This article was originally written for a seminar on Representation & Configuration at the University of Klagenfurt in 2021
Foreword:
This essay was difficult to write for the simple reasons that I am neither of African descent nor is my skin colour black. And this essay was difficult to conceive because I may be able to reason and judge upon the reality and history of racism in its totality but I’ll be never able to fully comprehend what it means to experience this very reality, which consequently limits my perspective profoundly. All I could do to justify writing about this important but difficult topic in this essay was to ground my thoughts in those belonging to one of the great thinkers of our time, who is African himself, Achille Mbembe. Obviously, I am not an expert in post-colonial studies or adjacent research fields. However, I took the initiative to approach this study and learned much about my own prejudices and limitations as a researcher.
Abstract
The race of Orcs has been dominating fantasy worlds for almost a century. They represent, in most cases, inhumane forces of evil. However, this kind of representation has departed from their savage conception in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. One can argue that (relatively) recent video games such as World of Warcraft (Blizzard 2004) or Gothic 3 (Piranha Bytes 2006) have developed civilised and sophisticated orc races with a high culture that seem almost human. Looking at this development from a post-colonial philosophical perspective, the concept of the Orc appears to have undergone comparable changes as the repressive notion of the “Black Man”[1] (Mbembe 2017). Tolkien and subsequent white authors have created an embodiment of the negation of the ideal White Man[2] with the Orc. Uncivilised, dependent on superstitious forces, brutish and ugly. In my essay, I will investigate parallels between (the concepts of) the Orc and the Black Man and their development throughout time. To do so, I intend to present a brief genealogy of the Orc based on its representation in the Lord of the Rings, Warhammer 40K and World of Warcraft. I will then present the game Gothic 3 and its interpretation of the Orc as an example of its contemporary representation. Further, I will introduce Achille Mbembe’s notion of the Black Man based on his work The Critique of Black Reason to provide a theoretical lens through which the sophistication process of the Orc may be understood. Moreover, in a synthesis, I will establish the Orc and his “evolution” as a partially genuine representation of the idea of the Black Man in western thought and its development from being a slavish subhuman to becoming equal among White Men.
A Genealogy of the Orc
“Evil. Disposable. Generally up for a party but will probably end up killing each other. Disposable. Bad at tactics but too numerous for it to really matter. Disposable. Just good enough at fighting to make our heroes look cool, but never good enough to pose a real threat. Disposable.” (Reuben 2020)
When Tolkien conceived the Orc for his world of Middle Earth it was most likely based on MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin from 1872. However, the rather funny and awkward goblin from a children’s book mutated through Tolkien’s feather into a rather monstrous beast, a true force of evil; incapable of moral thought (Rearick 2004: 862). Tolkien described them in a private letter as “squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types” (1981)
This mutation can be better understood if we learn about the Orc’s origin and place among two other essential races in Middle Earth, namely Elves and humans. Elves represent purity, culture, intelligence, and harmony, while humans are arguably located somehow between elves and orcs (Rearick 2004: 862). However, The first orcs were elves enslaved and mutilated by the Dark Lord Sauron over generations until they degenerated into monstrous beings. So orcs are engineered impurity and evil (Rearick 2004: 871). Hence, the creation of the Orc makes only sense in its opposition to the other purer forms. The Orc is here, the negation of all good. In addition, elves and humans are credited with the ability to decide their fate by themselves. They are autonomous agents that can change the course of history, like during the battle of Helms Deep in the movie Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, where the elf Haldir states, “An Alliance once existed between Elves and Men. Long ago we fought and died together. We come to honor that allegiance.” (2002). Orcs, however, are slavish brutes that act by command of higher dark forces. They might seem chaotic and uncontrollable, but they depend on taskmasters and higher power to guide them.
While Dungeons and Dragons remained relatively faithful to Tolkien’s orcish brute, Warhammer 40K adapted the Orc and made it fit for space. In Warhammer 40K, Orcs regain comically traits of the goblin but remain forces of evil that only exist to wage war for which they engineer complex war machines. Loponen describes this difference with the fact that “in Tolkienesque fantasy, the denotation is ‘dark-skinned slaves of evil,’ while in Warhammer 40K, it is ‘green-skinned hooligan warriors.’” (Loponen 2019: 31). They themselves were engineered by the Eldar (higher beings) and spread like parasites through fungi in which they are born. However, in Warhammer 40K, we start to see a development of the Orc that moves slightly towards the human race in the form of orc mercenaries that collaborate with humans and seem to appropriate even working-class motivations:
“He is coarse and rough and of limited sensibilities, but he does function in society. He is not a psychotic killer as some Humanis cultists claim. He’s just making a living doing what he does best.” (Reuben 2020)
With the Warcraft series and the subsequent RPG World of Warcraft, Orcs are spotlighted by becoming playable. In World of Warcraft, Orcs remain green-skinned[3] but develop a form of high culture (i.e., commerce, architecture, spirituality, military) (Monson 2012: 65). While they still represent a wild being in their core, they seem to have learned to control their temper. They have learned to coexist with other life forms and have formed alliances with other races in a coalition (The Horde) and seem to not fight only for domination but also for complex concepts such as duty, honour and freedom. Orcs have in Warcraft become independent from greater magic forces ruling them or primal engineering as it was in their earlier representations. They are the product of natural evolution and are descendants of titans (Monson 2012: 59).
This brief overview shows how the idea of a devilish race that existed to fight other purer races developed slowly into a more complex and sophisticated version of itself. While Tolkien’s Orc was more beast than human, almost a century later, Orcs are granted human traits allowing them to represent their own culture and intellect on an almost equal level as humans.
Gothic 3
Gothic 3 is a German fantasy RPG published in 2016 by Piranha Bytes. It is the intended end of the Gothic trilogy, a respected RPG franchise.
In the game, a by humans ruled continent consisting of Nordmar (in the north amidst icy mountains), Myrtana (in the centre, a land of forests and plains) and Varant (in the southern deserts) is overrun by a horde of Orcs. Orcs are physically stronger than humans, are better organised, unified, have better weaponry, and are empowered by secret and divine magic. Their invasion is driven by an ideology of superiority and search for ancient artefacts carrying magic to grant them deification. They believe in their god Beliar which is a deity of destruction and darkness.
While the inhabitants of Nordmar and Varant remain independent from the Orcs (either in opposition or coalition), the people of Myrtanna are fully dominated and lose their independence. The previously ruling force, the monarchy of King Rhobar II., is driven into its last stronghold, where they encapsulate themselves in a magical barrier. The people outside of the barrier fight as rebels in the name of King Rhobar II., collaborate as mercenaries with the orcs, live in the woods as rangers (in opposition to the orcs but not loyal to the king), raid the lands as bandits or have been enslaved by the orcs.
The player enters the game in this stage of political instability. The region of Myrtana where players begin their journey can be regarded as the first chapter of the game where the Orcs run sacked cities, towns and castles while Rebels control strategic camps to oppose the invaders. Players can approach the game in a non-linear fashion. However, there will be choices to make whether one supports the rebellion and liberates cities from the orcs or collaborates with the orcs and rids out rebel encampments.
In Gothic 3 we encounter a unique interpretation of the Orc. We seem overall an orc that negates the humanist developments visible in Warcraft in the Hegelian sense. It is not a direct regression to the Tolkien-Orc but a renaissance of the Orc’s genuine traits of domination and destruction. The Orc, in that sense, becomes a sophisticated doom bringer. It is like if the Orc has understood that only through intellect will he be able to channel his genuine traits. The Orc develops, in addition, a complex relationship with the human race. He employs them as mercenaries, collaborates in searching for artefacts with the assassins, enslaves and fights human resistance. However, while Orcs seem to have emancipated themselves from humans, they have become dependent on them in a new master-slave relationship. The main quest of the Orcs is to find divine artefacts; this task can, however, not be fulfilled without the help of humans in the form of collaboration or massive slave work in excavation projects.
To sum up, in Gothic 3 we face a representation of the Orc that has transcended humanity. While Orcs in Warcraft seem to aspire to be like humans, in Gothic 3, orcs exploit ideal human traits such as intellect and autonomy to use them for their own desires and needs, which are, after all, the domination of the human race and the harmony between them and their divine mission.
The Critique of Black Reason
In the book The Critique of Black Reason, the philosopher Achille Mbembe introduces his interpretation of the concept of the “Black Man”. It is a repressive but ultimately empowering construct that has been applied to the black race by white slavers and later most of western society during the 18th and 20th century to be then slowly deconstructed and reassembled in the mid 20th century until now. In the book, he describes how the White [4]notion of the Black Man has infested the “black consciousness” of African slaves and haunts them but also encourages them to face and fight their state of subjugation.
“Black consciousness during early capitalism emerged in part within this dynamic of movement and circulation. It was the product of a tradition of travel and displacement, one rooted in a logic that denationalised the imagination. Such processes of denationalisation continued through the middle of the twentieth century and marked most of the great movements of Black emancipation.” (Mbembe 2017: 14)
So, the birth of the Black Man begins with the displacement of African populations. He loses his roots and identity and is transformed into a new form of resource ready at hand for the White Man to be transformed into whatever he needs it to be. With the enslavement of Africans and their export to the United States, a new kind of master-slave relationship is moulded. Mbembe presents capitalism as the main reason for the need to degrade the Black Man into a tool, or as he calls it, the living crypt of capital. He explains, “[t]he term “Black” was the product of a social and technological machine tightly linked to the emergence and globalisation of capitalism. It was invented to signify exclusion, brutalisation, and degradation, to point to a limit constantly conjured and abhorred.” (2017: 6)
But Black Man’s transformation into something more beast than man had to be manifested based on physical appearance to be recognised and pointed at easily. For that, he needed respected intellectuals such as Voltaire to strengthen the process of dehumanisation as described in his Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations (1789)
“Their round eyes, squat noses, and invariable thick lips, the different configuration of their ears, their woolly heads and the measure of their intellects, make a prodigious difference between them and other species of men; and what demonstrates, that they are not indebted for this difference to their climates, is that Negro men and women, being transported into the coldest countries, constantly produce animals of their own species; and that mulattoes are only a bastard race of black men and white women, or white men and black women, as asses, specifically different from horses, produce mules by copulating with mares.” (Voltaire 1789, after Mbembe 2017: 76)
The black skin colour was the defining visual cue for the White Man to reassert him and the Black Man into their designated roles of master and slave. Him being human and Black Man being “dark mass of undifferentiated matter of flesh and bone” (Mbembe 2017: 73).
The transformation of African slaves through the concept of the Black Man into beasts of burden reached its peak in the 19th century. White southern Americans depended on the idea and subjugation of the Black Man so much that they would even go to war against people of their own race to protect it during the American Civil War (Mbembe 2017: 58).
While America would continue to struggle with the social and racial aftermaths of the Civil War, Europe would embark on their last great exotic adventure, namely the Scramble for Africa. In this period, a handful of European states would turn to Africa to colonise every last bit. Like with the race trade, capitalism was the driving force that required resources (Mbembe 2017: 57); however, this project of mass exploitation of the African continent required an ideology of justification, which was missionary and benevolent in nature. White Man had to civilise the Black Man for his own good.
“Colonisation was viewed as a form of general treatment for the idiocy of races predisposed to degeneration. Such a belief led Léon Blum himself to say in 1925: ‘We admit the right and even the duty of superior races to attract to themselves those which have not reached the same degree of culture, and to call them to the progress realised thanks to the efforts of Science and Industry.'” (Mbembe 2017: 65)
This period of violent education of White values ended with Europe shifting its focus on two World Wars in the 20th century.
With domination losing its grip on the Black Man in the 20th century, he still remained an ostracised figure in the imagination and reality of the White world. While enslavement and domination were sanctioned, a period of segregation took place. Segregation, however, led to fear of the unknown, and systemic racism manifested inequalities and rising hate, especially in the United States, where large black populations were growing, all descendants of former slaves. (Mbembe 2017: 84)
The fear that haunted the White world like a spectre was based on the result of constructing the notion of the Black Man for almost 300 years. The Black Man remained a slavish creature of degeneration and lower morale in the minds of White people; what could be worse than mixing or interbreeding and becoming like him? (Mbembe 2017: 42)
Fears even grew with Civil Rights movements in the mid 20th century. However, after struggle, the western world would come to terms with a new era of racial coexistence and wider appreciation (King 2002: 13). African Americans would reclaim the notion of the Black Man and make it their own. The Black Man became a human of culture and determination by his own right. Or in Mbembe’s words “to be African is first and foremost to be a free man” (2017:178).
In the 21st century, racial inequality does remain a pressing issue. However, the situation a century ago has come a long way. According to Mbembe, the global black community is, however, now at a crossroads. Black people will always be conscious of their identity by a dialectic, which is what means by Black Reason. Being black will always be on one side, remembering the invention and subjugation of the Black Man by the White Man. On the other hand, Black Reason enables black people to determine by themselves which future they wish for themselves. Being black “is the talismanic function of color—that which, surfacing at the end of sight, ultimately imposes itself as symptom and destiny, or as a knot in the conspiracy of power” (Mbmebe 2017: 152). What he means is that the past becomes in this case and in the political situation black people are now a not just a curse but a weapon of strength. He warns, however, to walk the path of retribution and reversal. Black people are given a unique chance to lead the way and be a thorn in world politics in enforcing change; change involving all human beings as a unified community beyond race.
“Until we have eliminated racism from our current lives and imaginations, we will have to continue to struggle for the creation of a world-beyond-race. But to achieve it, to sit down at a table to which everyone has been invited, we must undertake an exacting political and ethical critique of racism and of the ideologies of difference. The celebration of difference will be meaningful only if it opens onto the fundamental question of our time, that of sharing, of the common, of the expansion of our horizon.” (Mbembe 2017: 177)
The Black Orc: From Savagedom to Retribution
In the previous section, I presented a genealogy of the Orc and displayed its development from an evil savage being to a sophisticated and intelligent being capable of subjugating the human race. Moreover, I introduced the notion of the Black Man by Mbembe and its history and development. That being from a White construct that colonised the imagination of humanity with a slave race more beast than human to a determined and independent global community that reclaimed this notion for themselves and made it something empowering.
Now it will be the task to align these developments, compare and make meaning out of them. The question here is, how does the Orc represent the Black Man?
When we speak of representation, we have to look at it as informal and poetic representation (Young 1999: 133). We cannot search for distinct historical events that appear in both concepts and their biographies but for creative reassembled semantic and illustrative representations embedded in the essential characteristics of both concepts.
To make these comparisons, I have decided to focus on a number of distinct aspects of both concepts and compare them, namely (a) Origin; (b) Appearance, (c) Character, (d) Relationship.
(a) Origin
The origin of the Orc, is in Tolkien’s books or in the Warhammer 40K universe a product of engineering by higher beings making it essentially different from humans’ genesis. Compared to the concept of the Black Man, we have an initial White understanding that he is subhuman and closer to primates or basically animals (Loponen 2019: 73), which sets him apart from the superior White race. One can even go further and argue that the construction of the concept of the Black Man is itself an act of engineering by a self-declared higher race.
However, in later writings like in Warcraft Orcs are evolutionary descendants of Titans, attributing them with a proud past. In Gothic 3, the exact origin of Orcs is unknown. Compared to the Black Man after the black community reclaimed the notion, he emerged like all other humans from Africa.
(b) Appearance
Orcs are generally imagined as brutish, bulky and ugly. They have, in all cases, a different skin colour. In the Warhammer and Warcraft universes, they are all green-skinned. In its White conception, the Black Man is reduced to his black skin colour, which is a signifier for his inferior attributes of being uncivilised and uneducated (Loponen 2019: 74).
In Gothic 3, Orcs have different skin colours, which are hierarchical, of which having white skin is an indicator of being of higher rank. While being black remains a target for racism and inequality, it has also become for the black community something to be proud about especially expressed by political movements such as the Black Panther and Black Lives Matter movement but also by hip hop or reggae culture (cp. King 2002).
(c) Character
Witch character personality traits are meant that are associated with the fictional Orc as the construct of the Black Man. Orcs are in Tolkien’s book and the Warhammer universe evil, violent, driven by martial instinct and seem mostly without a distinct individual personality because they are mostly represented as an undifferentiated mass. Their character is reflected in their physical appearance and vice versa. The Black Man in early conceptions, is associated with being uncivilised, primitive and driven by instinct like animals. [B]lackness was personified as ‘Satanic’, ‘uncivilized’, ‘savage’, ‘backward,’ and ‘immoral.” (King 2002: 68) These characteristics were merged and forwarded as a coherent idea of the dark and beastly Black Man.
In World of Warcraft and Gothic 3, Orcs are a proud people of honour (Loponen 2019: 80). They are strong personalities with slightly arrogant tendencies. They are proud of their race and have developed high culture inform of weaponry, architecture and spirituality. Nowadays, the reclaimed idea of the Black Man is arguably associated with vitality, creativity and a sense of freedom.
(d) Relationship
The Orcs in Tolkien’s book and the Warhammer universe are mostly one-sided and based on hostility. There is only war between them. However, while Tolkien’s Orcs are interested in enslaving humans and not just eradicating them, Warhammer’s orcs seem to want only termination and destruction (Loponen 2019: 65). The relationship between the Black and White Man is of a full-scale master-slave relationship in which the enslavement and exploitation of the Black Man is considered to be a natural circumstance. While Orcs and humans are fighting, the Black and White Man exist in early conceptions and realities at least in a static relation.
In Gothic 3 and Warcraft, Orcs become their own masters and develop a complex relationship to humans. They fight wars against humans and enslave them but also form alliances and collaborate. In today’s society, inclusion has become a driving force that stresses the importance of diversity. In many cases, Black and White Men may remain in conflict and inequality, but many projects and social circumstances have been developed to foster closer relationships.
After looking at these comparisons and their development, we can speak of poetic similarities that are highlighted first of all in the total otherness of Orcs and the Black Men from (White) humans. They are reduced to their physical appearance but also the character and are defined by the negation of humanist attributes like being violent, uncivilised and overall savage. Their different origins also highlight this otherness. It is only in a reconceptualisation that we see orcs being regarded capable of being civilised and cultured. The same goes with the idea of the Black Man. However, it is important to stress out that real-world social developments and the acts of black civil rights movements reclaiming their identity in reshaping what it means to be black forwarded and forced the White notion of the Black Man to change.
So, if we return to the basic thought of this essay, namely how orcs represent the Black Man, we can observe a direct link between the both civilising processes. The White world started to understand that their idea of the Black Man was repressive, wrong and harmful. This might have eventually led to the change of the representation of Orcs because their representation is fundamentally linked to that of the Black Man.
Conclusion
In Gothic 3, Orcs are intelligent, civilised and unified. They turn, however, on the White human race, dominate and enslave them. It feels like in Gothic 3 we face a world in which Orcs have taken vengeance on their authors. It feels like Gothic 3 portrays what Mbembe warns of. In Gothic 3, in the light of the genealogy of the Orc, we see what Horkheimer and Adorno described as the reality of the dialectic of enlightenment (2020). Progress is not linear, and negations are not always logical; the ever-returning antithesis may be closer to chaos than wisdom.
On the other hand, given that the Orc is a poetic representation of the Black Man, Gothic 3 seems like a fantasy in which the White race is punished and is forced into penance. Still, orcs remain a depiction of evil, does that mean that if black people are bound to their past of enslavement White people will be always bound to their original conceptualisation of the Black Man? In all cases the observations done in this essay strongly indicate that every change in the perception of the black population through the imaginative figure of the Black Man will endorse change in the representation of him through the Orc in contemporary media.
References
Blizzard Entertainment. 2004. World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment.
Horkheimer, M. & Theodor Adorno. 2020. Dialectic of Enlightenment. University of Stanford Press: Stanford
King, Stephen. 2002. Reggae, Rastafari and the Rheotirc of Social Control. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Loponen, Mika. 2019. The Semiospheres of Prejudice in the Fantastic Arts : The Inherited Racism of Irrealia and Their Translation. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto.
Mbembe, Achille. 2017. Critique of black reason. Durham: Duke University Press.
Monson, Melissa. 2012. “Race-Based Fantasy Realm: Essentialism in the World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture (Sage) 7 (1): 48-71.
Peter Jackson. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. 2002. New Line Cinema, WingNut Films.
Piranha Bytes. 2006. Gothic 3. JoWooD Productions.
Rearick, Anderson. 2004. “Why is the Only Good Orc a Dead Orc? The Dark Face of Racism Examined in Tolkien’s World.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies (John Hopkins University Press) 50 (4): 861-874.
Reuben, Nic. 2020. It’s not easy being green: a brief history of orcs in video games: From A to Zug Zug. February 6. Accessed September 23, 2021. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-02-06-its-not-easy-being-green-a-brief-history-of-orcs-in-video-games.
Young, James. 1999. “Representation in literature.” Literature & Aesthetics 9: 127-143.
[1] With the Black Man, I strictly refer to the concept of the Black Man constructed by white slavers, authors and citizens.
[2] With the White Man, I refer to a simplified historical personification of Europeans and Americans.
[3] In WoW, the skin colour of Orcs is a complicated subject because they used to be red or dark skinned in the past, however this aspect would exceed the scope of this essay.
[4] White is being capitalised to indicate its supremacist and racist tendencies