The West's Cultural Narcissism: An Examination of Tolkien's Orcs

[EvaDK]

The eternal 'wings argument' can actually refer to either Eagles or Balrogs.

The Eagles are their own master (apart from Eru); they are not an Uber service that someone can just call upon to serve. Besides, you can't just drop the ring into Mount Doom from above anyway; the volcano doesn't have an open crater.

As for Balrogs, they do not have functioning wings in the text. If they did, Gandalf could not have blocked the bridge at Khazad Dum for Durin's Bane; it could just have taken flight over to the other side, if it had wings.

Maybe because Tom Bombadil has already the world as he sees fit because he is an incarnation of Eru, and therefore he created the world. That is my opinion at least. I think Tom Bombadil nature is the most controversial topic among Tolkien fans.

My personal guess is that Tom is an Ainur/Valar, who decided to settle in Arda in this form. From human or Elf perspective, the Valar are practically Gods in their own right. We know that Tom predates Morgoth in Arda. His wife is referred to as a 'spirit of the river, lake' or something similar. There are many theories as to why Tolkien decided to include them in LOTR; the character might have been developed much earlier in Tolkien career, just like his Elves were.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I think the whole thing with the damn ring makes little sense. But as in life the important part is the journey rather than reaching the destination.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

The eternal 'wings argument' can actually refer to either Eagles or Balrogs.

The Eagles are their own master (apart from Eru); they are not an Uber service that someone can just call upon to serve. Besides, you can't just drop the ring into Mount Doom from above anyway; the volcano doesn't have an open crater.

As for Balrogs, they do not have functioning wings in the text. If they did, Gandalf could not have blocked the bridge at Khazad Dum for Durin's Bane; it could just have taken flight over to the other side, if it had wings.



My personal guess is that Tom is an Ainur, who decided to settle in Arda in this form. From human or Elf perspective, the Ainur are practically Gods in their own right. We know that Tom predates Morgoth in Arda. His wife is referred to as a 'spirit of the river, lake' or something similar. There are many theories as to why Tolkien decided to include them in LOTR; the character might have been developed much earlier in Tolkien career, just like his Elves were.

But IIRC Melkor was the first Ainur landing on Arda.

 

[EvaDK]

But IIRC Melkor was the first Ainur landing on Arda.

From Fellowship of the Ring: Eldest, that's what I am...Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn...he knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless — before the Dark Lord came from Outside.

So, whatever Tom is, he arrived there before Morgoth.

 

[Ajidica]

My personal guess is that Tom is an Ainur/Valar, who decided to settle in Arda in this form. From human or Elf perspective, the Valar are practically Gods in their own right. We know that Tom predates Morgoth in Arda. His wife is referred to as a 'spirit of the river, lake' or something similar. There are many theories as to why Tolkien decided to include them in LOTR; the character might have been developed much earlier in Tolkien career, just like his Elves were.

My theory is that Tom is an outside entity, like Tulkas or Ungoliant. A being who dropped by and took a liking to the place.

As for Balrogs, they do not have functioning wings in the text. If they did, Gandalf could not have blocked the bridge at Khazad Dum for Durin's Bane; it could just have taken flight over to the other side, if it had wings.

Having wings doesn't mean they are functional wings. Balrogs could certainly want wings of shadow and smoke to terrify their opponents.
(Plus, who says wings have to let you fly? Penguins have wings, but that doesn't mean they can fly!)

 

[Samson]

As for Balrogs, they do not have functioning wings in the text. If they did, Gandalf could not have blocked the bridge at Khazad Dum for Durin's Bane; it could just have taken flight over to the other side, if it had wings.

The only other similar time we are presented with a balrog fight is the assault on Gondolin. IIRC the lord of the Balrogs was fought on a pass leading away, and some elven hero held the pass and so allowed escape off the population? That would have made no sense if the balrogs could have just flown around him.

 

[Lexicus]

My theory is that Tom is an outside entity, like Tulkas or Ungoliant. A being who dropped by and took a liking to the place.

Tulkas is one of the Valar; he just arrived later than the rest.

 

[Evie]

None of those arguments are damning (it's implied Gandalf's spiritual presence, not his physical presence, is the greater obstacle; Glorfindel is locked into battle with the Balrog before it has time to take off: taking off while someone is hacking at you might be difficult.),nor the fact that both Balrog fall (once you're already falling, getting your wings going may be a lot harder).

I am however largely in the no functional wings camp.

Though I'm now intrigued by the idea that what they lack is *instinctive* flight - which given the complexity of winged flight might make sense for creatures that weren't born with wings. It would explain both situations were they may have used flight (the "winged speed" quote), which would be conscious, deliberate effort, and situations where, in the middle of action they did not think to fly,

 

[Akka]

I think Tolkien's white/black, good/evil, superior/inferior dicotomy has a somewhat racist background even if subconsciously. Tolkien was probably as racist as the average guy of his time, so for the average western progressive generation Z people that means very racist, sexist, homophobe, etc, basically as anything happened before 1999 or so.

That's a pretty wrong take on Tolkien's writing I'd say - he's in fact pretty progressive by his time's standards. What he does, is that he manages to express these progressive ideas consistent in ways that are consistent with the mythological frame of the story which were supposed to happen as myths and legends, with sets of values that were markedly different from the days they were written - nobility and strength from the blood, conservative behaviours and so on. You don't read a medieval chanson de geste and expect to find modern sensibilities, it would just feel off and artificial.

In any case anyone not liking Tolkien's work can create his own equalitarian, non-sexist, environmental-friendly, democratic imaginary world, but wont have the same appeal probably.

THAT part should really be taken to heart though.

 

[Evie]

You just pretty much described most of the heavy weight franchises of science-fiction - Trek the most, Wars less so, Who somewhere in the middle.

Their appeal is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Though (to get us back in a way to the OP) the price of that lovely (proto-DEI) banding together is in every case an Evil Empire you can without moral second-guessing band together against.

 

[Evie]

Wars and LOTR share that, it's...considerably less present in Trek where there have been many evil empires but with one exception (DS9) they rarely serve to rally the universe against them, and with even less exception they rarely stay the Evil Empire for more than one generation.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Klingons (though I know they bring them on board later on; ditto a Stormtrooper in later Wars).

Yes, we need a new Evil Empire every generation. In RL, too. One of the big problems with post-90s American politics is that we lost the USSR as the Evil Empire, and Islam hasn't fully-enough taken its place. So the American polity has turned against itself instead.* In 2016 Trump imaged a horde of Mexican rapists, but for 2024, he's gone fully in to Those Other Americans are your greatest foe:

Trump sees American foes, not Russia, as ‘the greatest threat’

Donald Trump sees the U.S. as a “third-world dictatorship” filled with nefarious villains who are far scarier than Russia. How many Republicans agree?

www.msnbc.com

and

Poll: We have met the enemy and it is us

More than half of Americans polled say that other Americans are the "biggest threat" to the nation.

www.politico.com

*The only other alternative is equally unsatisfying, and that is what Global Climate Change has foisted on us: the Evil Empire . . . is us!

 

[Hygro]

Wars happen. You can't stop them, do much about them. Likening Russians to orcs will not bring peace to Ukraine, but refraining from racist caricatures might go a long way to ensure we have less of that rot in the world.

I disagree with all three of your premises.
1) I don't think people are making "racist caricatures" out of Russians in a wide scale. I do think however orcishness is a pretty apt metaphor for the displayed behavior of the Russian war apparatus and its politicians leading it.

2) I don't think the war's existence depends on the caricatures. In fact I think the refusal to address that behavior is what gives machismo-minded war mongers the thought that their enemies are "too weak" to stop them, which is an invitation to invade. So while I don't think calling them orcs leads to an invasion, I do think passivity does in the face of those who agree with first order, explicit measures of strength and weakness.

3) The way to bring peace is to destroy the Russian invasion, which is better motivated by an open hatred for the evils of their invasion and not by mis-ordering our emotions to go "but the people are good at heart as they are anywhere". If you can be 100% committed to the Ukrainian victory while holding your nuance, fine, but it's a waste of calories unless you only have mental RAM and no mental harddrive to switch attitudes when the change from war to peace comes.

 

[Evie]

The Klingon are hardly used to unify most of anyone else, though. And more to the point, their conflict with the Federation is resolvable. There's no inherent "us or them" situation, and in the end peace and alliance between the two states is achieved with both sides able to retain their own cultures and nature. That's rather at odds with the typical Evil Empire.

This is very different from Finn in Star Wars whose character arc is all about rejcting the culture of the Evil Empire, inherently incompatible with the Resistance, and who remain a lone defector from a mostly irredeemable empire. Nor is it comparable with public opinion or politician changing their mind on who The Great Satan is.

The closest Trek comes to an inherently intolerable enemy is the OG Borgs, whose drive to assimilate all make them nigh impossible to cohabitate with, and Seven of Nine is a much stronger parallel to Finn than Worf.

(Yes, I know about the Imperial Remnant in Legends. But that was much changed from the original Evil Empire, and is perhaps most akin to certain events from s2 Picard)

 

[schlaufuchs]

I don't see how someone else's interpretation of his works, no matter how qualified, should supersede the man's own words on the subject.

For the simple reason that the author is not speaking objectively on their own works or intentionality, but is rather speculating on the intentionality of a past version of themself. That speculation will always be distorted - by time, memory, context, hindsight, and so on. In the same way that we can misremember things from the past, or color them differently - take for instance a thing you enjoyed or were proud of in the past which you now view as cringe, or a with a certain nostalgic quaintness, the same applies to an author of a text. If you relate that story to your children with the intent of warning them about following your cringe behavior, and they instead hear in it a story about how cool you were as a kid and behavior to be emulated, an interpretation of your story has been generated independent of your intent, and that interpretation is no less valid. The only person who can receive *the* "intended" reading of your story can only ever be this exact version of yourself with this exact personality and set of experiences. Even should you retell the story later, it will be drawing from an interpretation of the previous telling of the story and its outcomes, and so will have a different intention behind it.

This whole thread has been very silly. The people bringing forward that quote from Tolkien about how he despises allegory and had no intention of any of his work being made into allegory as if to foreclose any metaphorical interpretation of his work is ludicrous. Meaning in language is not fixed. A text's meaning and intention can exist independent of an author's own intent - even in that author's radical absence. Therefore, to hold an author's intent - whether stated or inferred - as sacrosanct, as the final word on a text's absolute meaning, is, I think, a rather sad and myopic way to interact with art and language. Great texts lend themselves to multiple interpretations. Lord of the Rings is no different.

 

[Samson]

The Klingon are hardly used to unify most of anyone else, though. And more to the point, their conflict with the Federation is resolvable. There's no inherent "us or them" situation, and in the end peace and alliance between the two states is achieved with both sides able to retain their own cultures and nature. That's rather at odds with the typical Evil Empire.

In TOS the Klingons were the USSR and were generally presented as irreconcilable enemies. It is only after starfleet got all hippy that they really made friends with the Klingons.

 

[Lexicus]

So the American polity has turned against itself instead.

Validly so; the greatest threat to the American experiment has always been its enemies inside America.

 

[Evie]

I wouldn't call it "going hippie". I would call it "writers developing their vilains at all instead of leaving them cardboard cutout caricatures".

In any event, while they are the archenemy of TOS, I would still argue they do not play the "Evil Empire against whom everyone else is united" role.

 

[Angst]

two points that afaik wasn't brought up on p1 (i'm not gonna read the thread just yet, but wanted to share two things);

- russian soldiers irt the ukraine war are literally called orcs on reddit, also by ukrainian users ofc, so crezth's described usage of tolkien is very concretely factual.

- anyone that gets miffy over analyses like this must remember; tolkien's work can both be great and embody an awful worldview. i like tolkien's stuff, but at the same time, his narrative ranges from the icky-naive to the sometimes quite unfortunate. this goes beyond the Othering and some of it has nothing to do with the mythology it draws from

edit: lmao after posting, i see that there's something hilarious about this thread already having divulged into "do balrogs have wings?" on p5