Things That Annoy You

[Askold]

Wait, where are the anti-black undertones in the LOTR films?

[Even Then]

Well, the uruk-hai are all dark-skinned (iirc the only dark-skinned characters in the movies) and the heroes are all white. Intentional? I have no idea, I'm not gonna make that claim, but it's there at least.

[Askold]

Dude. The orcs are almost all darker skinned (apart from the horribly deformed orc general that steals the scene briefly) but that's a different species and I doubt that it is supposed to be racist. I assumed that you would be talking about the darker skinned tribes of evil men that serve Sauron but even that is mainly just that certain tribes and kingdoms sided with elves while others sided with Sauron.

Then again, decades ago people thought that LOTR was a metaphor for the Great war (and then later it was claimed that it was a metaphor for the Second World War) but Tolkien himself always claimed this was not the case.

[Even Then]

Thing is, a thing in fiction doesn't actually need to involve humans at all to send a message. If a cartoon with talking animals and shit gives a PSA on how people have personal boundaries or something, that's still a message that can resonate with humans, yeah? Yeah.

The same principle applies here; if the only people in the movie with dark skin are either an inhuman, inherently evil soldier race or "evil men" (which I legit forgot about, it's been a while since I watched LOTR) while the good guys are all varying shades of light beige*, then that's not exactly a neutral thing when placed in a real-world context.

And like I said: I'm not saying it was intentional. But here's the thing; fiction can have unfortunate implications even when those implications aren't intentional. Stephenie Meyer intended for imprinting to be seen as platonic and beautiful; in practice, it came across as creepy jail bait wait. Death of the Author is a thing, and if I made a movie where the only people who look Asian are literal goddamn dog-men, it'd still be skeevy even if I legit thought it wasn't.

*if I remember correctly

[Ultimate Paragon]

I don't know about the movies, but there were black people equivalents in the books.  Many of the "Southrons" were very obviously based on Africans, but they weren't portrayed as savages or inherently evil.  While some of them fought for Sauron, they were obviously being forced to do so.

[Even Then]

Well, I'm talking about the movies. Don't remember if the "evil men" were there or not.

[Ultimate Paragon]

I personally disagree with the notion of the orcs having anti-black undertones, but I'm not going to hate on people who just happen to think that way.

[Sigmaleph]

And like I said: I'm not saying it was intentional. But here's the thing; fiction can have unfortunate implications even when those implications aren't intentional. Stephenie Meyer intended for imprinting to be seen as platonic and beautiful; in practice, it came across as creepy jail bait wait. Death of the Author is a thing, and if I made a movie where the only people who look Asian are literal goddamn dog-men, it'd still be skeevy even if I legit thought it wasn't.

Hm. I don't like the idea of using Death of the Author to say "this thing has problematic implications", because by that principle everything can have problematic implications.

Like. If you say "I interpreted group X in this novel as a metaphor for black people" that's a fact about you. You can interpret whatever you like as a metaphor for whatever else. But if you say "The author intended group X as a metaphor for black people" that's a fact about the author, and you can't use death of the author there.

I think there is a lot of racialism* in LotR. But for that to jump from a personal view of a work of fiction to political commentary I have to establish that beyond my own opinion, either saying the author intended it or that it was an unconscious bias the author had creeping in, or something. But I need to talk about the author to do that.


*as in, the idea that races have inherent qualities. Most obviously in, like, Men vs Elves vs Orcs but also in Men from the south and east vs Men from the north and west.

[Even Then]

Fair. It'd be inaccurate to call it political commentary, because that implies intent. I also not trying to say that problematic implications in a work are objective fact or something, and if I came across that way then I didn't intend to. I guess I should've worded myself better, since there was confusion on that.

[Eiki-mun]

I have no idea what anyone's talking about at this point.

This annoys me.

[Askold]

Death of the author annoys me.

Particularly when people use it to claim that a) What the author meant makes no difference and therefore b) because they make a [wrong-bad] interpretation of the text therefore they get to attack the writer for having [wrong-bad] beliefs.

[Even Then]

Yeah, you've got a point about b) behaviour.

[Ironchew]

I'd rather have death of the author than not.

Especially when people like Lucas are going around saying Greedo shot first and Darth Vader had no eyebrows.

[Sigmaleph]

*shrug* You can have death of the author and also separate interpretation from text. I'd argue it's the only consistent way to have death of the author.

That, or you can just kill George Lucas.


do not kill george lucas. or any other authors

[ironbite]

Uh.....yeah I kinda....sorta.....

Ironbite-already....did.