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Tolkien wasn’t the first to make evil and monstrous fantasy beings seem racially “other”. These elements sound straight out of Victorian anthropology, linking mental qualities and physique. Yet, the orcs in The Lord of the Rings undoubtedly have racial characteristics which are problematic: we never get a detailed description in the text, but recurring traits include slanted eyes and swarthy complexions. He never completed The Silmarillion, so there is no final “solution” to the question of their origin. He tried out several explanations about their origin, even the possibility that orcs were automata with only echoic speech, like parrots. Tolkien agonised over this, and the idea that these monstrous creatures could once have been lofty elves.
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In it, Duncan imagines the real Senator Theodore G Bilbo – the early 20th-century, white supremacist senator of Mississippi – opposing the immigration of orcs in Tolkien’s Shire in a post-Lord of the Rings era. The latest media interest was triggered by a Wired podcast with fantasy fiction author Andy Duncan in which he discussed his 2002 short story Senator Bilbo, whose main character shares a name with Tolkien’s Hobbit hero, Bilbo Baggins.
#WHY IS THERE DIFFERENT LORD OF THE RINGS EDITIONS MOVIE#
The last burst of this media debate was in 2002, prompted by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. What’s more, it has already been explored extensively in the media. The subject of Tolkien and race is not new it has been discussed comprehensively by scholars, including my own study. In demonising orcs, the ugly, monstrous enemy of the elves, did JRR Tolkien betray a belief that “some races are worse than others”? That’s the debate that has been at the heart of claims in the British press recently accusing the Lord of the Rings author of harbouring racist views.