Steve Dufour
2003-08-25 13:53:08 UTC
By Greg Wright from http://www.hollywoodjesus.com
Peter Jackson's Orcs
Tolkien, Racism and Classism
The peoples of Middle-Earth are, admittedly, very European. The people
of Gondor, and others of Numenorean descent, are fair-skinned and
grey-eyed. The north-men of Rohan are, not suprisingly, Nordic in
their fair-haired stature. And the Hobbits themselves, while a bit on
the furry side, are very, well... British. The Southrons on the other
hand -- those of Near and Far Harad -- are swarthy and even quite
dark-skinned, while the followers of Ghan-Buri-Ghan are presented as
aboriginal and men of uncertain descent are at times described as
sallow.
Does this make Tolkien racist? To be sure, the humanoids of
Middle-Earth tend to be what might be today called segregationist:
purity of bloodlines is of tremendous concern to these people, and at
the time of The War of the Ring, to be a Numenorian is a source of
great pride -- and to be anything else is to be, quite frankly,
something lesser. But Rohan's separatism, for only one example, is
based more on ignorance, fear and mistrust than it is on ideology. And
it's hardly surprising that Tolkien, in writing a mythology he could
dedicate "to England," would produce a fantastic world that rather
mirrored his own. The Lord of the Rings takes place in a northerly
clime, not an equatorial.
The stratification of Middle-Earth's social classes has also been
criticized. Kings are kings, and serfs are serfs -- and the twain
shall never meet. But again, to be English is to recognize and accept
the significance of bloodlines and lineage: to know your place in the
world, and to embrace it. At the same time, a worthy monarch of
Middle-Earth knows what it is to be truly noble, and that nobility
cannot be reduced to station alone. Even the lowliest may be worthy of
great honor through loyalty, faithfulness, courage and service -- thus
Aragorn and Eomer may confer status and position upon mere Hobbits,
that peculiar and unique "branch of the specifically human race."
And Just What the Heck Are Orcs?
But the real key to understanding Tolkien's feelings about race is to
address the issue of the Elves, and their counterparts -- the Orcs.
For here we see in Tolkien truly distinct races. The Dwarves are also
racially different from the human family; but Elves and Orcs are
actually related, the Orcs in dark ages past having been corruptly
bred from the nobility of Elvish stock by dark powers. Peter Jackson's
movies bring this legend into the foreground in Saruman's development
of a new breed of Orc, the "fighting Uruk-Hai," which he calls the
culmination of the ages-long process of corruption.
And here, of course, it would be pretty easy to bring up the charges
of racism again: the Elves themselves are racially stratified into
"High" and "Low" classes, with the High Elves at times snobbishly
preferential on the basis of dialect and hair color; and, of course,
the Elves are all fair-skinned, while the corrupt Orcs are all
dark-skinned.
But what are Orcs, exactly? Tolkien was at great pains to explain the
nature of Elves. Unlike humans, whose eternal spirit is housed in a
fallen, corrupt body, Elves are simultaneously immortal -- Galadriel,
for only one example, has lived several thousands of years by the time
of The War of the Ring -- yet bound to a physical fate. Though Elvish
spirits pass to the Halls of Mandos, this is but a temporary and
finite residence. At the remaking of Arda (the End Times of
Middle-Earth) the Elves face an unknown future while the spirits of
Men will dwell on with Eru forever.
As corrupted Elves, do Orcs share a similar fate? Are they long-lived
liked their nobler, purer kin? Those issues are never really addressed
by Tolkien. For what makes an Orc an Orc, as far as Tolkien is
concerned, is not the color of what passes for skin or even the nature
of what might be called the Orc's spirit -- it's what an Orc does, and
who an Orc serves.
The Orcs of Moria
Peter Jackson really does do a fine job of bringing the Orcs to the
screen. Unlike Rankin/Bass (who, in an apparent homage to the
classical origins of goblins, put wings on Tolkien's Orcs) and Ralph
Bakshi (whose Orcs resemble denizens of a Cecil B. DeMille leper
colony), Jackson does present a vision tolerably consistent with
Tolkien's. Thanks to prosthetic and digital technology, Jackson's Orcs
are anatomically dinstinct enough for us to see real connections
between the screen and Tolkien's narrative -- and there is yet room
for the various classes which exist even within the race of Orcs.
The Orcs of Moria, for instance, are the scuttling, clambering breed
which seems characteristic of the Misty Mountains, even the more
southerly vales. They are fair archers, and fight in swarming hordes
with the assistance of cave trolls. In Moria, they are dominated by
the fearsome presence of the Balrog and flee at his coming -- and to
the extent that the Balrog is in league with Sauron, they also serve
the Dark Lord. And while they are a loathsome menace, perhaps best
visualized as they clamber down from the shadows upon the Fellowship
in the halls of Dwarrowdelf, their abilities are limited. They are
deathly afraid of sunlight, and will even cower and die under its
influence. So it is that they do not pursue the Fellowship as it
issues from Moria, and Aragorn must remind Boromir that by nightfall
Kheled-Zaram will be swarming with Orcs.
Grishnakh and the Orcs of the Field
It's a pity, really, that Jackson can't devote more screen time in The
Two Towers to the party of Orcs which takes Merry and Pippin captive
and lugs them across Rohan toward Isengard. The stripped-down version
of the story doesn't allow many questions to be answered. Why are
there two breeds of Orcs among the party: Grishnakh and his fellows,
and the Uruk-Hai? Why are they in the open country on the west side of
Anduin in the first place? Why do they then trek through the unsafe
enemy territory of Rohan, instead of heading for the relative safety
of the east bank of Anduin toward Mordor?
The answers are really in service to Jackson's fundamental conception
of Saruman as a pragmatically hopeless, duped vassal of Sauron rather
than the duplicitous aspirant to power which Tolkien conceives. So
there is little clue in Jackson's movies that Grishnakh and company
are Orcs of Mordor temporarily and bregrudingly in league with
Saruman's Uruk-Hai, browbeaten into taking the westerly course. In
Tolkien, a contingent of the Mordor Orcs even breaks off from the main
party to beat a return to the east; but they are forced back by the
Riders of Rohan.
Grishnakh and the others of the Mordor breed are more affected by the
sunlight than are the Uruk-Hai. While not as sun-intolerant as the
Orcs of Moria, they are still dependent on their own vile brew for
sustenance -- and are wholly at the mercy of fear and the will of
their master to drive them on.
The Uruk-Hai
Saruman's Orcs have had all such infirmity bred out of them. They
don't scuttle, like the Orcs of Moria, and they don't equivocate or
quarrel amongst themselves, like the Orcs of Mordor. They are
impervious to the effects of the sun, and they equal or excel in
stature the Elves themselves and their human allies. They are lean,
mean fighting machines, and they have but one purpose -- to serve the
will of Saruman.
Whether in Tolkien or in Jackson -- but perhaps most clear in
Jackson's movies -- this gets us into the territory of defining what
it is that really makes an Orc orc-ish: misplaced allegiance. In the
first place, Orcs are mistakenly driven by fear. For Tolkien, a
Christian, this is inimical to a sound understanding of one's purpose
in the universe: a motivation toward praise and worship of the creator
through love, which "casts out fear." Second, Orcs mistakenly revere
the creation rather than the Creator. Whether it's Saruman, Sauron,
the Balrog or their own Orc chieftans, all are the creation of Eru.
And all Middle-Earth ultimately falls under the sway of its Creator;
neither demons nor wayward wizards can supplant the intended majesty
of Eru.
The Effects of Idolatry
And really, this discussion of Orcs should scuttle charges of racism
or classism in Tolkien. Why? Because as far as Tolkien was concerned,
Orcs were merely a fictionalization of a contemporary reality. He
transformed his war experiences, for instance -- the visceral struggle
between good and evil -- into "another form and symbol with Morgoth
and Orcs" pitted against the Elves. Further, in a war-time letter to
his son Christopher, Tolkien called the Orcs "as real a creation as
anything in 'realistic' fiction." For Tolkien, it was easy to see that
adapting the means of the enemy to defeat the enemy -- "attempting to
conquer Sauron with the Ring," if you will -- bears, of necessity,
evil fruit: "The penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons,
and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs." And their fate? Tolkien
conceded the possibility that Orcs, like some human residents of our
own world, might be "unredeemable" -- yet insisted that, in
Middle-Earth, mercy should be shown to Orcs "even at cost," a moral
vision distinctly lacking in Jackson's The Two Towers.
And so even among men of our own time we can see behavior worthy of
Orcs: a prime motive of fear instead of love, and an esteem of
creation elevated above devotion to the Creator. The net effect is
division among men where God intended unity -- the root of all racism
and classism. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Jesus
observed. One cannot serve two masters.
And so Tolkien's Orcs really bring home the issue to us, personally.
If we examine our own behavior, what do we find? Love, and devotion to
God? Or fear, and perhaps devotion to self? Are we men as we were
intended to be, or have we ourselves become Orcs?
Peter Jackson's Orcs
Tolkien, Racism and Classism
The peoples of Middle-Earth are, admittedly, very European. The people
of Gondor, and others of Numenorean descent, are fair-skinned and
grey-eyed. The north-men of Rohan are, not suprisingly, Nordic in
their fair-haired stature. And the Hobbits themselves, while a bit on
the furry side, are very, well... British. The Southrons on the other
hand -- those of Near and Far Harad -- are swarthy and even quite
dark-skinned, while the followers of Ghan-Buri-Ghan are presented as
aboriginal and men of uncertain descent are at times described as
sallow.
Does this make Tolkien racist? To be sure, the humanoids of
Middle-Earth tend to be what might be today called segregationist:
purity of bloodlines is of tremendous concern to these people, and at
the time of The War of the Ring, to be a Numenorian is a source of
great pride -- and to be anything else is to be, quite frankly,
something lesser. But Rohan's separatism, for only one example, is
based more on ignorance, fear and mistrust than it is on ideology. And
it's hardly surprising that Tolkien, in writing a mythology he could
dedicate "to England," would produce a fantastic world that rather
mirrored his own. The Lord of the Rings takes place in a northerly
clime, not an equatorial.
The stratification of Middle-Earth's social classes has also been
criticized. Kings are kings, and serfs are serfs -- and the twain
shall never meet. But again, to be English is to recognize and accept
the significance of bloodlines and lineage: to know your place in the
world, and to embrace it. At the same time, a worthy monarch of
Middle-Earth knows what it is to be truly noble, and that nobility
cannot be reduced to station alone. Even the lowliest may be worthy of
great honor through loyalty, faithfulness, courage and service -- thus
Aragorn and Eomer may confer status and position upon mere Hobbits,
that peculiar and unique "branch of the specifically human race."
And Just What the Heck Are Orcs?
But the real key to understanding Tolkien's feelings about race is to
address the issue of the Elves, and their counterparts -- the Orcs.
For here we see in Tolkien truly distinct races. The Dwarves are also
racially different from the human family; but Elves and Orcs are
actually related, the Orcs in dark ages past having been corruptly
bred from the nobility of Elvish stock by dark powers. Peter Jackson's
movies bring this legend into the foreground in Saruman's development
of a new breed of Orc, the "fighting Uruk-Hai," which he calls the
culmination of the ages-long process of corruption.
And here, of course, it would be pretty easy to bring up the charges
of racism again: the Elves themselves are racially stratified into
"High" and "Low" classes, with the High Elves at times snobbishly
preferential on the basis of dialect and hair color; and, of course,
the Elves are all fair-skinned, while the corrupt Orcs are all
dark-skinned.
But what are Orcs, exactly? Tolkien was at great pains to explain the
nature of Elves. Unlike humans, whose eternal spirit is housed in a
fallen, corrupt body, Elves are simultaneously immortal -- Galadriel,
for only one example, has lived several thousands of years by the time
of The War of the Ring -- yet bound to a physical fate. Though Elvish
spirits pass to the Halls of Mandos, this is but a temporary and
finite residence. At the remaking of Arda (the End Times of
Middle-Earth) the Elves face an unknown future while the spirits of
Men will dwell on with Eru forever.
As corrupted Elves, do Orcs share a similar fate? Are they long-lived
liked their nobler, purer kin? Those issues are never really addressed
by Tolkien. For what makes an Orc an Orc, as far as Tolkien is
concerned, is not the color of what passes for skin or even the nature
of what might be called the Orc's spirit -- it's what an Orc does, and
who an Orc serves.
The Orcs of Moria
Peter Jackson really does do a fine job of bringing the Orcs to the
screen. Unlike Rankin/Bass (who, in an apparent homage to the
classical origins of goblins, put wings on Tolkien's Orcs) and Ralph
Bakshi (whose Orcs resemble denizens of a Cecil B. DeMille leper
colony), Jackson does present a vision tolerably consistent with
Tolkien's. Thanks to prosthetic and digital technology, Jackson's Orcs
are anatomically dinstinct enough for us to see real connections
between the screen and Tolkien's narrative -- and there is yet room
for the various classes which exist even within the race of Orcs.
The Orcs of Moria, for instance, are the scuttling, clambering breed
which seems characteristic of the Misty Mountains, even the more
southerly vales. They are fair archers, and fight in swarming hordes
with the assistance of cave trolls. In Moria, they are dominated by
the fearsome presence of the Balrog and flee at his coming -- and to
the extent that the Balrog is in league with Sauron, they also serve
the Dark Lord. And while they are a loathsome menace, perhaps best
visualized as they clamber down from the shadows upon the Fellowship
in the halls of Dwarrowdelf, their abilities are limited. They are
deathly afraid of sunlight, and will even cower and die under its
influence. So it is that they do not pursue the Fellowship as it
issues from Moria, and Aragorn must remind Boromir that by nightfall
Kheled-Zaram will be swarming with Orcs.
Grishnakh and the Orcs of the Field
It's a pity, really, that Jackson can't devote more screen time in The
Two Towers to the party of Orcs which takes Merry and Pippin captive
and lugs them across Rohan toward Isengard. The stripped-down version
of the story doesn't allow many questions to be answered. Why are
there two breeds of Orcs among the party: Grishnakh and his fellows,
and the Uruk-Hai? Why are they in the open country on the west side of
Anduin in the first place? Why do they then trek through the unsafe
enemy territory of Rohan, instead of heading for the relative safety
of the east bank of Anduin toward Mordor?
The answers are really in service to Jackson's fundamental conception
of Saruman as a pragmatically hopeless, duped vassal of Sauron rather
than the duplicitous aspirant to power which Tolkien conceives. So
there is little clue in Jackson's movies that Grishnakh and company
are Orcs of Mordor temporarily and bregrudingly in league with
Saruman's Uruk-Hai, browbeaten into taking the westerly course. In
Tolkien, a contingent of the Mordor Orcs even breaks off from the main
party to beat a return to the east; but they are forced back by the
Riders of Rohan.
Grishnakh and the others of the Mordor breed are more affected by the
sunlight than are the Uruk-Hai. While not as sun-intolerant as the
Orcs of Moria, they are still dependent on their own vile brew for
sustenance -- and are wholly at the mercy of fear and the will of
their master to drive them on.
The Uruk-Hai
Saruman's Orcs have had all such infirmity bred out of them. They
don't scuttle, like the Orcs of Moria, and they don't equivocate or
quarrel amongst themselves, like the Orcs of Mordor. They are
impervious to the effects of the sun, and they equal or excel in
stature the Elves themselves and their human allies. They are lean,
mean fighting machines, and they have but one purpose -- to serve the
will of Saruman.
Whether in Tolkien or in Jackson -- but perhaps most clear in
Jackson's movies -- this gets us into the territory of defining what
it is that really makes an Orc orc-ish: misplaced allegiance. In the
first place, Orcs are mistakenly driven by fear. For Tolkien, a
Christian, this is inimical to a sound understanding of one's purpose
in the universe: a motivation toward praise and worship of the creator
through love, which "casts out fear." Second, Orcs mistakenly revere
the creation rather than the Creator. Whether it's Saruman, Sauron,
the Balrog or their own Orc chieftans, all are the creation of Eru.
And all Middle-Earth ultimately falls under the sway of its Creator;
neither demons nor wayward wizards can supplant the intended majesty
of Eru.
The Effects of Idolatry
And really, this discussion of Orcs should scuttle charges of racism
or classism in Tolkien. Why? Because as far as Tolkien was concerned,
Orcs were merely a fictionalization of a contemporary reality. He
transformed his war experiences, for instance -- the visceral struggle
between good and evil -- into "another form and symbol with Morgoth
and Orcs" pitted against the Elves. Further, in a war-time letter to
his son Christopher, Tolkien called the Orcs "as real a creation as
anything in 'realistic' fiction." For Tolkien, it was easy to see that
adapting the means of the enemy to defeat the enemy -- "attempting to
conquer Sauron with the Ring," if you will -- bears, of necessity,
evil fruit: "The penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons,
and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs." And their fate? Tolkien
conceded the possibility that Orcs, like some human residents of our
own world, might be "unredeemable" -- yet insisted that, in
Middle-Earth, mercy should be shown to Orcs "even at cost," a moral
vision distinctly lacking in Jackson's The Two Towers.
And so even among men of our own time we can see behavior worthy of
Orcs: a prime motive of fear instead of love, and an esteem of
creation elevated above devotion to the Creator. The net effect is
division among men where God intended unity -- the root of all racism
and classism. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Jesus
observed. One cannot serve two masters.
And so Tolkien's Orcs really bring home the issue to us, personally.
If we examine our own behavior, what do we find? Love, and devotion to
God? Or fear, and perhaps devotion to self? Are we men as we were
intended to be, or have we ourselves become Orcs?