Is Lord of the Rings Racist?
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- Опубліковано 23 кві 2024
- A discussion of how Lord of the Rings ended up like this. | Buy Symphony of the Sojourn: www.amazon.com/dp/B0CT89VR14?...
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Sources:
Branston, B. (1957). The Lost Gods of England. London: Thames and Hudson.
Chance, J. (1979). Tolkien’s Art: A ‘Mythology for England’. London & Basingstoke: Macmillan Press.
Hardman, G. trans. (2011). The Saga of Sorli the Strong. The Complete Fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda. Available online at: www.germanicmythology.com/FOR... [last accessed 08/04/2024].
Humphrey, C. (1977). Tolkien: a biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Shipley, T. (1982). The Road to Middle-Earth. Allen & Unwin.
Shippey, T. (2004). "Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel". In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
St Clair, G. (1996). "An Overview Of the Northern Influences on Tolkien's Works". Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature, v. 21, no. 2, Article 13.
Stuart, R. (2022). Tolkien, Race, and Racism in Middle-earth. Palgrave Macmillan.
Tolkien, J. (1932, 1934). "Sigelwara Land". Medium Aevum, v.1 no.3 & v.3 no.2.
See also:
Sinex, M. (2010). "Monsterized Saracens," Tolkien's Haradrim, and Other Medieval "Fantasy Products". Tolkien Studies, v. 7, no. 1, p 175-196.
Written and created by K Klein
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Omg is it an epistolary novel?
@@beckyginger3432 Certainly part of it is! If you’ve read Hyperion by Dan Simmons, it borrows some framing ideas from it. One of the characters’ stories is a series of journal entries. I hope you give it a shot!
Never knew that videos could be sponsored by books
TIL
This is interesting
I actually didnt skip this sponsor, unlike nearly all others, which should tell you a lot
Not a big reader, but this still interested me more than some random ass company / service ever could
@@XnoobSpeakable That means a lot that you didn’t skip it! I really hope you give it a shot.
I remember my grandmother saying to me: I don’t care what they tell you in school, Frodo was black.
This shit is one year old, everyone who still makes these jokes is definitely a closet racist
I... I´ll need you to walk me through this epic thing whatever it is
@@zeecaptain42"Oh my science my epic blackerinos ÖÖÖ"
The thing you're referencing is 1 year old now. I'm convinced everyone who still makes this "joke" is a closeted bigot at this point
I think it's okay even if Frodo is white.
while the worldbuilding itself is undeniably inspired by england and norse mythology, i always got the impression that the actual storytelling in lotr was heavily influenced by tolkiens experiences as a ww1 soldier. you can see it in the way sauron, the ultimate bad guy in the story, doesnt even show up at any point, the heroes never ever see him just like how ww1 never actually got to see the ultimate bad guy leading the enemy nation. likewise, while the heros do get to see the enemy army up close, they only get to see them as this massive wave of evil soldiers, they cant know them as individuals, they cant make friends with them, they cant think of them as anything other than an massive wave of evil soldiers. only sometimes will they allow themselves to look at a fallen soldier and wonder what the mans name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would rather stayed there in peace.
thank you for making this btw, loved the video!!!
I feel that the opposite is the case. Tolkien was absolutely uninterested in a modern world, even his descriptions of war are probably taken from the descriptions of ancient battles like Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.
His strict dualism of good and evil also perfectly reflect his Catholic worldview, I would go as far as to say that Gollum is a parody of a more psychologically driven literature, because in Tolkien's opinion humans are not that complicated.
I'd argue that while the world wars had no influence on lotr's plot, it definitely had one on the depiction of war itself. This is especially flagrant in The Fall of Gondolin, where industrialized war is shown as a force much more destructive and uncaring to the older ways.
@@daniel5730 Tolkien (like many of the Inklings) was explicitly and less explicitly very influenced by G. K. Chesterton, an older English Catholic writer, who was primarily a journalist. He was not disinterested in the Modern world, he was critical of modernity per se - and especially _Modernism_ - in the same way as Chesterton. Just because Tolkien asserts elements of myth and history in his storytelling doesn't create some binary where he can have nothing to do with the Modern world. It's true, his battles are very well-grounded in Classical and Medieval warfare- but look at Grond, which much more resembles the kind of Modern, industrialized, specialized weapon that appeared in WWI. I cannot emphasize enough that if you read Chesterton, you will see the discourse about Modernism versus what he might call "common sense" inherent to Tolkien's novels. Hell, Tolkien said that "Chestertonian fantasy" was a "means of recovery" to heal the _modern_ world. He was thinking about now!
And Catholicism, as Chesterton would say explicitly and Tolkien clearly agreed with, is not dualist. Tolkien's world isn't dualist, that interpretation comes from people imposing assumptions onto it because of their unfamiliarity with Tolkien's beliefs and influences. In Arda, as in Catholicism, evil is the privation of the good with no independent being or substance, a twisting of the natural order which is in some sense allowed to happen by the highest good. We _see_ complicated, "morally-grey" characters all throughout Tolkien's work, because - as a Catholic writer who consciously revised his work to emphasize his Catholicism - Tolkien's mortals "participate in creaturely free will" (to greater and lesser degrees), they are not categorically good nor evil.
@@Eronoc13
Let me elaborate, when I wrote that Tolkien was uninterested in modern world I've meant that he wasn't looking to explore it in his works as anything positive or remarkable. He is clearly critical of it - Sauron's force is clearly industrial and there's a whole chapter dedicated to forced industrialization of Shire, through little dialogue we have from orcs we understand that they know about moral laws but aren't following them since they are corrupted.
But I will remain convicted that despite being devote Catholic, Tolkien made Middle Earth much more pagan in spirit, than it is usually thought - all his positive heroes are descendants of noble bloodlines and their appearance always mirrors their inner nobility and power, something that doesn't jive with equalizing morals of Christianity.
And secondly - I still think that the world of Middle Earth is dualistic and that Tolkien wasn't interested in "Morally Grey Characters". It is clear that he valued devotion to duty and confidence in reality of good and evil. Compare the death of two kings - Theoden and Denethor; one overcame his slumber and died in a battle confident and content with his demise, while another gloated in his doubts until he was driven to madness. I think characters like Gollum and Denethor paint us a good picture of what Tolkien thought of morally grey characters.
And lastly - this is where I differ from the author of this channel. While I don't agree with Tolkien politically, I think his insistence on keeping his work anachronistic and maybe even anti-modern in spirit. While I can't say that I don't enjoy Ursula Le Guinn's writing, I found that fantasy that comes from "unproblematic" authors is always enlightenment wearing a fantasy outfit, her stories with fantasy elements could be told in any other setting, but when it comes to Middle Earth the form is crucial to the substance. And overall - it feels much more authentic.
@@daniel5730I'm pretty sure moral naivity isn't tied to any religion in particular. Also you're going quite wild with that gollum theory of yours, it's going to take a bit more then this to make it convincing
Edit: while I think that it's rather obvious that Tolkien was indeed willing to explore and discuss the modern times I agree he viewed them negatively. I remember being quite amused when I realised that while all characters talked in that peculiar pompous manner, the orcs spoke very much normally. But that is just a cherry on top, the more telling examples have already been listed in the main comment
Sam's compassion isn't 'modern', it's timeless.
sure, compassion is timeless, but Sam's existence as a compassionate character is really a product of the time of the novel. Odin never stops and thinks about the perspective of the jotuns, for instance.
One could say that the Hobbits have a "more modern" outlook than most people in Middle Earth, having been raised in comfort and rarely struggling, much like many of the people who espoused modern ideals at the time of Tolkien. I wouldn't include the Men of the West as "modern" people, as their values are extremely different from the Hobbits, more prone to resort to violence and dehumanization of the enemy.
We know little of elves, and distant lords of heaven - our gods are of war, and of famine, Gondorkin, and it is from the north and west it comes. - ‘The times of Eldarion’, A Ring of Far Harad. Probably.
@@kklein He did have sexual relations with them.
Plus, the Aesir and the Jötunn often get along. It is just some specific Jötunns which are dangerous (but not necessarily intentionally malevolent 😈).
@@kklein Why is the existence of a character embodying a timeless, universal, human concept somehow tied to our time when such descriptions and characters can be found most anywhere
I would like to point out, not to dismiss your point but to add to it another perspective, that Tolkien also borrowed a lot from Finnish mythology and language (everyone knows the Evlish language borrowed a lot from Finnish, and Gandalf for instance has clear parables to Väinämöinen), but when Tolkien wrote his books, Finns were seen as "oriental", and a common slur for Finnish people was "China Swedes" up until the early 1940s. So although one of the antagonist groups got their influence from asiatic people, there are "asiatic" (as seen at the time) influences on "the good" side as well. I think this gives more credence to the idea that Tolkien wasn't personally racist, though that doesn't mean that his work couldn't be, and his work has been used to push racist ideas (though this in itself doesn't mean that a work is racist, racist are idiots and don't necessarily understand the works they are co-opting).
Is there any reason why Findland was seen as oriental? In my mind Finland is Nordic and thus very much European. Were there specific cultural similarities between Finland and "the East"?
@@Jack93885 Why Finns were seen as non-white? Racism has never been about anything concrete, and like with Italians and Irish people, determining who is white revolves mostly around who are seen as problematic and "lesser people". Finns were seen so in all over the world. In US it was because of the assosiation with labor union and striking and friendlyness with American Indians. In Sweden it was because of many things, including the worse social status of Finns in Sweden and Swedish ideals for race purity.
Why oriental specifically? Finns share some similarities in facial structures with other Asian groups with things like narrower eyes from Finnish ansestry being a mix of germanic and uralic peoples. Another insult was "mongoloid" because of this (also used for idiots in general and for people with Down syndrome specifically). You can read more on this on Wikipedia: "Anti-Finnish sentiment"
@@Tyhmyri40The Sami people and the language being Ugric makes for this perception on the Finnish.
@@nathaniel3323 And also, the words "Finn", "Finnish" and "Finland" as applied to a group of people were at one point racist slurs referring to the Sámi peoples (who were definitely seen as "other" from a Nordic perspective) and their lands rather than to the more predominantly Baltic people they reference today.
"The land of mostly people who are more or less like us but also some different people" doesn't catch on as easily as "the land of the different people".
@@IaCthulhuFthagn Please site a source for that claim, cant find any result for the word Finn as a slur anywhere. Also Finnish people are quite separate from the Sámi people.
8:30 This bit about how we would interpret the same words differently as written by Tolkien vs some ancient Anglo-Saxon reminds me of Borges' short story of Don Quijote being rewritten word for word by a modern Frenchman and how that results in an entirely different work
Who rewrote it?
@xCorvus7x It was a fictional story by (real author) Jorge Luis Borges, about a (fictional) French author named Pierre Menard who rewrote Don Quijote. I believe the story by Borges is called "Pierre Menard, author of Don Quijote" or something similar.
@@stilltoomanyhats Ah, okay, thank you.
Yes! I love Borges
I'm a little disappointed that this video essay doesn't mention the commentary in the books about how the orcs of Mordor loath their lord Sauron, nor of the conflicts between the orcs, which are described in the books.
because the orcs aren't the focus of the video?
@@MCArt25 Everything I just said pertains to the topic of the video essay you just watched, showing that Tolkien does *not* consider the orcs to be an evil monolith, contrary to what this video says.
This video does not mention orcs once.
You claim that orcs are the focus of the video and that this video says "orcs are an evil monolith" but like... literally what the fuck are you talking about?
This video is about the Haradrim. The Haradrim are humans, not orcs.
@@Ruminations09 You must be trolling. I never said the video focuses on orcs, though it does mention them multiple times.
@@MarshallTheArtist No, it literally doesn't mention orcs once. The transcript of the video is in the description. Press CTRL+F and type Orc, and you'll notice exactly zero results.
Way I saw it was that the Haradrim are seen from the perspective of the men of the northern areas. They are deemed evil and dark because they side with Sauron, but this doesn't mean they actually ARE evil. They are, much as you said in the video, seen through the sort of eyes an Anglo-Saxon would have looked through when thinking of Africa, or China. Strange, unknowable, foreign and usually subversive. This, however, does not make this view true, and indeed, to my mind at least, the scene with Sam, where he looks on the body of the dead Harad man, proved as much. In that scene, we are struck by the realization that these are men, human beings just like us, and that they have been brought here, likely coerced in some fashion, or tricked, into servitude. We do not know whether the Haradrim hate their master, whether they rebel against him, and while I think a Haradrim character would have been awesome, we do not get this in the story since, as you stated, it ultimately has nothing to do with the story as a whole. It could just be me, and my reading of the book, but to me, Tolkien proved himself not to be a racist by that beautiful scene. That he even took the time to write it, to make the reader feel for what could have easily been left a faceless evil thrall, to me speaks volumes.
I will premise this, though, with the statement that Tolkien's world was different from our own, and he was a product of that world, and thus, even if he had not intended any hateful message, it is possible that he was influenced by the prevailing views of the time. I am not trying to say that Tolkien, as much as I love his works, was a perfect man, indeed no human ever can be, but I honestly do not agree with views of him being racist.
Rhey were once colonized by Numenorians who extracted resources. Too bad most people don't read the appendix or books like the silmarillion because of oversimplification
This is something I really wish the Rings of Power show had the actual creativity to explore. Maybe the men of Harad Are just tricked or coerced into Sauron's service/alliance, or maybe they have some real legitimate grievances with the Gondorians and their Numenorian ancestors (who did colonize all over the world and did, thru the later 2nd Age, become ruthless imperialists). Perhaps the people of Harad would even be offended that the Gondorians assume they're misled or tricked into siding with the strongman who promises them revenge against those proud men of the West who lorded over them before (even if Sauron would, sooner or later, prove a nastier master). That's the kind of racism I feel in Tolkien's writing: not a personal, virulent mouth-foaming hatred, but more of a disinterested, early 20th c. English attitude that, for instance, takes the existence of the British Empire as a baseline good, that doesn't think much about or interrogate what life is like for the people who aren't English under that system (sorta like Churchill's outlook in his writings on Empire and history).
@@johnstajduhar9617 it is stated explicitly that the numenorians just extracted resources without care, so it's implied why
Even knowing that Lovecraft was in fact racist even by the standards of his time (though he often wrote characters to be even more racist than himself, which is wacky, and conversely sometimes revealed through his writing a reverence for Asian culture and ethnicities, whether through "sloe-eyed" goddess of beauty Nathicana or the "exotic yet familiar" surroundings in the Crawling Chaos), this is how I prefer to read his works, too- Not as revealing the real author's obscene bigotry, but as reflecting the stodgy white New England attitudes of the characters, which works well with the irony that those characters often turn out to have "bad blood" in the form of ancestors who were cannibals, evil sorcerers, devil worshipers or fish.
@@johnstajduhar9617 I'm pretty sure that it's mentioned somewhere that Haradrim joined Sauron exactly because Gondorians had oppressed them in the past to the point that Sauron seemed the better option, and also that a good number of them still rejected Sauron and instead joined with the Blue Wizards (but obviously those are not the ones Sauron would send to invade middle earth, so they are not the ones that show up in LotR).
At least for me I've always found it important to look at the intent of someones work. When you read the passage in a modern context, sure it *can* be read as racist simply due to the skin colour but you have to ask if that is the intent to Tolkien writing it.
My first thought that comes to mind are svartalfr from norse mythology, literally called black elves and are almost categorically evil in all appearances yet most people can agree that its probably not born from a racist intent but rather a way for a skald or poet to inject some mystery and otherness in their story.
Another important note is the perspective the book is written in which is that of the men of the west. In universe they would lack sufficient knowledge of the haaradrim (or how its spelt sorry) to have more than a almost mythical image of them. I dont think the men of the east are ment as a literal people of pitch black skin etc as we see pther characters with ambiguous skin colour in the west (Aragorn being a prime example), but rather as a skewed retelling similar to the romans describing the brittons as "slow people who live in lakes of mud".
Sorry rant over
Haradrims are basically the Arabs or berbers of northern Africa with the more darker skinned ones being the sub-saharan people of central africa
A video with a sponsor that isn't just a random thing with no connection to the video; a video with an actual fitting sponsor?
Thanks! I really do value that K Klein was willing to take a sponsorship from me as an independent author; it’s something that I hope isn’t just unique to this channel.
@@rowanalexandriabennett honestly, writer to writer, putting ads for your book in UA-cam videos is v smart !! I hadn’t ever thought of that (tho I’m a screenwriter and songwriter so it’s not as cut and dry as books go). catching your intended audience where they usually prowl lol
@@rowanalexandriabennett At least I have never seen anything like that sponsorship before. And it certainly worked in my case: I'll remember your book. Maybe I'll pick it up after I'm done with my current read (One Hundred Years of Solitude).
@@kivadacosta Haha that's the idea! Hope you give it a shot. Any works of yours that I could check out? Shameless plugs encouraged!
@@lonestarr1490 Oh dear; I really dread being the book you READ after one of my favorites. But I'm glad to hear it, nonetheless!
The line about orcs looking like the "least-lovely mongol-types" doesn't really help either
To be fair, the full quote is
" They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types"
I feel like that is 1). Admiting it's an odd way to describe and that it's an exageration of the look 2) I've seen people say that that sounds like the propaganda cartoons they made. Seeing some of them... they look like goblins. And, in the books, orcs and goblins are the same thing
Interestingly, after the war in Ukraine started, Ukranians started to call Russians "orks" (орки). I wonder if this can be called racist
@felixgroove4016
Oh yeah, it’s racist given that the Ukrainians are overrun with Nazism, and actively pursue Nazi policies of dehumanization and extermination against their national minorities and beyond just their Russians, and have a stated goal of killing all Russians everywhere in the world.
Go back to prior 100 years. It’s basically the same as the Hun Panic complete with “stop this brute” ape imagery of the Germans during the First World War.
Both campaigns relied upon mostly exaggeration of a limited number of actual crimes, and a certain number of fictional hysterias to create an image of an inhuman, alien, rampaging monster army.
I was wounded out of the war, a long time ago, and the orc label did bother me at first, but I’ve since learned to adopted affectionally, especially for the strong and martial connotations.
@@felixgroove4016dehumanizing? Ye that sounds racist
Not justifying it, but it is quite likely that it stems form WW1, where the Germans were refered to as Huns, who were a mongolic group. It could be a metafor we're too detached form to inherently know.
IIRC there was a mention of the fact that Easterlings and Haradrim did not exactly *chose* the dark side. They were taken by force by leaders who were corrupted and given power by Sauron. I mean, two of the Mages (the unnamed blue ones) just fucking disappeared after they went to the East, so darkness must be kinda rampant in those places and since we know that ALL humans are good by nature we could assume that shit went south in the South and East.
I may or may not be pulling this out of my ass tho because for the love of God I can't remember where I heard that and was it even canon at all
i THINK this comes from a series of letters Tolkien wrote about the Blue Wizards after the publishing of LotR
@@kklein maybe? I feel really bad that I can't remember where I seen it.
Point being, even disregarding that, in the grand scheme of things, all of humans, heck, all of the world is inherently good in Tolkien's work. At the very least redeemable. Which Sam's line is pointing out, I think. It doesn't make those depiction non-racist but at least makes them bit more palatable, in my humble opinion.
Its maybe too "modern" as you said, but that way of thinking ("Yes, those people look ugly and fight on enemies' side, but they are still humans, therefore they are inherently good") is perfectly in-line with Tolkien's own beliefs. For a brief moment Sam became a vessel of an author. This line made me think for a good week when I first read the books back in the middle school and may or may not changed my world view entirely. Its beautiful. However, as you said, it definitely can be seen as a bit out of place.
Also, can we talk about orcs for a second? I think that the most problematic part of the Legendarium is them, not Harad or East, since, you know, those are still humans and therefore redeemable by definition, but orcs are just kinda... Evil. As far as I know, Tolkien himself had a huge back and forth with the question of "Who exactly are orcs and are they redeemable?" since he was devoted christian and believed that everyone can be redeemed but orcs aren't humans therefore should they be redeemable? If yes, then why we see exactly 0 "good" orcs? I mean, "Men of the East" at least got one humanizing line, while orcs are always bad without exception and THAT I find racist
@@VasiliyOgniovI think that's because what Orcs were to Tolkien, they were the people he fought against during world war 1, wielding machines and poisons, the same ones that caused him to be taken from his ideal pastoralism to a land destroyed by technology and war, if nothing else the trenches decorating the country side, not to even claim they were Germans. I think this is why they aren't humans in narative, why they wield the name of Orco, a destruktive Ogre from Italian folklore, ultimately deriving from Orcus, the god of the underworld and why they hold an italian name instead of the Germanic, he was drawing from.
As for the appearance issue, the "mongoloid" description he has in the book also has a basis in WW1, where the Germans were refered to as Huns, a mongol culture. Then again Tolkien was also the man of his time and he can't escape that.
Isn't this basically how reasonable people deal with these issues today? It's not the people, it's the political environment?
@@VasiliyOgniov I think the idea of orcs as inherrently evil is better understood through the lens of spiritual warfare, rather than race.
You mention his Christian (moreover, Catholic) faith and I think it's relevant here. That there are legions doing the work of corrupted/fallen beings, set against all that is good and holy, is a key idea in Catholicism. If Tolkein ever attended a Low Mass he would likely have recited the prayer to St. Michael as it was recited after such masses throughout near the entirity of his life. It finishes,
"by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell
and with him those other wicked spirits
who wander through the world for the ruin of souls."
These beings that in the Catholic faith are considered to be of a spiritual/(primarily) internal nature are represented in a more physical form in Arda. If you consider Melkor as an analogue of Satan then it is clear how his creations, the orcs, trolls, and dragons are ontoligically evil while the men and elves, known as the Children of Ilúvatar, are ontoligcally good. Eru giving blessing to the creation of the dwarves would also set them in the good camp too.
While I appreciate the intention, I find the idea of applying the lense of race to analyse a myth of ontological good and evil rather problematic in itself.
morþor meant 'crime, violence, torment' in Old English, btw.
It's morþing time
@@burner555Morthing.
Now, it just means Murder...
Couldn't resist.
There seem to be a lot of people who end up at one of two extremes:
On the one hand, there are those who focus solely on their immediate experience as readers, so much so that they don't really seem to think of fictional characters and events as fictional constructs at all. "The Haradrim could have had civil wars," is a perfectly natural thought to have as you read, but those types of hypotheticals can't form the basis of an interpretation that's meaningful to anyone else but yourself, and so they are quite useless in discussions with others. To those who _only_ read stories like this, and never move on to a more distanced approach, it might not be very easy to see stories as part of the culture they're in. They're self-contained things, and that's it. But a literary work will always be part of a larger context, in several ways; it literally can't _not_ be.
On the other hand, there are those who contextualize stories not only to view a particular work in the context of its past or present culture, but also to label it as e.g. "dangerous," "decadent," categorically "problematic," etc. -- perhaps to promote the idea that literary works should be _in service of_ society somehow. This takes many forms, but all have in common a general failure to think of art as art, in favor of some more instrumental approach.
I think it's important to be aware of how you tend to read stories and then find a more constructive balance between different ways to approach them. It's crucial to acknowledge that even seemingly contradictory ideas and analyses can all be true or valid at once.
This was a really interesting analysis. I love looking at the works of past authors and seeing what that work says about them and their time. I don't think Tolkien intended to be racist at any point writing LOTR, but it definitely does reflect how the world around him was at that time, and how attempts at escaping societal norms often come up futile. It will be very interesting to see how the authors of today, writing books with subtle choices that no one would bat an eye to nowadays, will be regarded by people 100 years from now. Perhaps they will live at a time past climate catastrophy and newfound scarcity, where our current careless approach to consumerism will be seen as (for the lack of a more refined term) evil.
Love your videos, keep making them
I am gonna write a book and explicitly gonna say ''This book is definitely meant to be RACIST to every nations under the sun''.
7:11 elephants are mentioned in the Old English poems.
Are they? I'd be interested to see an example of that.
@@ashwinnmyburgh9364 There is the poem "Wonders of the East", which talks about dragons and phoenixes, too.
Any time someone mentions elephants, all I can think of is Hannibal reaching Rome
and telling the troops "Actually, lets just go home, guys" LOL
Just commenting on Sam’s line, what I always took away from the stories were that the big battles etc were based around big myths with a simple lens that represents the old mythology from one point of view. But Sam and Frodo are the non myths that aren’t simple, and eventually forgotten by the myths so they are more real. But 🤷🏻♂️
Tell me why I read the thumbnail to the tune of Uptown Funk
Because it’s vastly superior
I always interpreted the people of Harad as more an analogue to Arab people than black people but I don't think that fundamentally changes much.
They seem like North African/Carthaginian references if anything, given his mythological bent and how he roughly maps Middle Earth onto Real Earth (by design).
@@johnstajduhar9617 ah so still a semitic people then
Something of note is that Tolkien himself believed that the Blue Wizards might have helped out in the Eastern Lands and prevented the “dark” people from all falling to Sauron’s influence. In fact without their help there might have been a ton more Easterlings and Southerners the main characters would’ve had to contend with and their win likely wouldn’t have been possible.
Anyways this does imply he saw them as real people and redeemable. His entire viewpoint actually was that everyone was redeemable and it’s one of the reasons why he grappled so much with the origins of the Orcs, I don’t think he believed anything in the Legendarium was truly 100% evil or irredeemable. It’s for these reasons I don’t think Tolkien intended for it to be racist to be honest and I think even as you put, it’s quite a bit more complicated than black = bad = racism.
Interestingly, that version of the Blue Wizards is from later writings and musings iirc. The earlier versions had the Blue wizards falling like Saruman and becoming evil. His reevaluation of the Blue Wizards seems to occur alongside his reevaluation of the Orcs, and whether they are true Evil or perverted Good, and he never answered that definitively.
Good video. I find that that tension you discuss between the mythological style and the more modern characters is a lot of what gives the lord of the rings it’s charm. Because while the war of the ring is a mythological one, and many of the characters fit as mythological heroes (particularly Aragorn, but all the non-hobbits really) the central characters it’s all about are very much normal people you could meet in your day to day life.
I find this really makes the sort come alive today in a way that mythological epics struggle to.
I think a part you might have missed is the argument that if its a visual illustration of Good vs. Evil then having Gondor be centered around a white tree and mordor being the shadow land makes sense. It keeps things simple and easily recognizable, a trait not often found in some of his writings. Having a dark skinned folk from the south and them going along with Sauron makes sense when you think of it as a visual summary. It's similar to good characters using Light Magic and bad ones using Black magic. Doesn't mean he thought that of all humans but it does go along with what the story has been saying up to this point.
Im sure this video wont be any controversial at all. And that the comments will be completely in good faith :)
Flame War in 3...2...1...
Can't wait for K Klein to be dogpiled on Twitter and UA-cam
I mean, while I may disagree with some of his points, I at least can at least understand that this is his, subjective, opinion on the piece. It is an interesting debate to have. Besides, I cannot in good faith hate on a video which was clearly created with a good amount of research and effort such as this.
You can't "in good faith" think that LotR is racist either so reap what you sow.
@@junfour you can. Why do you think that you can't? You might want to explore that
The fact rhat Tolkien might be racist and in other ways conservative like that is something that i got the feeling for while reading the Silmarillion. After the first coming of Man upon Beleriand, in the first fight between elves, men and Morgoth (the big bad) it's only the Easterlings among the Men that betray the others and fight on the side of Morgoth (though not all Easterlings do) and the Easterlings are explicitly described as dark/yellow skinned.
There's that, and there's also the fact that in the Silmarillion basically all of the characters are either nobility or directly related to nobility. There's no hero that isn't from a regal bloodline, or at the very least the chief of its people.
In general, Tolkien is well understood as being influenced both by his Catholicism and by old literature but.. he was also a monarchist. A monarchist but also an anarchist oddly enough. He liked escapism. He wanted his universe to be comforting. What he wrote, his simplistic morality between the Vala and Morgoth, it's something that made sense to him. His writings about noble races and bloodlines against the corrupting influence of evil, that's just what he believed in. If he has a more grounded story in LotR instead of the Silmarillion, it might be because the Silmarillion was inspired by older texts but... It could also be that LotR was where he felt he needed to meet the public halfway, where he needed to compromise. He didn't in the Silmarillion, he never even published it.
Seems more like the standard pop-USA-🦅-brand cultural supremacism. (Despite Tolkien being English.)
"Everyone has to conform to my way of thinking or they are evil 😈 and must be purged or forcibly indoctrinated. If they completely abandon their culture and accept mine, I will think of them as good, so I can't be racist."
@@katethegoat7507 "A monarchist but also an anarchist oddly enough" Can you talk more about that? Those are pretty diametrically opposed, it's like being a vegan game hunter
@@GavinBisesi honestly I can't because I haven't understood it myself either. Iirc he just said it himself. If I'd have to guess I'd say that it might have something to do with him disliking the idea of states. He didn't like how people associate themselves with abstract countries instead of being loyal to a specific person
@@GavinBisesi From what I understand, he wanted government to function very much like how it does in the good days of Numenor/Gondor. In other words, a "great man" kind leads mostly through example of upright moral character and by charismatic obligation, but without government really being involved with people's day-to-day.
In other words, you give your king a tithe because it is the right thing to do and see that he will use it to protect the kingdom, without there being tax collectors to force you to. You have a beautiful, stylistically consistent home with your community because it is right for the neighborhood, not because of a permitting board. You follow your King to war because he has made a speech explaining the battle's absolute necessity.
It's a completely fantastical political position, and I don't think Tolkien thought it would really work, but it is a comforting dream.
It's been a while since I saw a video from this channel :)
Hi from Sweden, as I'm completing my Erasmus scholarship
I had no idea where this was leading, but I’m really glad I watched til the end. You did an excellent job on this one.
As an aside, I really love your visual language of boxes for quotation, the different coloured text for annotations, and reboxing to building on even more ideas. As somebody who works with the structure of programming languages I’m constantly thinking of quotation, splicing and evaluation, and this pleases me greatly, matching up with a lot to my internal visual models. Also a links nicely to the idea of the frame narrative, which is ofc very relevant to Tolkien’s work (I’m sure this was not an accident). :)
I think so many people think that if tolkien had some racist ideas/influences (for crying out loud hes a brit born in 19th century) you cant like the books. Im maybe what some people might refer to as a radical leftist, even a radical feminist. But I find that most people who think like me absolutely adore LOTR even though they might see problematic sides of it
I think one of the main reasosn for this is that Tolkiens world is so vast and had so many different underlying themes and thoughtfull discussions that we all recognize the depth and care that went into it. It is not easily reduced to those worst inclinations it might have
1. lord of the rings is not racist
2. compound sentences are not run off sentences
yeah that sums out pretty well...
Never got the “I love this thing but will deliberately spread propaganda relating to it” type of fan. Seems like a very convenient thing to be saying when new adaptions just so happen to be coming out that can then claim they fixed the bad bits
propaganda??? lol
So how would you break down the Silmarillion and the battle of Dagor dagrath and the easternlings that allied with the elven kingdoms and one king betrayed the alliance for Morgoth and one choose the alliance?
Title: "Lord of the Rings is racist." Content: "Ok fine it's a bit more complicated than that. But at least you clicked on the video!"
The title doesn’t make that claim, it asks the question
@@hogndog2339 Yeah ok guess what the title used to be, "Lord of the Rings is racist (and why that's interesting)" if memory doesn't fail. You came to the party too late it seems. Here we had another example where a youtuber uploads with a clickbaity title and then changes it later either because of the backlash or for plausible deniability. But you were not to know that.
If we do not criticize the past, we never learn from it
"BuTt iT wAs DifFErenT bACk tHeN"
@@burner555I mean they were, but to claim that we must consume them noncritically, or that we should throw it away as it doesn't tolerante our sensibilities is dumb.
It's not about excusing, or condemning, it's about understanding it, so we hopefully don't make the same mistakes.
If we condemn the past for every little thing we interpret into it, we will destroy history, and not actually learn anything...
@@Tasorius Who is condemning anything? The first minute of this video is straight up gushing about how much he loves Lord of the Rings. If you are unable to be critical of things you love, that is that ACTUAL way you won't learn anything.
also i´m never forgetting his description of orcs as "mongoloid" in appereance. Like...dude!!!
Is the outro music available anywhere to listen to? It sounds really pleasant, I'd like to add it to my sleep playlist haha
An English man born un 1892 might have a problematic view of people from Africa and Asia. 🤯. I kid, but of course this is how would right about these people, but the fact he included such a line shows that he even knows his views are problematic.
Excellent video! Really got the gears in my head turning.
No fictional work can escape the reality in which it was written. We are forever trapped in our respective present. In terms of racism, I can only imagine what it must be like to come across a caricature and get the hunch that one belongs to the group of people it was based on.
I've been rewriting and deleting paragraphs from this comment multiple times, trying to anticipate what the reader will make of it, and I have come to the conclusion that being an author of anything sounds like hell.
Would be really cool to see a video from you on tones in swedish, I want to know how unique it is. You know, tomten vs tomten, stegen vs stegen.
0:57 and here your lord of the rings card is now rejected.
Even just some guy would tell you neither group are a direct one to one comparison.
May I ask why your accent is sometimes rhotic and sometimes not? Or maybe it's word specific? Pretty sure it isn't linking R. I never noticed this before with your other videos but a minute into this one I already can't ignore it.
With other channels I'd just ignore this but since this is a channel about language I think asking you and other viewers about this is fitting. Love your videos and keep up the good work! :)
Great video, and so glad you mentioned Le Guin! She's an incredible writer, I hope you return to this topic and explore some of her work, especially Earthsea (which has, as you know, interesting views of race itself).
I think it's a good analysis.
Tolkien wrote about how there was a lot going on with the peoples of the East and the South, but since he was focusing on Middle Earth, we never hear it.
There's also the implication in a lot of his writtings that these are not evil people per se, but they are convinced and lied to by Margoth, Sauron, and most likely the Blue Wizards as well. Which, might as well be his catholicism speaking. "Those people over there? They can be good but the Devil's deceived them".
When in comes to Orcs, in a couple of lines it implies that they do have some sort of moral standard. I remember on a letter he wrote to his son during WWII, he basically explains that Orcs are like, absolute evil, because of the self-inflicted writing restrictions, the style of the epic, where the enemy is big, vilified and monolothic. I reckon something similar happened with the other manish races.
I feel like he would've maybe explored all that.
So good. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently (for some reason), so this video comes at the perfect time to articulate how I feel about it
I was honestly surprised how much more nuanced Tolkiens legendarium is than just "Evil brown people fighting the good people of the west", all people followed Morgoth from the beginning, and the only reason people of the West turned away from him was their proximity to the elves. We can see how righteous numenoreans become corrupted, and Tolkien makes it clear at multiple points in the books that there is nothing inherently evil about easterlings or haradrim. Indeed, there is the famous Tal Elmar tale told from the pov of Edain of Gondor who were a followers of Morgoth and who were subsequently driven out and subjugated by Numenoreans, it sure isn't as black and white as you'd expect from an allegory of Christianity
One of the interesting things as an author is how much we repeat the stories we've been told without thinking. I'm writing a novel with a pov from a pre-conquest Indigenous background, and to get an idea of what life was like back then, you have to really dig through the history written by the (quite racist) victors, reading between the lines as much as possible (or read much smarter people who did the same thing).
Sometimes I think about how easy it would be to just repeat the much easier it would be for someone to just put together a story from that history, without reading between the lines. They wouldn't have to be a bad person, or to dislike that group. The story might be good, extremely good.
I think this is one of the ways racism perpetuates itself in the absence of hate, and also why representation matters (especially for writers).
Tolkien: famously lazy
@@maydaymemer4660 I'm not sure how you managed to draw that meaning from my comment unless you were alredy looking for it.
“When last I looked, J R R Tolkien, not K Klein was the author of The Lord of the Rings.”
I think to remember another passage, where Sam just entered to Mordor to try to save Frodo in the Return of the King. An explanation is given to the Blackgate, which is not as much used to impede the entrance of enemies to Mordor, as it is for avoiding "slaves of Sauron" to escape its domains
Nice Video,
There is also the other possibility, that Tolkien either didn't want to make the story morally grey or that it was outside his skillset.
This one line with Sam is great, but he isn't able or doesn't want to give us this depth. And this depth is almost everywhere lacking in the book. Wormtongue get's the chance to redeem himself in the end, but Tolkien doesn't allow it, he kills Saruman and is killed afterwards. Just like Saruman himself. They're evil and it seems, there is no way back from that.
Tolkien vehemently opposed the Nazi doctrine of Teutonic racial purity, despite drawing from a common well of Teutonic mythology. That didn't stop him reflecting the common-or-garden racism of mid-20th century England that he was infused in.
Then show where he reflected it
@@vitornunes07 I don't need to - It's the theme of the video you're commenting under.
@@phnompenhandy You do having made the claim.
@@user-zx9jq4pv1w Don't feed the trolls.
I also love the books and am not looking to cancel anything. Saying that, there is another layer of complication to this analysis, especially given the idea of a pure study of mythology separating it/him from modern concerns. Tolkien was an establishment Oxford don writing at the height of the Empire, a time when academic study of classics, history and archeology was pushing to create a narrative and selective mythology of white empire. it doesn't doesn't have to be shown with nefarious or mustache twirling intent, as in works such as The Lair of the White Worm's early chapters, or with overt pseudo-scientific racism of the era, but it's the context. Also, talking of being a soldier during Empire, the Battle of Helm's Deep is so evocative of The Battle of Rourke's Drift that a friend of mine, who angrily rebuffed any of my observations on this topic, gasped "rourke's drift" out loud when we watched the battle in the Jackson films. Our modern reference being the film "Zulu". And that's when I realized that a lot of the context, culture, worldview and reference in LotR go unnoticed to younger fans because time has simply moved on, and less and less of those references now feature in other culture.
I think a welcome addition to this video would have been to mention Kirill Eskov's novel *The Last Ringbearer*, which turns the story of *The Lord of the Rings* on its head by retelling it from the perspective of the orcs.
Your thesis is wrong. Sam’s statement is not modern. It is Christian. And it also is a very common sentiment among combat veterans like Tolkien.
This perfectly puts words to how I’ve felt about fantasy racism for so long. A lot of fantasy communities are huge on historical accuracy, and for good reason, but navigating the differences between historical race relations and modern ones requires a bit more nuance and tact that a lot of people seem to lack. As a result, so much of fantasy writing and community feels very uncomfortable sometimes.
Why should fantasy respect history? Did medieval Europe really have dragons?
@@MarshallTheArtist Wait, what? We didn't? 😢
The thing is that Tolkien's stories are ultimately not about worldly politics but about the metaphysical struggle of staying true to and trusting in salvation through suffering.
@@doomhippie6673 You didn't answer my first question. My second was rhetorical, but my first was sincere.
@@MarshallTheArtist That's like saying 'did medieval Europe have Toyotas?' You clearly don't understand the issue.
Fascinating video.
Also, I might need to read Symphony of Sojourn, it's really piqued my interest.
Thanks! I hope you give it a shot, and any feedback is good feedback!
welcome back kay klein
1:43 ok you're just setting yourself up at this point
That Sam's scene reeks of World War 1 experience, LOTR cannot escape the modernity of its author, so modern criticism applies.
As Tolkien did call Sam the true hero in some letter, I think that one line is meant to imply that the rest of the portrayal of the Haradrim is wrong.
Sam is the purest of all characters, no hint of evil. So Sam thinking that the Haradrim might not be inherently evil is supposed to be seen as correct, while the further portrayal is not. Tolkien spoke out against Apartheid, against racists using his book and against Antisemitism. I would not say he was racist. Especially not as racist as some of his contemporaries (HP Lovecraft comes to mind).
He wrote it how the old myths were. But he still had to show that he did not fully agree with that portrayal, so he wrote in that line.
And the Blue Wizards in the east helping the Easterlings fight against Sauron is supposed to show that they aren't evil either. (Though that does create uncomfortable missionary parallels, as the wizards were essentially angels, so them converting the Easterlings is a bit icky)
Evil can't create, it only corrupts.
I think you over-interpreted Sam's thought. Nothing would've been worse than Tolkien actually giving a voice to the Haradrim, his imaginary representation of a real life people he knew nothing about. Tolkien writes about what he knows, we see the story through the lives of characters Tolkien himself could relate to because they draw from the same cultural source, something that would've been impossible to do with characters from the far south. Literally the most racist thing he could've done is to project (even if they were positive) preconceptions that he had about those peoples and cultures without knowing them, without having lived with them, without having experienced their everyday lives. What he did through Sam is remind all those who meet such strangers from far away lands, whatever the circumstances, to remember that they are human too, to relate to them in some kind of way, to empathise even if they happen to be your enemies.
Edit : Thinking about it even more, I'm wondering if there's actually anything LESS racist than to describe people so different to you in appearance, even terrifyingly so, but to still encourage others to empathise and relate to them.
Tolkein actually wrote an essay on the word you mention, called Sigelwara Land, in the 1930s. in it he speculates that Sigelwara Land could have originally referred to the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of Muspelheim and thus the Sigelwara themselves would originally be a kind of soot-black demons, but that this original pagan understanding was obscured by Christianization and by the time the Exodus was composed in Old English, the word was understood and used more literally. he reconstructs the word as sigel ("sun") and *hearwa ("soot", "coal, "hearth", "roast") and so it could be understood as having a meaning similar to sun-burnt, and with this more literal understanding the term shifted to mean Ethiopia. however there's no widely accepted reconstruction of the second element (and unlike sigel it's unattested), and other scholars suggest other meanings such as "worshipper". regardless, the soot-black demons with flaming eyes likely influenced the Balrogs, while the word *hearwa itself likely influenced the name Harad.
Really good and eloquent video. There is one difference that I don't think you stressed enough. The people of the south in the sagas (the only relevant texts I am familiar with) are no threat. They are distant. They are only present to people who go there (e.g. go to Miklagård/Constantinople to earn money).
Tolkien could in fact have made a mythology where the south was similarly distant and unthreatening, where elves and men spoke badly of them but were not threatened by them. So the people are not just kept in their mythological oldnorseanglosaxon format; they are made worse. Aragorn and other white characters are entirely mythological, but they are not made worse.
Tolkien's source for this is (I guess) not medieval. It is just pedestrian, banal, imperial racism.
Oh god the mental gymnastics
@@vitornunes07 are you mentally out of breath? Then read more :)
Not gonna lie they had me at the middle, then they threw the same ball as I was about to curve back at them haha!
Racist or not, the phrase "black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues" has a truly beautiful rhythm.
I feel the need to point out that the Haradrim most likely draw more of their inspiration from southwest Asia than they do from Africa. While the use of war elephants is known from North Africa's history, their use in war persisted much longer in India. Combine that with the strong emphasis on cavalry the Haradrim field in the siege of Minis Tirith and Near Harad looks more to be a mix of southwest Asian and North African cultures. This would track with not only the historical events Tolkien alludes to at times but also his war time experiences. Gondor is sometimes compared to the Eastern Roman Empire which similarly lost eastern territories until their borders were pushed back almost to their capitol city. And the Ottoman Empire was one of the participants of WW1.
except Anglo-Saxon writers didn’t call dark-skinned Africans “half trolls with white eyes and red tongues” they just commented on their skin being black and speculated it was from the heat of the sun. the idea of that implying immorality or ugliness or an inherent ontological opposition to a ‘White’ Europe isnt really from that period, it comes much more from early modern colonialism, and in a way came to a head with the events and thinking of the mid-20th century which Tolkien was also very heavily inspired by. Tolkien is as much trapped in his own present as we are, and as the Anglo-Saxons were
TL;DR: the Sigelwara were just *there* and barely at that in the Old English literature, no one made Tolkien write them as the servants of Sauron, plus all the other stuff like the orcs and the wood woses and the eastrons.
Tolkien did try to write about racialised people compassionately, and Sam’s paragraph there is some of his best work *because of that*, but he also fucked quite up a lot, and I dont care about whether that makes him a “bad person”, that’s between him and God. I care about the equally valuable lessons we can take away from his mistakes *if we’re willing to be honest with ourselves about them*
I have always view Sam's moment with the death haradrim a rare point of comparison with a person who has never seen conflict between humans, and soldiers that are used to violence. For Sam, that's a death human being in front of him, for the Ithilien rangers, it's just another moment in a conflict that has being going on for ages at that point
Ok fair warning, REALLY long comment coming up! See, I love Tolkien's work dearly, but have often struggled with let's say, our differnt political and ideological views. Now, let's start:
-It is downright silly to expect an Englishman born and raised in colonial South Africa , and deeply indoctinated in christianity, to conform to 2024 standards of political correctness and sensibilities
-Tolkien often makes a point about "clean bloodlines" eg Aragorn's impeccable pedigree, but, at the same time, in the Gondor civil war I think his sympathies were clearly against the Castamiri who wanted a pure-blooded Numenorian on the throne
-There is absolutely no mention of the lineage of men who first turn to Morgoth being black or anything like that
-The black Numeroreans who worshipped Sauron were not called black because of any external physical characteristic
-The Southrons only turned to Sauron because of the threat of numenorian colonialism, which brings us to the next point...
-Tolkien wrote of his dislike of both the Roman and the British empires. By the standards of his day, such an anti-imperialist view was almost extreme! I think he deeply belive in the "civilising mission" of colonialism, that is first and foremost the spread of Christianity and maybe some basic infrastructure. He was deeply suspicious of technological progress, so I don't think he believed Africa missed out out on anything by not having any factories etc.
-His descriptions of other nations is more "exotic" or "orientalist" than racist. Of course hte first time you saw a black person you would be shocked, just as much as a black person would be shocked upon encountering white skinned, blue-eyed European for the first time. There is nothing wrong with admitting that we cannot understand everyone and everything
-While racism takes many forms as time progresses (divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book), race as we understand it nowadays only appeared as late as the 16th century, as a justification for colonialism. Check out the History of England podcast, ep. 301 "Black Tudors" for some very intresting details
Theres also the elements of enviromentalism, which i would say are anti-colonial in nature because indigenous people tend to respect the land more than Anglo Saxons
I mean why cant the elephant riding thing be used to describe people of india i mean those were period of colonialism and europe was becoming rich looting india which was consodered the gem of british crown
The Shire is likely a reference to an English county, but specifically Tolkien’s Old English knowledge likely informed the name. “scir” is the Old English word for plot of land, pronounced “sher”. Credit to thorn in my old English class lmao
Thanks for addressing this, and lots to unpack What of Elves/Dwarves/Men? (The rarity of counterexamples may say something too...) (Admittedly, Orcs vs Elves adds a crumb of complexity) Sexism is another potential topic.
Very good video about an interesting subject. The racism card has been used and abused in media and pop culture way too much for some years now. And although I agree with the video's conclusion, I m not sure it aims at the right direction.
I m not a Tolkien expert, I m just a fan of Tolkien's books (and Jackson's amazing trilogy of course). But from what I ve read, his perceived "racism" wasn't mainly against black or brown people, but against the "easterners". The classic division in Tolkien's work that you touched on in the video, the good-evil and light-dark duality, geograpihcally and culturally isn't translated in West vs South or North vs South, but in West vs East. That is a very important distinction for many reasons. Yes, Haradrim specifically are a broad representation of Africans or Middle Eastern people compared to the good westerners, but I would argue that Orcs who are the main "evil race" in Tolkien's universe are much more of a representation of east Slavs or Mongols of the real world. The great threat from the East, a concept deep embeded in the western mind, psyche and folklore: the barbarian eastern hordes, the emperor warlords and tyrants that want to invade, conquer and subjugate the good peaceful and civilised West (Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, the Ottomans etc). Those that have nothing in common with us (they speak different tongues, they worship different gods, they are the nomadic people of the steppes, they re not farmers like the Shire and Gondor, or woodland dwellers like the Elves etc).
It's no coincidence of course that the orc languages and the Black Speech (the languages of evil) don't derive from african lagnuages but from eastern languages like the Hurrian language (mesopotamian). And of course in contrast the "good" languages like the Westron (English) is part of the germanic language family and the Elven languages (Sindarin, Quenya etc) derive from celtic languages like Welsh, or from Finnish (although ironically Finnish is closer to the mongolian language family than to the germanic).
Also many people tend to view Orcs as black, but they re not. The Uruk-hai are depicted as black. Orcs are mostly shown as pale grey skinned, a colour that is neither white nor black, but in fact is closer to white. It's almost like they are a sick and twisted version of white, which fits perfectly with their origin story: they were elves and men who where taken by the dark powers and tortured, altered etc to make an "evil" race loyal to the dark lord, be it Morgoth or later Sauron.
I started re-reading Fellowship recently and have been thinking a lot about the rasism, and also the strange classism of how families have different personality traits and some families are naturally disposed to leadership (more prevelent than i remembered).
Also love your final point about the more modern aspect with the internal monologue of the main characters. Its that mix of the grand and ancient feeling tale + the intimate and personal that makes these books so special to me. And it's why im never gonna read Silmarillion no matter how much nerd cred I'd get lol
read the silmarillion. read it. read it. READ IT.
@@kklein Ugh I've skimmed David Day's books about the world of Tolkien, that is enough for me
Great video, and made some points that I had never considered before, yet I disagree that the Sam line takes away from the "mythology" reading, since the premise of the books themselves is that they are a sort of autobiography with input from other characters. Those characters whose POV we see somewhat but can't have had input into the writing are ones that Frodo or others spent time with and so could reliably in their own heads construct a representation of events during that period of time.
None of the fellowship or allies talk to the Harad and thus other than the one moment where the Best Boy thinks about them, there is no reason to include detail about their culture or lives, which the hobbits could not have known.
That doesn't excuse things in The Silmarillion, but I guess you just play the straight mythology card for that one.
Anyway, how cool would it have been if we'd got stories of conflict and strife within the other races of men that showed us how they ended up allied with the evil side.
Something that adds another layer of complexity on to this it the idea of a "mythology of England." A country having a strong mythological narrative can often serve as a foundation for nationalism - this is not to say that making a mythology about a country is necessarily inherently nationalist, just that if you want to increase nationalism, establishing a mythology is helpful for bringing the people of a country together, telling them that their country is special or uniquely good or superior or whatever. I think it's pretty clear that Tolkien was not constructing his mythology for this purpose. For one, you mentioned his anti-racism. For another, if you wanted to spark nationalist sentiment, a pro-war message would probably be very helpful in achieving that, which his books don't have.
Having said that, I do think it's still worth looking at some historical context related to the kind of stuff Tolkien was writing about. In the 1870s - before Tolkien's time, but not by so much that it would have been out of the cultural consciousness - Wagner made his Ring cycle (that's not the actual translation of the German name, that's just how it's commonly referred to). Wagner was of course a brilliant composer, though also a noted antisemite. Like Tolkien, he had a general interest in Germanic mythology, especially (but not exclusively) Norse mythology. For an example more contemporary to Tolkien, the Nazis also used Norse mythology, along with the idea of the Aryan (though the two aren't related - the actual irl Aryans lived in the middle east and India) to establish a national identity for the Germans to rally behind. This was after Tolkien published The Hobbit and before he published LotR.
To re-emphasize, I'm not saying that Tolkien's work falls in to the same category as the two examples I gave (which I realize were both specifically in the country of Germany - fear not, I know that Germanic doesn't mean German lol). I'm just saying that that's the landscape of Germanic folk tales around the time, so there are bound to be some similarities, and some of them will be a little uncomfortable. Whether or not his allegation that he read the Völsunga Saga in Old Norse as a kid are true, it's clear that he was fascinated by Germanic mythology from a young age, so it's likely (if not certain) that he chose to write about Germanic myths because they're Really Freaking Cool(tm) and had been obsessed with them for along time, not because of any sort of ulterior motive related to the usage of said myths at the time.
Ultimately this really doesn't change your conclusion at all, it's just some interesting stuff that I was reminded of while watching this video, and I feel like it sort of fits along with the vibe, even if it's not exactly the same vibe. Vibe-tangential, I guess?
I thought the "oliphants" were lifted straight from Kipling.
He was just talking about his visit to Chicago and Detroit.
2:14 That analysis doesn't work because it's inaccurate and too reductive.
Aside from the struggle to be good being more fleshed out in the story than you give it credit here, The Lord of the Rings is not a story of fair, valiant, imposing men proving themselves as heroes but of those living in the shadow of such figures, common folk who happen to be tasked with a mission that asks of them not to be honourful warriors but perseverance. Their most important virtue is to endure and not give up, not to gather mythic armies and slay the evil hordes.
We cannot see the perspective of the foreign peoples because the story starts with and is about people who have barely ever heard of such peoples existing.
This insight isn't missing either because the story is not about finding brotherhood across nation lines but the divine challenge the protagonists face.
one of the more interesting "racism in tolkien's writing" videos.
Two minor considerations please. One is that I wonder if when those with literary training approach certain books, do they apply a bit too much of the present upon those texts. This feels like that kind of content. Not what is in text, but what can we extrapolate from the text for our claims. A second minor oddity I find. Tolkien never wrote run on sentences. Now as a literary tool, the compound sentence may be a product of the past that we don't use much these days, but nonetheless as a philologist this man well understands sentence composition, which I think we don't always appreciate from just a language comprehension. Perhaps just me.
Ngl i never really noticed any racism in the books. I loved your analysis. However, i believe that considering Tolkien's work racist ultimately wont yield much constructive. These aren't books about that. So, while the deliberations are definitely worthwhile, i don't think one should worry about that too much
Makes me think: what if there was a thoughtful retelling/expansion of LotR, from the perspective of the Haradrim, paralleling African or Middle Eastern mythology in the same way that the original story parallels English and Norse mythology? (Does such a thing exist? I’m not a huge LotR buff.)
There is a text written from an orcish perspective under the notion, that said orc is a grunt in something like "Mordor's umpteeth rifle battalion" guarding the mountains of Mordor against racist killers from the west. Very funny to read but I unfortunately can't remember the title....
The problem with retelling the story is that the main idea is not a political story of conquest of any side but a story about staying true to yourself and accepting your fate.
Why everybody forget about Moorcock... he's influence on literature is big too...
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i think a good way to look at it is in that it’s racist because the world that created it is racist, in the same way that even trans people can hold transphobic thoughts because the world that they live in is transphobic. it doesn’t degrade the work itself, but its an interesting part of the metatextual discussion of the work
Also many modern readers see the relationship between Frodo and Sam as romantic, but that wasn't Tolkien's intend as far as I know
Sureeeee it wasn't 😉😉
This isn't really relevant?
"Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend."
I feel like part of the reason why modern readers like to view relationships such as Sam and Frodo's as romantic is because there's so few actual gay representation in media. But at the same time, it's like they're unable to even imagine that two men can love each other deeply without it being romantic, which is just kinda sad? And paradoxically, it's also a pretty conservative worldview if you think about it. It's like saying "straight men can't be emotional and affectionate with each other, so if two guys are doing that, they must be gay".
Honestly Sam and Frodo having a romantic relationship never really made sense to me, But Legolas and Gimli I can see more, But at the same time, It doesn't really matter: They had a close relationship, they were clearly very close to eachother, In my opinion it doesn't really affect the story at all if that close relationship was romantic or platonic. Although, Perhaps, This opinion is based on my own views, of Romantic and Platonic love as being different, closely-linked, facets of the same thing, rather than completely separate things.
its like how in the movie 300 the persians are lagit monsters some look like were references to tolkins works. But that's the point, the whole story is from one guy who lost an eye and wasn't at the last battle cus they wanted him to tell the other greeks. And we even see that this whole time he was telling the story to some soldier getting them pumped for battle then in the sec movie the persians look normal all be it clad in black all the time.
Genuine question. Would this also make ASOIF racist? In essos there are also miths of strange peoples, where would be the difference between the two cases? What could be argued for ASOIAF that couldn't for TLOR?
George RR Martin has a much more modern (you can even call it post modern) worldview and style of writing, so he knows that the representation of a fictional group in fantasy can be harmful to real groups in reality.
When Martin describes people in other continents as savages, dark wizards or monsters, it is always a description made by in-universe unreliable narrators that had little to none contact with those people and may even be driven by a personal agenda or prejudice. Racism is a real problem in ASOIAF world (though not the same racism as our world) and characters that partake in it are shown to be wrong.
Still, I don't think that Martin is perfect in the sense of multicultural representation. For example, The Dothraki are of the cultures we have the most intimate contact in the main series and they all are pretty flat one dimensional characters that rarely ever go beyond the most basic ideals of their culture.
That's interesting. A quote being taken by the author as an example of "re-humanization" of an enemy, and the other, is also an excellent example of extreme exceptionalism. No shadow of doubt in thought of Sam about the "righteousness" of his side. Only lies or threats could lead the Haradrim there, of course...
You didn't even read the books did you
@@vitornunes07 I did, many times. An that's the point - it does not make much sense to assess the books from perspective of real world, would it be racism or exceptionalism.
You keep saying 'black people' when most Haradrim are not black. Only Far Harad has the black people (who are quite unflatteringly described).
Yes. Near Haradrim are clear analogies of Arabs, specifically the Saracens who Western Europeans fought in the Crusades and romanticised as noble adversaries, particularly in the figure of Saladin. Note the Southrons are described in the Battle of the Pellenor Fields as mounted knights wielding curved scimitars, and worthy adversaries of King Theoden.
In ex Ussr everybody loves Lotr, but we often think he meant ussr to be mordor. Not sure if there some truth to it
The use of modern writing styles and techniques doesn't obligate one to work within a modern philosophical framework anymore than writing on a typewriter does, nor does the use of a typewriter or modern writing techniques make it appropriate to evaluate a work in a modernist framework. These are distinct categories that can be employed independently of each other.
Thoughful video, but I have to disagree with both the conclusion and the arguments.
At no point does one need to bring race into the picture for a complete reading of LoTR.
Sauron and Saruman recruiting foreign armies/mercenaries does not make those people, ontologically evil. In constrast to Sauron and Saruman who *are* ontologically evil, and not racially othered.
And by the exact same Sam-quote you brought up, it is unambiguous to me that Tolkien intends to frame these foreigners as not ontologically evil or even different, which to me is essential to racism.
Racism to me is the believe that different groups of people are different in their essence, that their souls so to say are different.
As far as I know this is the only scene where one of these people is considered individually, and in that scene, they are humanized and empathised with.
If LoTR were racist, it would bother to racially other these foreigners. It would depict how they're supposedly bad, smelly, inferior, aggressive, weak, uncivillised etc, but it doesn't do that.
These people aren't antagonized because of what or who they are but soley because they're serving under Sauron.
The assertion that "modern" necessitates a racialized perspective is also one that I find questionable. Regardless of if Sams quote precludes LoTR from being pre-modern, why should a modern work necessarily divide the different peoples in a story into separate races? Why must it necessarily be viewed through that lense?
I feel like that that is more indicative of the readers world-view than that of the work or its author.
Thanks. I really needed to read that.
Tolkien grew up in the Edwardian era. If you read pretty much anything from that time period you can get a glimpse into the world he lived in. Tolkien grew up reading books like King Solomon's Mines and She. It's hard to believe that his worldview wasn't racialized.
doesn't the video directly talk about the fact that lotr isn't racist in the way modern books are?
it also talks about the fact that the book is only as racist as you read it
and it never asserts that there is a necessity to look at it through the modern lens of race, only that there is a tension there, for the creator of the video.
it feels like you didn't engage with the video at all.
@bahaman19901 The Lord of the Rings is a modern book. Tolkien is definitely trying to emulate older works, but he is still writing it in the 20th century. If I wrote a book today in the style of Shakespeare, that doesn't mean my book is not modern.
Tolkien's grew up in a world with very different views on race than today. Vastly different. Today racism is a social problem and generally considered to be evil. But when Tolkien was growing up racism was considered scientific fact. It was taught at universities including Oxford where he worked.
The stories he read growing up like King Solomon's Mines and She are examples of the general attitudes of the time he lived.
Don't forget the smackdown he laid on the Nazis when they asked whether he was Aryan or Jewish.
1:43 CLIPPED
The thing is, reinterpreting myths for modern audiences is literally timeless. Lancelot's fling with Guinevere was added when it was considered a socially accepted, even ideal, form of love. It was then turned into a fatal flaw for the character when that social context faded back away and cheating was once more just considered bad, no caveats, ifs, buts, or maybes. Humans do this incessantly, repeatedly. So I can't really accept the idea that Tolkein HAD to do this in order for his story to be a valid entry as a myth woven in the modern day. He would have achieved this even if he had completely abandoned using metaphor and generalisations when it came to character's skin colours.
I feel like you’re really not that well versed in the greater lore of Tolkien. One thing about the men of the East and south is that although their collectively referred to as easterlings and haradrim respectively as if they were singular unified cultures, in reality they were umbrella terms used to describe the numerous peoples of those far off lands who were linguisticly and ethnically related, similar to how the Romans initially viewed the celts and Germans or how medieval Europeans collectively called all nomadic steppe tribes (turks, mongols, khazars etc) as tatars. There are several easterling cultures that appear throughout the history of middle earth such as the wainriders, a hunnic-inspired confederacy of warrior nomads who rode war chariots into battle and waged several conflicts against gondor, the balchoth, a more mongol-based culture implied to have been descended from the wainriders. However the most notable factions of easterlings were those who crossed into beleriand during the first age. These easterlings were divided between two leaders, bor and ulfang who upon arriving in beleriand, swore fealty to the elven lord caranthir who gifted them with rich lands to reside in. While bor and his people were largely satisfied with their new home, ulfang desired more and secretly allied himself with the enemy of the free peoples, morgoth who enticed him with promises more verdant lands to rule over in exchange for his loyalty. From this point on, Ulfang and his tribe acted as spies feeding the dark lord information on his enemies battle plans and strategies. Eventually when, one of caranthir’s brothers, maedhros led a massive military alliance comprised of all the armies of man, elf and dwarf alike to storm morgoth’s stronghold ulfang betrayed them and turned his forces on the elves while bor and his followers remained loyal to the end, fighting alongside their elven friends, though most of the faithful easterlings would be wiped out regardless including bor himself, who following his demise, was remembered by the elves as bor the faithful. The battle saw all the armies the free peoples had at their control completely decimated, which allowed morgoth to conquer and reign over most of beleriand. Unfortunately for the easterlings, morgoth had gone back on his back on his promise and instead gave them charge of hithlum, a cold, dreary region to the northwest of beleriand which was surrounded by several mountain ranges. It was to put it simply a prison for the easterlings as they were forbidden to leave the region by morgoth. The few faithful easterlings that remained fled beleriand , but what happened to them after that is unknown, though it is hinted that they may have been the ancestors of the men of forodwaith and even afew cultures in eriador. Another important detail to the lore of the east is that it’s actually were both the first elves and men originated, awakening in cuivienan and hildorien respectively, both of which were stated to have been on the completely opposite side of middle earth. At some point morgoth discovered early man, and disguised himself as one of them and promised them great gifts but secretly corrupted them with many coming to view him as a god and began dark worship of him. Many however did not accept the dark lord with many groups leaving hildorien and dispersing across middle earth. One of these groups would embark on a great exodus across middle earth in search of the fabled lands of the west where the great powers of the world resided. These people eventually became the Edain who would settle beleriand and fight alongside the elves. The haradrim also possess a strong hatred towards dunedain of Gondor specifically which dates back to the second age when the numenoreans (descendants of the edain and ancestors to the dunedain) who had initially been great friends with the men of middle earth and shared much knowledge with them, began colonizing places like eriador and harad. The native inhabitants of these regions would be lorded over by the numenoreans and forced to pay tribute to them, and when the numenoreans fell under the sway of Sauron and began worshipping his fallen master morgoth, they then began enslaving the men of harad, with many being taken back to the numenorean homeland to be used as human sacrifices. Even after the downfall of numenor, the haradrim would remained under the lordship of the black numenoreans (followers of Sauron who had survived the downfall) who ruled from the fortress city of umbar. When Gondor eventually conquered the city they established dominion over much of harad, with the southron kingdoms becoming vassals of Gondor, and while much less tyranical and more reasonable than the black numenoreans they still demanded tributes from them. Despite this, the lands of harad beyond the coastal regions were allowed to remain functionally independent, so long as they recognized Gondor’s authority. Unfortunately several dissident vassals launched a rebellion and captured umbar which saw the current king killed. The exact reason for this revolt is unknown its likely because umbar was a major trading hub and accumulated vast amounts of riches. Whatever the reason, the king’s successor quickly retaliated against them, reclaiming the city crushing the rebellion and in order to keep them in line, took the heirs of the dissident lords as political hostages and had them serve as wards within his court. So with the haradrim you can definitely understand why they would join Sauron, not because they actually liked him but to get revenge on their greatest enemy. Another event in the east and south were the rebellions instigated by the blue wizards against Sauron. This conflict is only mentioned briefly, but in simple terms, it saw the two blue wizards travel to the east and South respectively where they rallied the factions of easterlings and haradrim who refused to follow Sauron in a planned invasion of the west and rose up against him. Despite only being mentioned in passing, this event was actually quite crucial, as it prevented from Sauron amassing as many forces as he had initially hoped and delayed his invasion of the west a full 90 years, which allowed the elves and their Allies time to prepare for war. And addressing the whole half troll black men with red tongues, it’s stated that the Uruk hai where the result of forced breeding between orc and man ( best not to think of the disturbing implications of that) and perhaps these half trolls the result of something similar. that or their either just exaggerate misinterpretations of natives or just completely made up. So in short… tolkien was in no way bigoted, and while lotr may seem very racist when taken at face value, when you actually delve into the greater lore, themes and messages of Tolkien’s world, that is objectively inaccurate. There is no way a man who chastised the South African government for its racial policies, who was disgusted by the depiction of Japanese racial stereotypes in wartime propaganda, condemned the atrocities committed by stalin’s regime and sent an absolutely scathing letter to the nazi party in which he tore apart their entire ideology while also showing his blatantly positive views of jewish people (keep in mind that this was when the Germans had conquered most of Europe and Britain was bracing for a full on invasion) would ever support any form of racism let alone incorporate it into his work.
bro we didn't need a full essay, especially one you open with "I feel like you're not that well versed in Tolkien"
@@Thermopolis11Your very reply suggests you did in fact need the full essay
smallest LOTR essay
@@slyseal2091 okay yeah I really went overboard with the comment, and starting it by practically saying "well your not a true fan like me" was pretty dumb, but I feel like I've gotten my point across that Tolkien was very evidently not a bigot.
holy SHIT that video was thought-provoking. It brought me on a rollercoaster of emotions that was amazing
It was a bunch of common sense opinions, a bit of mental gymnastics and no actual in-depth analisys
From the thumbnail I thought the quote meant "black men enjoy half-trolls," akin to "gentlemen prefer blondes," and I was like man, that's a pretty wild stereotype
Also, counterpoint: The hobbits as a whole were direct analogs of 19th century brits, and had many objectively anachronistic elements in a world that was supposed to be (hitherto) prehistoric Europe, like pocketwatches and folding umbrellas. Sam (or rather, Frodo, who wrote the text amd assumed what Sam was thinking) is a modern reader-analog dropped into this otherwise ancient and mythological sequence of events, so he naturally thinks the things we would in that situation; But Aragorn would never think those things, for example, not because he is not goodhearted but because he is of his time.
Ok you've had time to watch the video now you can comment
Woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke woke
(This comment is satire, in case you're not sure)
@@klop4228 Every day i wake up
I don't get the last part. You spent like a third of the video going on about how we don't get information on the Haradrim because the story isn't about them, and the line you cite as 'ruining the illusion' is one that is fundamentally a reminder of the fact that yes, these people are in fact human. It seems like you're taking the story simply being written from a certain perspective as somehow being indicative of xenophobia. If you want to paint LOTR as racist, there are better arguments to be made than this.
Are you telling me that Tiffany Aching is from the same area as Peregrin Took?
Why are the red tongues significant? Almost everything has red tongues, because to taste anything the taste-buds have to be on top of the "skin" of the tongue, and have to be well served by oxygen --> blood close to skin --> red colo(u)r.
(Actually pink) tongues are more easily seen in contrast to darker skin tones, as are the whites of the eyes, hence the old-time representation of blacks with red tongues and bulging white eyes.
@@michaelnewsham1412 ah, nice to know