Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice argues, in his book Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, for an innate colonialism in the modern fantasy genre. A colonialism that scholars, like Justice, Helen Young, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Clare Bradford, suggest provides the foundations for the racial stereotypes and hierarchies embedded in much of modern fantasy literature.
One of the earliest texts to describe the modern fantasy genre, Tolkien’s 1947 “On Fairy-Stories,” voices a clear colonial mindset. In “On Fairy-Stories,” Tolkien includes a comparative between European and Indigenous stories:
Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable. (19-20)
While the comparison can be chalked up to personal opinion, it is also used for Tolkien’s sponsorship of British epic fantasy and adventure narratives. Tolkien appears to create a purposeful hierarchy between story types. Prior to the above quote, Tolkien indicates that the more modern adventure stories of Alice or pirates “left him cool,” but he did enjoy “Red Indian” stories. Tolkien sets up a clear preference, and in so doing, he also creates a hierarchy between Indigenous and European folklore, declaring the latter as “pre-eminently desirable.”
Tolkien uses stories about “Red Indians” as a clear foil for medieval European stories on dragons and wizards. It is true that Tolkien (most likely) had settler-colonial stories about Indigenous peoples in mind over traditional stories from any particular Nation. Like the Western genre stories, Tolkien exoticizes Indigenous peoples with adjectives like “strange” or the claim that Indigenous peoples offer a “glimpse of an archaic mode of life,” which is a common colonial tendency to treat Indigenous cultures as mirrors into their own pasts instead of existing and enduring cultures. Overall, Tolkien renders the living Indigenous nations as myths or fairy-stories themselves. They become characters in a story, existing only through the lens of Western novels, akin to storybook wizards and pirates.
It is a colonial legacy that flows through to the most modern of adaptations on Tolkien’s work in Rings of Power, which has the orcs demand: don’t we deserve a home too? As the Amazon series (and even the upcoming expansion to the Warner Brother’s film franchise) translates Middle Earth for today’s audience, I remain curious to see how the representation of Mordor and the orcs as a warmongering yet diasporic people seeking a homeland plays out in season 2 (expected to be released in 2024) — especially when the series comes with all the pitfalls of a prequel that must eventually allow for the canon of the Lord of the Rings series to logically unfold from its stories. Is it possible for the Middle Earth adaptations to fully contend with their original creator’s own imperial and colonial worldviews?
Image: Mystic Art Design from Pixabay
