Are Orcs Evil?

[Aiken_Drumn]

Bottom line is that you should not repaint old paintings with a new brush lest you erase the work of the actual painter. Nor should you seek to edit it to fit what ever is pleasing to your tastes and perspective. Instead you should learn to admire and appreciate the work as it was created and allow everyone to come to their own conclusions from what ever perspective they individually have.

Your view is one increasingly out of step with a modern viewpoint that makes the world around us welcoming for all. Man should progress, not kneel at the altar of cannonisation.

 

[Evie]

And again, nobody in this case is repainting the old painting. Even in cases were books get republished with alterations, no one is reaching back and changing the old print books. No one is taking the old print books away from those who have them. The old art *still exists* ; a new version is being released. Presenting it as "painting over the old painting" is disigenuous misrepresentation (there can be some issues around electronic copies, though).

And that's when people are actually releasing new versions of the old book ; to say nothing of adaptations and sequels/prequels which are even further removed from having any power to change the original art.

Presenting any of them as "painting over the original" is, most bluntly put, a bald-faced lie.

 

[Kyriakos]

Depends on the audience's sensitivities. I can't pretend to revere Tolkien, so I personally don't mind at all.
Imagine someone having written a famous story where (say) some minority is persecuted. Then someone adapts it to a story of CSA-fans being persecuted. Would that be ok because it doesn't have the power to change the original art? (let's assume the adapter honestly believed the story is helpful this way, ie they weren't trolling, and despite the controversy it also found people that liked it).

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Your view is one increasingly out of step with a modern viewpoint that makes the world around us welcoming for all. Man should progress, not kneel at the altar of cannonisation.

A man who would edit and adapt in order to protect you does you no service. For what he is doing is censoring the world you interact in and denying you the freedom to experience it and make your own conclusions. It is better to risk being offended than to be coddled like a sheep until you can't think for your self. And that in turn does nothing but make you ever more dependent on the censor to keep you safe from harm.

The human soul is not something to be coddled and wrapped in a bubble.

 

[Patine]

Putting aside the fact that we are not bound to follow Tolkien's definition of the orcs (if we stand on the shoulders of giants, it's so we can reach higher than they did), especially when Tolkien's own definition in life evolved...

...this explanation of Tolkien's orcs is contradicted by Tolkien's own words and actions at just about every level.



Evil, they may be, but mindless is in every way at odds with what's on the page. They are noted in the Hobbit (yes, the Hobbit says goblin, but Tolkien was very explicit that Goblins and orcs are synonymous in his works) to be technologically adept and creators of many devices that have since troubled the world. They also display an aptitude for strategy and cunning in warfare, and a degree of loyalty to other members of their "clan" (eg, Grishnak returning to Ugluk's troops because of the good lads he left behind), plus a desire for independence from Sauron and his army (Gorbag and Shagrat discuss striking out on their own after the war is over also in TTT).

In LOTR, the Isengard-style industrial spoliage of the Shire is explicitly refered to as ORC-works, too. Not Saruman-work.



Some who aren't bothering to read the foreword, were Tolkien explicitly respond to the notion of the Lord of the Rings as an analogy, and specifically a WW2 allegory with a lengthy answer that boils down to "Oh heck no."

Beyond Tolkien's explicit statement, there's also the fact that he was vehement during the war about how the germans shouldn't be dehumanized (because no one has the right to dehumanize another people; not the germans to other people and not other people to the germans), so the idea that he wrote a dehumanizing take on them, reducing them to footsoliders of evil, would be...strange.

Finally, the *chronology* doesn't work. At all. The Hobbit, introducing the Goblins (again, synonymous with orcs to Tolkien) and the Necromancer (Sauron), was largely finished writing in 1932. Some of the elven stories (featuring Dark Lords, evil orcs and all that jazz) predates even that - some of them were written one whole world war earlier. All of which is...before Adolf Hitler even rose to power, let alone before there were even the first hints of a second world war.

This isn't to say the War didn't have some influence on the writing (although Tolkien's experience in the First one had a lot more influence). But this isn't it.

(Oh, and in answer to the race-species debate: no, elves, hobbits and probably orcs are not species, at least not in Tolkien. Tolkien explicitly acknowledged in his letters that biologically, human and elves are in fact the same (that whole "reproducing and having fertile offspring" thing). And he also explicitly wrote Hobbits are even closer to humans than elves are, so all three, at least, are one biological species. Orcs may or may not be corrupted elves or men, in which case they'd definitely be the same biological species; and even if not, are still apparently capable of some form of interbreeding with humans so either same species or a very close relative)

Of course, in the Modern Fantasy Market, it's not even just Tolkien vs. D&D. The Warcraft Franchise, including one of the two best-selling MMO\'s, by far, alongside Final Fantasy XIV, has Orcs as the, "lead race," (de facto) of the Horde faction, like Humans are such to the Alliance. The Horde also includes such things as takes on Trolls, Goblins, Native American-themed called, "Tauren," a group of Undead called the Forsaken who regained their sentience from, "the Scourge," (which is like an Undead Magical Borg), while the Alliance has Dwarves, Gnomes, Worgen (Werewolves), effectively blue-skinned, horned, hooved, and betailed people from another world called, "Draenei," and they each have a different type of Elf, and a philiosophy of Pandaren (Sino-cutural Panda-people). Although these two factions are often at each other's throats, they cooperate, at times, against existenstal threats to Azeroth (the fantasy world's name), and the game allows the playing of any these races, and all have quests, and potential for heroism. Orcs, in this, are portrayed as clannish, honourboud, with a powerful warrior ethic and a desire to prove themselves, dialed up almost to the degree of Star Trek Klingons.

 

[Evie]

A man who would edit and adapt in order to protect you does you no service. For what he is doing is censoring the world you interact in and denying you the freedom to experience it and make your own conclusions. It is better to risk being offended than to be coddled like a sheep until you can't think for your self. And that in turn does nothing but make you ever more dependent on the censor to keep you safe from harm.

The human soul is not something to be coddled and wrapped in a bubble.

That's a whole load of self-aggrandizing crock to try and make not caring about others some sort of morally righteous stand.

 

[Patine]

That's a whole load of self-aggrandizing crock to try and make not caring about others some sort of morally righteous stand.

It sounds like they're quoting an unattributed source.

 

[Patine]

That's a whole load of self-aggrandizing crock to try and make not caring about others some sort of morally righteous stand.

Did you read my point of expansion on the original topic?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Your view is one increasingly out of step with a modern viewpoint that makes the world around us welcoming for all. Man should progress, not kneel at the altar of cannonisation.

Let's not forget, "Biblical canon" is itself an unfixed concept that changes to meet the needs of the community. What was Christianity at inception, but a messianic Jewish cult? Arguably one of the main reasons Western Church attendance has been declining in the new century is an institutional failure to meet people where they are: if you're LBGT+, or an eco-socialist, or a pacifist, and all the headlines are sucked up by the Prosperity Gospel ilk railing against women's lib and quoting Deuteronomy 20 to justify the IDF bombing hospitals, I'm hardly surprised you'd feel you're not welcome in God's house.

The stories that endure are the ones that offer themselves up for adaptation and reimagination, not cling to textual purity—as the essay linked in my last post argues, Dune provides a thought experiment on where Islam might be twenty millennia in the future. Back in the Oral Tradition, the details were always subservient to conveying the core message. Consider all the ways Shakespeare's plays have been spun and re-costumed to different periods and contexts (and denounced in all-too-familiar terms: "A Black Hamlet?! Outrageous!"). Personally I find the assertion that Middle-earth is so conceptually fragile that it couldn't imagine a broader range of skin tones to be the real smother-coddling.

 

[Patine]

Let's not forget, "Biblical canon" is itself an unfixed concept that changes to meet the needs of the community. What was Christianity at inception, but a messianic Jewish cult? Arguably one of the main reasons Western Church attendance has been declining in the new century is an institutional failure to meet people where they are: if you're LBGT+, or an eco-socialist, or a pacifist, and all the headlines are sucked up by the Prosperity Gospel ilk railing against women's lib and quoting Deuteronomy 20 to justify the IDF bombing hospitals, I'm hardly surprised you'd feel you're not welcome in God's house.

Except that, such people, and the so-called pushers of a politicized, militant heretical brand of Pseudo-Christian teaching, don't get the idea if they're still quoting Deuteronomy. There is no one INHERENTLY barred from seeking Salvation.

 

[Evie]

Did you read my point of expansion on the original topic?

Yes, actually I thought I had liked it earlier but apparently the like didn't register.

 

[Kyriakos]

Tolkien is a non-historically important personal mythology, so due to that I suppose one can be more lenient if they wish - or rather have another argument of the type that doesn't convince opponents but makes the choir nod.
Imo it is worse when such is done to actual ethnic mythologies (regardless of where they are from).
I'd find it weird if black or chinese or other people found their way in an adaptation of The Trial/The Castle by Kafka, but in the end it's of a work that was created in the 20th century; in theory they could be in such a story just fine (despite there being no chance Kafka would write them in). Not the same with something set in archaic times and you have local nobles that are from a different hemisphere.

 

[Plotinus]

Honestly, one of the main characters in Malory's Morte Darthur, Sir Palomides, is not white. And, even more remarkably, his non-whiteness is not mentioned by any other character, ever (although his being a Muslim is). If one of the central works of classic British mythology (supposedly set in the early Middle Ages to boot) can feature a main character who isn't white (and who isn't bad either), I don't see why other such works can't be interpreted or re-imagined to include similar characters.

 

[Kyriakos]

I suppose he came from far away. Similar to Memnon, the actual black hero in the Iliad, who was from Africa and allied to the trojans. Not the same as making Achilles black, though ^^

 

[r16]

there was going to be some picture here , couldn't find it on the tablet . A towering guy fighting some others on a wooden bridge . Looked like a Black guy in what must be called chain mail armour , so maybe the Middle Ages ... It came to me that this was Horatio on the Bridge re-interpreted . Now , the only time ı have ever encountered Horatio was Tom Cruise in the Oblivion . It turns out dying for the fathers' temples is 600 lines all told , Winston Churchill memorized it entirely , it is perfectly suitable for propaganda and stuff and one of the google returns implied rather clearly that if not the Messiah , Trump was at least an Horatio . To stop the hordes at the gates .

we will naturally have disagreements on the hows and whys . Population pyramids of the West are skewed , with the exception of America or whatever . What people want to take as faith in Mankind's ability to rise from non-human practices is a simple thing about how some countries will run out of warm bodies . Population growth is in "coloured countries" . So , like it becomes necessary to add people to the mix . Even backwards in history , to create a cultural bond . Like , what's it to me ?



am pretty sure there were "coloured" emperors . There is nothing that stops Horatio being some Black guy in 500 BC or AD . Africa still remains across the sea from the Italian Peninsula . Not even requiring a set percentage in everything is an issue . BUT this replicating business is not helpful or something .

a certain number of idiots in my country has been led to believe a billion out of eight will soon be on the move because of Global Warming . Made them accept 15 or 20 million refugees/immigrants , willing to move out previous locals to other countries . If you are following the news closely you might have noticed the plan to liberate some dozen million square kilometers from their mostly useless owners have suffered a few setbacks . You have every right to believe in human rights and every right to distrust my claims of respecting them but this is a grenade in your hand and you have really misplaced the pin . It is going to explode someday , with these idiots who believe the only justifiable invasions are those they have made so far and those they will do in the future . The casualty figures might very well turn out to be , well , ... Like if you are not really good at shooting people , perhaps you should be ready through other means ; even stopping it before happens perhaps , by God's Help ?

to question stuff is not Fascism , is not Racism . People can always tell better stories after all . You might really not understand high strategy , ı know ı don't myself but as a perfect dead horse case , do not fail like the Disney's sequel thing . Promise a lot , deliver extremely little , except a culture war tool . And fail even in that with fake claims White Old Men managed to ruin things . People will have their TV and whatnot , a million shows must have happened . A great many of them duds or copycats , but whatever . It can't be THAT difficult to tell something new . Instead of giving more ammunition to extremists . Like , isn't it clear that they will not change their views but it should be possible to keep the young on a proper track ? By making it harder for extremists to claim some cultural elites are after "degeneration" of culture ...