Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Races: Orcs

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A black, white, and dark blue striped header image with the text Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Races: Orcs

Universally disliked by the Free People of Middle-earth, Orcs seemed to exist only to kill and destroy, and yet these people presented a moral dilemma: if orcs were truly evil and not human, they deserved death; however, if they showed an understanding of good and evil, even if they repeatedly did wrong, then targeting them was a race-based genocide. Tolkien was uncomfortable with the concept of his heroes being racist towards their enemies, yet the heroes were frequently racist towards each other, so this was not what set apart their treatment of orcs. The key difference was that orcs could be killed without repercussions. While Elves participated in kinslayings, Dwarves and Elves fought each other, and Men joked about hunting Hobbits, these actions were eventually seen as reprehensible, while the mass killing of orcs was viewed as acceptable, even a game.

A lot of unpleasant things will be covered in this essay as I unpack how I choose to portray orcs. Tolkien himself was not entirely sure how to portray them, as he created multiple origin stories. In The Book of Lost Tales, they are part of the Uvanimor, a host of “evil fays” which included “monsters, giants, and ogres” that were “bred in the earth” by Melko, another name for Morgoth (268). In Morgoth’s Ring, there are two confliction theories: spelling variant Melkor was used as he turned animals into “monsters of horn and ivory” in several iterations of the tale (18, 32, 41) or the Orcs were a “spawn of earth corrupted by the power of Morgoth” (195), grown from the ground as good but turned evil.

The most popular origin, appearing in The Silmarillion, was that some Elves were “by slow arts of cruelty… corrupted and enslaved” to become a “mockery” of their former selves, but were technically alive, since “naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make” (64). This line closely matched Frodo’s description of Orcs — “The Shadow that bred them can only mock… it only ruined them and twisted them” (The Return of the King, 201) — a strong indicator that he had read the in-universe version of The Silmarillion.

Based on this text and historical context, I considered four elements when designing my orcs: undead beings from around the world such as vampires and zombies, the impact of World War II propaganda on the portrayal of fantasy villains, the varied use of blackface in entertainment, and modern understanding of cleanliness as a virtue.

Five characters with orc ancestry; the four on the left wear ragged clothes, while the fifth wears Manchu-inspired clothes

The Undead Around the World

Orcs had similar origins to the undead of Western folklore, including zombies, vampires, and werewolves. These creatures began as ordinary humans before their transformation by a negative force such as a mad scientist, virus, or an undead person of the same type. While the most common modern depictions of these creatures often arose during the Victorian era with novels such as Dracula by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, they existed for long enough to receive their own folkloric motifs in Stith Thompson’s Motif Index. Vampires take up all of E251 with focus on how to overcome their powers (E251.1), how they are brought to life (E251.2), their horrific deeds (E251.3), and their physical form (E251.4). Werewolves appeared as a taboo, as gazing upon a werewolf stunned its victim in Irish mythology (C311.1.4), while the creature itself was categorized as a variation on a man to canine transformation (D113.1.1).

While no zombies made it to the Motif Index, folklore researcher Dr. Emily Zarka created a three-part video series on the history of the monster for the PBS Digital channel Monstrum, now called Storied. The origin of these creatures was based in West African spiritual practices, which spread throughout the world due to the Transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved people brought to Haiti created their own religion, Vodou, whose practitioners believed a person with unique powers could trap the “part of the soul that houses free will” and control the body of a recently deceased person. This sharply contrasted Frankenstein, where an unethical scientist compiled the body parts from multiple sources to create a sentient being who acted on its own.

One technique I use to show the “undeadness” of orcs was through acromelanism or point coloration on their skin, where their hands, feet, and face are a darker tone than the rest of their bodies. This coloring appears on domesticated mammals such as some breeds of dogs, cats, and rabbits due to a gene activating melanin when cold. My orcs exhibit peripheral cyanosis, an unrelated condition to acromelanism but also caused by cold, as the hands and feet of humans turn blue or purple when blood flow is restricted. I combined this gradient skin tone with pallor mortis or the unusually pale skin of recently deceased people, showing how the pallid and lifeless skin of orcs was a mockery of fair and undying elves.

Propaganda of World War II

Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings in the 1930s through 1950s, around the time of World War II, and he harbored “a burning private grudge… against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler” for ruining Norse mythology through Nazi propaganda (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 55-56). Both sides of the war used inflammatory language and imagery when describing the enemy, which were rooted in centuries of stereotype. My focus for this section is on propaganda created by the Allies, especially in the United States.

People whose ancestors had come from Axis countries were considered guilty by association and suspected of being traitors. The U.S. government subjected people with Japanese ancestry, along with a few of German and Italian descent, to harsh treatment. Soon after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Alien Enemy Control Program as he issued presidential proclamations to arrest non-citizens with Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry. He later signed Executive Order 9066 to incarcerate Japanese-Americans, around 122,000, with no trial regardless of their place of birth. These orders showed stark differences in treatment between European and Asian people in the United States, which had gone on even before World War II.

These differences extended to wartime propaganda. In posters depicting Axis leaders, Adolf Hitler of Germany was drawn as a regular man if somewhat goofy, Benito Mussolini was portrayed as stupid, and Hideki Tojo was drawn like an animal with small eyes and large teeth. This uneven dehumanization of the enemy appeared in The Lord of the Rings, as people from Rhûn and Harad were still regarded as Men even with negative descriptions while Orcs were treated as little more than animals.

Person with pointed ears, sharp teeth, and covered in dirt; a red eye insignia across the chest Person with pointed ears, sharp teeth, and covered in dirt; a white hand insignia across the chest Short person with pointed ears, sharp teeth, and covered in dirt

Blackface: From Minstrel Shows to Black Peter

One unique argument I make through my illustrations of Orcs is that they were intended to be white or European-coded people whose skin was darkened by dirt, rather than Black or African-coded people as drawn by some illustrators. The West has long understood the concept of a white person appearing as a Black person or another non-white race for the purpose of entertainment. Back in the Elizabethan era of England, the tragic hero in William Shakespeare’s play Othello, well-known for its portrayal of a Moorish or North African character, was traditionally played by a white actor in blackface. But this poor casting choice did not stay in the post-Medieval period: the prestigious Metropolitan Opera in New York City did not cast its first Black singers as Othello until 2015.

For lowbrow performances, minstrel shows and blackface minstrelsy were common in American theater during the years leading up to the Civil War and throughout Reconstruction. White men made their living by mocking the culture of African Americans through caricatures of their song and dance. With the rise of radio in the early 20th century, sitcoms like Amos 'n' Andy used white voice actors to perform Black characters, making occasional stage appearances wearing blackface.

A different form of blackface is found throughout northwestern Europe as the Christmastime character Zwarte Piet or Black Pete, currently being rebranded to Roetveegpiet or Sooty Pete. Most popular in the Netherlands, he first appeared in the poem “St. Nikolaas en zijn knecht” [Saint Nicholas and his servant] written by Dutch schoolteacher Jan Schenkman in 1850 and intended to portray a Moorish person. This led to white people dressing up as Moors using blackface and wigs during Christmas parades, and these portrayals became a part of Dutch national heritage. More recently, several cities asked people to change their costuming to chimney sweeps, so people still got the fun of wearing shabby clothes and putting paint on their face without the racist connotations. Unfortunately, some this turned into a mockery of working class people, many of whom were Black.

Given this history in the real-world, it is no surprise that people of color were described pejoratively in Middle-earth. An Orc of Moria was described as “swart” in Frodo’s perspective (The Fellowship of the Ring, 365) instead of the more commonly “swarthy”, as used for Men of Harad and Men from parts of Gondor. “Swart” comes from Old English meaning “black” when referring to night or dark clouds, along with skin tone, with an added meaning of “wicked”. It shared a Proto-Indo-European root with the early 15th century English word “sordid”, meaning “dirty”, and had negative connotations related to soiling, much like “zwarte” in Dutch. In contrast, “swarthy” evolved from “swart” in the 1580s as a neutral descriptor for people of color. Its main synonym was “tawny”, a word originating in Medieval Latin, arriving in English to mean “tan” by the mid-14th century, and used in colonial British English as a neutral descriptor for people of color by the 1650s.

Person with regular ears, sharp teeth, and covered in dirt Person with regular ears, sharp teeth, and slightly stained with dirt wearing Manchu-inspired clothes

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness

If a primary issue with the Orcs was that they are dirty, then cleanliness must have been held in high value in Middle-earth cultures. Hobbits were regular bathers with songs about the activity (Fellowship, 113-114), and Elves did not like Orcs walking through their water sources, as Haldir of Lothlorien exclaimed “curse their foul feet in its clean water!” when telling Frodo of Orcs crossing the river Nimrodel (Fellowship, 387)

To this day, ritual cleansing is paramount in Western culture, but the method by which people washed themselves and their motivation for doing so has changed drastically. Judaism has many rules for unclean things, including foods and rituals for bathing, which appear in Leviticus 11 through 15. However, Medieval Christianity did away with most uncleanliness rules due to Jesus’ parable on spiritual cleanliness found in Matthew 15:1-20: “What makes someone unclean isn’t what goes into the mouth. It’s what comes out of the mouth that makes someone unclean”. While people of the Middle Ages did not wallow in mud as shown in Hollywood films, this choice did contribute to plagues in Europe, as discussed in “(iv) Gondor and the Heirs of Anárion”.

According to Phrase Finder, the notion that “cleanliness is next to godliness” first appeared in English in 1605 as part of The Advancement of Learning by Sir Francis Bacon, a legal advisor to Elizabeth I and James I: “for cleanness of body was ever esteemed to proceed from a due reverence to God, to society, and to ourselves”. This phrase emphasized physical cleanliness during a time where people bathed weekly, and anything more was “regarded as excessive” and one of the “worldly vanities”.

Public bathhouses for working class people were the norm until the 1500s, when all closed due to the spread of syphilis. In contrast, communal bathhouses in Japan, known as sentō, are only now facing closure as younger generations adopt modern Western taboos about public nudity. Back to Medieval Europe, upper class people, especially women, were bathed by servants, as being undressed in front of servants of the same sex “was not considered awkward or improper”. This shift in cultural norms seemed to arise during the Victorian era, at the same time “cleanliness is next to godliness” became a stock phrase for “Christian moralists”.

With plenty of historical evidence, I needed textual evidence that a person’s loss of freewill and turn towards evil could be represented by an accumulation of dirt, and I found evidence in a somewhat unexpected place. Upon returning to the Shire, the Hobbits of the Fellowship were confronted with a genocide against their people and the destruction of their country. Sam Gamgee’s long-time rival, mill owner Ted Sandyman, was blamed by the community for turn against his people and siding with the latest colonizers. Ted’s face was blackened from cleaning the inside of factory machines; he had become incapable of cleaning himself yet still relished the opportunity to mock Sam (Return, 322-323).

Due to their name and position in Hobbiton society, I have interpreted the Sandyman family as land-owning Harfoots with some Fallohide ancestry. They owned a mill on the banks of the river, one possible origin of “sandy”, a word which first appeared in Middle English. Alternatively, they might have grown “sandy” hair like Frodo’s cousin, Lotho Sackville-Baggins (Fellowship, 76), which became a descriptor for light brown hair with red and blonde highlights during the 1520s. In either case, Ted was likely the height of an average hobbit-boy, which I interpret as 3'6" (42" or 1.07m), and also the typical height for a five-year-old child: the same time modern children begin compulsory education, and children of the early Industrial Revolution might begin working in the mines or the mills.

In fact, some mill owners preferred to hire children, due to their “nimble fingers and smaller bodies… and they could not fight back”, the exact “advantage” to using an adult Hobbit worker. In the late 19th and early 20th century, American photographers like Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis captured images of child laborers, typically European immigrants, with bare feet and blackened faces: the antithesis of the clean and godly children so prized by the Victorians. While Black and Hispanic children labored in similar conditions, photographers did not document them. At the same time in the mines underneath the southwest British counties of Cornwall and Devon, my ancestors were photographed by John Charles Burrow, a Cornish photographer hired by mill owners to “capture life underground” which exposed the dangerous and dirty work of digging for tin, copper, and arsenic to the general public. Once again, all of the workers were white.

These historical images, coupled with textual references, reinforced my proposed imagery for Orcs: they were fair Elves who lost their free will after their resuscitation into an undead state, which severed their connection between cleanliness and godliness or its Middle-earth equivalent, the veneration of Valar such as Elbereth.

On the left, a tall elf with a green outfit, long hair, and pointy ears; on the left, an orc with bowed legs, pointy teeth, and a torn tunic covered in dirt A short orc the same size as two hobbits with hairy feet and legs wearing clean green clothes On the left, a half-orc wears green Manchu-inspired clothes and his hair is in a queue; on the right, the Dunlending Man wears blue Manchu-inspired clothes and his hair is in a queue

Variations of Orcs

While a wide range of orc cultures existed in Middle-earth, I am focusing on five main types. I assume that goblins, the term used in The Hobbit and colloquially used by Hobbits, were standard orcs. Since Sam and Frodo blended in with them (Return, 221-223), most goblins could not have been more than four feet tall. Much larger were the Orcs of Isengard or Uruk-hai bred by Saruman, who is shown here with the white hand of Saruman insignia. The Orcs of Mordor bred by Sauron appeared to be about the same size, as shown here with the red eye of Sauron insignia. Finally, half-orcs or goblin-men were produced by crossbreeding Men and Orcs. In Morgoth’s Ring, they were described as “Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile” (418-419). Orc-men had more Orc-like traits and remained among Orcs, while Men-orcs had more Man-like traits and lived in communities of Men, especially Men of Shadow, like the squint-eyed fellow who lived among the Dunlendings or some of the Ruffians who invaded the Shire. I imagine some Men-orcs might have a quarter or an eight Orc ancestry, allowing them to more easily “pass” as Men.


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