THE ESSENTIAL ORC

DON'T HUMANIZE ORCS, ORCIZE THEM!

“I originally took the word Orc from Old English.” - JRR Tolkien

I have been obsessed with Orcs for as long as I’ve known about them. Something about the thuggish servants of an evil Wizard caught me when I was young. Maybe it was because I had no idea how to go down the road of sorcery, that I didn’t believe in that road.

I didn’t believe in Orcs either, but I saw that brutality & strength were two of the key operating factors in the way of the world. Orcs were a way of looking at this without having to be worshipful of thugs, gangsters, GIs or the police. Orcs were a way of gaining some fantastic distance.

Orcs first appeared as Goblins in the Princess & the Goblin by George MacDonald. He portrayed Goblins as subterranean, grotesque, cunning & mischievous humanoids who once lived above ground but retreated underground due to human taxes/laws, becoming misshapen over time. This falls into the German conception of Kobolds.

Prior to any written works of fiction, Goblins were a part of general folklore, lumped into the world of the “little people”. The little people were things like brownies, gnomes, fairies, elves, dwarfs, leprechauns, gremlins & the list goes on.

Goblins were always on the more malicious, bad-spirited side of those things, but they were not yet codified. It took JRR Tolkien & specifically the Hobbit to spread a clear idea of what Goblins are to the world.

With Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Goblins became interchangeable with Orcs. However, Orcs weren’t the smaller, cave dwelling creeps that were depicted in the Hobbit. Orcs were a real menace, servants of Wizards, hell-bent on caving the world to their will.

There are many theories about the Lord of the Rings being an allegory for WWI or WWII. I prefer to think of it as a general story about the nature of power & don’t need it to be an allegory. In this way of looking at things, Orcs are the most debased followers of power, although, men are not too far behind.

In Tolkien’s writing, Orcs are smaller in stature than Men. One huge orc-chieftain”is almost Man-high, but others must have been of a similar size to Hobbits. Frodo & Sam succeed in disguising themselves as Orcs in Mordor. Orcs have long arms & fanged mouths. Some had black, grey or an unhealthy yellow or pale brown skin color. Some had short, crooked legs. Orcs bled black blood.

The Lord of the Rings was originally published in 1954-1955. It didn’t really take hold until it was embraced by the counter-culture in the late sixties. From there it was absorbed into the mainstream as the counter-culture went commercial.

The counter-culture, like everything that tries for a revolution in this country is absorbed & with that absorption, society changes. It doesn’t revolve, but it definitely changes.

Orcs were depicted as the most Tolkien-esque in Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings. Orcs were shadowy, hell-creatures that were possibly dead. Though because Bakshi’s vision is intentionally as outsider you can get while still making Hollywood movies, Bakshi did not define Orcs for most of America.

At about the same time as Bakshi’s LOTR, Orcs appeared in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as Pig-Faced. It has been conjectured that these were influenced by the Goblin servants of Maleficent in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959). Although David C. Sutherland III is no longer alive to confirm or deny.

In the years following Orcs became a staple of most fantasy miniatures lines & fantasy roleplaying games. It took Games Workshop’s Warhammer in 1983 to breathe new life into Orcs.

The Rankin-Bass cartoons of the Hobbit (1977) & the Return of the King (1980) featured distinct Goblins & Orcs that probably influenced the Games Workshop ones, but that’s just conjecture on my part.

Games Workshop/Citadel Miniature’s Orcs at this point were modelled after the designs of John Blanche but there was a lot of Tony Ackland flavor in them as well. These models were sculpted by the Perry Twins. The Games Workshop standard of the atrophied-skull-like nose, jutting jaw & pointed ears became their appearance.

The following year Kev “Goblin Master” Adams joined Citadel & soon established himself as the most flavorful & best sculptor of Goblins. By this time, the two species of Goblins & Orcs had become distinct again. Goblins were the diminutive, weaker of the two, with pointy noses & weak chins while the Orcs were the larger of the two with protruding jaws.

In my interview with Kev Adams he revealed that Goblins had more Punk influence while Orcs had more Football Hooligan influence.

“In the UK we have football hooligans, the main ones being like Orcs with their tribal battles but there are what are known as the under fives who are at the bottom of the pecking order, nasty spiteful kids who will use craft knives & gang up on bigger enemies when they have the advantage, I’ve seen these real goblins & the panic & mayhem they caused at Punk gigs in particular so there’s an influence but throughout my life I’ve known mischief & loved it although my fun wasn’t vicious, I would just attack & sabotage the corrupt system any way i could, often in amusing ways & it was constant. I view Goblins as mischievous beings who would attack anything they disliked often in creative & funny ways so I resonate with Goblins.”

Kev Adams was also directly inspired by Brian Froud’s Goblins, most notably depicted in 1986’s Jim Henson movie “Labyrinth”. This version helped the public to understand Goblins, but Orcs were still waiting in the wings to be comprehended by the hive mind.

It would take Blizzard Entertainment’s 1994 video-game Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to deliver what was an essentialized Games Workshop Orc to the public. Just a few years prior, Brian Ansell left Games Workshop & it took them a while to regain their footing after losing their primary driver.

Warcraft dominated the Orc sphere for a while & simultaneously, Magic the Gathering presented Orcs between the D&D standard that had been set in the 80s & the Warcraft stereotype that had been created.

Dungeons & Dragons Orcs had lost their flair, being overshadowed by Games Workshop’s vision. People were tired of killing Orcs in the dungeons of their imagination. D&D Orcs started to lose their teeth as early as 1989 when they were introduced as player characters in “the Orcs of Tharr” book.

AD&D had already had Half-Orcs as a player character option since the beginning (1977) & allowing Orcs was a further way for them to lose whatever distinction they had. Later, there was a thinly veiled “Orcs are African-American flavored” thing going on in TSR products. This is most glaringly obvious with their depiction of Orc Break Dancers in that same Orcs of Tharr book.

Racism is more ingrained in all-things American than most other places. Because of this it was more integral to the dominant American vehicle for Generic Fantasy even if it was more subconscious, buried.

I think this is why present-day D&D has bent over backwards to humanize Orcs. D&D has a dirtier past. Although, I don’t think that Orcs should have any tinge of American Racial politics in them, it is unsurprising that they do.

The next big depiction of Orcs was Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings in 2001. He captured more of the Tolkien flavor of Orcs as hell-born, half dead, servants of evil. However, he still racialized them with a New Zealand twist. This dimension was lost on most Americans who have a difficult time understanding things that aren’t American.

There are general whispers about Orcs being the racialized “evil other” in the Lord of the Rings. Yes, Orcs are the “evil other”, there can be no doubt about it. Yes, old racial politics are thoroughly part of everything that is old (or present-day). However, It’s important to keep in mind that in the future, the present will be “old”.

Thinking that we have to cleanse the past or not enjoy old books because they don’t agree with the present is unmasked authoritarianism & makes more enemies than friends. It is better to be patient & forgiving with the past & keep your eye on the present & even the future.

Orcs were then taken back from Warcraft by Warhammer who used the essentialized Orc as Orks in Warhammer 40,000. Orcs were stereotyped a few times & each time they lost some of their nuance, roughness & open-ness until they have been presented as the stereotypes of the Games Workshop Ork on one side & the neutered, safe Orcs of Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Both versions don’t do Orcs justice. Orcs are best understood as the “evil other”, the servants of dark power, They aren’t supposed to be humanized, if anything they should be Orcized.