What John Rhys-Davies says is precisely my concern about the Lord of the Rings movie and novel. The entire story illustrates a binary opposition of good and evil, ugly and beautiful, wise and barbaric. It perpetuates a dangerously simplistic world view with no room for contradictions and complexity. Some characters live through internal contradictions - but this is easily resolved by blaming the ring: for Bilbo's and Frodo's attachment to it, Faramirs power trip, and even sushi-eating Gollum.

The simplistic setup of the story makes it easy to transfer it to today's world, and this temptation is especially threatening people who can't or don't want to deal with its complexity. They can equal the evil world of Saruman with "the muslim threat", well in tune with Bush's war on terror. Or, on another note, you could see the ring as a symbol for a simplistic analysis of capitalism - it makes you greedy and evil. The solution is pretty teletubby-hobbit land: where men are men and women are women, where the greatest achievement is to quietly raise kids, go fishing and have a drunk party from time to time. Thanks very much!

Lord of the rings, because it's entertaining and serves the desire for a simple, beautiful world, is a threat to todays global culture. It allows for no crossovers, no cross-fertilisation of cultures, not even a single step out of normality.

I love much of the world of dead white men and women - the 19th century novels, stories that deal with the emotional conflicts of individuals in a repressive society, the nightmarish paintings of Goya, the his/herstory of working class solidarity and anger, the political writings of the in-between the war period in the face of fascism. And I'm learning about today's culture in places that used to be big powerful empires, like Greece, Spain or Iran. Today, we are better equipped than ever to stop "othering" everybody and everything different. So - Lord of the Rings might be an enjoyable movie to watch, but its philosophy is certainly not one to bring about another world.

There's me for months defending LoTR from accusations of a racist/imperialist subtext, saying 'no look, it's just a fantasy world, orcs aren't metaphors just scary baddies!'

And now it seems I have to eat my pointy hat...

looks like John Rhys-Davies is full of shit and telling others therories i found this on another web page  http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jan/08lord.htm


The Lord of the Rings rooted in racism: Academic

Shyam Bhatia in London | January 08, 2003 14:49 IST

An American academic, who teaches at the Warwick University in the United Kingdom, has described J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy as an 'epic rooted in racism'.

Dr Stephen Shapiro, an expert in cultural studies, race and slavery, said the author used his novels to present bigotry through a fantasy world.

Following the release in UK of the film The Two Towers, the second in the series, Dr Shapiro told rediff.com that the books represent anxieties about immigration in mid-1950s Britain.

He said: "Put simply, Tolkien's good guys are white and the bad guys are black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate and a psychologically undeveloped horde."

In the trilogy, a small group, the fellowship, is pitted against a foreign horde and this reflects long-standing Anglo-European anxieties about being overwhelmed by non-Europeans, he said.

This is consistent with Tolkien's Nordicist convictions. He thinks the Northern races had a culture and it was carried in the blood, Dr Shapiro said.

While Tolkien describes the Hobbits and Elves as amazingly white, ethnically pure clans, their antagonists, the Orcs, are a motley dark-skinned mass, akin to tribal Africans or aborigines. The recent films amplify a 'fear of a black planet' and exaggerate this difference by insisting on stark white-black colour codes, Dr Shapiro said.

He added: "Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings because he wanted to recreate a mythology for the English, which had been destroyed by foreign invasion. He felt the Normans had destroyed organic English culture. There is the notion that foreigners destroy culture and there was also a fantasy that there was a solid homogeneous English culture there to begin with, which was not the case because there were Celts and Vikings and a host of other groups.

"We have a pure village ideal, which is being threatened by new technologies and groups coming in. I think the film has picked up on this by colour coding the characters in very stark ways.

"For instance, the fellowship is portrayed as uber-Aryan, very white and there is the notion that they are a vanishing group under the advent of the other, evil ethnic groups.

"The Orcs are a black mass that doesn't speak the languages and are desecrating the cathedrals.

"For today's film fans, this older racial anxiety fuses with a current fear and hatred of Islam that supports a crusading war in the Middle East. The mass appeal of The Lord of the Rings, and the recent movies may well rest on racist codes."

Dr Shapiro said that the trilogy, which began in the 1930s and published in the 1950s, was written at the onset of de-colonisation, when the first immigrants from the Caribbean and Indian subcontinent came to Britain. The Midlands, Tolkien's model for the Shire, was becoming a multicultural region.

A spokesman for Harper Collins, publisher of the trilogy, accused Dr Shapiro of mixing up his dates: "The copyright for The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the series, was 1954. Tolkien would have finished writing the book quite a bit before the mid-50s and certainly the idea would have come a number of years before, given the sheer size of the book. So I think the timing is out.

"A number of academics have commented on Tolkien's work and this is the first time anybody has ever seen these issues in it. Of course, if you look hard enough at many great epics, you can extrapolate what you like, particularly if you have academic kudos behind you.

"A number of people have said that they think The Lord of the Rings could be an allegory for the Second World War, or indeed the first, as Tolkien fought in it, but it was never a view that he agreed with. His great abiding passion and interest came from the Icelandic sagas and mythology, and this was his version of one of those sagas."

Richard Crawshaw, a trustee for the Tolkien Society, said: "There was definitely no racial intent in his work. He detested racism."

Tony is one of us cant you see the resemblance in the photo
our great leaders will crush all infidels
Tony Ork and his frend George Uruk-Hai
will slay all who stand before them
AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Who's next on the PC chopping block I wonder - Led Zeppelin?

We the of Ork Revolutionary Front will have nothing to do with world domination as proposed by the TONY ORK, THE BUSH URUK-HAI or the OSAMA NAZGAL scum

We renounce their twisted teachings

We have Orks AND Uruk-hai members and more are joining every day
We will stop them by fair means or foul (more likly foul)
We sneer at the ring
We slander the weak humans but wont eat them (mostly)
and as for religious fanatics of any religion.... fuck em all!

We have been everywhere Seattle Genoa New York London Thessoloniki but you aint seen us HAHA
We bin there in disguise fighting fighting ...not with blades but with words (twisted) and other things which i cant spell in your stupid human language

Warrugu

A cursory glance at white supremacist websites will demonstrate that JRR Tolkien has long been considered the white racists fave author. The essentialist racism of LOTR is obvious to anyone.

Actually, Lord of the Rings is all about how evil capitalism and industry ( epitomised by Saruman with a 'mind of metal and wheels' ), will be torn down by the revenge of nature, led by our fellow Ents. See how the evil orcs tore down the forests, and then the forests kicked the shit out of them.
The Uruk-Hai are the genetically modified super-soldiers of the new world order.

You can read anything you like into it. Its a fairy story. A racist actor can use it to justify his views like they can use the Bible to justify murder. Also, Hollywood made the film seem more racist than it is. I cringed at the 'Stand Men of the West' line. And there seemed to be more Arabs in it than I remember.

Anyway, he wrote that book while the second world war was brewing. I think everybody thought of Germany as Mordor in those days. And I think concepts of good and evil were easier concepts to think about, although to be honest there was no nation who could be thought of as really good, there were certainly greater manifestations of evil in some countries than in others.

Finally, he wrote it to give England a mythology of its own, and hence help form a national identity. So of course it will be liked by nationalist nutters. The Nazis were really into old German paganism, similar to Norse mythology, with Odin and Thor and all that crew.

But you know, there are lots of good qualities in the book, such as the love of two male hobbits for each other, and the smoking of pipeweed.

Yes John Rhys Davis might have been talking out of his arse, but to say that LOTR is racist is ridiculous. Its a work of fiction written fifty years ago that means many different things to many people. Some believe its a warning about ecological destruction, others that its about nuclear weapons,some that its based on Tolkiens experience in the first world war, and finally some see it as a christian allegory.

I tend to believe what Tolkien said, when he described it as a British myth to replace those Anglo Saxon ones that were lost after the Norman invasion.

Personally i believe that the title 'The Return of The King' is offence to those Elvis fans who are still in mourning for The King!!

Ja, das ist very gut, as a nazi der Lord of der Rings ist mein favourite book in der whole vorld. Tolkien ist of course eine deutsche name, and der dwarf guy ist ein very cool, und indeed korrect, as der immigrants are truly threatening der reich. I haff ein plan in zat I vill raise an army of der nazi elves (all blont of course... ja) und zen drive der orcs out of der reich, und take control of der whole vorld. Under our control der indymedia vill be banned, as der fucking humourless cunts keep deleting mein posts. A sieg heil to you mein friends! JA!