Was he a little ethnocentric?

[Fëalossë]

I don't mean to taint the character of J. R. R. Tolkien, but don't you find it strange that the people of Gondor have grey eyes, the Rohirrim are all blue-eyed, blonde people, all elves were white (although at least they weren't for the most part blonde or blue-eyed)? And the Southrons were described as being dark-skinned and dark-eyed... Maybe I'm way off base; any takers?

[Periantari Andruil]

Tha'ts an interesting question.. but I think Tolkien meant for his works to be focused upon the "mythology of England", so therefore had everyone kind of homogenously white...
there has been discussion about his descriptions of Southrons and the people from the East, but I think his geography is just coincidental upon the West being "good" and the East being "bad" in terms of WWII...
But I think basically he used those descriptions of the Rohirrim and of Gondor because he was basing his work on mythology... on mythologies he has read in the past relating to Nordic legend, and most of the characters described there are white with grey and blue eyes..... so it's really a matter of what he was inspired by...

[Black Rider]

I agree. i don't think he was being ethnocentric just to be ethnocentric. if he wanted it to be a mythology from England, he sort of didn't really have a choice to make them anything else. in mythology, there aren't really any cultural differences. the Greek gods look greek, the African legends are about African people, and Tolkien's mythology that he wrote for England are about the peoples who lived in England back in the days of the Aanglo Saxons who were from the Netherlands and Norway, and that whole area.

[Fëalossë]

I suppose you can't expect someone to respect diversity when he's writing stories for his own amusement. Maybe I'm just trying to be a bit too "Canadian."

Actually, the Anglo-Saxons came from the Angle, which is in Denmark/Germany, and Saxony, which is is northern Germany. Which I find funny, because England and the English language are therefore both named for a land that their people no longer live on (the Angle). Go figure.:rolleyes:

But I still think it wasn't necessary for him to make the "evil" men dark-skinned, and have all the "good" lands in the West (symbolizing Western society as being better than others).

[Lady Luthien]

well typically dark colors denote fear and evilness(i think thats a word...lol) so, no he didn't HAVE to make them black, and I don't think he did so bc he didn't like black people. Also, a creature is much more frightening when they're black(color, I mean, not race). ;) It's just sort of the basic and harmless good versus evil spiel...the good guys being chased by the bad guys, who wear black suits and black sun glasses and drive jet black cars...ok I guess my point is: mb he was ethnocentric, but I don't see anything wrong with it bc it was his book, and like others have said, English people are, in fact, white. And about the whole West thing, Tolkien clearly stated in the prologue that he despised allegory, and did not want his story to be taken as such. With this in mind, we can safely assume that he did not make the West "good" to denote that the West in this world was better than everyone else, but that he simply had to choose a direction to give them, and chose West.

[Periantari Andruil]

I agree with Lady Luthien's points :thumbs:

Actually more discussion had been started on this thread in the Library... it also includes an interesting article in which an academic claims that Tolkien was racist... (not that i totally agree... ) and also racist is not the same as being ethnocentric is it?

http://www.warofthering.net/forums/vbulletin225/upload/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1949&highlight=Tolkien+and+Racism

[Black Rider]

Originally posted by Fëalossë


Actually, the Anglo-Saxons came from the Angle, which is in Denmark/Germany, and Saxony, which is is northern Germany. Which I find funny, because England and the English language are therefore both named for a land that their people no longer live on (the Angle). Go figure.:rolleyes:


lol thanks i wasn't too sure exactly. long time since history covered that!

i would agree with you, Peri. being ethnocentric is not the same as racism

[Fëalossë]

Well... theoretically... Ethnocentrism is when you believe that your culture is better than those of others. Racism is basically judging people by skin colour or things that are characteristic to a certain people. So they're sort of the same, but sort of different. I'd get out a dictionary, but I'm too lazy.lol

[Tar-Palantír]

Well, just to put in my point of view, Tolkien was not racist or ethnocentric in a 'bad' way. If you search for something hard enough, chanses are that you will find it.
And searching for these things in mythologies is pretty easy, the Romans for example described everyone else not roman as Barbaric. If somehow Tolkien really wanted to do what he set out to, he would make his works very like to greek, norse and other mythologies in almost all such things are common.

Well, thats my opinion at least.

[Aeriel]

Hi,

I'm a newbie to this forum, but not to Tolkien.

I don't know what you've been reading, but the Prof's Letters make it very clear that he wasn't a racist. Ethnocentric, perhaps; a product of his times, but I think there are a few points worth making:
1. Tolkien doesn't always use white for good and black for evil in The Lord of the Rings. Everything has two possibilities. So we have the Black Riders, who actually are (to those who can see them) livid pale under their robes. We have the "ghastly white hand of Isengard". And mirroring the white city of Minas Tirith we have Minas Morgul, shining white again, but with a "corpse light that illuminated nothing". There is the "Shadow" associated with Sauron, but also the shadowy (black) hair of Arwen. And the point of her becoming Queen at the end is that "now shall night too be beautiful and beloved, and all its fear pass away".
Both dark and light are good when uncorrupted.
Also, I think the symbolism of the West shouldn't be read in astrictly modern political way. The point has been made that in the Silmarillion Morgoth's stronghold was in the north. Men and Elves both "awoke" in the East. Essentially, the east is associated with the rising sun, with dawn and birth and beginnings. And the west is traditionally associated with sunset, with death and the Land of the Dead. And The Lord of the Rings is set in the evening of Middle Earth.
Nor are all the dark men evil and the good men fair-skinned. There are plenty of fair-skinned evil men in the book. As regards the Easterlings, Haradrim and Dunlendings, we get their enemies' version simply because of the focus of the story. Sam's observation on the dead Southron is extremely important - it makes the point that these are simply people who want what any people want, peace and safety to live their lives, but who are led by evil rulers. Merry and Pippin also notice that when they actually see the Dunlendings they don't actually look evil (in fact, in the appendices we learn that they are related to the Men of Bree and are descendants of the People of Haleth of the First Age); it was Gondor's injustice in giving their lands to the Rohirrim - who quickly drove them into the hills - that has made them prey to Saruman's promises. The appendices and earlier writings of Tolkien actually make clear that the evil rule in Harad has itself come about (in the south at least) because evil Numenoreans, corrupted by Sauron, have used their arts to establish sway over these peoples. And there are in fact darker-complexioned men in Gondor, descendants of pre-Numenorean inhabitants, who are perfectly at one with the rest of the nation (they come in to Minas Tirith led by Forlong, if you recall).

[Lady Luthien]

great post, Aeriel...you certainly are not a newbie in any way! ;)
I'd like to add onto your idea...Grima, who was obvioulsy evil, was exceedinly pale, and Saruman the White was also evil. Just like Aeriel said...the evil is not in the color, but in who wears that color.

[Eledhwen]

Excellent points Aeriel! I think that Sam's reflection upon the man from Harad is really very important because right there Tolkien is saying that these people are not inherently evil. They are the enemy but probably because they have been coerced or mislead into fighting for Sauron.

And of course, Tolkien was trying to contruct a plausible mythology for his beloved England, so some ethnocentrism would come through the story. I've never been offended by the story (been reading it a looong time now) and I'm not fair-skinned/fair-eyed. I think the whole racist argument is a convenient recourse for someone who doesn't understand the literature and doesn't want to take the time to understand it. Or just comes from someone with an extremely limited viewpoint.

[Fëalossë]

Hehe... You weren't referring to me, were you, Eledhwen?

In any case, I loved the Lord of the Rings. (If I didn't, why would I be on here?) It was just a thought. Personally, I think he probably just made "good people" white because he never thought about it. Why would he make the "good people" dark-skinned and the "bad people" white-skinned? The story would have been labelled as some kind of strange attempt at making people multicultural (or something). I'm sure he never thought twice about it.

But wait... what's this about "his own history of Britain?" I thought he hated allegory. (Or whatever you'd call that.) I understood that he meant it all for his own unique history.

[Periantari Andruil]

Everyone has really good points! :thumbs:

Tolkien was trying to create his own mythology of how England came to be and in that area of the world, mostly fair-color skin people live there. Tolkien was also deeply influenced by Beowulf and other Nordic tales ... these stories served as inspiration, so that is why he did not try to describe peoples of a different skin color that much. Mythology is not the same as history... he was just trying to explain how England came about in his story... but in no way that is the same as a "history". =)

I don't think Tolkien really meant to have dark as bad and light as good...probably a decision relating to how we usually connotate and associate dark and light. I think there is a conscious decision upon deciding how the bad guys and good guys look like based on the fact on how good and bad had been portrayed in the past stories that he has read. And Aerial's point about the white hand of Saruman and also the Black Riders are really ghastly white underneath too... are points that take consideration into having light colors be evil too.

[Eledhwen]

I really like this thread! It's made me go back and look things up to try to get a feeling for everyone's point of view...

Peri, you've got it spot on. I just wanted to add that myth is in many ways "grander" or "larger" than history because it incorporates themes like creation/dissolution and ponders things like evil, death, honour, faith etc in an archetypal way (as opposed to *factual*). And he felt that England didn't have the rich mythological framework that so many places had (at least not to his satisfaction). So he set about creating that. Pretty nice job too!!

And no Fëalossë, I wasn't thinking of you! :grin: I didn't think you were saying he was a racist. But there are some really critical articles out there by people who don't seem to want to understand the literature - and make some pretty flimsy arguments too! pfbbt But I thought you were just being a good, open-eyed Canuck like myself!! ;)

[Fëalossë]

Hehe... good to know. :grin:

[Mirkgirl]

Maybe I'm a bit off topic... but anyway... we all know (from the Foreword) that Tolkien wrote Book IV and send it to Christopher when he was in South Africa with RAF. The bulgarian translator has taken the liberty to say that that might be the reason why in there we see brown men with scarlet robes and gold. Sounds reasonable to me (:

[Eledhwen]

I read about this before, but seeing it up in our news I decided to really read the article. The title alone is charming - "A 'Return' of the White Patriarchy?". This is the type of stereotypical drivel I'm talking about - and the author obviously has no intention of trying to understand Tolkien's work. She talks about what her "African-American female eyes" see, but I wonder why my Indian-Caribbean female eyes don't see it. It also doesn't strike me as a particularly tolerant piece...

Here's the link: http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=932

Thoughts?

[Mirkgirl]

Well this was fun! - the only way to read these is from the humourous side, at least for me.
On the good side, even the mighty wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) is sanitized and transformed from the weed-smoking, rather dingy figure we first meet in the "The Fellowship of the Ring," into Gandalf the White, who, by the time of "Return of the King," has become a powerful military leader complete with pure white hair and an Eisenhower attitude. roflmao roflmao roflmao ... and if I have to be serious - noticed the other dude with the white hair in first part?

Say what you will about the convoluted storyline of the "Matrix" trilogy — at least those films give women and people of color some characters they can relate to. Not true. I wanted a female bending a fork! I can't relate to that spoon! (actually talking about this... Tolkien can be blamed in this as well - why was Lobelia stealing spoons? What's all that obssession with spoons when the forks are obviously a lot better... even if they were invented in France (no offence)!)

Beyond this threesome, the rest of the women of Middle Earth are largely an unwashed, helpless mass who, in the face of a virtually hopeless battle against overwhelming enemy forces in "The Two Towers," can do little more than look anxious and cower with their children in fear.
Okay that scene did look bad! I didn't get the same feeling while reading the book tho so I guess we can blame this on PJ

Sorry I'm a bit in a strange mood

[Eledhwen]

... lol ... you are in a strange mood Mirky ... but I think fork-bending is way cooler too ... of course it would be futile exercise because "there is no fork" :p

[Periantari Andruil]

That author... :rolleyes: i really disagree with her. I DESPISE the Matrix... maybe it just isn't my story but in no way those two movies in my mind can be comparable....
In terms of Matrix being more for everyone and not as "ethnocentric"... has she ever ready why Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings? I mean all the dichotomies of black versus white has already been discussed and I really do not think that Tolkien meant for anything to have a racist connotation.
In terms of the female characters, that is also debatable because for the women that Tolkien do show, they are all very strong. Maybe they do not fit into the modern view of how a women should be, but nevertheless Tolkien made her female characters vital and integral to the success of the men.


To my African American female eyes, the biggest difference between "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix" isn't swords vs. automatic weapons, or low-tech vs. high-tech. It's the patriarchy of the past versus the Rainbow Coalition of the future.


Again, LotR is meant to be Tolkien's mythology of England's past. He used white people to portray good guys and maybe dark-skinned people to portray bad guys. As a minority myself, I do not find problem with that and truly do not believe that he wanted to give off the message of his views at that time. As again, he did not mean for making an allegory of the world nor meant to imply that good is white and bad is evil.. I mean these colors have mythically meant something, but we do see Saruman having white be his color as well for example.

I mean I can kind of understand the patriarchal elements of LotR, but women really had a long way to go before establishing equality and that's the truth. I mean i'm a girl who enjoy the story and although yes, I do agree that LotR has too many male characters, but I do not find that as a deterrant to the story nor does it bother me nor influence on how I think about this classic.

Finally, LotR and Matrix are incomparable in these ways that she's trying to relativize things. LotR is a mythology, something that seeks to represent a story of the past. The Matrix is a modern movie... therefore it has leeway in choosing the diverse characters in both race and gender. LotR is no doubt a patriarchal male-dominated movie, but that should not be looked down as something bad. A epic story about the battle between good and evil and about the smallest person changing the course of the future is enough reason to love this trilogy. I just don't see the two movies as comparable through scope. LotR is a CLASSIC and will be for years to come and personally, I do not feel that race nor gender exclusions are a big deal. :mmmm:

Besides, PJ did expand Arwen's role just for the purpose of having a female have a more important role :rolleyes:
(he tried to make Galadriel more visible too)
The females in LotR are special... you do not need them fighting just to make a difference.

[Periantari Andruil]

btw.. here's an article that defends Tolkien and puts Andrea Lewis to shame :p
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/c-e/chapin/2004/chapin022204.htm

now HE'S read his Tolkien ;) =)

[Mirkgirl]

yeah not a bad article.
I'd add that the race issue in the book was actually dwarves-elves. And it ends with Legolas taking Gimli with him to Valinor. But they both were white men in her view I guess.

[Eledhwen]

Interesting article PA - thanx! :thumbs: He makes some good points about species, Saruman (liked that) and Eowyn. I also liked that bit about Eisenhower.

If Lewis had even read the book, she might have had (at the very least) a better argument. But she still would have been reaching - especially with a comparison to The Matrix.

[Lady Luthien]

about Eledhwen's article: I wonder if that author ever stopped to consider the fact that Tolkien's story was set in the Middle Ages...when women were not held in high esteem and for the most part were deemed essentially powerless. He was simply writing the times realistically. The Matrix(I won't even go into the fact that you can't compare an epic ledgend to that modern..I won't say the word :) ) is set in futuristic times, so of course it would portray women differently...The women's potrayal in LoTR is not a fault of Tolkien's but a sign of authenticity to the times. Just thought I'd point that out.