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

[Samson]

I don't know enough about each of these cases to comment, though I will say that imperial Japan certainly got explicitly racist ideas from Europe.
Generally, the degree of racialization going on in a particular example of ethnic strife can be known.

The historical origins of racism lie in early modern Europe, so that essay is an answer in a literal sense to the question "at what point does group bias become racism?"

I haven't read those essays in a while but the basic answer is a combination of a few different ideas was necessary to produce scientific racism. It is inextricably tied up in the development of rational science, the displacement of fundamentally religious worldviews particularly as it relates to humanity and humanity's place in the universe, and crucially the idea of "progress" which allowed Europeans to imagine they were more "advanced" than the other peoples they were encountering around the globe.

I think there are two completely different questions, and we are talking about different ones:

One is "historically, when did the modern understanding of "race", and the discrimination based upon that, come to be".

The other is "what class of things does the term racism encompass today". One could then ask "using that definition, what things in the past would we class as racism". If you are going to include the "othering" that resulted in the Rwandan genocide as racism today, and use the same definition to ask if the socio-ethnic caste system that predated western contact was racist I would have to say yes.

 

[Lexicus]

I ascribe the lack of rich townlands to the limitations of visual effects.

Maybe, but if so I think Jackson missed a trick there - the impact of Mordor's army (or any army that size, really) passing over the Pelennor would have been a great opportunity to show the human cost of the war in a way that would have made more sense than a few scenes of panicked civilians running around Minas Tirith.

Most of the fighting in the battle happens under an overcast sky, and it is clear the picture was subject to heavy color correction, which makes it look washed out.

I really do not like how the film turned the Darkness of Mordor into the Overcast of Mordor. The part of the battle where Grond breaks the gate is how the light should have been for the whole film battle.

 

[Ajidica]

Yeah, RotK was probably the weakest movie as an adaptation, even if it was the most impressive visually and in terms of Fitting In All That Book Stuff.

 

[Lexicus]

Yeah, RotK was probably the weakest movie as an adaptation, even if it was the most impressive visually and in terms of Fitting In All That Book Stuff.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it. I also don't like how they turned the Army of the Dead into, like, the alien weapon in Independence Day but I can understand why Jackson did that. On the other hand, a "change from the book" that I really like in RotK is at the end, when Frodo is hanging on the cliff over the lava, he looks down with this kind of hopelessness and Sam says: don't you let go!

I thought for a long time that this was just for what we might call 'generic dramatic effect' but I think Jackson intends us to understand that Frodo wanted to let it all go and just die right there and with that in mind I think Sam's line actually becomes really quite powerful.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

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.

People definitely are making racist caricatures of Russians on a wide scale, and with little significant pushback to boot. And I do believe orcishness is a tasteless metaphor; it is perfectly possible to criticise and take a stand against violent imperialism without resorting to language which is dehumanising and racistly connotative. I am passionately pro-Palestinian, to the point that I believe Israel does not have the right to exist and the fairest solution to the issue is the utter and absolute dismantling of the Israeli state and the establishment of a Palestinian one in its stead. Yet I brook no use of anti-Semitic tropes to describe the violent occupation.

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.

I never said the war's existence depends on the caricatures? I really have no idea what you're arguing here, or what you're arguing against.

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.

An open hatred for the evils of invasion is not the same thing as racist/racialist rhetoric. And in any case, whatever you think or say of Russia or Russians will not in the least affect the course of the war; an 'open hatred for the evils of invasion' won't repel Russian tanks, a 'misordering of emotions' won't cause Ukrainian soldiers to roll over next time Russia launches an offensive. And I hate to be assumptive, but that last part frankly sounds genocidal. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean!

 

[Gori the Grey]

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

There are a handful of threads from over my years of posting that are in the "why I'll never leave CFC" folder. This one is now one of them, because in it we have people, the same people, drawing on a deep immersion in the details of Tolkien's fictional world and a nuanced understanding of geopolitics. Nowhere else in my life am I going to get that combination.

 

[Moriarte]

Such narratives can be both insidious and harmful, as they reduce complex societies and cultures to mere caricatures or villains, thereby justifying conflict, domination, and the denial of agency to those being characterized in this manner. It's a troubling legacy that we need to actively challenge and dismantle in our understanding of global politics and relations.

The narrative you speak off has also touched down in Russia, a very long time ago. After 30 years of tensions between West & Russia, sanctions, restrictions and othe bi-annual and bilateral condemnations by competing business-formations, Russians ironically understand themselves as Tolkien’s orcs and the N. Americans/Europeans as elves. I don’t think narrative itself is harmful. It’s just what younger people are supposed to do: come up with stupid analogies, paint banners and then run around trying to tell the whole world what an awesome meme they came up with. Capitalist dynamic that hides behind the narrative - that can be harmful, yes. Working out economic differences isimportant. Delineating spheres of influence. Dehumanization aspect will quickly fall when the war ends. Can 3 giant spiders in the jar settle their differences? Some say it’s impossible, until two of them are dead.

 

[Yeekim]

People definitely are making racist caricatures of Russians on a wide scale, and with little significant pushback to boot.

How to tell you don't know much about Russia without telling you don't know much about Russia.

Do you speak Russian?
Have you ever been there (outside of the two capitals, or are you closely acquainted with anyone who has)?
Have you ever been in Russian occupied territory (or are you closely acquainted with anyone who has)?
What is the extent of your direct, unfiltered knowledge/exposure about anything Russian?

There is not one Russia, but several. And few of them...well.
I'll just leave a short article to illustrate my point.

Aimar Ventsel: Bucha was bound to happen

Ethnologist Aimar Ventsel writes about Russian industrial settlements where a real man is considered strong, always ready to strike and never defeated by alcohol. What took place in Bucha, Irpin and other Ukrainian cities was shocking, while it was not a bit surprising, the author finds.

news.err.ee

 

[Snowygerry]

The caricature is a very efficient form of propaganda, its power should not be underestimated nor its use in war neglected.

Nothing undermines dictatorship like public ridicule.

“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled,” Milan Kundera wrote in The Joke, “because laughter is the rust that corrodes everything.”

https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20060209_RidiculeasaWeapon2.2.1.pdf

• To the enemy, ridicule can be worse than death. At least many enemies find death
to be a supernatural martyrdom. Ridicule is much worse: destruction without
martyrdom: A fate worse than death. And they have to live with it.

 

[Sarin]

The caricature is a very efficient form of propaganda, its power should not be underestimated nor its use in war neglected.

Nothing undermines dictatorship like public ridicule.

“No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled,” Milan Kundera wrote in The Joke, “because laughter is the rust that corrodes everything.”

https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20060209_RidiculeasaWeapon2.2.1.pdf

• To the enemy, ridicule can be worse than death. At least many enemies find death
to be a supernatural martyrdom. Ridicule is much worse: destruction without
martyrdom: A fate worse than death. And they have to live with it.

Coming from the country that was occupied throughout WWII and then spent 40 years as forced slave to Soviet Union, I can attest that humour, in all its forms, is a very effective tool of resistance and essential part of freedom of speech.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

How to tell you don't know much about Russia without telling you don't know much about Russia.

Do you speak Russian?
Have you ever been there (outside of the two capitals, or are you closely acquainted with anyone who has)?
Have you ever been in Russian occupied territory (or are you closely acquainted with anyone who has)?
What is the extent of your direct, unfiltered knowledge/exposure about anything Russian?

There is not one Russia, but several. And few of them...well.
I'll just leave a short article to illustrate my point.

Aimar Ventsel: Bucha was bound to happen

Ethnologist Aimar Ventsel writes about Russian industrial settlements where a real man is considered strong, always ready to strike and never defeated by alcohol. What took place in Bucha, Irpin and other Ukrainian cities was shocking, while it was not a bit surprising, the author finds.

news.err.ee

Just what the blazes has all that to do with my statement?

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

So I guess anti-Semitic caricatures are also a-OK?

 

[Snowygerry]

I cannot say it more clearly than the article above :

In Christianity, ridicule of another person is considered uncharitable and can even be sinful, except, one reasons, in time of war when violence and killing can be morally permissible.

 

[Evie]

Comparing someone to monsters is not ridicule though.

Monsters are not an object of ridicule. Orcs are not an object of ridicule. They are at an object of fear (in numbers, for orcs), they are horrifying. They are threatening, at an existential level. They are, in essence, for those who live their life in impotent anger, exactly what they aspire to be, and what they aspire to be seen as. To label them monsters it’s to empower them. Sure, it tells “us” (whoever us might be that they must be destroyed - but that’s not ridicule either.

Ridicule should do the opposite. Deflate their ego, take away their power over us. Show them as object of laughter and mockery. Take away the image of awe and might they aim to project.

Comparing Putin to Sauron is not ridicule. Singing about the precise number and size of male reproductive organs in the possession of Putin and his cronies is

 

[Snowygerry]

Putin is certainly not allseeing, he can barely look over the table

 

[Akka]

Putin his certainly not allseeing, he can barely look over the table

Admitedly, considering the size of the tables, he's extenuating circumstances to not be able to see all over there.

 

[Hygro]

People definitely are making racist caricatures of Russians on a wide scale, and with little significant pushback to boot. And I do believe orcishness is a tasteless metaphor; it is perfectly possible to criticise and take a stand against violent imperialism without resorting to language which is dehumanising and racistly connotative. I am passionately pro-Palestinian, to the point that I believe Israel does not have the right to exist and the fairest solution to the issue is the utter and absolute dismantling of the Israeli state and the establishment of a Palestinian one in its stead. Yet I brook no use of anti-Semitic tropes to describe the violent occupation.

I never said the war's existence depends on the caricatures? I really have no idea what you're arguing here, or what you're arguing against.

An open hatred for the evils of invasion is not the same thing as racist/racialist rhetoric. And in any case, whatever you think or say of Russia or Russians will not in the least affect the course of the war; an 'open hatred for the evils of invasion' won't repel Russian tanks, a 'misordering of emotions' won't cause Ukrainian soldiers to roll over next time Russia launches an offensive. And I hate to be assumptive, but that last part frankly sounds genocidal. I have no idea what it's supposed to mean!

I don't think you understand the stakes here. Not calling a spade a spade is how we end up with enough Americans thinking the Russian invasion is justified, or irrelevant. And then, by political pressure starting here, NATO backs off, and Russia wins or at least takes land and people.

Absolutely 100% open hatred of the evils of the Russian invasion keeps us sending the weapons, intelligence, and operational support that repels Russian tanks.

Whether or not the United States stops Russia from occupying Ukraine is dependent on the sentiment of Americans.

 

[Hygro]

It is easy enough to see this happening in the Ukraine thread on this site; what makes you think our Ukraine threads are so unrepresentstive of the wider discourse on the issue? I think it's pretty clear that people are making racist caricatures of Russians at scale; I reiterate I don't see it as the salient issue in the war or discourse about the war but it is pretty hard to ignore.

Where's the line between what you consider a racist caricature and what I said here:

​

I do think however orcishness is a pretty apt metaphor for the displayed behavior of the Russian war apparatus and its politicians leading it.

 

[Gorbles]

Where's the line between what you consider a racist caricature and what I said here:

​

Because folks aren't constraining themselves to the war apparatus and the politicians that lead it. That's the entire point, and that's always been the point.

We have, in various threads, repeated logic that goes as follows:

"Russia is a dictator-like / dictator-actual police state where people are thrown in prison for saying the wrong thing", and by the same people, "look at these opinion polls from Russia supporting the war, these are obviously trustworthy and evidence that Russians are Bad People™".

Like, how do you even square that? But square that some folks do. Regularly. Repeatedly.

Now for the record, I agree with the former. I just disagree with the latter, logically, because of the former.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

I don't think you understand the stakes here. Not calling a spade a spade is how we end up with enough Americans thinking the Russian invasion is justified, or irrelevant. And then, by political pressure starting here, NATO backs off, and Russia wins or at least takes land and people.

Absolutely 100% open hatred of the evils of the Russian invasion keeps us sending the weapons, intelligence, and operational support that repels Russian tanks.

Whether or not the United States stops Russia from occupying Ukraine is dependent on the sentiment of Americans.

This is pure propaganda talk, and it's an unnerving experience hearing (or reading) it raw.

To paint the enemy as irredeemable, remorseless, unthinking scum, to portray them as both dangerous and paradoxically clumsy and ineffective is a popular tactic among governments to push support for military action. We recoil in horror when we see instances of this in fascist and communist propaganda, but when the Free World does it is not only kosher but also a moral obligation. I look forward to reading people wantonly calling Iraqis monsters and Iranians otherworldly freaks next time the US wants to do a spot of democracy-restoring in that part of the world. I can't wait to see the Chinese portrayed as hordes of pigtailed dwarves when tensions over Taiwan eventually boil over.

You are right. To win a war, to bring it to a brutal conclusion you must hate, hate, hate the enemy so no one has the rational clarity to bring up problematic criticisms; a hyper stirring up of emotions is clearly the right way to combat any misgivings that Our War is not a fight of pure good pitted against pure evil.