NP Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage

[John Bailey]

>From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
>Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 10:08:51 +1000
>
>on 6/1/03 2:42 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:
>
> > I must admit that when it comes to cultural artefacts I'm not so much
> > interested in "vast majority"-opinions but in the voices of people who, 
>I
> > think, are worth listening too (like Rushdie).
>
>I'm interested in the way political ideas and cultural attitudes are formed
>too. But I don't discount "'vast majority'-opinions" either. I don't agree
>with this implication that 'most people aren't worth listening to' at all.
>

I absolutely agree with this statement, but also think it is one of the 
reasons TLOTR can be considered in light of the 'racist' arguments which 
have been kicking around here. Personally, I don't think that I would call 
it racist per se, but I would definitely start by calling it 'racial', and 
seeing where that takes us.

Listening to the 'vast majority' is really, really hard. But I like 
listening to the people around me at cinemas. I've had a long interest in 
this and like it when people tell me what they hear in a cinema. Not that 
the comments of individual audience members are keys to a consensus, but...

When I saw the first 'Rings' movie there was an audible intake of breath 
when the Uruk-Hai (is that what they're called?) first turned up. One of the 
guys sitting next to a friend of mine (I think he was Thai) swore and was 
vocally angry at this. My friend puzzled over it and discussed it with me 
later. I had already been thinking about these characters; for me, 
considering the film's shooting location and my own proximity to NZ, the use 
of native NZers to make up the orc armies was disturbing. I didn't know if I 
was projecting this. But I'd also just seen Attack of the Clones and so 
Maori armies were becoming a bit of a theme.

But when the Uruk-Hai smeared the white hand print on his face, that seemed 
to me a very coded gesture. Someone pointed out 'but it's in the book!' 
Sure, but I haven't read the books since I was, like, 13. Does that make a 
response less valid?

Why do fantasy and SF stories often feature different 'races', instead of 
different 'species'?

They're racial, alright. So I think we should be able to talk about the 
racialisation of fantasy without necessarily assuming racism (ie that word 
automatically bringing up connotations which shut down debate.) We can 
discuss what the racialisation means, and if it turns out be racist, then 
we'll get to that.

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online 
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963