eastern Roman’s however shrank back through centuries of war with the ottomans until a few miles from the walls was the only territory the eastern romans held. Finally a massive army of ottomans, said to be up 200,000 strong, faced off against a paltry force of 7,000 or so defenders, barely enough to man the walls. (Battle of Minas Tirith cough).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople

You can add the battle of Vienna to the inspirations however, the largest Calvary charge in history was western horsemen riding to the aid of the besieged imperial city of Vienna (again by the forces of countless thousands of ottoman orcs), when a heroic charge of 18,000 polish hussars and german knights ended ottoman encroachment into the west once and for all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

I wouldn’t be shocked if the some of the archetecture is based off of something like that, but the culture of Gondor (what I was thinking of, I guess) is thoroughly western.

But the battle of Vienna rings true. Folks have argued the same, in some way. Though most of the battle of minas tirith was in the pelennor fields. But Vienna makes sense if only because the Ottomans seem to spawn the fundaments of the eastern allies of Sauron.

Im sure reddit and the like have gone over these things. Tolkien makes no explicit reference, however.

 

[Bald1]

I don't agree that fantasy is racist.

However, I do feel it's pretty simplistic as always portraying Orcs, Goblins, etc as "all evil" races.

Very simplistic "good vs evil" themes. And fantasy is based on medieval Europe. So it just so happens that "white man" is always portrayed as the "good guys."

When in reality, human beings themselves are both the "good" and "evil" ones.

Hey now! Gorath (dark elf type of guy) was a good guy.

#not all

 

[mime]

The shadow and darkness themes in Tolkien need to be understood properly: shadows and darkness are themes for evil in Tolkien because he has an Augustinian view of the good-- the evil is privation, it lacks being. It does not have metaphysical substance. Thus, a shadow is a lack of light. It's not more complicated than that. Thus, Orcs are not "inherently" evil, just like Gollum isnt inherently evil. They're corrupted things, twisted by evil because it does not have the ability to create. This is everywhere in his literature, from Melkor, to Sauron, to Saurman, to Gollum, and to the One Ring.

Dude isn't wrong about some things, but he certainly misread Tolkien on this stuff.

Woah this is some deep stuff. Where can I get more info on this? Interested in the shadow and darkness themes.

 

[blaseblah]

Evil races aren't specific to fantasy. Sci-fi does this too. The Borg, The Aliens in Alien, etc.

 

[Spoken]

Woah this is some deep stuff. Where can I get more info on this? Interested in the shadow and darkness themes.

Ralph Wood’s Gospel According to Tolkien and Tom Shippey’s Road to Middle Earth are fine places to start

 

[Phlog]

It doesn't matter even if they were, it's a fantasy, it can be anything they want.

These beings are different species, like horse and donkey or lion and tiger. Regardless though they can be as seemingly racist as they like and it means nothing more than that reality was a bit racist.