The casting agencies working on Peter Jackson’s Amazon TV series based on The Lord of the Rings, referred to in your tongue-in-cheek article (Pass notes, G2, 18 December), are apparently seeking people with “mean-looking” faces who are hairy, toothless, wrinkled, and very tall or very short. This goes counter to and devalues Tolkien’s legacy. According to his biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien himself described an orc in one of his letters: “they are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes”.
While not wishing to associate in any way with that particular characterisation (with its racist undertones), I deplore the fact that Hollywood has decided to lazily portray the “baddie” Orcs as facially (and bodily) scarred in every Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien film over the past 20 years – just like the Bond movies so frequently do. In the process, generations of children have been wrongly led to associate facial scarring with nastiness, villainy and immorality.
This is face-ist stereotyping of the worse kind. In these enlightened times, Face Equality International will be seeking to ensure that Jackson and Amazon instruct the casting agency in a new, civilised way that respects face equality (and race equality too), and avoids needless stereotyping.
James Partridge
Director, Face Equality International
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