#david ibata

There is nothing like seeing art in person. Absolutely nothing compares. I see art online as a call to action.

DDAY: Who We Are, Pt. 1

In "Towers," though, which continues to do big at the box office as the second film of the Rings trilogy (the third, "Return of the King," is to come out at the end of the year), the series' heroes -- hobbits, elves, dwarves and people -- for the first time encounter races of human adversaries. They include the Easterlings and Haradrim, denizens of lands in the east and south of Middle Earth who have joined with the forces of evil. The Easterlings can barely be made out under their armor; their faces are covered except for a narrow slit through which glare pairs of coal-black eyes. But their headgear looks like a cross between a Samurai warrior's helmet and a cone-shaped "Coolie" hat. An Asian influence is obvious. The Haradrim are more recognizable. They are garbed in turbans and flowing crimson robes. They ride giant elephants. They resemble nothing other than North African or Middle Eastern tribesmen. A recently released "Towers" companion book, "The Lord of the Rings: Creatures," calls the Haradrim "exotic outlanders" whose costumes "were inspired by the twelfth-century Saracen warriors of the Middle East." The Saracens were Islamic soldiers who battled Christian invaders during the Crusades. The "good guys" include the human Dunedain, Rohirrim and Gondorians. All fair-skinned, mostly blond and mostly blue-eyed. ( A third group of human foes in the film is white: the Wild Men. The fallen wizard Saruman incites them by reminding them the horsemen of Rohan oppress them and have driven them from their lands. Cavalry against native tribes; does this picture seem familiar?) In the nearly five decades since "Lord of the Rings" was first published, Tolkien fans were willing to overlook parts of the text some condemned as racially insensitive. In "Rings," it was argued, race was never directly addressed in the book, and physical descriptions of enemy humans were rare. Things that might strike today's reader as discomfiting were attributed to the intellectual, cultural and social milieu within which Tolkien (1892-1973), an Oxford don, moved. Can anyone recall one white male author before the present literary era -- other than perhaps the far-seeing Mark Twain in "Huckleberry Finn" -- who, when the two sides came into conflict, depicted men of color sympathetically and Caucasian men as evil? Better to focus on the "Rings'" main themes: of courage, hope and love, of friendship, loyalty and spiritual strength, in the face of a fearsome threat.