Do orcs in gaming display parallels to colonialist propaganda?

[Doug McCrae]

It's hardly "colonialist", more like it's a very, very longstanding trend in how humans view outsider groups.

These ideas have changed over time. We see, starting I think with Linnaeus in the 18th century, something new - the notion that the mentally and morally inferior other is that way, not because of climate or culture (as Aristotle believed), but because of their biological makeup.

This is the same as the idea of race in D&D, particularly in early editions.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Just worth pointing out, having a frontier or wild region doesn't automatically equate to being drawn from 19th century colonialism. A lot of gaming is based on ancient history and medieval history.

D&D has medieval trappings but it's really set in the Wild West.

 

[S'mon]

What about the idea in early editions of D&D that the PCs would clear the wilderness of monsters and build a stronghold there?

What could be more colonialist than planting a colony in the wilderness, yep. Certainly a more accurate use than decolonisation as the replacing of European history in European University courses, the last time I saw the word used. Before that was in Black Panther.

 

[wingsandsword]

While yes, many of the classic fantasy and pulp authors reflected the casual racism of their eras, how exactly are you supposed to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race that cannot in any way be seen as any kind of racial or ethnic metaphor?

Unless you make them look utterly inhuman, you're working with the established palette of human skin tones, hair types, facial features, builds ect.

You're trying to create something that will convey menace and threat to the audience, to be that dangerous, primitive and different-looking and strangely acting outsider/foreigner that has been an element of human culture since antiquity.

If you make it too inhuman, you lose that metaphor, if you make it something that has no resemblance to humanity, that allusion is lost and it becomes just a generic monster race.

So, how exactly was Tolkien, or any other author, supposed to convey the idea of a bestial, foreign, hostile, barbaric people that are recognizably similar to humans, yet alien, without being anything that could be construed as potentially offensive to any real-world race or ethnicity?

The only alternative would be to make Orcs that were totally inhuman. I've seen it done, with orcs treated in some sources as having green skin and pig-like features with snouts, treating them as greenskinned anthropomorphic pigs/boars. . .but that tends to lose the more "realistic" aspects of fantasy.

Personally, I never read those stories and thought they were an obvious stand-in for ANY specific real world race or ethnicity, simply that they were meant to look brutal, barbaric, and hostile to the intended audience. Depending on the audience, they could be the Philistines to the ancient Israelites. It could be the Celts or Goths to the ancient Romans. They could be Mongols or Manchus to the ancient Chinese. They could be the Ainu to the ancient Japanese. They could be Native Americans to the 18th and 19th century United States. . .they could be the Europeans to the Ottoman Turks, or the Spaniards to the Moors.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION] - a great series of posts that cut through to the key points!

 

[Bedrockgames]

D&D has medieval trappings but it's really set in the Wild West.

Is it? I don't know that it is. I think it draws on lots of genres, which includes westerns for sure. But fantasy definitely has strong medieval and ancient history traces. I think there are lots of other historical sources of inspiration here beyond westerns. It is just part of the mix I think.

 

[pemerton]

While yes, many of the classic fantasy and pulp authors reflected the casual racism of their eras, how exactly are you supposed to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race that cannot in any way be seen as any kind of racial or ethnic metaphor?

Unless you make them look utterly inhuman, you're working with the established palette of human skin tones, hair types, facial features, builds ect.

You're trying to create something that will convey menace and threat to the audience, to be that dangerous, primitive and different-looking and strangely acting outsider/foreigner that has been an element of human culture since antiquity.

<snip>

So, how exactly was Tolkien, or any other author, supposed to convey the idea of a bestial, foreign, hostile, barbaric people that are recognizably similar to humans, yet alien, without being anything that could be construed as potentially offensive to any real-world race or ethnicity?

Well, it's not a given that wanting to create a monstrous, villainous humanoid race can avoid the sorts of political overtones that are being discussed in this thread.

And when you do it by making that race (say) Turkic, or East Asian, or whatever, in appearance, broad cultural tropes, etc - well, I'm not sure that's a defence against suggestions of racism.

I've watched the LotR movies with people of colour. They have noticed that all the protagonists are white (I don't think all here is an exaggeration) and that the Uruk-hai are played by people of colour (Maori in particular). That didn't stop them enjoying the films, but it didn't facilitate it either!

 

[Umbran]

How much truth is there to this assumption?

There are actually three questions here.

1) Did the author *intend* for orcs (or any other race) to stand in for a real-world race group?
2) Did the author unconsciously mold orcs to be a stand in for a real-world race group?
3) Are there sufficient similarities that, regardless of the author, is it reasonable for us to see them as a stand-in for a real-world race group?

To answer (1), we must ask the author.
To answer (2), we must play armchair psychologist. Imho, it would not really be fair to the author to do this unless you can cite multiple disparate elements in their works over time that suggest they have an unconscious tendency to such.
To answer (3), we must look inside our own minds.

(1) and (2) are really about trying to figure out what kind of person the author is/was like.

(3) is more about whether we should use these elements as-is in our games.

 

[Bedrockgames]

There are actually three questions here.

1) Did the author *intend* for orcs (or any other race) to stand in for a real-world race group?
2) Did the author unconsciously mold orcs to be a stand in for a real-world race group?
3) Are there sufficient similarities that, regardless of the author, is it reasonable for us to see them as a stand-in for a real-world race group?

To answer (1), we must ask the author.
To answer (2), we must play armchair psychologist. Imho, it would not really be fair to the author to do this unless you can cite multiple disparate elements in their works over time that suggest they have an unconscious tendency to such.
To answer (3), we must look inside our own minds.

(1) and (2) are really about trying to figure out what kind of person the author is/was like.

(3) is more about whether we should use these elements as-is in our games.

If we are getting introspective about our own settings, I use Ronnie James Dio as my model for barbaric orcs---just something about that hair (and I use the Romans as my model for the civilized orcs). But I tend to run fantasy settings with more of a Mediterranean feel to them.

 

[VelvetViolet]

The responses so far have proven very educational. Thank you.

So this sort of, I don’t know what to call it, race building is very disturbing to me. You are writing a race whose sole purpose is to be killed by the heroes, and justly killed at that rather than the heroes being vicious psychopaths. I prefer to avoid that if I can.

I did some thinking about how to reclaim the savage humanoid horde trope and in my opinion to comes down to two extremes. On one end, you can depict them as people with the same depth as humans and demihumans (i.e. elves dwarves, halflings, tieflings, dragonborn, etc), although that often unfortunately results in replacing negative stereotypes with positive(?) stereotypes (e.g. all elves are beautiful, all dwarves are good workers, all halflings live in the shire, etc). But I digress.

On the other end, you could strip away any semblance of humanity and write them as essentially aliens or bioweapons. Warhammer 40k does this: the orcs are an invasive ecosystem engineered to fight robot space Egyptians. In 13th Age, orcs are apparently born as adults holding weapons from rifts in the earth; they’re sterile and half-orcs are caused by environmental conditions.

What do you think?

P.S. Whether D&D owes more to westerns or not varies by campaign setting. Settings with big frontiers to explore dotted with occasional towns (or crashed alien spaceships) are clearly channeling westerns (or post-apocalyptic) with pseudo-medieval window dressing.