When is a movie not just a movie?

of fantasy which are huge, massive, and extremely powerful? I've been told that black Africans are portrayed that way. I'm sorry, but I've never seen them portrayed that way (in fact, no one has ever been able to cite a reference for me, but I suppose given the immense amount of literature our society produces, there is something out there -- but did Tolkien ever see it?) 2) "But these guys come from the south!" Yes, they come from the south. And people who live in warm regions tend to be dark-skinned. Funny, that. Should Tolkien have portrayed all the southern peoples of Middle-earth as albinos or something? Well, there are certainly other Men who serve Sauron, whose skin is less dark than the "troll-men". Sam sees one up close, and as he looks upon the dead Southron warrior he wonders if the man really is evil, or if he wasn't perhaps led or sent to war against his will. Well, the passage where Sam questions the motivations of a dead Southron doesn't really convince many people that their deductions could possibly be in error. They point to the yellow-skinned Easterlings as further proof of Tolkien's clash of the ethnic stereotypes. Only there are no yellow-skinned Easterlings in Tolkien. There are some sallow-skinned half-orcs, but that's as far as you get with respect to Asian-like features (in fact, Tolkien once described Orcs as a debased form of Mongoloid in appearance, but he wasn't implying that Asians were Orcs). "But they must have been yellow-skinned -- they came from the east!" Well, there's logic for you. Anyone who comes from the east must look like an Asian. I guess that means all Europeans look like Asians, because they surely live to the east of me! Tolkien did describe one group of Easterlings. "Not tall, but broad and grim," these men are said to be. "Bearded like dwarves, wielding great axes. Out of some savage land in the wide East they come, we deem." These men (part of the army which takes Cair Andros and blocks the road against the Rohirrim) have sometimes been called half-dwarves, though Tolkien never uses the term of them. The perception is not of an Asiatic people, but of another fantasy race, similar to the half-trolls who appear later on in "The Battle of the Pelennor Fields". Where are all the Asians? Tolkien doesn't seem to dwell on skin color much, or eye shapes, or

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