23. Hella Problematic in So Many Ways.

All about orcs.

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?

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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