Iraq and colonized comnig back to haunt...wasn't Iraq...nevermind

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, thanks ...

---  <platypus91 at excite.com> wrote:
>  
> Any relation of the Two Towers to our current Iraqi
> conflict is incidental, at best.  European (and
> consequently American) fear of "savage/heathen
> cultures" (extending to our "formerly colonized"
> subtext) goes back to the days of Hannibal sacking
> Rome. 

Agreed, and then some.  The former was never anyone's
argument in the first place, and, on the latter, one
can of course go back even further, see, e.g., ...

Momigliano, Arnaldo D.  Alien Wisdom: The Limits
   of Hellenization.  New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.

http://us.cambridge.org/titles/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521387612

> So to say that a book which seeks to establish an
> English mythology is racist is self-evident. Of
> course it's racist. But then, isn't most of any
> cultures' mythology? Us against them...

Not sure if I'd be quite so blunt, but ...

> As a "person of color" it bothers me when an author
> characterizes his/her heroes as white, pure,
> light skinned, etc., and her/his villains as dark,
> black, etc. Whether or not the author intends it to
> be racist, for one reading who happens to have more
> melanin in their skin than the rest of their
> classmates, it tends to be a bit disturbing.  In my
> experience people need very little ammo to
> perpetuate their prejudices....

And as a person of, er, "flesh" color, it bothers me
as well.  I don't think anyone here's claiming Tolkien
was necessarily racist, not consciously, but he does
indeed reproduce racist semiotics or what have you. 
Me, I was once as a youngster taken to task by my
mother for coloring a picture of my father bright
pink, but, hey, he did have high blood pressure ...

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