Random Instances Of Weird Racism And Bigotry Throughout 'Lord Of Rings' (And In JRR Tolkien's Life) (11 items)

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  (#1) Tolkien's Dwarves Are An Unsubtle And Unflattering Analogue To Jewish People

  Tolkien's deliberate association between dwarves and Jewish people is well-documented. He once noted, "[t]he dwarves of course are quite obviously, couldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of [Jewish people]?" This admittance makes his characterization of dwarves troubling - particularly in The Hobbit - as Tolkien relies heavily on Jewish stereotypes, which directly contribute to antisemitism.

  While some dwarves are portrayed as good people, their preoccupation with gold and their incessant greed (which in part fuels the conflict in Lake-town) are inarguably offensive. To make matters worse, dwarves are portrayed as wicked in Tolkien's earlier work, which only serves to further harmful stereotypes about Jewish people that are still prevalent today. 
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  (#2) Tolkien's Literal Representations Of Light And Dark Are Super Problematic

  Occasionally, characters in The Lord of the Rings break the light = good, dark = bad stereotype (Saruman comes to mind), but the prevailing trend is extremely troubling. The struggle of light versus dark is a concept that dates back to the early days of humanity, but in practice the model presents an uncomfortable binary that isn't useful for understanding contemporary conflicts (which are often morally gray all around). 

  Things get even worse when creators decide to demonstrate the concept by making evil characters' features appear darker. This is exactly what transpires in Tolkien's world; the heroes are beautiful and light-skinned, whereas orcs, Uruk-Hai, Easterlings, and Haradrim all feature considerably darker complexions. They're not evil because they're not white, but these associations tend to bleed into viewers' perceptions of real life, and can potentially cause them to be more critical of dark-skinned people. 
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  (#3) An Actor Says She Was Turned Away For Not Being White Enough

  While this isn't directly Tolkien's fault, perhaps if he'd included a few more characters of color who weren't evil in his works, it wouldn't have happened. British-Pakistani actor Naz Humphries told Stuff, an online publication in New Zealand, that she was turned away from an audition to be an extra in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey because she wasn't white enough.

  "We are looking for light-skinned people," a film company representative said. "I'm not trying to be - whatever. It's just the brief. You've got to look like a hobbit."

  According to Stuff, Robert Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth notes that the most common hobbits, Harfoots, are "browner" than other hobbits, but it seems the casting director (who was later fired) had a different, purely white vision for the Shire. Whiteness is equated with goodness so frequently in the franchise that perhaps it seemed consistent to call for only light-skinned actors, but doing so contradicted the source material. 
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  (#4) Tolkien's Evil Race Is Based On Racial Stereotypes

  In a letter from 1958, Tolkien wrote that orcs were "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact, degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types." Even without this concrete evidence of Tolkien's bigotry, orcs' features are clearly racialized within the text, and the films do no better.

  In addition to their black skin, many orcs also have dreadlocks. This combination of traits is clearly inspired by people of color, and the whole thing is utterly disgusting. Even if Tolkien's association was made subconsciously, these types of parallels condition audiences to associate blackness with evil, and help archaic stereotypes continue on into present day. 
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  (#5) Tolkien's Most Interesting Female Character Gets Slighted

  Eowyn is one of the standout female characters in The Lord of the Rings. She slays the Witch-king of Angmar precisely because she's not a man, but that doesn't stop Tolkien from crediting others for her achievement.

  In the story, the hobbit Merry also plays a crucial role in the Witch-king's demise. Although he's biologically male, he's not technically a man, since he's not a human. To make matters worse, Eowyn ultimately decides to trade in her armor for the Middle-earth equivalent of a nurse's uniform. Even though she's a total bad*ss, Tolkien seems to think she's meant to be a caregiver. 

  Though Eowyn is one of the few women to have a truly active role in the plot, her representation leaves much to be desired, as her moment in the spotlight is eclipsed by the adventures of the series's numerous male characters. 
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  (#6) Tolkien Was A Total Misogynist

  Tolkien's unflattering views of women are all too apparent in his work. It's this attitude that produced the lackluster characterizations of the story's women, and his misogyny is equally apparent in his personal letters. 

  In what's come to be known as Letter 43, Tolkien explained to his son some "truths" he believed about women.

  "How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp [a male's] ideas, see his point - and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him," he wrote. Tolkien added that for women, love "means that she wants to become the mother of the young man’s children."

  While he never outright said women are inferior, there's certainly an air of derision in the letter, which suggests Tolkien lacked a basic understanding of femininity. This bleeds back into the characterizations of women in The Lord of the Rings: Eowyn's unfeminine goals are corrected by the tale's end, Galadriel's lust for power is nothing more than the work of an evil ring, and Arwen remains pure, beautiful, and good in a way that's painfully simplistic. 
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  (#7) The Human Enemies In The Films Are Pretty Much All People Of Color

  The primary cast of the Lord of the Rings films is pretty overwhelmingly white. This has nothing to do with "historical accuracy," as the series is set in a fantasy world with dragons and hobbits. To make matters worse, most of the human enemies the fellowship faces are people of color, whose costumes were designed to reference Asian and Middle Eastern cultures. 

  This kind of oversight is all too common in Hollywood, and it's time more people started calling out studios who whitewash their casts. While film executives would most likely cite the "marketability" of the films' (white) stars, there are plenty of fantastic non-white actors in the world, and it's unbecoming to assume that every good person in Middle-earth is Caucasian. 
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  (#8) Female Characters Are Severely Underdeveloped

  The women of Tolkien's work are uniformly underdeveloped. Pretty much all the female characters in his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are either wholly good (Goldberry, Arwen), relegated to stereotypical femininity (Galadriel, Eowyn), or just downright nasty (Shelob, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins).

  Regardless of whether they're good or evil, all the women of the series are noticeably one-dimensional. Compare this to the series's vast assortment of complex male characters (Gandalf is wise, Frodo is courageous, Aragorn is noble, Wormtongue is evil, and so on), and the trend becomes painfully obvious. Women just aren't allowed to be fully developed characters in Tolkien's world, perhaps because Tolkien wasn't interested in featuring feminine heroes. 
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  (#9) Physical Characteristics Of Villains Are Racialized

  While many of the series's characters are never described in detail, when it comes to villains, Tolkien often takes a little extra time to list their physical features. Take the Southerner in The Fellowship of the Ring, who's described as "sallow" and having "sly, slanting eyes." Sallow can mean "yellowish," which, in conjunction with the description of the Southerner's eyes calls to mind the racist caricatures of Japanese people that were prevalent during World War II.

  Tolkien claimed that the series wasn't intended to be an allegory for any war, and it's possible he never intended for such a connection to be made. However, at a certain point, Tolkien's intent becomes irrelevant, as many of these racial stereotypes are so ingrained in Western culture that they routinely pop up in seemingly unrelated texts. In light of all the franchise's other problems, it's important to consider why the Southerner's traits are so easily associated with evil in Tolkien's world.
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  (#10) 'The Lord Of The Rings' Has Been Hijacked By Racist, Nationalist Groups

  Tolkien was openly anti-war and frequently spoke out against Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, but that hasn't stopped nationalist and racist groups from commandeering his work for their own bigoted purposes. By creating a mythology in which the majority of heroes are white and the majority of enemies are not, Tolkien unwittingly crafted a tale that represents the views of groups like the neo-Nazi British National Party, who've used his fiction to preach their white-supremacist vision of the world.
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  (#11) Positive Stereotypes Are Still Stereotypes

  One of the biggest obstacles critics of Tolkien's work run into is the claim that, because many of his characters adhere to positive stereotypes, there's no reason to be upset. Sure, the few women who appear in The Lord of the Rings tend to be good, and Tolkien himself described Jewish people as "gifted," but that doesn't erase the fact that his views are still informed by stereotypes. Positive or benign stereotypes naturalize more hateful biases, and fail to recognize the spectrum of personality traits that exist in all people. There is no "inherent woman" or "inherent Jewish person," and to suggest otherwise is a recipe for bigotry. 

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