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Dealing with values dissonance


The Marquis de Leech

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I generally try not to make a deal out of it if the values are a bit off when compared to today and usually succeed. However I remember having to watch The Birth of a Nation in history in school and it freaked the crap out of me. Though IIRC it was more than a tad racist even for its own time.

Birth of a Nation is a strange movie, in that the director was apparently surprised that the movie was so racist. In fact, IIRC, he made Intolerance as a response.

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It's an excellent example for this discussion. Griffith's discombobulation about its reception is notable, as is his response; the sort of self examination through art as he struggled with his own preconceptions. But Birth itself served African Americans poorly. And the film basically rebooted the KKK. Art apparently can have an effect on the exoteric culture.

Critics: That's pretty racist.

Artist: What? Really?

Critics: Yah, really.

Artist: Okay, I can see that.

Pretty refreshing. Seems like some modern creators would try to weasel out of it, first claiming that it wasn't racist at all and then claiming that the racism was instructive, enlightening, and uplifting for the groups in question.

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Eh, this sounds weird but for me it depends on the quality of the work. Lovecraft was an unstable racist but his work was so good that it didn't collide with my enjoyment of it. Goodkind's books suck so all I'm thinking about is his Ayn Rand fanboydom.

I don't think it's weird to say it depends on quality.

A good work of art is worth overlooking things like it being sexist because it was written 100 years ago.

Yes, this and this. I can "forgive" an awful lot in terms of values differences (with the author or the work) but I can't forgive bad art.

There is actually quite a bit backing up GRRM being prejudiced against non western cultures, including his own admission that he likely is. And GRRMs handling of non westeros is pretty bad for the most part. Maybe not quite as bad as Tolkien, but bad.

What exactly are you referring to? What has GRRM said?

Also, it feels like you're using "prejudiced" in a somewhat neutral way (as if prejudice was some sort of disagreement/misunderstanding/ignorance/etc.) as opposed to the more common negative way (prejudice = hate/dislike/distrust/snobbery/etc.). It seems like most folks use it in the latter mode (which is bad) as opposed to the former (which we're all really guilty of to some degree or other...certainly "Easterners" can also be uninterested in or mistaken about other cultures just as much as Tolkien could be said to be about theirs). Am I missing something?

This feels like it makes a difference...certainly Tolkien had some ignorance/antipathy to "Eastern" things being a European who was obsessed with Norse mythology. I can't agree with the concept that he disliked and hated "Easterners" just because the villains come from the East.

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I specifically chose my words - I don't think that GRRM was bigoted. But I think he's prejudiced and was willing to engage in some fairly bad stereotypes.

Here's his response in one place:

Not really. I think it’s good people were debating those points. Obviously I don’t think I’m misogynistic or racist as some of those critics say, I think they’re reading it too simplistic. Certainly, I’m a 62 year old white male and none of us entirely escape the values that we’re inoculated with at an early age, even if we reject them — like me leaving Catholicism. I don’t hold myself up as a paragon of feminism. But I’m very gratified — that idiot critic at the New York Times notwithstanding — on the fact I have so many female fans who love my women characters and I tried to provide a variety of female characters. With all my characters, I try to show that we’re all human.

There was another interview that mentioned more of it, I think. I'll see if I can find a transcript.

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I was thinking more that he said the dwarves are based on the Jews as an example of his likely personal prejudices, but the depiction of the East is still prejudiced even if he personally didn't hold any prejudices against brown skinned peoples.

I should have separated the issues of the man from the issues in his works, apologies for conflating the two.

I'm going to go and set my copy of LOTR on fire now.

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I'm reacting so viscerally to this news because I've heard people advocating violence against Jews and had people hate me, and in fact been beaten up for, the stereotypes Tolkien uses in his books, by the way. Like someone telling me we should save oil by burning Jews because clearly we (and Israel) are the reason for the global recession.

so to everybody who is going to tell me I'm overreacting and should get over it: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I CAN IGNORE. These stereotypes have an emotional component for me. I'm, not saying you should be offended by them but I am saying I am. Edited twice to clarify because I know how the internet works.

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Just to be sure Verboten, I'm only noting something I read on the 'net as well, basically that Tolkien noted their similarities then had the dwarves be greedy.

It is possible that he meant something else. I feel like the case against him feels bad, but I don't want to say he was a definite Anti-Semite.

Of course, that the prejudice can be read in his work is problematic.

Here's wikipedia:

"Tolkien was now influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history.[5] The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland (the Lonely Mountain, their ancestral home, is the goal the exiled Dwarves seek to reclaim), and living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews,[5][6] whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible.[5]

"

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Just to be sure Verboten, I'm only noting something I read on the 'net as well, basically that Tolkien noted their similarities then had the dwarves be greedy.

It is possible that he meant something else. I feel like the case against him feels bad, but I don't want to say he was a definite Anti-Semite.

Of course, that the prejudice can be read in his work is problematic.

Here's wikipedia:

"Tolkien was now influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history.[5] The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland (the Lonely Mountain, their ancestral home, is the goal the exiled Dwarves seek to reclaim), and living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews,[5][6] whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible.[5]

"

Are you asking me to be reasonable on the internet?! But yeah, should not jump to conclusions the book burning will wait.

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I'm reacting so viscerally to this news because I've heard people advocating violence against Jews and had people hate me, and in fact been beaten up for, the stereotypes Tolkien uses in his books, by the way. Like someone telling me we should save oil by burning Jews because clearly we (and Israel) are the reason for the global recession.

so to everybody who is going to tell me I'm overreacting and should get over it: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I CAN IGNORE. These stereotypes have an emotional component for me. I'm, not saying you should be offended by them but I am saying I am. Edited twice to clarify because I know how the internet works.

I hope you don't drive a Ford then.

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Tolkien was certainly not anti-semitic. Here's a letter he wrote in June 1938 in response to a German publisher's query about whether The Hobbit was written by an Aryan:

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter ... I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-iranian; as far as I am aware noone of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject -- which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung.

I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and remain yours faithfully

J.R.R. Tolkien

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As for the dwarves thing, when Tolkien first started his work back in 1917, the dwarves (which are Norse critters) were uniformly evil. The Hobbit (1930s) was initially unrelated to that backstory, and portrays Thorin and company as fundamentally decent. This later nicer interpretation of dwarves was applied the rest of his work, so you find Gimli being a good guy. I think when Tolkien gave that interview in the 1960s where he raised the Jewish analogy, he was thinking along the lines of a people with a lost homeland and an ancient language (recall that language was Tolkien's obsession). Greedy dwarves are a Norse thing.

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There is anti-Semitism in Tolkien. There's a nice essay here "Dwarves are not Heroes". The author's argument is that he at least became aware of it and moderated it as time went on she concludes quite nicely:

What we have, finally, in Tolkien is a 20th century author confronted by the ways that his writing, perhaps not even entirely consciously, had drawn on antisemitic beliefs, and attempting to work through the issue in his subsequent books. The Dwarves in The Hobbit are not the same as they are the Lord of the Rings, and critics who have avoided a full assessment of Tolkien's use of antisemitic tropes in The Hobbit have missed some pointed alterations in the Dwarvish characters between the earlier book and the later writings. This doesn't erase what he had already written--simply trying to change negative traits to positive ones still subscribes to claims for racial identity--and I think readers and critics do need to acknowledge that he could be (and was) influenced by such aspects of English culture as antisemitism. To observe this is not necessarily to adopt the mode of "gotcha" criticism, as Glen Love refers to it in an essay on ecocriticism, "dragging past writers to the dock" for lack of modern sensibilities (11). Rather, it is to observe that such ways of thinking, "or the writer's diversion from [them] [...] may be worth examining" (Love 11). Instead of insisting that Tolkien is worthy of literary study but resisting analyses that present problems for the reader, critics should allow themselves (and be allowed by their own readers) to examine his books with the same approaches that they use for other texts, noticing changes, gaps, alterations, and biases in Tolkien's texts. After all, in the case of the Dwarves in The Hobbit, he seems to have been perfectly willing to perform such examinations himself.

If you have a view that a Semitic people are distinct, alien and have negative traits, then that is anti-Semitic. Yes some of those negative traits are there in the sagas but in the sagas the dwarves seem to be the same as the dark elves and so are a variety of elf, but by the time of Tolkien they have become split off into entirely separate species, and in his writing actually the products of entirely separate acts of creation. But that's not the same as thinking that Tolkien was a Nazi or a nazi sympathiser which he clearly wasn't.

I'm not so moved by the dark men from the east argument, all men apparently are at risk of corruption in Tolkien.

With Howard the negative seems far stronger. At least in Tolkien seperate races like dwarves, elves and men are all equally capable of civilisation and can live together peacefuly.

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Have to disagree with the argument that that the Jewish analogy extends beyond homeland/language.

Arguing that the Dwarves are fond of riches and stuff overlooks the fact that, well, the Noldor run into the same problem. Or anyone who runs across the Silmarils (Thingol, et al). Lust for material/worldly things is a very common thing in Tolkien, and if you consider his source material (Fafnir's treasure, Beowulf), I think it's much more likely he got his portrayal of gold lust from there, rather than giving one of his peoples a negative semitic stereotype.

(Mieville is also full of shit with his statement that racism is true in Tolkien. Yeah, that Ar-Pharazon chappie was so admirable...).

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Tolkien got another mention for being racist in this thread, big surprise there.

Orcs =/= black people. They're never even really described in detail. Mostly they're described in the loosest of terms, in terms of evil and filth, not actual appearance. The movies gave them a popularly recognized look, but I'm sure it isn't what Tolkien envisioned. Being dark skinned in movies doesn't mean a thing.

It doesn't matter whether orcs = 'black people'. The point is they reinforce the idea of something 'foreign' being monolithic and completely evil. Which comes from wartime thinking.

I don't really blame Tolkein for that. That specific idea was everywhere during both world wars, since its a hell of a lot easier to kill your fellow man if they aren't actually your fellow man. Its totally unsurprising to see it seep into his work.

However, I do blame modern writers for following in his footsteps.

edit: Oh, and the dwarves = Jews thing is baseless bullshit, you can simply substitute 'Jew' for 'humans obsessed by greed', which as a theme is everywhere in his books.

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There is anti-Semitism in Tolkien. There's a nice essay here "Dwarves are not Heroes". The author's argument is that he at least became aware of it and moderated it as time went on she concludes quite nicely:

If you have a view that a Semitic people are distinct, alien and have negative traits, then that is anti-Semitic. Yes some of those negative traits are there in the sagas but in the sagas the dwarves seem to be the same as the dark elves and so are a variety of elf, but by the time of Tolkien they have become split off into entirely separate species, and in his writing actually the products of entirely separate acts of creation. But that's not the same as thinking that Tolkien was a Nazi or a nazi sympathiser which he clearly wasn't.

I'm not so moved by the dark men from the east argument, all men apparently are at risk of corruption in Tolkien.

With Howard the negative seems far stronger. At least in Tolkien seperate races like dwarves, elves and men are all equally capable of civilisation and can live together peacefuly.

Thank you for the link. :) If there is anti-semetic stuff in Tolkiens work, I'm not going to read it any more. I do not like to be reminded of real world prejudices and stereotypes while reading fantasy.

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See, all of the above is why I really dislike the knee-jerk reaction to the values dissonance concept, such as "well JRRT says dwarves are greedy and they kind of seem like Jews, therefore JRRT didn't like Jews and therefore2 I cannot like JRRT." Yes, I get that there are often personal and other issues and concerns that play into these things, but all too often it feels like folks are just looking for something to get exercised about.

You know who else is negatively portrayed in Tolkien's work? Canines (since all the wolves are evil), angelic beings (since Gandalf makes mistakes, Saruman is corrupted, and Radagast is indifferent), people with power (like Denethor), people without power (like Butterburr the innkeeper), people with artistic talent (like Feanor and his sons...crap, did JRRT hate himself???), "common" folk (like those silly and often stupid hobbits), bug-eyed loincloth wearers (like Gollum), and on and on.

Or maybe he was writing a complex work of art that defies simplistic labelling and trite moralizing?

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