Some in media pound Lord of the Rings ...for racism

[daveleau]

I was just as amazed as you probably are, but the British "Guardian" and the NYTimes are both saying it was a racist or pro-war flick. This article quotes and links to them and shows how they are, in turn, the real racists... (GO Get 'em Review! )

Linkage:
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldbe...berg010303.asp

[nomaxim]

'Barney', Tele-tubbies', 'Harry Potter', and LOTR. Boy some people just need to let go once in awhile, Maybe they need to get out more?

Good find Dave!

Oh puhleeeze gimme a frickin' break! lol

Jonah Goldberg sums up my thoughts on this one, here:

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.

Note: paragraph break and emphasis added

[ClubMed]

Not that I care about this subject because I, like you, think it is pathetic. However to make this thread more interesting, I have read some research papers by psychologists that have been able to prove that villains in the arts are often mirrors of society and the fears of society. The people who make these movies are human beings after all, who like everyone have fears.

So these articles bear something of the truth no matter how hard it might be for some of us to accept.

Art reflects society. It has always been like this and will always be like this.

I enjoyed the movie, but then again I am not dark skinned nor do I have slitted eyes, and the last time I looked in the mirror I didn't see an Orc

[Epidemic]

Hey the dehumanization of the orcs is obviously an attempt to dehumanize Black asians. There are no two ways to look at this.


ps CM psychologists find all sorts of things which I do not agree with. They are the worst sort of statisticians. They go into every study with an agenda IMO.

[Mr. Goodbytes]

I remember when The Lion King came out, and the same kind of idiots, like these media members (I wouldn't call them journalists), claimed that the hyenas in the movie were made to resemble blacks. It's just ridiculous. How stupid can people really be? Oh wait, that's what the darwin awards are for.

[Epidemic]

I was trying to remember the lion king one.

What about anti semitic Microsoft With NYC.

When you type NYC in wingdings it shows the death symbol, star of david, and the thumbs up. SPOOKEY

[Jonty]

The Guardian is only read by PC lefties anyway so don't worry!

[Theophylact]

It's not quite as far fetched as you might think (I can find you a number of well-considered articles over the years on the subject of Tolkien's politics, religion and philosophy), but one forgives a lot in good authors who are not of our time. Agatha Christie's antiSemitism, once pretty much the British upper-class norm, is quite unpalatable now, even though her books are still popular. Shakespeare is "guilty" of being non-PC, too. For an Elizibethan, he was pretty enlightened, though he wouldn't pass muster now.

Norman Spinrad wrote a novel (very hard to find now) called The Iron Dream. The frame imagines a world in which Adolf Hitler emigrated to the US after the First World War, and became a science-fiction/fantasy writer. Hitler's best-known work, an epic called Lord of the Swastika, is presented in its entirety in Dream. The genius of this book is that we, with our stance in a world in which the Second World War did take place, get to understand the writer's biases in a way that his readers never could.

(Critical note: Spinrad, like Philip K. Dick, is a great writer without being a good one. If style is more important to you than substance, you're not going to like either of them.)

edited to correct solecism

[Epidemic]

You can not judge historical figures by the measures of today. They must be measured by the norm of the time.

It is sort of like measuring the scientific abilities of ugg the first wheel maker. He did a great deed with his invention and his keen eye in his time advanced us.