I think this issue is somewhat within my lane since the original Tolkien Orcs were specifically a racist caricature of Asians And my thing is like, what's done is done and it's too late to "cancel Orcs" completely from our pop culture, but I'm allowed to make be snarky about ithttps://twitter.com/HoldenShearer/status/1254414174484140034 …
-
Show this thread
-
And I keep saying the worst part is that Tolkien Half-Orcs aren't "speciesism" against, like, video game grunts that you shoot for the sake of cool action sequences Like it's actual literal racism, analogous to real world racism Normal people who live in town with evil blood
3 replies 2 retweets 54 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @arthur_affect
Even Tolkien himself expressed regret that he made an inherently evil race of people, so it's especially foolish to deny it. It's not to his credit that he didn't ever make "trying at least a little to make orcs less racist" a priority when writing The Silmarillion, but still.
2 replies 3 retweets 16 likes -
Replying to @jackchristmas1
I keep saying that making the Orcs bird-people (or animal-people) was an out that that filmmaker guy gave him to make it come off as less oof Like that was an out he was trying to give himself, saying Orcs were engineered by Morgoth from animals
1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @jackchristmas1
But he got MAD about that He straight up SAID "No, that's not what I imagined, the Orcs in my head specifically look like a caricature of Asian humans"
2 replies 2 retweets 11 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @jackchristmas1
Somehow, no matter what the explanation was -- the Silmarillion saying they were mutant Elves, the other stories saying Morgoth grew them from slime or engineered them from animals Dr. Moreau style, the "they're all very minor Maiar demons" theory -- they had to look Asian
1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect
What did Tolkien say about his mental view of the elves? They also can be considered Asian (i.e., not Nordic) it seems to me (?)
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @cgtzeno
No not really He physically describes Elves as "fair" and Orcs as "dark" and it's pretty clear that at least sometimes he was literally referring to skin color
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
Galadriel is explicitly blonde-haired and in the Silmarillion the first and "fairest" generation of Elves (the Vanyar) are all said to be blonde Arwen is dark-haired but she's "grey-eyed"
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.