Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[BIONIC]

Lots of concern dismissing happening

That's totally fair, but calling him a racist in several threads without an explanation seems surprising. People have debated whether his portrayal of Orcs or the East were racist, but his letters to others show him as much less racist than most of the era.

Wow that's such a hard swerve! Fair enough. I've considered it for a long time but I don't think there's enough to call his works overtly racist. Questionable in places for sure.

Fair enough. I’d love to see a thread expounding on this sometime if you are comfortable and you ever feel like making the effort. You make such excellent threads and I’m sure you have a sophisticated, developed understanding of your reasoning, given how near and dear his work once was to you (or at least, appeared to be).

Wow that's really sad, but fair. People change. Hope you can maybe revisit and rekindle your love for his work one day.

And about the thread itself, still can't believe the drama about that picture. Those people are crazy.

I have read this comment multiple times and it's not fair against Tolkien. It's fine if you lose interest in something. That happens. But it's not necessary to post it every single time whenever there's a Tolkien discussion.

Tolkien lived more than hundred years ago. Had he lived today I'm 100% sure he would have included more minorities in his works or wrote certain characters differently.

That's what's frustrates me about Rings of Power. I'm certain Tolkien would love it that there are dark skinned Dwarves and Elf's. They are probably amongst the best characters in the series.

You can see the same with comic book artists like Franquin btw. He had some really, really racist caricatures in his early works (1945). After learning more about the world he regretted it and started to draw characters differently. Even Tezuka the god of manga had some racists caricatures that he regretted. Both Franquin and Tezuka definitely weren't racists though

Tolkien was a product of his time for better or worse.

Totally agreed.

Edmond Dantès, one of the posters on here I really respect, hates Tolkien now and makes a practice of wandering into various threads and blurting out statements to that effect totally unprompted? Not a pleasant discovery to make.

Yeah, it's real bitter and performative feeling which is pretty off-putting.

Tolkien was a white man of his time, yes. He had some pretty blatant shortcomings. I don't think it's wrong for someone to point them out. Nor is it wrong for someone to find that they would rather spend their time with works from their own culture that they found a lack of in their life previously. But come on. Spending months going into not just every Tolkien thread but a bunch of unrelated fantasy threads to make drive-by posts about Tolkien being racist or trash or mediocre or whatever. This is silly. Tolkien was not "racist trash" by the standards of his time or even ours. There are more positive ways to channel your shift in perceptive and taste. Why not make threads about the fiction you're enjoying more now? Or even threads about why you think it's superior to western fantasy if it needs to be about that.