I'd have to strongly disagree that it's bad to deconstruct the subtexts (racist or otherwise) to fiction.
I'll agree that Lord of the Rings is quite ambiguous, that's why I chose it to illustrate the blurry boundary between "black=evil" as a racist and non-racist idea. My argument wasn't that it's horribly racist, just to point out that the line between the two sorts of association isn't always easy to draw.
But CS Lewis offended me as an eight year old, and thinking about this sort of analysis has just allowed me to put that discomfort into words.
The "Red heads are awesome, brunettes are evil" subtext to "Prince Caspian" might not have bothered you but it bothered me :P (Though actually I was more bothered by the blatant "Muslims are evil devil worshippers" metaphor in "The Horse and his boy") Similarly, while you and I can dismiss the fact that every single dark skinned character in the LOTR movies(*) is evil it's probably not very nice for all the dark-skinned people watching, especially when taken in conjunction with the same being true of a great deal of fantasy.
If you don't poke at the subtext of things and think about what's really going on you end up supporting the status quo, and the status quo sucks. (This is one of the basic principles I was brought up on, mind you, which might explain my childhood reaction to books being a bit atypical)
(*)I can't remember if the Uruk-Hai are black in the books
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I'll agree that Lord of the Rings is quite ambiguous, that's why I chose it to illustrate the blurry boundary between "black=evil" as a racist and non-racist idea. My argument wasn't that it's horribly racist, just to point out that the line between the two sorts of association isn't always easy to draw.
But CS Lewis offended me as an eight year old, and thinking about this sort of analysis has just allowed me to put that discomfort into words.
The "Red heads are awesome, brunettes are evil" subtext to "Prince Caspian" might not have bothered you but it bothered me :P (Though actually I was more bothered by the blatant "Muslims are evil devil worshippers" metaphor in "The Horse and his boy") Similarly, while you and I can dismiss the fact that every single dark skinned character in the LOTR movies(*) is evil it's probably not very nice for all the dark-skinned people watching, especially when taken in conjunction with the same being true of a great deal of fantasy.
If you don't poke at the subtext of things and think about what's really going on you end up supporting the status quo, and the status quo sucks. (This is one of the basic principles I was brought up on, mind you, which might explain my childhood reaction to books being a bit atypical)
(*)I can't remember if the Uruk-Hai are black in the books