February 08, 2021

23. Hella Problematic in So Many Ways.

56 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Orcs. While not

the only ‘bad guys’ in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s wider mythology by

a long shot, they’re generally the most common, appearing in everything from

the earliest versions of the Book of Lost Tales to the final years of his

reconsiderations and potential revisions. But ultimately the Orcs themselves

may also be the most mysterious, their exact origins and place in Tolkien’s

wider cosmology unclear, their own culpability potentially up for question in

the face of manipulation and lies at the hands of Morgoth, Sauron and their

lieutenants, even as they cut literal swathes through green growing grasses

and commit horrific acts of violence among other species as much as

themselves. What actually does life itself mean in Middle-earth when Tolkien

himself couldn’t square away who or what the Orcs were exactly? How does

Tolkien’s own unsureness of the Orcs’ origins reflect upon demonizations of

the ‘other’ in wider human history, especially given the unsettling

implications that Orc genocide can be a solution? How best to address the

unavoidably racist elements in the descriptions of the Orcs that Tolkien

himself admits to within the scope of his wider themes, and how can they be

envisioned in art and film? In what ways did Tolkien’s military experiences

shape how the Orcs are often portrayed, and how does that signal ways in which

he felt that being an Orc might be less intrinsic and more something created

by circumstances? And why do Orcs sound a little like Cockneys, sort of?

Show Notes.

Jared’s

doodle. We

love the little hat.

The Amazon

synopsis! And it tells

us...almost nothing that we didn’t already know!

Tolkien Gateway’s Orcs entry gives you

the basics...but the basics themselves can and do shift.

Our episode on death, in contrast

to this wider meditation here on life.

Morgoth’s Ring does have a

lot of Tolkien’s later thoughts on Orcs and more. Relatedly, hröa and

fëa are important

topics here.

You can guess what we think about QAnon. We hope for the best for the

misled.

The scene with the dead Haradrim

soldier is justly famed, in whatever

version.

Aphantasia, as Oriana mentions having.

Tolkien’s letter #210 from the

published collection is his response to the proposed Morton Zimmerman script.

Porcs! They’re apparently coming back?

The concept of the Yellow Peril

is one of the most pernicious things in human history—and that’s saying

something. Fu Manchu is just one

small outgrowth.

Totalitarianism in Middle-earth is a rich vein of study—and Tolkien clearly hated it in our world.

Sing along with the Orcs!

Tolkien’s Father Christmas

goblins—presumably

not like Orcs, but you never know.

You might be familiar with the 1984 film

Gremlins. (Ned still remembers the

ads.)

Oriana’s conlang piece in Vox

(updated from when we last referred to it!). David J.

Peterson was who Oriana was

referring to.

Pompeii’s graffiti! Ah the glory that was Rome et al.

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

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