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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Storm Raven" data-source="post: 4878692" data-attributes="member: 307">It isn't new, but it isn't very well supported. Anyone who actually reads the books would fined the assertions made about ERB laughable.Laughable like these sorts of claims. As pointed out before, Carter is not the only white man on the planet. (For some of the stories, he's not even the only American on the planet). There is an entire race of white martians (the Therns), and they are ruthlessly evil. How is that an example of "white guys are good"? There are also black martians, yellow martians, red martians, and green martians (as well as stranger beings like the plant men of mars and the kaldanes). Oddly, the red martians are explictly described as being the result of millennia of intermixing between the various martian races (excepting the green, who are radically different than any other martian race) resulting in a reddish skin tone. How the mixing of black, yellow and white results in red is a mystery to me, but that's not the point. The point is that if there was an implied racism here, then this would be described by the pejorative term "miscegenation" and condemned. Contrary to that, however, the red martians are described as the most civilized of all martians.When Carter settles into martian society, he fits in, not because he is somehow superior to them morally, but because he is incredibly violent and warlike, just as they are. He becomes warlord of Mars, not by changing martian society, but by becoming part of it. It is hard to see how this marks him as being superior to the martians in any way other than swordsmanship. Further, other than the green martians, none of the various races of martians could be termed uncivilized, and most are explicitly described as being much more civilized and with better technology than humans have. In point of fact, if there is any kind of idealization that ERB indulges in it is the "noble savage" being superior to the decadent civilized man. In many ways, Carter succeeds not because he is more civilized than the martians, but rather because he is more barbaric.I find your assertion that the green martians are somehow supposed to be a stand in for communism fairly unconvincing. Yes, children are raised communally, and all property is shared. On the other hand, the green martians hold slaves, have a king for a leader, and advance in rank by killing their superiors. Hardly a socialist vision of society. If ERB was trying to parody communism with the green martians, he did a poor job of it, especially since the green martians (under Tars Tarkus) become stalwart and loyal allies to Carter throughout the books. If he wanted to parody communism, he also had ample opportunities in other books outside the Barsoom series that would have been much easier, but he failed to do so. In The Mad King, set in eastern Europe during WWI, it would have been easy to introduce a communist villain to the story of royal intrigue and nationalist warfare, but he didn't. In the Tarzan books, the villain Rokloff is a Russian spy, a perfect opportunity to introduce a communist sympathizer, but Rokloff is an out and out czarist instead. Given that he passed up these golden opportunities to include evil communists in stories much better suited to their presence, it strains credulity to think that he included them in such a subtle way in A Princess of Mars.The green martians seem to me to be much more like Spartan culture, and given that they are presented as an idealized warrior race and ERB was clearly interested in classical studies, they are probably a more likely inspirations. Given their nomadic culture and warlike ways, the green martians are also probably inspired by the plains Indians or the Mongols (or both), although they are clearly idealized as noble savages. Note, however, that Carter doesn't change their culture at all. The green martians remain unrepentant savages throughout the entire series of books.When I picked up the various ERB books, I had been told about their racist overtones, and to be perfectly honest, I was not surprised when people warned me, as I have read a fair amount of pulp fiction from that time period. But when I read the books, I found that the "racism" of the novels is only a factor if you sort of half read them. You can draw racist conclusions from some of the things that happen in the books, but only if you don't read the entire book, and only if you aren't paying attention. Having read many of the "ERB has racism" treatments, I can only conclude that the authors of those pieces decided that since ERB wrote "only" pulp novels, that they could merely skim through the books and draw conclusions from that rather than actually reading them, because the criticisms simply don't hold up under any kind of scrutiny.</blockquote>

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