Saturday, December 13, 2003
It looks most likely that Lord of the Rings will be voted the UK's favourite book tonight in the Big Read, which will no doubt piss off Germaine Greer and this guy here. I don't believe that Tolkien's book is perfect and some of the familiar arguments about it are one's I've used in discussion in the past, but not with the fervour that this guy aims for. The problem is that it's the culmination in many ways of a strand of British literature (and I'm already onto dodgy ground here, so I might need Plums to help me out or dash the planks from beneath my feet) which contains all the faults used to damn Tolkien. Absence of women? Well, yes, all the members of the Fellowship are men. I'm uncomfortable invoking Eowyn/Dernhelm because I think that Tolkien messes her character up totally in 'Return of the King' and makes her a twisted misandrist, but there is Galadriel who is one of the strongest characters in the book full stop. But it's the same in the King Arthur stories. I can't remember a female figure worth a damn in those. The events that shaped Tolkien's life were the First World War and university life, both intensely male environments. Is it any surprise that this carried over unconsciously into his writing. If you want female characters from Tolkien, read around the Lord of the Rings. There are the stories about Beren and Luthien, who many believe to be Tolkien and his wife. Luthien sneaks her way into the dungeons of the Dark Lord to rescue Beren and together they defeat him.
Racism. This is, I think, an extremely dodgy area to attempt to prosecute Tolkien, though it's one I've argued with Plums several times. The purely evil Orcs are, in Tolkien's words, "squat, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant-eyes". The enemy is the Dark Lord and he lives in the Black Land. So, the description is being 'matched' to some uber-stereotype of everything that is non-Aryan, and the use of the word's 'Dark' and 'Black' are being similarly misused. All fine and well if, before European society made any real contact with African or Eastern culture, different terms had been used to describe evil things. White was not Aryan supremacy, it was the colour of God, black the colour of the devil. During the day our ancestors could see danger, in the darkness they were more vulnerable to mishap. Sometimes black does not refer to the colour of a brown or yellow or red person's skin. And orc's aren't human! If he wants to hold them to some colour rules then I'm going to claim that LotR is extremely positive to other cultures because it has the powerful Ents who help to crush Sauron and they are ALL BROWN-SKINNED. And the orcs of Saruman all display a White Hand on their shields. Trying to link Tolkien to Nazism by bringing it up only to say, 'of course Tolkien wasn't a Nazi but...' is dishonest.
Luckily most of the people in the comments seem to agree that he's taking his arguments a tadge too far as well.
Racism. This is, I think, an extremely dodgy area to attempt to prosecute Tolkien, though it's one I've argued with Plums several times. The purely evil Orcs are, in Tolkien's words, "squat, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant-eyes". The enemy is the Dark Lord and he lives in the Black Land. So, the description is being 'matched' to some uber-stereotype of everything that is non-Aryan, and the use of the word's 'Dark' and 'Black' are being similarly misused. All fine and well if, before European society made any real contact with African or Eastern culture, different terms had been used to describe evil things. White was not Aryan supremacy, it was the colour of God, black the colour of the devil. During the day our ancestors could see danger, in the darkness they were more vulnerable to mishap. Sometimes black does not refer to the colour of a brown or yellow or red person's skin. And orc's aren't human! If he wants to hold them to some colour rules then I'm going to claim that LotR is extremely positive to other cultures because it has the powerful Ents who help to crush Sauron and they are ALL BROWN-SKINNED. And the orcs of Saruman all display a White Hand on their shields. Trying to link Tolkien to Nazism by bringing it up only to say, 'of course Tolkien wasn't a Nazi but...' is dishonest.
Luckily most of the people in the comments seem to agree that he's taking his arguments a tadge too far as well.
