A Mixed Bag of Mixed Races

To my mind, there is no better example of the unconscious and, likely, unintentional racism of the fantasy genre than the various iterations of the concept of “mixed races.” The idea of races in fantasy is problematic enough on its own and steeped in the cultural mindset of the early 1900s, but an argument could be made that this conceptualization of fantasy races has become more nuanced over time, allowing for good and evil to exist within each of them. This same argument for nuance however cannot be made for the mixed fantasy races.
Starting where virtually all fantasy tropes originate, the idea of mixed races in fantasy first reared its head in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Considering Tolkien’s love for elves, it is no surprise that there should be kids born from the union of elves and humans, though to my memory there are no specifically named half-elven children in his works, only couplings of elves and humans. Yet it is only these races that are known to ever marry or give birth to children with each other. No elf or human ever has romantic relations with any dwarf, hobbit, or orc, and it is certainly telling that so many fans of Tolkien complained about the addition of a romance between Tauriel and Kili in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit. However, in this latter case, I would argue it was due to poor writing as many fans online seem to enjoy shipping Legolas and Gimli together.
Regardless, the legacy of the half-elves being the only mixed race in fantasy has been carried on to the modern day by works such as Michael Sullivan’s Riyria Chronicles. To my knowledge, the only place one might find a half-dwarf is in C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian.
One strange mixed races that, at first, seems to contradict the trend of mixing humans with the “prettier” race are half-orcs. Appearing most notably in the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop roleplaying game, half-orcs are actually perhaps one of the most problematic examples of a fantasy mixed race as it relies on the stereotype of the savage and brutal orcs as a part of their biology that the character must often struggle to overcome, usually through the influence of their human blood.
Though perhaps you have noticed something while reading this, every time “half” is added before another race, it always means half human, half something else. While it is understandable that we, as human, would be human-centric in our fantasy and naming conventions, the cultural basis of most fantasy races is fairly revealing of the eurocentrism of Western fantasy as well. Why then are there no names for half-dwarf half-elven peoples?
This is especially odd considering that humans are notoriously experimental in their mating in the real world. And these races of fantasy worlds have supposedly lived with each other for several centuries at least. It is ridiculous to think that there wouldn’t be every combination under the sun and the moon. Perhaps this reveals how we like to clean up history and pretend that real mixed races and racial mingling didn’t exist until recently, which is of course not true. As with most people in our world today, “pure” race people should be a massive minority in every fantasy world.


--Brian Lazarow

Comments

  1. grace authFebruary 14, 2018 at 12:58 PM

    This blog brings up many interesting points that spark many different conversation topics. A specific example would be the idea of the "not pure" race being unimportant enough to be named. This makes me think of Helen Young's idea of Habits of Whiteness where the idea of the White body is placed into works such as The Silmarillion. I, too, find it ludicrous that "White ideals" such as being an elite, pure race is even a thought when the White race is a mix of many. The idea that an impure being such as a half-elf not having a name is interesting to me, because it reminds me of these false ideas many have about what is "pure" and what is not.

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  2. UnknownFebruary 21, 2018 at 9:53 PM


    Firstly, pretty decent blog. The extensiveness of the idea of mixing races with both tolkien fiction and tabletop games brings up the intentions behind the creators. Within a recent reading by Helen Young, “Founding Fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard”, She states that “mixing races is problematic in tolkien’s world”. Tolkien was influenced by much of European culture and only had elves (presumed as "white") and human combinations known as the half-elven children as said by your essay. Even then, in other things that contain mixing of ogres, dwarves, or orcs, those breeds don't contain names nor are very favored since their persona is featured as bad.

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  3. tom blakeMarch 17, 2018 at 2:10 PM

    Much has been written about what the orcs could represent, but they have been described by Tolkien alternatively as inspired by Mongols and as black-skinned, so even monstrous races are not wholly separate sadly from real world influences. See section 1.1 e.g. in http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien's_Works.

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