Quote:
Originally Posted by Oliver_W
Nope, they literally won't call Rafiki a monkey, because the character is usually played by a black woman... but I bet that not a single non-racist in the audience connected a monkey being called a monkey, with a black woman being called a slur.
It's like Lord of the Rjngs, when closet racists tell on themselves by associating Orcs with black people, when they don't represent any humans, not even subtextually.
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To be fair on the Lion King one, I can't see any real reason to refer to Rafiki is anything other than a baboon, as Rafiki is a baboon, which yes is a type of monkey but everyone knows what a baboon is and it's far more descriptive. Referring to Rafiki as a monkey is sort of like referring to a person as an Ape. Like yes... technically we are indeed apes... but why wouldn't you say human?
And Lord of the Rings weeeeeell... I mean... if you actually look at when it was written there is
most likely some subconscious racial subtext involved in elves and orcs, with Tolkien elves being tall/beautiful/very pale skinned and Orcs, specifically an evil and corrupted offshoot of elves, being dark-skinned.
I love LOTR for what it is but let's not pretend that it doesn't have the footprint of its' time. Tolkien wasn't racist, but the trope of "pureness" being embodied by light skin and "dark skin" being an indicator of evil in fiction, as a trope, goes back further than Tolkien... so it's not necessarily that HE chose to make them dark skinned with any racist intent - but the origins of that are somewhat rooted in race.