9 Most Insane Things Happening In Movies & TV Right Now (Nov 30th)

4. Can't We Orc Just Get Along?

Have you ever sat and watched the Lord Of The Rings and worried about the plight of the orcs and the Uruk-hai as an oppressed race who simply want to carve out a piece of Middle Earth to call home free from oppression and the tyranny of self-proclaimed superior races?

Have you ever looked at the gorgeous, blonde-haired, blue-eyed elves and thought they looked a bit... Aryan? No? Well, someone clearly has.

Fantasy author Andy Duncan has leaned in on the racist allegory of JRR Tolkien's most celebrated work while revisiting his story Senator Bilbo on the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, suggesting the story speaks of anxiety at progressive change and the influx of "others" who could well just be misunderstood. If we just took the time to pay attention to them a little more, we'd drop our Shire First mentality and embrace them with open arms and they wouldn't stab us and hand us over to their master who literally wants to claim dominion over the whole world.

That's the problem with some allegories, they fall apart when you step onwards from them a little. Orcs are an instrument of evil: they're not looking to start settlements in the Shire. They want to eat the Hobbits. And for all the claims that Lord Of The Rings is propaganda written by the victors, that's an awfully "normative" response to a fantasy book.