Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

S'mon said:

Yup, though I have the original WDs too. If you doubt there is luridness in Tizun Thane then look at the BoWD cover, which depicts the ogre & slave girl encounter.

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If I still have the cover - which is no longer attached to the magazine itself - I don't know where I've stored it. But I had a quick scan of the adventure and saw the harem girls. Who - just to make sure there's no doubt or confusion - have a 5% chance of being houris!

Bedrockgames said:

I don't know what people are calling for. But if they are not calling for substantive change in what is permissible, what is the purpose of the thread?

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It is one thing to analyze something for content deemed problematic, and another to call for it to be censored. But it feels like things are shifting and it is becoming less and less acceptable to creatively engage things that some might see as problematic.

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I consider myself pretty educated, but I have to admit I find this stuff very difficult to navigate. It is like you don't know where to step and what is going to be deemed an issue. And I do think that stifles creativity .

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I think it's fairly obvious what the purpose of the thread is - it's to discuss the question asked in the title ie do orcs in fantasy gamaing display parallels to colonialist proganda?

As far as you, as an author, not knowing how to avoid "problematic" material eg racist and sexist tropes, well that's one of the perils of authorship.

But I think your use of "acceptability" is misplaced. The racism of the pulps wasn't acceptable to people of colour at that time. It's just that few white people listened to them when they voiced their objections. There's an extent to which that state of affairs has now changed, and objections by people of colour to racist tropes are being taken more seriously by a wider range of white people. Are you saying you wish this wasn't so? If not, then what are you saying?

Bedrockgames said:

If someone is seeking to call back to the pulp genre, it may not be to your sensibilities, but I think is leagues different than if he is doing it because he has a disdain for women (and I think reasonable readers can see that distinction and make a judgement on their own about).

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But if the intent is clear, I don't think this kind of element needs to be excised from the hobby (I can certainly see why it wouldn't be in a new edition of D&D, but this thread isn't just about D&D). And I am not saying people have to like random harlots in their tables. What I'd hope is there can be games that have that kind stuff, and their can be games that don't, and people make up their own minds.

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If someone wants to call back to a racist and sexist literature, why is that a good thing?

Or if you think it's not sexist and/or racist, then make that case.

An homage doesn't become in good taste, or cleverly ironic, or respectably nostalgic, or whatever else it might be, just because an author wishes it to be so. Pointing to an author's desires isn't a defence of the work as a work.

Bedrockgames said:

It is been a while since I read Lird of the Rings but just by memory, it seems like that connection isn’t clear from the book alone.

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Huh? The stuff about orcs is all in the books. I've not read any Tolkien letters or biography and have no real interest in doing so. But it's not rocket science to read a book in which (i) blood and inheritance are central obsessions and (ii) the heroic types are from "the west" and predominantly white and (iii) the largely nameless hordes of evil are dark-skinned, bandy-legged and scimitar wielding, and notice that those tropes have fairly obvious racist overtones.

Bedrockgames said:

With JRR Tolkien, I think it is even more murky because in most accounts I’ve read of him personally he fidnt seem particularly racist by the standards of the time. Again though I could be missing something.

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Bedrockgames said:

I am just saying, can see where someone might think he is invoking something else, or simply drawing on the shape for convenience/aesthetics, without any thought that it is meant to the group of people it might be associated with.

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This is why - like [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - I am not interested in JRRT's mental states. I'm not trying to decide whether or not he was a racist. I am talking about his works, which - I think quite obviously - draw upon and reproduce tropes of dark-skinned scimitar-wielding vicious and violent hordes.

I mean, perhaps for convenience and without any thought about it, JRRT decided that describing his villains as dark-skinned and "slanty eyed" would clearly evoke a recognition of their villainy in his audience. But how is that a refutation of the claim that he is drawing on racist tropes that evoke racist ideas? It's an acknowledgement of that very fact!

Bedrockgames said:

I think we are establishing guidelines that are well intentioned but maybe misguided. I can totally understand trying to eliminate unsavory and racist themes or concepts from one's work (I do that myself, I don't want to be racist toward anyone). But when we start looking for things that are not immediately obvious unless you dive into the history of a genre, then I think it gets a lot sketchier.

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Any trope that comes from a culture is going to have traces of something bad from that culture initially. How pure do we need to make every trope?

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And one of the larger problems is it feels like the content isn't getting better or more interesting, it is just getting cleaner and less problematic.

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I've honed in on the sentences because I'm trying to identify what you are actually claiming.

It seems that you are saying eliminating racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) tropes will make fiction less interesting. If that is your claim, maybe you could make it a bit more clearly and provide some reasons. If that's not your claim, and if the question How pure do we need to make every trope? is intended as a genuine question rather than a rhetorical one, then can you clarify what you are claiming and what you are puzzled about? And what is misguided about trying to avoid certain tropes that are evocative of racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) ideas?

lowkey13 said:

Allow me to quote my earlier post-




Before even getting into issues of intent, I think the issue with the conversation is when you start labeling a text as "racist." A text might have racist themes, a text might reflect the broader racism of the culture of the time, a text might have racist stereotypes, and so on, but the text itself isn't racist.


And because of that, the intent of the author really doesn't matter in terms of what the text contains.* And what I was getting to above, is that a lot of people end up getting heated about these subjects because they adopt the following logical analysis:

1. If a person shows that the text has racist stereotypes, then that means they are saying the author is racist; and
2. I don't want the author to be racist, therefore I will demand proof that the author intended that the text be racist; and
3. Absent compelling and unequivocal proof that the author was a racist** then the author couldn't have intended the text to be racist; therefore
4. The text doesn't have racist stereotypes.

Which is why these discussions are rarely fruitful, and often heated.



*To be clear, since people often misunderstand each other, I completely agree with you that, inter alia, LoTR contains some racist stereotypes, and you have accurately quoted them.

**Assumedly, either a) twiddling their mustache while saying, "Ima racist and I like to write racist stuff," or b) being HP Lovecraft.

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I don’t feel the reasons you listed explain the reaction from the other side of the debate. I think there are just genuinely different approaches to interpreting this stuff going on. Part of our interpretation of text is the authors intent. It seems so strange to me that we would entirely divorce the author from the text that way. Like I said before, it isn’t the only thing that matters. But whenever you read something a person wrote, a part of your brain tried to decipher the intent behind the literal words. That is a really important part if communication, otherwise we would take everything written literally. If you fail to understand intent you can miss humor, irony, etc. in the case of racism you can take a statement that isn’t meant to be racist and cast it as racist. That doesn’t mean it still couldn’t be racist. A person might not mean to be racist, and still say something racist or employ a racist concept. But none of this stuff rests in a vacuum divorced from intent in my mind..

pemerton said:

I think it's fairly obvious what the purpose of the thread is - it's to discuss the question asked in the title ie do orcs in fantasy gamaing display parallels to colonialist proganda?

As far as you, as an author, not knowing how to avoid "problematic" material eg racist and sexist tropes, well that's one of the perils of authorship.

But I think your use of "acceptability" is misplaced. The racism of the pulps wasn't acceptable to people of colour at that time. It's just that few white people listened to them when they voiced their objections. There's an extent to which that state of affairs has now changed, and objections by people of colour to racist tropes are being taken more seriously by a wider range of white people. Are you saying you wish this wasn't so? If not, then what are you saying?

If someone wants to call back to a racist and sexist literature, why is that a good thing?

Or if you think it's not sexist and/or racist, then make that case.

An homage doesn't become in good taste, or cleverly ironic, or respectably nostalgic, or whatever else it might be, just because an author wishes it to be so. Pointing to an author's desires isn't a defence of the work as a work.

Huh? The stuff about orcs is all in the books. I've not read any Tolkien letters or biography and have no real interest in doing so. But it's not rocket science to read a book in which (i) blood and inheritance are central obsessions and (ii) the heroic types are from "the west" and predominantly white and (iii) the largely nameless hordes of evil are dark-skinned, bandy-legged and scimitar wielding, and notice that those tropes have fairly obvious racist overtones.


This is why - like [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - I am not interested in JRRT's mental states. I'm not trying to decide whether or not he was a racist. I am talking about his works, which - I think quite obviously - draw upon and reproduce tropes of dark-skinned scimitar-wielding vicious and violent hordes.

I mean, perhaps for convenience and without any thought about it, JRRT decided that describing his villains as dark-skinned and "slanty eyed" would clearly evoke a recognition of their villainy in his audience. But how is that a refutation of the claim that he is drawing on racist tropes that evoke racist ideas? It's an acknowledgement of that very fact!

I've honed in on the sentences because I'm trying to identify what you are actually claiming.

It seems that you are saying eliminating racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) tropes will make fiction less interesting. If that is your claim, maybe you could make it a bit more clearly and provide some reasons. If that's not your claim, and if the question How pure do we need to make every trope? is intended as a genuine question rather than a rhetorical one, then can you clarify what you are claiming and what you are puzzled about? And what is misguided about trying to avoid certain tropes that are evocative of racist (perhaps also sexist, etc) ideas?

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I feel like you are putting words in my mouth. I am saying people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set. Further I think some of what people are identifying as colonialist or racist is only so under a deep microscope. I think those kinds of tropes are very different from more pronounced and clear examples of racism. It is like when critics used to call all kinds of movies fascist (just because the hero used a gun or something). To me it feels like we can lose tropes that are not really a problem and in the process diminish the power of important words like Racism.

[MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] - I've worked out which adventure I was thinking of. Not The Lichway, and not Halls, but Pool of the Standing Stones.

Braken the LE cleric "has had a special suit of plate forged which allows the molestation of females without removal". By default he is in "the fur-draped four poster bed . . . with one of the village maidens". Fully armoured, natch, due to his armourer's ingenious design.

Meanwhile in the "Boudoir Area" (cf "Braken's Bedroom") we have Prisilla the LE female MU (her sex is called out expressly; Braken's is left to be inferred from pronouns). She is "sually to be found in [her] bed - sometimes but not always alone".

It's almost like there's some sort of recurring patern here . . . maybe even a trope . . .

Bedrockgames said:

people disagree on what tropes are racist or colonialist, and I am wary of where that bar is being set.

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To me it feels like we can lose tropes that are not really a problem and in the process diminish the power of important words like Racism.

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And to other people - particular those who actually suffer under those tropes - it may feel like you aren't noticing, or perhaps don't care about, what they are acutely aware of.

How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it won't be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.

I would also add - you have said more than once that you don't have a view about JRRT's orcs, in response to others who are telling you that they think the matter is pretty clear-cut. What are you inviting those who think it is clear to do in response to your professed uncertainty? Wait for you to make up your mind? Change their minds? Or what?

pemerton said:

And to other people - particular those who actually suffer under those tropes - it may feel like you aren't noticing, or perhaps don't care about, what they are acutely aware of.

How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it won't be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.

I would also add - you have said more than once that you don't have a view about JRRT's orcs, in response to others who are telling you that they think the matter is pretty clear-cut. What are you inviting those who think it is clear to do in response to your professed uncertainty? Wait for you to make up your mind? Change their minds? Or what?

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I don’t think you speak for everyonecaffected by tropes, there are problematic tropes I am personally impacted by, and my responses to them may not be what people expect. When I have asked people about these kinds of topics, I get a range of responses. I think we should certainly talk to everyone impacted by stuff, but we can still make our own decisions about whether something is in fact a problem. Sometimes there is a problem, sometimes we are finding one that isn’t there, sometimes we make a mountain out of a mole hill.

My point about Tolkien is what is said: I can see how people would have genuinely different reactions and interpretations. I personally would lean toward saying it is on the cusp.

*Deleted by user*

lowkey13 said:

I'm going to be very honest with you.

I think it might be helpful for you to explore why you just have a "genuinely different approach[] to interpreting this stuff[.]"

Really think about it.

Because a lot of this is pretty clear cut.

In the end, you have to make peace with certain things. I remain a huge H.P. Lovecraft fan, and I always will be. I love 1e, despite the many ways it reflects its times (esp. wrt. causal misogyny). Heck, I will always think Chinatown is a masterpiece. And it still hurts when I realize that something I loved uncritically has ... well, issues.

But I start by listening and acknowledging the issues (whether its in the text, with the author, or both) instead of leaping to defend something and tying myself into knots about exactly how much intent there was for "swarthy" and "slant-eyed" and "Mongol-types."

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I think you are projecting things on to what I am saying. When it comes to Livecraft, I hugely agree: he was very racist. I still read Lovecraft but I can absolutely see the valid argument in the claim that he is racist. But we’re talking about whether evil orcs are racist or colonialist. I think that is far less clear and totally open to debate.

pemerton said:

How to resolve this impasse? I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it won't be resolved simply by you asking them to accept in good faith that you don't notice the racism in things they find racist.

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Moreover, whether you notice it or not isn't much of an excuse.

Let us say you are out about town, wearing heavy boots. Someone else is wearing sandals, and you step on their foot, and don't notice.

The fact that you don't notice, and that it wasn't your intent, does not change the fact that their toe got stomped upon, and they are in pain.

And, are you going to argue, "No, sir, since I didn't notice your toe got stepped on, and it clearly wasn't my intent to step on your toe, I am going to reject your suggestions on how to avoid stepping on toes with my big old boots!"