When is a movie not just a movie?

day, but those wars will be fought for the usual human reasons, not to advance Sauron's control over all the world. Nonetheless, given all these clear indications that Tolkien's book is not advocating the superiority of race (and I have only touched the surface on this subject), some people still dare to ask, "Will Peter Jackson portray white men fighting black men?" This seems to be a real concern for some people. It would, I suppose, be okay if Jackson (a New Zealander, remember) were to make a movie about how the Europeans fought with Polynesians. After all, the United States doesn't have a large Polynesian population. We've done some horrendous things to Polynesian peoples, but we don't agonize over their past sufferings. Not much. And no one seems to object to the movie "Zulu". That's a great movie, in my opinion. It documents a battle between white men and black men, but it's not about white men trying to oppress black men. Rather, it's about the clash of two great powers. The Battle of Rorke's Drift probably doesn't figure highly in the list of turning points in history, but it was a sign of what the Zulus were up against. They eventually disbanded their armies because they realized they couldn't defeat the British empire. The Zulus were shrewd, brave warriors, and they had professional soldiers, generals, and an effective military strategy which made them a great power for many generations. They just didn't have the technology and industry that the British had to back up their armies. Sadly, I don't think people are going to look at the battles in "The Lord of the Rings" as if they are re-enactments. And that's because the book is a work of fiction, not a history book. Tolkien tried to present the fiction of history. His pseudo-history is so detailed you can find all sorts of credible instances of perversion, derailment, and ironic twistings of the principles of the founders of Numenor and Gondor (and other nations). But people don't see that deeply into the story. They have painted a veneer of ethnic stereotypes across the pages of Tolkien's prose and are dumbfounded to think that someone might actually try to portray these battles without doing something to amend the supposed political incorrectness. If Peter Jackson is indeed moved to address whatever moral dilemmas he perceives, I wonder how surprised we overly sensitive Americans will be at the result?

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