Orc Lives Matter

[Skanky Vamp]

For the first time in 50 years Dungeons & Dragons are addressing the stereotypical and racial image of the Orc. Once considered inherently evil, Dungeons & Dragons now realize that in so doing they have unwittingly denigrated the Orc. They felt that was just not right. So moving forward Orcs will no longer be evil, they will simply be Orcs. They now recognize that Orcs are morally and culturally complex people.

They did not however, apologize to any Orcs they may have offended by their "monstrous and evil" portrayals, so how much have they changed really?

 

[DeadlyDuo]

For the first time in 50 years Dungeons & Dragons are addressing the stereotypical and racial image of the Orc. Once considered inherently evil, Dungeons & Dragons now realize that in so doing they have unwittingly denigrated the Orc. They felt that was just not right. So moving forward Orcs will no longer be evil, they will simply be Orcs. They now recognize that Orcs are morally and culturally complex people.

They did not however, apologize to any Orcs they may have offended by their "monstrous and evil" portrayals, so how much have they changed really?

Why don't they just change the orcs to white? That way they keep evil orcs. That's the current narrative, isn't it?

 

[Skanky Vamp]

That's the current narrative, isn't it?

Their current narrative is that no one is inherently evil. Sauron thanks them for the support.

 

[TriBel]

That's not new...and you're phrasing it to sound more ludicrous than it is. Similar criticism was made of Lord of the Rings as a novel and later as a film specifically in relation to the Orcs. I have a white friend with a black wife and he commented on how uncomfortable it was watching it with his young son. In fact, none of this criticism is new - it's simply made it to the mainstream. Achebe complained about Conrad's Heart of Darkness nearly 50 years ago.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

you're phrasing it to sound more ludicrous than it is.

That's because I found it funny and attempted to write it as such.

 

[TriBel]

Yes - I got that but really all it serves to do is to allow this "white privilege" everyone insists doesn't exist to show. I don't know where/how/why D&D originated (just looked it up). I do know that much of LoR was written pre-war as a treatise on Englishness (most of our counties have the prefix "shire" and the concept of The Shires draws on the English pastoral tradition and further back). To give Tolkien his due, it was an attack on fascism (I think TH White's Sword in the Stone does something similar - particularly "The Once and Future King"*) but it's been criticised and defended because of the implicit racism ("the shires" in England tends to be a short-cut for the southern rural counties as opposed to the more northern industrialized counties. The former are predominately white (Anglo-Saxon rather than Celtic) so there's inevitably an "us" versus "them" in terms of race. It doesn't make Tolkien an overt racist (he might have been - I don't know. Never met that man though I knew his son) but it does show how certain ideas are perpetuated.

I like LoR - I read it more than 40 years ago so I'm not complaining - I'm just saying I can see why some folk think there's an issue with the Orcs. Interestingly (to me), S7 BtVS begins in England in "The Shires" and draws on the same tradition as Tolkien (also the soundtrack alludes to the War Poets). It references the fantasy genre by way of Harry Potter; Westbury is about 20 miles from where legend tells us the sword in the stone and the holy grail were hidden: both are referenced in End of Days in relation to the Scythe and in Chosen they play this (while Buffy is in the "dungeon" with her dragon demon):

Make of it what you will - or nothing at all - perhaps it's just coincidence.