White Castle

[bcholmes]

This year, I bought a new DVD copy of Casablanca in preparation for my annual Casablanca-watching tradition on New Year's Eve. I love Casablanca, but every year I'm jarred by one line that I always manage to elide from my memory: when Ilsa arrives at Rick's Café Americaine for the first time and asks "who's that boy playing the piano?" The "boy" is, of course, an adult black man -- Rick's friend, Sam, from the famous line, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'".

(Tangent: Wikipedia mentions some interesting trivial. Dooley Wilson was paid $350 a week for playing Sam, whereas Sidney Greenstreet was paid ten times as much).

I'm thinking about this in the context of The Lord of the Rings. I think I'm just about the only sf fan who has never read the books (I started one of them many years ago, but found it hard to get into). I saw the Bakshi film in theatres, and found it difficult to follow. But by the time I actually saw the Jackson films, I'd already been exposed to a great deal of writing about the racist subtext.

Ian Hagemann, for example, once told me that when he first read the story, he was extremely aware that all of the good people were fair-skinned and the darker the skin of a race, the more evil they were. And, well, actually it's more than just subtext; sometimes it's actual text. Here's a pretty creepy essay: a loving treatment of the racialism of Tolkien's writings.

And here's an interesting blurb from a Tolkien newsgroup FAQ (and, by "interesting", I mean, insulting):

Was Tolkien racist? Were his works?

A full discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this FAQ. Some people find what they consider to be clear indications of racist attitudes in Tolkien's works. It is certainly possible that they are right: racism is notoriously difficult to recognize accurately, and most people harbor at least some level of racial mistrust.

On the other hand, most people who make such accusations seem to do so primarily to stir up controversy and inspire flame wars. In fact, much of the "evidence" presented to demonstrate Tolkien's racism is flawed, and there is reason to believe that Tolkien was less racist than many people of his day.

[...]

In short, while there are racially "suspicious" elements to be found in Tolkien's writings if one hunts for them, closer examination typically reveals the attitude behind them to be benign. That doesn't mean that he was perfect, but it certainly doesn't seem that he should be condemned for intolerance.

I think it's pretty clear that Tolkien is, at least, racialist, in DuBois' sense. A question is: how does that uncritical racialism get internalized in a racist culture?

Other people can debate, more informedly than I, the racialism and/or racism of The Lord of the Rings, 'cause, hey, I still haven't read the books. But I am interested in two things:

1. More often than not, people are pretty silent on the topic of racist or racialist themes in Tolkien.
2. When the topic is brought up, long-time Tolkien fans really downplay or outright refute the idea that there's racism there.

In a sense, it's like me and Casablanca: in all that I've said about the film, I think that this is the first time I've brought up Ilsa's troubling piece of dialog. (Sure, there's an argument that Ilsa's words are typical of the time, and that she's not more racist than the standards of the time. Classic Franz Fanon question: Is covert and ignorant stereotyping less racist than overt racism?). I want to emphasize the good elements of the story and de-emphasize the troubling bits.

It reminds me a lot of this commentary about how to behave when you're called on your racism. And also of the reactions to the complaints about the sexism in the film version of Sin City. The responses, there, seemed to be that:

1. The graphic novels were sexist, so that's okay (it's true to its source material)
2. The genre is sexist, so that's okay (it's true to the genre)
3. Men were horribly injured (including some who lost penii), so any sexism is rendered null and void

I find the race problem in The Lord of the Rings especially troubling in the context of fantasy RPGs. arcady0 made this interesting post which prompted a lot of my thinking:

In DnD the default assumption is that the darker the skin of a given race, the closer to pure evil it will be. A cursory flip through DnD's imagery throughout the years will show this. In modern times, it has even begun to apply native American, African, and Asian imagry to the evil races... and the language used to describe such races as Orcs is not just similar, but is a near -exact- match to the language once used by writers like Mr. Baum in the 1800s when the called for the genocide of the native Americans.

Dirty, savage, brutal, uncivilizable people who roam the badlands seeking to kill 'us purer people' and 'rape our women' to create a new race of mongrels.

I've run into bizarre circular logic on some RPG message boards: when Hero Games came out with Fantasy Hero, I posted that I found it bothersome how white all the art was. The response: that's what gamers want to play. They want western Western European fantasy like Dungeons and Dragons. Why? Because what they really want is to immerse themselves in The Lord of the Rings. Isn't that source material.. white-centric? Yes, but it's a product of Tolkien's time. So, Fantasy Hero is a product of Tolkien's time? It's a convention of the genre. A genre of which Tolkien is the exemplar. And Tolkien is so well-loved that we choose not to critically examine the messages about race, there.

Hero Games now has three different fantasy worlds planned: a Lord of the Rings-like world; a Conan-like world and a Celtic myth (King Arthur?)-like world. Can't we give a passing acknowledgement to Tékumel or Nyambe or Earthsea? (Oh, wait. Earthsea is now white, too.)

Maybe I shouldn't think about this as much as I do. Maybe I should just accept the conventions, and write up a new character class for D20: the Magical Negro.

Comments

[firecat]

I've run into that attitude toward sexism too.