05/9/2010
The Lord of the Rings rooted in racism
“Shyam Bhatia in London | An American academic, who teaches at the Warwick University in the United Kingdom, has described J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy as an ‘epic rooted in racism’.
Dr Stephen Shapiro, an expert in cultural studies, race and slavery, said the author used his novels to present bigotry through a fantasy world.(…)” Read More
The scary thing is that racist views are so “normal” in Northern Europe, that “this could not be racist”. Being a fantasy and science fiction fan, I loved those books as a kid, but later on, especially after the internet revolution, I have seen so much else which was so different (most notably Star Trek, where all races, genders and cultures are depicted as respectable and worthy living beings), that I could not go back to liking it anymore, and did not even remotely consider watching the movies. Maybe the future can bring different epic fantasy, where there is no need to consider a certain race as “subhuman dirt”…
