Quote from: StormBringer;422992As I understand it, most anthropologists seem to think that red hair is derived from human and Neanderthal interbreeding, a result of living in close proximity and trading extensively.

Haven't dug into this extensively, but AFAIK this isn't true (perhaps I'm biased here since I'm a ginger ).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071025-Neandertals-Redheads.html

Note particularly this bit:
Variations in this gene's sequence limit melanin production in people with pale skin and red hair, although the particular mutation found by the researchers is not known to occur in modern humans.

Red hair certainly appears in the Neanderthal gene pool, but the specific mutation in modern humans is different to the one that they've found - thus far anyway. Later research does suggest interbreeding through - perhaps a 1% to 4% genetic contribution to modern humans according to the popular article here.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-neanderthals-humans-mated-interbred-dna-gene/

Quote from: Melan;422989Not to mention there is a huge difference between orcs imagined as "ugly humanoids with piggish faces" and orcs imagined as "loathsome, bestial monsters that barely resemble humans". The first case makes voluntary interbreeding more likely, and artwork depicting orcs is all over the scale from brutish humans who wouldn't look that out of place in a human city to green monsters from hell.

Good points.  While a fetish for the grotesque has undoubtedly existed since day one, I would agree it not to be enough of a factor.  I prefer the former sort, myself.  Metaphors for human failings work best when the metaphor still largely resembles a human.

Quote(Also, I searched for these images with the Google safety filter off. Don't do this. :eek:)

"Ok, important safety tip, thanks Egon."  

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;422994Haven't dug into this extensively, but AFAIK this isn't true (perhaps I'm biased here since I'm a ginger ).
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071025-Neandertals-Redheads.html

Note particularly this bit:
Variations in this gene's sequence limit melanin production in people with pale skin and red hair, although the particular mutation found by the researchers is not known to occur in modern humans.

Red hair certainly appears in the Neanderthal gene pool, but the specific mutation in modern humans is different to the one that they've found - thus far anyway. Later research does suggest interbreeding through - perhaps a 1% to 4% genetic contribution to modern humans according to the popular article here.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100506-science-neanderthals-humans-mated-interbred-dna-gene/

Thanks for the assist, I hadn't seen any follow up since I read about it originally some time ago.

In any case, Neanderthals were hardly noted for their Brad Pitt like countenances, and there were few problems interbreeding.

Ah, the racist subtext in Tolkien. Never gets old...

Yes, Tolkien -- born and raised in late-1800s, early-1900 South Africa -- probably was racist, as were Lovecraft, Howard, Hergé (of Tintin fame), and your great-grandfather.

The Lord of the Rings is not a primer on racism. Sure, it can be easily deconstructed as such, because some villains are swarthy (Easterlings), and some examples of racial miscigenation are considered "wrong" (half-orcs). Again, it was an early 20th Century thing; racism was not yet the taboo it is today (no sane, contemporary fantasy writer would ever risk being interpreted as racist), and was an accepted stance in politics, religion, science and polite conversation.

But Tolkien was openly anti-Nazi, Lovecraft married an Ukrainian Jew, and Howard... yeah, well, Howard had issues, but to the best of my knowledge, never acted on his racial prejudices. So, even if these dead white men wrote "racist stuff" (or, more accurately, fiction which reflected the racist biases of their time), they didn't exactly practice what they preached.

Just for the sake of clarity, racism is bad, and stupid. This is not "modern enlightenment" bias, this is one of the rare examples of real, honest-to-God progress the Humanity has made in the last few decades, that we now finally recognize institutionalized, unjustified prejudice and hatred for what it is, and that we've mostly purged science, politics, religion and societal norms of its heinous influence (and relegated any and all remaining racist elements of these disciplines to the fringe). If you write racist stuff on a fantasy novel, or God forbid, a RPG (RaHoWa, I'm looking at you), you are a complete fucking idiot.

Tolkien, Lovecraft et al. get away scot free because they didn't know any better. Context, people.

Quote from: Melan;422991Plus: in threads like this, never forget to link Starship Stormtroppers!

Michael Moorcock is a tool sometimes, really. Love his fiction, hate his politics.

Though "Epic Pooh", his classic essay dissing Tolkien, might be more relevant to the issue at hand.

I'll readily admit that Moorcock is a good writer, even when writing about politics, but his stance reeks of a particular brand of Leftist indignation and self-righteousness, to which I was frequently exposed back in the day, and which I've come to utterly revile.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;422993It was a different time. A time when I remind you: keeping Black Slaves was still totally legal in several of parts of Tolkien's empire (Northern Nigeria Colony, for example). Eugenics, racial hierarchies, and divine right of aristocracy were all respectable positions that real people in polite society would simply have. Darwin's theory that Black People and White People were the same species was still controversial, and books talking about it were banned in Germany and the Soviet Union.

That's seven kinds of wrong. The particular laws and customs of Northern Nigeria were at the time just as irrelevant to thinking in Europe and America as the laws and customs of the Congo Basin are irrelevant to them now: a faraway, unpleasant peculiarity.

The ideas of the nazis and communists were not derived from these feeble and obscure traditions; both ideologies were modern and - in the sense of Fordism and industrialisation, not its contemporary meaning of "liberal leftist" - relentlessly progressive. Tolkien's toryism and romantic views of a rural past have little to do with that, and his views on social divisions and aristocratic descent come from tradition, not a modern declaration of racial inequality. The roots are entirely different.

Mixing up the two, or treating traditionalism as the wellspring of fascism is a typical Western marxist idea (as seen in Moorcock's article above), and while popular, it has little to do with reality (a thorough debunking was done by John Lukacs in Democracy and Populism: Fear & Hatred as well as The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age). Reading fascism into Tolkien is "deconstruction" of the worst kind - while he had rejected the work's interpretation as an allegory right in the introduction. A writer is always subconsciously influenced by his or her times, but the misreadings of Tolkien as a racist or someone with fascist sympathies in face of all contrary evidence are simply bunk - a projection of the reader's anti-Tolkien or anti-conservative leanings onto the original work.

As for Darwin's theories or books being banned in the Soviet Union, that's, uh, nonsense considering that Darwin was treated as a major ideological predecessor of scientific socialism. The Soviet Union's ideological conflicts occurred entirely within the darwinian paradigm, and it was the conflict between Lysenkoism (a descendant of Lamarckism) and Mendelian genetics that ended with the state-backed triumph of the former and the purge of "Mendelists". Here are a few passages from B. A. Keller's How Man Transforms Plants, a typical Stalin era propaganda pamphlet that pretty much places Darwin next to the holiest figures of communist thought:

QuoteDarwin's teachings placed solving the question of human origin on a scientific foundation. In 1871, Darwin published a book on the origins of man, where he proved that man on Earth has come from animals similar to advanced apes as a result of natural selection. Engels proved that in the process of the ape's transformation into man, the most important, decisive role was played by collective, social work.
...
What urged Tymirzaev to commit so much attention and effort to spread the teachings of Darwin, and to develop it in the old, Tsarist Russia? The Tsarist government had grasped every means to keep the people, the workers and peasants from science, and to keep them in the darkness of religious prejudices. Darwin's teachings gave a correct, materialistic view on living nature, and this proved that the entire world of plants and animals is subjected to the general natural law of change, development and transformation.
...
When in foreign countries, they tried to contaminate and displace the materialistic teachings of Darwin with idealistic teachings (Mendelism), Tymirzaev proved their falsehood through a hard struggle.
...
...
Real science, in the teachings of Tymirzaev and other progressive scientists, completely unmasks the contemporary pseudosciences of these fascist fanatics.

If books related to Darwin were banned in the Soviet Union, that's because of either Mendelism or because the author was purged, not because of the basic ideas.

Also,

Quote from: FrankTrollman;422993But ultimately this thread is not about Tolkien and the similarities he himself lamented between himself and Hitler. This thread is more about HP Lovecraft. And HP Lovecraft was a fascist sympathizer who wrote extensively and often in support of Adolf Hitler until 1936 when the realities of concentration camps and possibly the influence of his own Jewish wife caused him to change his mind and begin writing letters discouraging people from supporting the Axis.

Again, death by a dozen basic errors. Lovecraft had long-long been divorced by the 30s, while "the realities of concentration camps" (of which he writes, if not approvingly, but at least as a necessary institution in The Shadow over Innsmouth, written in 1931 but published in 1936) were at the time basically unknown, so Lovecraft's reasons for "discouraging people from supporting the Axis" would have to come from other factors - that is, if there was an Axis before the 1940 Tripartite Act.

I typically avoid nitpicking others' arguments, but your pronouncements are built on an incredibly shaky foundation of factoids, mistakes and misunderstandings.

Quote from: The Butcher;423001Michael Moorcock is a tool sometimes, really. Love his fiction, hate his politics.

Though "Epic Pooh", his classic essay dissing Tolkien, might be more relevant to the issue at hand.

I'll readily admit that Moorcock is a good writer, even when writing about politics, but his stance reeks of a particular brand of Leftist indignation and self-righteousness, to which I was frequently exposed back in the day, and which I've come to utterly revile.

I actually like Moorcock's criticism even while I consider many of his political conclusions false. Epic Pooh formulates some of the problems I have with Tolkien, while his reflections on fantasy in other chapters of Wizardry and Wild Romance - on the exotic landscape, in particular - are witty and insightful. He is a thought-provoking essayist.

I actually have more trouble with his fiction - some of it is great, some of it, including major works like some Elric books and the Hawkmoon series, is lazy, formulaic hackwork with brief, very brief flashes of brilliant imagery.

Trouble with boiler-plate marxists is: bourgeois == fascism. Reason & differentiation break down right there.
Moorcock is on the money re: romanticism, though. And the funny thing is that Elric-Fans usually are goth-romantics of some sort.

Elric is perfect fiction to read when you are 14 and have some Hair Metal blaring in the background. Still, though, even at that age, I vastly preferred Leiber.

Quote from: Melan;423004That's seven kinds of wrong. The particular laws and customs of Northern Nigeria were at the time just as irrelevant to thinking in Europe and America as the laws and customs of the Congo Basin are irrelevant to them now: a faraway, unpleasant peculiarity.

Tolkien was BORN IN AFRICA. The views and peculiarities of the African colonies are very much the point, considering that his mother was a colonial in the darkest continent.

QuoteAgain, death by a dozen basic errors. Lovecraft had long-long been divorced by the 30s, while "the realities of concentration camps" (of which he writes, if not approvingly, but at least as a necessary institution in The Shadow over Innsmouth, written in 1931 but published in 1936) were at the time basically unknown, so Lovecraft's reasons for "discouraging people from supporting the Axis" would have to come from other factors - that is, if there was an Axis before the 1940 Tripartite Act.

Quote from: HP Lovecraft Biography pageBy 1935, the atrocities of the Fascists began to poke holes in Lovecraft's fantasy portrait of them, and he stopped sounding their praises. A neighbor visited Germany in 1936, and returned to tell Lovecraft exactly what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. Despite his intellectual prejudice against Jews, he had no actual hatred toward them, or toward any other racial group for that matter. Lovecraft was shocked, and began to actively discourage pro-Nazi sentiments when these were expressed among his circle of literary friends.

Those are apparently the conclusions of L. Sprague de Camp, who I trust on this subject more than you.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;422993...It was a different time. A time when I remind you: keeping Black Slaves was still totally legal in several of parts of Tolkien's empire...

:confused:

The Slavery Abolition Act (as its name indicates) abolished slavery throughout (almost all of) the British Empire in 1833.

I'm surprised by the claim that slavery was still legal in "several parts of Tolkien's empire" (i.e., the BE during Tolkien's lifetime).  Could you provide a link to support this claim?

Quote from: Settembrini;423006Trouble with boiler-plate marxists is: bourgeois == fascism. Reason & differentiation break down right there.
Moorcock is on the money re: romanticism, though. And the funny thing is that Elric-Fans usually are goth-romantics of some sort.

I love Moorcock's writings, still do, and I very much like the guy, his humour and personality as a human being, but sometimes he just is such a cliché leftist-anarchist intellectual (I suspect because he yearns to be recognized as a valid intellectual to begin with, despite all that 'fantasy tripe' he used to write) that I can do nothing but smile.

I just wanted to add:

Quote from: Melan;423004That's seven kinds of wrong. The particular laws and customs of Northern Nigeria were at the time just as irrelevant to thinking in Europe and America as the laws and customs of the Congo Basin are irrelevant to them now: a faraway, unpleasant peculiarity.

The ideas of the nazis and communists were not derived from these feeble and obscure traditions; both ideologies were modern and - in the sense of Fordism and industrialisation, not its contemporary meaning of "liberal leftist" - relentlessly progressive. Tolkien's toryism and romantic views of a rural past have little to do with that, and his views on social divisions and aristocratic descent come from tradition, not a modern declaration of racial inequality. The roots are entirely different.

Mixing up the two, or treating traditionalism as the wellspring of fascism is a typical Western marxist idea (as seen in Moorcock's article above), and while popular, it has little to do with reality (a thorough debunking was done by John Lukacs in Democracy and Populism: Fear & Hatred as well as The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age). Reading fascism into Tolkien is "deconstruction" of the worst kind - while he had rejected the work's interpretation as an allegory right in the introduction. A writer is always subconsciously influenced by his or her times, but the misreadings of Tolkien as a racist or someone with fascist sympathies in face of all contrary evidence are simply bunk - a projection of the reader's anti-Tolkien or anti-conservative leanings onto the original work.

As for Darwin's theories or books being banned in the Soviet Union, that's, uh, nonsense considering that Darwin was treated as a major ideological predecessor of scientific socialism. The Soviet Union's ideological conflicts occurred entirely within the darwinian paradigm, and it was the conflict between Lysenkoism (a descendant of Lamarckism) and Mendelian genetics that ended with the state-backed triumph of the former and the purge of "Mendelists". Here are a few passages from B. A. Keller's How Man Transforms Plants, a typical Stalin era propaganda pamphlet that pretty much places Darwin next to the holiest figures of communist thought:

If books related to Darwin were banned in the Soviet Union, that's because of either Mendelism or because the author was purged, not because of the basic ideas.

Also,

Again, death by a dozen basic errors. Lovecraft had long-long been divorced by the 30s, while "the realities of concentration camps" (of which he writes, if not approvingly, but at least as a necessary institution in The Shadow over Innsmouth, written in 1931 but published in 1936) were at the time basically unknown, so Lovecraft's reasons for "discouraging people from supporting the Axis" would have to come from other factors - that is, if there was an Axis before the 1940 Tripartite Act.

I typically avoid nitpicking others' arguments, but your pronouncements are built on an incredibly shaky foundation of factoids, mistakes and misunderstandings.

That is all.

Quote from: Benoist;423063I love Moorcock's writings, still do, and I very much like the guy, his humour and personality as a human being, but sometimes he just is such a cliché leftist-anarchist intellectual (I suspect because he yearns to be recognized as a valid intellectual to begin with, despite all that 'fantasy tripe' he used to write) that I can do nothing but smile.

That is a pretty believable, plausible characterisation. Also, you like Moorcock, and would admit having had a liking for WoD, no? So goth-Elric fan would not be too hard a stretch, right?

I SOLD all my Moorcock, btw. Could. Not. Stand. It. One and a half Elric stories and three Eternal Champion ones were the furthest I could get.
I cannot stand Faust, so Elric is just totally contrary to my tastes.

Quote from: Settembrini;423081That is a pretty believable, plausible characterisation. Also, you like Moorcock, and would admit having had a liking for WoD, no? So goth-Elric fan would not be too hard a stretch, right?

No it's not a stretch. Same thing that makes me love John Keats, Shelley, some of Shapespeare's outlook on the human tragedy... it's all part of the same mental landscape, if you think of it, that inspired Gothic artists for ages now.

But I'm a conflicted individual on these things. These types of imagery do speak to me, but at the same time, the Epic, the depiction of what is best in human beings, or what they should be aspiring to, is something that I hold dear as well. So when I read Tolkien talking about the reasons why he despises Shakespeare, I totally see where he is coming from, and that speaks to me. At the same time, when I see a representation of Hamlet I can't help but fall in love with Shakespeare all over again.

So that's not like I'm two-dimensional in that regard. But then, who really is, but the simplest minds amongst us, right?

Quote from: Settembrini;423081I SOLD all my Moorcock, btw. Could. Not. Stand. It. One and a half Elric stories and three Eternal Champion ones were the furthest I could get.
I cannot stand Faust, so Elric is just totally contrary to my tastes.

I like Elric, I really do. But then, I think I'm actually more in love with Hawkmoon, probably because it blends these two seamingly contradictory aspects of human romance I was just talking about above.

If anything, for all this implies of blends and contradictions, I think I could be characterized as being Arthurian at heart.

Quote from: Benoist;423089I like Elric, I really do. But then, I think I'm actually more in love with Hawkmoon

Meh.  Corum kicks both of their arses!

(I find Elric whiny and grating -- although I like the first few Elric stories, namely, the stuff before 'Stormbringer'.  Hawkmoon is a rather shallow character IMO, but the setting is cool.)