Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

David Stockhoff · 16 Dec 2011, 16:28 · from 2011-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:28:57 -0500
Subject: (urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W45C045D189B23106D2A590CFA00 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W45C045D189B23106D2A590CFA00 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4EEB71C9.9070302 at verizon.net>

On 12/15/2011 10:21 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
> I think, by todays standards, Tolkien's geo-social biases might not be considered so
>
> policially correct. I mostly mean his implication that those dark-skinned types from the
>
> south and east are evil and not to be trusted. Conversely that north and west are the "good"
>
> directions, not to mention those wonderful (american) eagles who always fly in at the last
>
> crucial moment to save the day. If he'd used falcons it just wouldn't have worked the same,
>
> I think.
Dead on. Much of our Western myths, and as they are perpetuated today by 
Hollywood, involve the brave and capable few who are besieged by the 
weak and cowardly many. This has little basis in reality, of course, and 
it has always struck me as a bit pathological. And so often the few are 
blond and big and the many dark and small. So too with Tolkien.

It may have started with the Romans and their legendary (and real) 
ability to defeat armies many times larger (armies that often included 
peasants and slaves). But you see it in Roland, and in any mention of 
the Huns (whose forces may have been large but never as large as 
Europeans thought), and in the Edda, and so on, right on through to 
Americans' persistent attempt to impose this template on WW2---where in 
fact the Wehrmacht was much better trained, more experienced, and better 
equipped than the Americans who outnumbered them and had air superiority 
to boot. (Never mind that the Russians were in much the same position 
but fought a much bigger war.)

Tolkien at least tries to rationalize this by making his orcs subhuman, 
created slaves who use powerful technology (so reminiscent of Arab siege 
engines, themselves descended from Roman and Chinese technology), 
monsters, and poisons. It's no wonder they can't sustain a shock---they 
have zero morale. But it's more than a bit creepy, since in the real 
world some of these generalizations have been applied to native peoples 
from Asians to Africans to Native Americans.

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