Is JRR Tolkien racist?

movies are never like the book they imitate.

and cant a person write about fiction any way he wants without having people questioning if there are blacks in their book and if so how many and how they were presented.


good gravy people! some of you are acting like you've been programmed to question anything and everything as being racist or potentially racist.

does it really matter if he included black people in his books or not? if so why does it matter? is it going to opress blacks in some way? if so how? are his books going to have some profound effect that somehow his books will lend to the demise of humanity as they are considered/questioned as racist?

i cant believe people act like this!



this thread sickens me.

Sorry for saying this colonel but your out of topic remarks about your "Buffness" just makes me have to say this

But...I mean come on man...you got all "Strong" because of Conan? How strong are you? Like Conan O'Brien strong?

Originally posted by FreeMason
Sorry for saying this colonel but your out of topic remarks about your "Buffness" just makes me have to say this

But...I mean come on man...you got all "Strong" because of Conan? How strong are you? Like Conan O'Brien strong?

I started lifting weights when I was about 14. How stong am I? I do dumbell bench presses with 130 lbs...if you must know.

[Edited on 31-7-2003 by Colonel]

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
movies are never like the book they imitate.

this thread sickens me.

ThePrankMonkey

I only singled out these points above as ones I disagree with.

1. Some films are very much as the author envisioned them. The best person to ask is the author, who might actively be involved in the screenplay and production. I do not suggest this is the case in LOTR, of course, just that your generalization is not one that a Monkey should be proud of.

2. I think the topic is not unreasonable for discussion, along with discussion on what is behind the biggest selling and second most popular book series of the past 100 years, the abominable Harry Potter.

If I was the poster though, as you suggest, I wouldn't be basing my question on any filmic interpretations.

That's why I started lifting at that age. I wanted to be like "Conan." And of course, Arnold was the man back then.

Well the big problem with threads, is they never end.

We already KNOW we proved that JRR Tolkein is NOT racist, yet the thread persists, and people still post, no real reason to because short from raising him from the dead and having himself tell us he's not a racist, we've shown he's not.

I don't think Super Christian C.S. Lewis would associate with him if he was.

FM

The persistence of posts would seem to indicate:

1. people want to have their say
2. not all people read everything that has gone before in a topic
3. you like using the royal "we"
4. no-one seems to have linked to any 'educated' analysis of Tolkien's writing on this basis

I guess if we wanted to sit back and analyze all kind of books, we would undoubtedly find some form of discrimination or such.....wouldn't we?

What makes Tolkens writings any different than any other author?

regards
seekerof

FM

I did notice your worthwhile injection of Tolkienisms earlier, by the way.

Colonel

Your impressions of say, Boris Vallejo as against Barry Smith?

MA's getting a bit irate.

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
movies are never like the book they imitate.

this thread sickens me.

ThePrankMonkey

I only singled out these points above as ones I disagree with.


1. Some films are very much as the author envisioned them. The best person to ask is the author, who might actively be involved in the screenplay and production. I do not suggest this is the case in LOTR, of course, just that your generalization is not one that a Monkey should be proud of.

2. I think the topic is not unreasonable for discussion, along with discussion on what is behind the biggest selling and second most popular book series of the past 100 years, the abominable Harry Potter.

If I was the poster though, as you suggest, I wouldn't be basing my question on any filmic interpretations.

ok hold on. it was a generlized comment per se. but most movies that are BASED on books are generally not how they were WRITTEN. this is because of editing, costume design, time restraints, etc.

and these movies are not like the books. similar but not the same. we all know this and thats not my complaint. i'm just pointing out that more often than not books that are translated into movies lose some of what was in the books.

of course tolkien has long since been dead. even his son cant TRULY speak for him as only the author himself has that right to say "this is how i envisioned it" and since he probably never dared dream his books would be made into a trilogy of movies i doubt he had any idea how they should look on the big screen.

secondly it is NOT, repeat NOT the discussion i question i question why the conversation has even come up. these books were written in a time different from our present one. are we asking this in a general sense or are we applying todays society to his books from long ago? if so then nothing could stand up to todays society. and most things in todays society would seem "extreme" (to say the least) to his form of society back then.

but in some way i do question the validity of this thread. is it REALLY this important? if so then please explain it to me. i am not understanding "the point" as it were of this thread.

It was CS Lewis who converted Tolkein.

In his world Black = evil, it wasn't a race issue at all.

Colonel

Not at all.

This is typical of my gracious, complimentary behaviour and decorum with my friend FreeMason. Our conversations show a mutual respect, even though he is often politically wrong. (Wrong, that is, not incorrect).

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
Colonel

Not at all.

This is typical of my gracious, complimentary behaviour and decorum with my friend FreeMason. Our conversations show a mutual respect, even though he is often politically wrong. (Wrong, that is, not incorrect).

Well, you have the patience of a saint. Me? I ain't THAT good.

People, asking about the bad guys wearing black cloaks and such. Well, is it any different from the white(good) Knight vs the black(evil) Knight? White Ninja vs Black Ninja? White light of the Holy vs Black light of the Dammed? Daylight(white) vs Night(black) when werewolves and vampires and other evil things come out?

Or in westerns, the good guys alwyas had a white bandanna and a white hat while the bad guys always had black bandannas and black hats.

Anyways, JRR is not racist, it's just the place he based his books off of was mainly white. As said, if you did a book using ancient africa as your base, it would be all black. Would it be racist? No, just the place it is in has all black, so no white characters.

Of course, what about asian and hispanics? How come no one went "Hey, no asian or hispanic people in the movie that was based off the LOTR series, JRR must be racist against asian and hispanic people." Of course, only seen a small part of the movie, to me it sucked so much compared to the books that I didn't watch the rest.

That post is kinda stupid. There's tons of books or stories that only involve white peoples and that doesn't make the author a racist. Why bashing on Tolkien for that, just because of his fame?

No he is not racist. Just cause there are no blacks does not mean he is racist. According to myths all elves are pale white,and so are dwaves (from what I've read). Alot of movies are out there and there are all black people.

Look at Star Wars the first one was all white (there were a few black extras), and people complained George Lucas was racist so he made Lando Calrissian black. Even so Lando's character is perfect black.

Colonel I think that the Orcs were black and white but that one big Orc damn I forget his name was played by a black man I think.

Actually as he was writing a "Mythology for England"
Why would he include any black people anyway?

If you were mayan, or Indian, or Chinesse, would you have any white people in your mythology?

If you did they would be the "white devils".

So a similar thing is working here, mythology of your past is naturally ethnocentric.

Exactly NC! I guess chinese are racist since all their legends and stories only have asians in them. I guess the Norse legends are racist since all the gods and goddesses are white. You get the point.

People, JRR wasn't racist, the setting of his book series was in an all white area. No blacks, asian, hispanics, all whites. So, is ancient England racist?