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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6434194" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>That's a fair question.</p><p></p><p>I'm white. Through both personal and professional connections, I'm fairly intimately involved in the more radical (Black Power-esque) aspect of Australian anti-racist advocacy, at least on the intellectual side (writing, training, teaching, supervising students, etc). The only thing that's surprised me in this thread, from you or others concerned about the drow, is that no one seems to have noticed the casting of Maori as orcs (esp uruk-hai) in the LotR films. When I have viewed those films with Australian people of colour, it's one of the first things they comment on (also the lack of non-white heroes).</p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree with both these posts.</p><p></p><p>I find HPL almost unreadable as fiction - reading those stories is, for me, an exercise in intellectual history. The racism is very overt. It is also overt in REH (as is the sexism), but I overlook it when I read because other elements of the fiction are engaging. But I wouldn't expect my friends who are black/brown women to read and enjoy REH.</p><p></p><p>In Tolkien, because the most racist elements are fictionalised (into the presentation of orcs), and the southrons and easterlings play little role in the stories, I find it less overt but still very evident. The inevitably visual character of the LotR films makes it more overt, as I've commented above and upthread.</p><p></p><p>The AD&D MM described both dwarves and gnomes as typically brown-skinned, but in art they are almost always white. D&D has a history of disregarding its own canonical descriptions to present protagonists and even side-characters as white.</p><p></p><p>5e seems to be making a modest break from this, although from memory the dwarf illustration in the race chapter is still of a white person.</p><p></p><p>You can laugh, but I can tell you that those who have pointed out to me that the only visibly dark characters in the LotR films were the Maori playing southrons and uruk-hai weren't laughing. For them it was an unhappy aspect of an otherwise compelling film.</p><p></p><p>From memory, in the Laketown scenes in the second Hobbit film there is one visibly black woman in a sea of white faces. That stands out too.</p><p></p><p>And to add to what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said above, it's not just that Tolkien happened to be writing a mythology for northern Europeans. Non-European peoples figure in his stories. They just figure in the stereotypical ways typical of the unreflective fiction of Victorian and Edwardian England: nameless "easterlings" and "southrons" who swarm in hordes to serve the Dark Lord; and band-legged swarthy-skinned scimitar-wielding orcs.</p><p></p><p>It mars what is otherwise (in my view, at least) a masterpiece of romantic fantasy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6434194, member: 42582"] That's a fair question. I'm white. Through both personal and professional connections, I'm fairly intimately involved in the more radical (Black Power-esque) aspect of Australian anti-racist advocacy, at least on the intellectual side (writing, training, teaching, supervising students, etc). The only thing that's surprised me in this thread, from you or others concerned about the drow, is that no one seems to have noticed the casting of Maori as orcs (esp uruk-hai) in the LotR films. When I have viewed those films with Australian people of colour, it's one of the first things they comment on (also the lack of non-white heroes). I agree with both these posts. I find HPL almost unreadable as fiction - reading those stories is, for me, an exercise in intellectual history. The racism is very overt. It is also overt in REH (as is the sexism), but I overlook it when I read because other elements of the fiction are engaging. But I wouldn't expect my friends who are black/brown women to read and enjoy REH. In Tolkien, because the most racist elements are fictionalised (into the presentation of orcs), and the southrons and easterlings play little role in the stories, I find it less overt but still very evident. The inevitably visual character of the LotR films makes it more overt, as I've commented above and upthread. The AD&D MM described both dwarves and gnomes as typically brown-skinned, but in art they are almost always white. D&D has a history of disregarding its own canonical descriptions to present protagonists and even side-characters as white. 5e seems to be making a modest break from this, although from memory the dwarf illustration in the race chapter is still of a white person. You can laugh, but I can tell you that those who have pointed out to me that the only visibly dark characters in the LotR films were the Maori playing southrons and uruk-hai weren't laughing. For them it was an unhappy aspect of an otherwise compelling film. From memory, in the Laketown scenes in the second Hobbit film there is one visibly black woman in a sea of white faces. That stands out too. And to add to what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said above, it's not just that Tolkien happened to be writing a mythology for northern Europeans. Non-European peoples figure in his stories. They just figure in the stereotypical ways typical of the unreflective fiction of Victorian and Edwardian England: nameless "easterlings" and "southrons" who swarm in hordes to serve the Dark Lord; and band-legged swarthy-skinned scimitar-wielding orcs. It mars what is otherwise (in my view, at least) a masterpiece of romantic fantasy. [/QUOTE]
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