Welsh star [John Rhys-Davies from LOTR] in race row

ONE of the biggest Welsh movie stars in Hollywood kicked off a race storm last night after making anti-Muslim remarks.

Outraged Islamic leaders in Wales demanded an immediate apology from Lord Of The Rings actor John Rhys-Davies, who claimed an increase in Europe's Muslim population was a "demographic catastrophe" threatening "Western civilisation".

The 59-year-old Ammanford actor's comments were originally made in an interview with American journalists from World magazine, but this week they were used by the far right British National Party in a leaflet to campaign for support among cinema-goers.

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http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/content_objectid=13830081_method=full_siteid=50082_page=1_headline=-Welsh%2Dstar%2Din%2Drace%2Drow-name_page.html

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From what I've seen on far-right message boards it seems that neo-nazis are big fans of LOTR series.

Odd that the far right are big supporters of LotR, as it is generally pro-little person (i.e., while the big folks are off fighting their war, the little hobbits are really doing the most important task...)
as well as anti-industrialization.

in Europe that use the Lord of the Rings as a basis for their "teachings". Scary groups, I'm telling you!

that can easily be used in right wing, even Fascist ideology. The emphasis on lineage and "blood" ("the blood of Numinor is all but spent"); the Fuedal hierarchialism (Sam calling Frodo "Master" always, as well as the divisions of Elves and Men into greater/lesser/ "lines"), the use of "dark" and "swarthy" to describe evil men (the "Harad" for example, who sound vaguely Arabic by description).

For me, the internal logic of the tale over-comes these elements, which I think are a combination of perhaps unconscious (being generous) racism and the use of the conventions of myth in the story. But it does not surprise me to learn they are put to evil ends.

...that can easily be used in right wing, even Fascist ideology.

I mentioned the conventions of myth. I should have added Medievalism too, thank you. The light/good dark/evil metaphor is of course much older than Medieval times, and I think probably arises from the virtually universal fear of the dark, certainly not from skin color.

Didn't he play the part of a muslim in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

I am the master of the seas...
I am the ruler of the ocean and the ....

(I always wondered how that song ended).

We had a pretty fiery thread on the subject

it's not like they don't like other races or cultures, they seek to protect their own culture. And sorry, but foreign influx DOES CHANGE CULTURE. Even though I don't agree with his views, I'm not going to call him a Nazi or anything like that. He's just a xenophobe.

I hope that people here show more sense than the DixieChick bashers and don't hold his private views against him. It's one thing to boycott a business or movie if the proceeds directly fund some right wing hate group... but people are entitled to their views, no matter how ignorant they are.

Chirac gets a pass for the exact feelings but Gimli gets reamed ?

That ain't right.

Which got a lot of exposure and was subsequently used by local (Dutch) neo-nazi parties in some posters and fliers.

The article raised some perfectly valid questions and my bro, although turning slightly conservative in his old age, is definitely not associated with any nazi organization or ideology.

As for John Rhys-Davies...I don't know the guy ;)

Including a whole hell of a lot of leftists and progressives. The books of JRR Tolkiens are the second best selling books in Western History, second to the Bible, according to a biography of Tolkien I read.

As with any medieval-based mythology, there are lots of themes that can be drawn on for good or ill depending on what you are looking for. It's not so much about there being some problem with the books as much as it is about there being a problem with an awful lot of people these days. :)

JRR tolkien spent an awful lotta time round the northwest sutherland region of scotland not far from where i live. He had a summer cottage on the isle of eigg and has his name in country hotel registers to the west of here.

The residents of the area are 100% white by the fact of declining population and the strong clan areas.

Recently in the pub, a local farmer mentioned to me, after a few drams of whiskey, that he did not understand why black people interbred with whites and that he thought it was bad. I was rather shocked, but i could understand his POV, as he knew more about breeding animal stocks than racial diversity, and i would not breed a black scottie dog with a white west highland terrier for similar reasons driving his thinking.

The scottish highlands are origin to the Klan also, as the emigre's from these parts took with them that very racial ignorance when the highland clearances drove many of them to america, where today, names like macloud, mackay, gunn, sinclair, mactavish, ross, sutherland and such are more common than in scotland itself.

I find this books to be rather anti feminist, and easily racially turned, as surely southrons, haradrim and the coarsairs of umbar are reflected on arabic peoples. Scottish highland clans are very blood line centric, and very "long" in time via that perspective.

Myself, i see it as the dark side of inbreeding, ignorance and too much being separated from the outside world. On the opposite side of things, the culture is nonviolent, and clearly tolkien's model for the shire. Some of the names of mountains out west are distincly similar to his books, like Suilven, which looks like a dark tower. Tolkien being a languages specialist surely borrowed from the old gallic names and places to make his art.


Unfortunately, the ignorant racism carries in the work if you wish to abuse it. Is that not true of most things. Even a kitchen knife is a deadly weapon if used inappropriately.

that I'd chalk down racism in the Highlands to people who have absolutely no experience of other races. Tolkien himself had much experience with people from other racial backgrounds.

It seems to me, on seeing the incredible small local world of the west higlands, that it is an ideal writers model for the shire, where people ain't seen no big folk, no black folk and nothing different for a gazillion years... and the little hobbits went on a big journey that was "fronwed upon" by the local folk not liking outsiders and such.

I thought he was making that up when i first read the books in california, now i come to see his sources. The pub in bree where aragorn sits in the back and is deemed an outsider by the local folk who will not talk to him and are distrustful of his kind... that is just like visiting a pub in lochinver, or alltnaharra, or the crask in just near lairg. All sooooo small and insular, that the image of a far away outsider, king of men, is a threatening foreigner.

The distrust of the hobbiton hobbits of the bucklanders... geesh, "local" is defined as 5 generations in the same villiage... and the humourous distrust of "thurso" hobbits of "people out west" makes me laugh... similarly stories about "wickers" and "orcadians" and the stereotypes are perfect material for a hobbiton, buckland, took, bree world of hobbits insulated, and then those that go to london or far away to edinburgh, are forever changed.

The insight of the highlands shows me that tolkien's imagination was less active than i orginally thought... rather more he used examples. :)

Are you crofting in alberta returning in the future, or are you canadian diaspora forever?

rural Ireland and the West Country of England. It is a totally parochial culture, as can be seen even in Lowland Scotland, where Glasgow and Edinburgh, although only 40-so miles apart might as well be a thousand.
I'm Canadian for good, myself, partly because of that parochial culture (i'm from Highland Perthshire, lived in mid-Argyll, Aberdeenshire and Glasgow).

It does seem that all the successful scots from the highlands leave, hell, even the lowlanders like sean connery leave. The smartest scots i've met are not in scotland, as if that parochialism drives away the best and brightest to get away from the shadenfreude, and the rural poverty of this conquored english playground for the rich and famous.

The new idea from jack maconnel is to invite foreigners in to scotland to create jobs and keep the population from dropping below 5 million... yet i certainly see how this prejudice against outsiders is a major detraction from scottish economic development... sadly, rural isolationism and localism is no solution to global economic pressures... and the foolish nationalists who put that forward as a way for scotland do no service to their countrymen.

As much as i love the regular hobbit people who i've met, the culture is indeed very restrictive, and were i "local" i would have left long ago myself. Americans may think they have a lot in common with the highlanders from the mel gibson movie, but in reality, american culture is like the english IMO. The parochialism does not dominate english culture quite like scotland.

Perthshire has become the golf and tourism playground for wealthy glasgwegians and edinburgh snotty folks. I find glasgow to be similar to los angeles, when compared to san francisco (edinburgh) and though i like the pretty city with the castle, i like the down home regular folks and restaurants of glasgow. Yet, even these cities are simply to culturally backward to be economic power centers and devolution is an economic disaster at the moment for all the hype.

Good that you got out, i understand why.

peace,
-s

in a way that never worked in Scotland. The truly sad thing is that I don't miss Scotland much at all, but then in many ways, Canada is a successful Scotland.

Tolkein was born and spent a significant part of his childhood in South Africa. That must have influenced him to some degree.

all things influence a writer... just when you drive around the west highlands yourself one day, a switch will click in your head about tolkien... no shit.

He really did have a summer cottage in the west, when he was writing those books, and it reflects strongly in the context. Sure, it could have been anywhere, which is what i myself thought until i happend upon the place where he hung out when he actually crafted the works.

It seems to this writer, that part of the magic that makes those books so special, is the spirit of the scottish highlands he captured. You can't tell me that photo of that dark mountain does not have a distinct dark tower look to it.... when you see it, it leaves hair standing up on the back of your head....

They say the rocks on the earths surface in the west highlands are the oldest strata exposed on the surface of the earth, and that ancient feeling comes across impeccably in tolkiens faux "ancient fiction".

I'm always inpsired by the lives of outstanding writers, and tolkien, with ones like orwell, robert louis stevenson, and shakespeare have all used the british culture very effectively as a setting for really profound works.

where Tolkien grew up (moving there when he was about 4, from South Africa). The attempted industrialisation of the Shire at the end of the books indicates his feeling for places like Sarehole, a hamlet when he lived there, now part of the city of Birmingham.

Remember that the 'mythological' background for Lord of the Rings was written in the 1920s, and The Hobbit, where The Shire first appears, in the 1930s. According to this West Scotland paper, Tolkien visited Eigg after the Second World War, when he'd already been writing LOTR for a few years.

Scotland might help with inspiration for the more mountainous settings (though he did once visit the Alps as a teenager, when a postcard is said to have been the inspiration for the character of Gandalf), but he was fairly Anglocentric.

One of his languages (Sindarin) was inspired by Welsh, another (Quenya) by Finnish.

Didn't ole Pat Buchanan complain about that not long ago, talking about the decline of the 'white' race.

I was disgusted after walking out of the last movie. In all three episodes, only nordic-looking people were featured as "mankind."
In the first two films, this was merely annoying, but didn't seem to matter to the storyline.

Then the third movie came out.

All of a sudden, the "traitors to man" were the swarthy-types from "the South.":eyes: Somehow, these other men were willing to sell out mankind for a few pieces of silver.:eyes: The only "noble and righteous" folk fighting "the dark lord" were the euro types. And "dark" literally no longer referred to the evil intentions of Saruman.

In the year 2003, that's just wrong.