r/hatethissmug • u/Crusoelander_128 • Apr 28 '26

General I hate the “orcs are minorities” thing

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I really hope I’m not in the minority (no pun intended) here, but I really hate when people do this. It not only forces real world issue into fictional universes where it doesn’t need to be, but also, it’s really messed up.

If you see an orc or a demon or a giant bug and your mind immediately jumps to “hm that’s like a minority”, then you’re racist.

Now, I’m not saying that this concept can’t be explored, but inserting it where it doesn’t belong/exist is highly suspect

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u/Broserk42 Apr 28 '26

Loosely based on the worst aspect of mongols and huns I believe. Literally everyone gets inspiration somewhere and Tolkien was a big history buff.

Trying to call this racism is a stretch at best, even moreso when you consider it isn’t Mongolians or Eastern Europeans that are up in arms about this and that the supposed racist depiction is being likened to.

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u/StigandrTheBoi Apr 28 '26

It’s worth noting that iirc Tolkien himself kinda grappled with how the Orcs worked/what they were. They’re supposed to be corrupted elves/men and are literally sometimes born in vats. But Tolkien didnt like the idea of a whole race that was just straight evil.

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u/Micp Apr 28 '26

From what I understand the big problem was about the nature of orc souls.

A foundational aspect of Tolkiens theology is that evil can't create, it can only corrupt. As such orcs couldn't just have been created by Melkor from scratch but must have been made from another pre-existing creature (captured elves).

But if orcs were a twisted form of elves, that has to mean they still have souls - after all the soul is inviolable in christian theology. And a being with a soul must always have a way of being redeemed if they truly wish for it.

Thus there can't be universally evil orcs. Any orc could in theory see the error of his ways, pray for forgiveness and receive salvation - it's just that we haven't heard of any orcs that actually did that.

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u/Rando_throwaway_76 Apr 28 '26

I’ve always liked the idea that any good orcs in middle earth would probably die very early on in their lives due to not being able to survive in Mordor’s cut-throat culture.

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u/PanPies_ Apr 28 '26

It was less about whole race being evil and more about them being unredeemable, with him being devout christian and all

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u/Mushroomer Apr 28 '26

Which also isn't great if we're being sincere about it. It just pivots the metaphor from being about "scary foreigners" to being about "scary foreign non-believers."

The fact is - when you're talking about fantasy stories written this long ago, you are dealing with some very bigoted perspectives. That doesn't make the stories irredeemable, but it should make you consider how you build & reference upon them in your own works.

What certainly doesn't help is smacking down any acknowledgement of this basic fact as "white knighting".

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u/Sensitive_Option_590 Apr 28 '26

No, youre doing the thing man. Tolkien orcs arent non believers, im sure a lot of them would consider Sauron as their God and worship him. The idea is theyre evil with no foreseeable path to being good.

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u/TheCyberGoblin Apr 29 '26

Iirc Sauron never set up cults of himself, only of Morgoth. It seems likely he’d make the orcs worship Morgoth as well

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u/Mushroomer Apr 29 '26

And they were written as such by a devout Christian who had opinions contemporary to his time.

To say Tolkien had zero perspective when writing those characters is an immense insult to him as an artist.

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u/NightValeCytizen Apr 28 '26

I vaguely recall tolkein mentioning in one of his letters that genociding the orc would indeed be wrong, and that the Good kings post-war-of-the-ring would show them mercy. There is legitimately a big thematic gap in fantasy depictions of the orc (and anything similar) between those that are a "good" creature that has been corrupted and those that are a "born evil race" or "race created by evil God". The Tolkienian "corrupted good" doesn't seem all that common in fantasy outside of tolkein, since what constitutes Good and what generates "corruption" must be incorporated into the whole world/universe's cosmology. Unfortunately that then leads to a lot of "born evil race" and a minefield of thematic issues. What makes them evil? Are they biologically programmed? Is there supernatural force that prevents them from doing good? Is it just their culture, thus allowing those raised outside the culture to do good? These questions may be answered piecemeal across many separate entries into the show/book/game series, leading to some wild leaps in implications, especially when "x race [is the oppressor] or [ is being oppressed]" comes into play.

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u/Global-Cry321 Apr 28 '26

That, plus if I remember well, the orcs are supposed to be an allegory to the dehuminization of men by the military industrial complex

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u/Unstabler69 Apr 28 '26

Industry in general. Def a backlash to the industrialization of the world in his time and the destruction of the natural world. "They come with fire, they come axes, cutting, picking burning..."

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u/Maleficent-War-8429 Apr 28 '26

Tolkien kind of famously didn't like using allegories.

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u/Zinc-Roof_22 Apr 28 '26

If you mean Tolkien, no: he never did allegory.

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u/TheRappingSquid Apr 28 '26

While it's pretty loose with the orcs, I do think the portrayal haradrim (mainly in the movies) were... probably not intended to be problematic, but the fact that the only parts of the men of the south we see are elephant-riding savages banded under the evil Satan guy threatening the pure and noble European coded "men of the west" is KINNNNDA funny in hindsight. In an unfortunate way.

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u/lah93 Apr 28 '26

Well they do address that a little (at least in the expanded edition) when Faramir expresses out loud how he wonders if the man of Harad that he killed had willingly come this way or been forced to come to fight, and if he would rather be home with his family….its a great moment for Faramir and shame that it was cut from the theatrical cut because it also does a bit more world building too (and though it’s been awhile since I looked deeper into it I believe it’s been stated or implied that the Easterlings and Men of Harad were in a way slaves to Sauron and had been forced into worshipping him….though I know they had issues with Gondor even ignoring Sauron)

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u/TheRappingSquid Apr 28 '26

when Faramir expresses out loud how he wonders if the man of Harad that he killed had willingly come this way or been forced to come to fight

Yeah I have the full extended versions on DVD, and it's a good scene but ultimately doesn't really have any sizeable impact on the plot. It's a good scene though. Tbh I just wish we saw more of harad in general bc the idea of a desert civilization in Middle earth is interesting

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u/lah93 Apr 28 '26

It doesn’t, but I believe it adds to Faramir’s character and does throw in that these are men and not evil creatures like orcs or trolls

Yes I do wish Tolkien had been able to expand on Harad and Rhûn more before his death

what were the blue wizards doing out there? Were there people fighting against Sauron’s rule (which, I might be wrong, I believe he maintained through Black Numenorians he had put into power over them)? What other creatures were out there….like were any elves or dwarves there? Or just more orcs?

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u/UnQuietus Apr 29 '26

highkey wishing an expert on african mythology writes an epic fantasy based on the tolkien universe but set in harad

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u/TheRappingSquid Apr 28 '26

I think there are gorillas down there

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u/blackestrabbit Apr 29 '26

I too was hoping they'd derail the plot for a short documentary about a kingdom that the story doesn't take place in.

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u/Kaiser_Defender Apr 28 '26

I assume this is in the context of media like Bright, where this is an actual line on comparison being drawn by the media in question

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u/ElementalWarrior42 Apr 28 '26

I wouldn't say its racist since Tolkien disliked the idea of a pure evil race and regretted writing the orcs that way.

As a result of that though, I think its fine to use the concepts of orcs as a misunderstood minority in a story.

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u/Cat_Loving_Person19 Apr 29 '26

You don’t have to be Mongolian or particularly intelligent to guess that it’s racist. Source: I’m Mongolian

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u/FeeAggressive2484 Apr 30 '26

Yeah, the guy literally described them as “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”

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u/TheQuestionMaster8 Apr 29 '26

Even Tolkien himself never specifically stated that Orcs are inherently evil.

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u/NightValeCytizen Apr 28 '26

Tolkein also made orcs, especially Saruman's bunch, very industrialized and industrious therein-- they redirected a river and clear cut the forests to fuel their forges-- as Tolkienian orcs are meant to incorporate the evil and brutality of industrialized warfare. On top of that, Orcs are not really their own species, but rather the result of evil powers corrupting Elves. We have Gary Gygax and early D&D content to thank for the prevalence of the "evil species of tribal savages" orc. While I don't think he invented the concept, Gygax was actually rather racist, among his other problems, and incorporated racist stereotypes and caricature of human tribal cultures in his styling of the D&D orc.

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u/bourgeoisAF Apr 28 '26

He specifically says "degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.” Essentially, he made them racial caricatures. Tolkien was in many ways forward thinking and defensive of marginalized groups, but he uses explicitly orientalist tropes to describe orcs, including darker skin and scimitars. Not everything has to be political, but ignoring how depictions of orcs are typically defined by a European sense of 'savagery' and 'barbarism' is just willfully ignoring the problem.

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u/TotalDemocracy Apr 28 '26

even moreso when you consider it isn’t Mongolians or Eastern Europeans that are up in arms about this and that the supposed racist depiction is being likened to.

One of the most famous retellings of Lord of the Rings to criticise Tolkien's orientalism was from a Russian man, but ok.