NP Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage

[jbor]

on 7/1/03 1:23 PM, Dave Monroe at davidmmonroe at yahoo.com wrote:

>> The orcs are specially-bred, less "a race" than a
>> sort of cloned species.
> 
> A "swarthy" race, species, whatever.

What, so "race" and "species" mean the same thing to you?!

There are the "humans" in Tolkien's text - different tribes (if not "races")
from Rohan and Gondor at least - and then there are trolls and wizards and
elves and dwarves and hobbits and the different varieties of orcs, all of
which *aren't human*. "Racism" refers to the way humans perceive and treat
other humans. If you want to turn the orcs into humans ("Africans", Maoris,
whatever) that's your problem, not the text's nor the film's.

> No, these choices, Tolkien's,
> Jackson's, Lucas's

I thought you were only interested in talking about "reception"? Again, note
the attempted sleight of hand from reader's response to author's intention.
The choice to imagine the orcs as human is your own.

best