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	rann 2003-12-30 01:07 am UTC (link)
	I couldn't get past the third sentence before my WTF-meter was pegged and I had to close it. @.@ (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 01:13 am UTC (link)
	This is as good as back in the day when a movie critic called Lion King sexist and racist. This based on Whoopi and Cheech voiceing ebil characters (so ignoring big bad white Scar and the kind king James Earl Jones) and the "go tell the lionesses to hunt" which is nature and reality. It must be nice to be that shut off from the rest of the world. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	tempslut 2003-12-30 04:33 am UTC (link)
	That reminds me--in ninth grade, I was at a get-together involving rewinding The Lion King over and over to see if the flowers really spelled out "SEX". We also did the same thing with Aladdin and "Good teenagers, take off your clothes!" (I know. "LOSER!") (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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	teratologist 2003-12-30 05:18 pm UTC (link)
	It's not sexist and racist, it just perpetuates the religio-magical view of the world where the holding of the kingship is directly related to the health and productivity of the land. Oddly, the Christian Coalition never seemed to pick up on that. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sarajayechan 2003-12-30 01:27 am UTC (link)
	sigh I wish people wouldn't try to find Deep Underlying Meanings/Resentment/Prejudice in EVERYTHING. It's true you can't take things at face value most of the time. But sometimes, you CAN because that's how it's SUPPOSED to be. LOTR using the dark-evil light-good thing has nothing to DO with racial undertones! (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 01:36 am UTC (link)
	OMG Star Wars is racist because they say the dark side is bad!!!one!one! And Harry Potter is racist because they say dark wizards are bad!!!! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 02:16 am UTC (link)
	...no, Star Wars contains racist overtones because they chose to dub characters with stereotypical Asian accents. :) -josie (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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valarltd
2003-12-30 04:40 am UTC (link)

Lessee, the only black character in the first tril is a treacherous mercenary who sells out his friends. (in all fairness, the lives of the tens of thousands of people in the city he administers outweigh 3 people.)

The hero is a blue-eyed blond.

The end of ANH is lifted straight from Triumph of the Will.

As for the prequels, let's not even go into Watto shall we? i was getting Italian off him in TPM, but the beard and hat were pushing it in AotC.

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	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 01:43 am UTC (link)
	Initial gut reaction: 'OMG, they can't be racist, they have elves you know! And dwarves!' (Reply to this)(Thread)

	Elves and Dwarves and Goblins, oh my! deoridhe 2003-12-30 04:01 pm UTC (link)
	...I actually had a similar thought. 8) Don't feel alone. (Reply to this)(Parent)

darkrose
2003-12-30 01:46 am UTC (link)

Umm.

I hate to say this, but Tolkien was a racist. Most biographies of him acknowledge this. He was an Englishman who grew up in South Africa in the late 1800's, and he absorbed all of the "White Man's Burden" nonsense that was part and parcel of the colonial mindset. It's not really an accident that the Haradrim and the Easterlings are supposed to look like Africans and Asians. I noticed that when I first read LotR as a kid, and yes, I did notice that the Haradrim in the film looked like every colonialist's stereotype of Black Africans. And you know...it did, in fact, detract from my enjoyment of the film, just as it did when I was twelve and I noticed that the only people in the book who looked like me were the bad guys. It especially annoyed me in the film because Jackson was willing to tinker with the book to get around the fact that most ofthe female characters are two-dimensional at best, but in at least one interview, he got a little shirty when someone pointed out the good guys=white; bad guys=dark thing.

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anu
2003-12-30 02:14 am UTC (link)

It's still more of a viable literary work than a racist novel. Men of that time were also sexist, yet Arwen (gag) and Eowyn were *there* and *involved*, versus looked over entirely.

The whole issue is too long over and done with to bother ranting about now. Tolkien's dead. Peter's just in it for the cash. Who's gonna care/change it? Nobody. Thus the ranting until blue in the face made by post link person is useless.

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musette, 2003-12-30 10:28 pm UTC

Women of LotR - (Anonymous), 2003-12-30 04:16 am UTC

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	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 03:08 am UTC (link)
	Most of the Orcs spoke with a cockney English accent. I'm from London! Who do I sue for offending me so badly? The World has gone mad. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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anu, 2003-12-30 03:25 am UTC

	teratologist 2003-12-30 03:50 am UTC (link)
	Yay for mentioning the Freemasons seemingly at random. But what's this? No mention of the Dwarves=Jewish equation? So disappointed. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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sparkysrevenge, 2004-01-01 07:56 am UTC

(Anonymous)
2003-12-30 04:10 am UTC (link)

From the rant I posted on my LJ:

"I think the main problem I have anytime this comes up regarding a fantasy world is that there are plenty of "realist" films in which darker skined people and women are tokens, but they tend to not have overt portrayals of good and evil, so we don't rant as much about it. Problem is, racism is more likely to look like this these days -- unstated, invisable stereotypes rather than outright "black people are evil" statements."

Yeah. It's not that I don't think Tolkien was a racist, not that there aren't problems of representation of non-white people in today's media. It's that I think taking issue with a fantasy world distracts us from solving real-world problems.

CJ,
xturtle on LJ

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panthea
2003-12-30 04:30 am UTC (link)

I must admit, as soon as I saw the Arab-lookin' folk on the elephants, my first reaction was, "Gee, Tolkien, thanks for the positive press." But I'm willing to chalk that up to the racist attitudes of the times and content myself with knowing that we've come farther than that-- at least to the point where there are people who recognize that this is a racist attitude. It rankles (especially nowadays, with all the oh-so-positive press Arabs are getting), but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the work as a fictional epic.

And on a related note, did anyone else get the impression that the bald tattooed (Indian?) fellows were based on the same template as that one guy in Street Fighter?

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	valarltd 2003-12-30 04:48 am UTC (link)
	Um, yeah. I noticed. Somewhere around Helm's Deep in point of fact: swarthy hordes of bestial subhumans menacing the last bastion of Humanity (all blue-eyed and blond). At least the Gondorians had some brunets involved. And I took one look at the guys on the Oliphuants and went "Lovely, Arabs too. I can't believe he got away with this." (Reply to this)(Thread)

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	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 05:41 am UTC (link)
	Eh, it's Indymedia. As for: it turns out that many of the people replying are really no better than the article writer well, see this thread right here on FW. It's not an easy topic to discuss without getting wanky. (Reply to this)(Thread)

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2003-12-30 05:42 am UTC

	This is a joke...right? (Anonymous) 2003-12-30 05:50 am UTC (link)
	I mean, at the end of his rant the guy thanks the "Great Mother" for the "counterbalancing influence the Rap/hip-hop culture has on the youth here in America and around the world." There's no way someone could actually type that with a straight face, right? Right? -skijg, on LJ (Reply to this)

	(Anonymous) 2003-12-30 05:54 am UTC (link)
	Not really on the subject... But oh how many wrong ways one can write 'Saruman' Omega h (Reply to this)

bunny
2003-12-30 05:40 pm UTC (link)

he reason that Western medicine has not advanced to the enlightened technological level as Chinese herbal medicine and why most Western technology is diametrically opposed to all life on this planet, poisoning our air and water and causing widespread disease and death is for the simple fact that the Freemasons and the Church have not yet let go of the death grip they have on each other's throats. In other words, the enlightened knowledge that the church has attempted to destroy that the Freemasons attempted to save and capitalize on with Western patents has turned into a death struggle that has created destructive technological paradigms here in the West that are now being forced on the populations of the entire earth destabilizing life and bringing with them the pollution of the air and water that once existed only in Christendom.

It's the Freemasons! They are poisoning our earth! Run for your life!

*eyeroll*

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	(Anonymous) 2003-12-31 12:13 am UTC (link)
	Dude, no way! My bard had learned to blow things up by level 15! Extremely useful. ;) Suzene (Reply to this)

	leahthegreat 2003-12-31 03:46 am UTC (link)
	When I saw the guys on oliphaunts, I was more reminded of the heart ripping out scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They so reminded me of the guy who ripped people's hearts out. (Reply to this)

maureenlycaon
2003-12-31 05:25 am UTC (link)

Oh, dear sweet Eru . . . not that one again. Although, looking at the guy's rant, I can't help but hear my troll-meter buzzing -- loudly.

To go over this again (and wank a bit myself), yeah, Tolkien was somewhat racist, in the offhanded, largely subconscious way that the vast majority of Englishmen of his time and his social class were. He assumed that European culture was superior to others. He also assumed that Sauron, as part of his need to build an empire, would try to corrupt and infiltrate as many tribes and nations and cultures as he possibly could to throw against the good guys.

Most modern-day racists would have real problems with Tolkien's ethos; it doesn't correspond much at all with theirs.

(End of wank -- could go on for pages, but this debate is too old and stale to be worth the energy.)

Maybe this twit is hoping to parody what he thinks political progressives sound like (though it's more of a burlesque, and a badly-done one at that). Or maybe he's just trolling with no more thought or elegance than a 12-year-old who splatters "Fuck Jews!" or the like on any Net forum. Either way, it bores the hell out of me. I can see why a not-too-bright conservative might want to take his rant at face value and go off on an anti-liberal or anti-PC rant of their own, but it's a waste of time and effort that would be better spend on watering the lawn.

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	malachan 2004-01-02 02:43 am UTC (link)
	My thoughts in brief: 1. Tolkien based it all on the Icelandic/Norse/Germanic sagas. The Nordic/Germanic people are, well, white. Is it any surprise that LOTR reflects the worldview of medeival Northwest Europe? 2. Elves and Orcs are archetypes. Really. (Reply to this)