Could this be what Aragorn looked like?

[Bill O'Meally]

I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192

-- 

Bill O'Meally

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 2018-02-10 16:49, Bill O'Meally wrote:
> I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.

On the contrary, here's some narration from Book 1, Chapter 9, as the
hobbits are approaching Bree:

But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The
Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They
were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have
strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of
beasts and birds.

The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".

--
Michael F. Stemper
A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.

[Bill O'Meally]

On 2018-02-11 17:06:21 +0000, Michael F. Stemper said:

On 2018-02-10 16:49, Bill O'Meally wrote:

I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.

On the contrary, here's some narration from Book 1, Chapter 9, as the

hobbits are approaching Bree:

  But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The

  Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They

  were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have

  strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of

  beasts and birds.

The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".

Ah, that clinches it then!

I wonder if Bakshi had that passage in mind when he was creating his Aragorn. He looks a lot like Cheddar Man (or Geronimo).

http://www.cornel1801.com/animated/Lord-of-the-Rings-1978/characters/Aragorn.jpg

-- 

Bill O'Meally

[Paul S. Person]

Quite possibly.

Bakshi, at least, read the book, as opposed to merely skimming it for
Action Sequences (as PJ clearly did).
--
"Nature must be explained in
her own terms through
the experience of our senses."

[ma...@mail.com]

On 2018-02-11, Bill O'Meally <omea...@geemail.com> wrote:
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
> ----------------640247989410286124
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I think that the next LOTR film will star a colored, wheelchair-bound
transexual.

Oh, and I think that Peter Jackson should be [enter horrrible
torture] for the CGI graphics in the two series. I must download tem
and remove those parts.


--
greymaus.ireland.ie
Just_Another_Grumpy_Old_Man

[Oregonian Haruspex]

> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".

I always thought they had tanned skin from their wandering woodland
lifestyle, and not because they were a distinct race. They spent their time
outdoors.

[JJ]

On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 10:49:08 PM UTC, Bill O'Meally wrote:
> I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.
> >
> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192
>

Isn't he described somewhere as 'pale'? I understood the 'darker' to mean having darker hair. The Bree-men are described as having brown hair.

[Paul S. Person]

A rough, outdoors life would account for Bakshi's visualization --
both extreme tanning (as you point out) and the general roughness of
features.

[Bill O'Meally]

On 2018-02-14 17:59:07 +0000, Paul S. Person said:

> On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 09:27:39 -0000 (UTC), Oregonian Haruspex
> <no_e...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>>
>> I always thought they had tanned skin from their wandering woodland
>> lifestyle, and not because they were a distinct race. They spent their time
>> outdoors.
>
> A rough, outdoors life would account for Bakshi's visualization --
> both extreme tanning (as you point out) and the general roughness of
> features.

As I recall, Sam's skin is also described as being brown, consistent
with him being a gardener.
--
Bill O'Meally

[Stan Brown]

On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
> On 2018-02-10 16:49, Bill O'Meally wrote:
> > I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.
>
> On the contrary, here's some narration from Book 1, Chapter 9, as the
> hobbits are approaching Bree:
>
> But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The
> Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They
> were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have
> strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of
> beasts and birds.
>
> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".

I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Tolkien FAQs: http://Tolkien.slimy.com (Steuard Jensen)
Tolkien letters FAQ: http://preview.tinyurl.com/pr6sa7u
FAQ of the Rings: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm
Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm

[Michael F. Stemper]

The only passage that I'm aware of describing somebody as "pale" is this
bit from Book Three, Chapter VI:

At his feet upon the steps sat a wizened figure of a man, with a pale
wise face and heavy-lidded eyes.

This is a description of Grima, seated at the feet of Theoden.

If you have any citations for either Aragorn being described as "pale",
or for the "darker" meaning hair rather than complexion, I'd be interested.

--
Michael F. Stemper
There's no "me" in "team". There's no "us" in "team", either.

[Louis Epstein]

Indeed.
I doubt "Swarthy Men" would be distinguished as such were the
other Men likewise.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

>> But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The
>> Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They
>> were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have
>> strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of
>> beasts and birds.
>>
>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>
> I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
> opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.

Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
British English versus American English? Because I've never heard anyone
say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has dark/fair/
white hair".

--
Michael F. Stemper
The FAQ for rec.arts.sf.written is at:
http://leepers.us/evelyn/faqs/sf-written
Please read it before posting.

[Paul S. Person]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 13:14:38 -0600, "Michael F. Stemper"
<michael...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
>>> But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The
>>> Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They
>>> were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have
>>> strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of
>>> beasts and birds.
>>>
>>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>>
>> I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
>> opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.
>
>Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
>British English versus American English? Because I've never heard anyone
>say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has dark/fair/
>white hair".

There is nothing in the text about "white" or "fair". We aren't told
in what way they are "darker".

I am not going to say that it is racist to automatically assume that
skin color is meant, but it could be, if it stems from a monomaniacal
focus on skin color above all other traits. Then again, Aragorn's
rough life might well make him well-tanned, which would probably make
his skin darker than that of townfolk.

That said, Aragorn has a very interesting ancestry. Would dark hair
and/or eyes actually be expected from such an ancestry? Did Faramir,
explicitly said to look like one of the Men of Numenor from of old,
have dark hair or eyes?

As to American usage, consider this:

In the film /The Good, the Bad and the Ugly/, Clint Eastwood is
consistently referred to as "Blondie". Althought he clearly has dark
hair, The Man in Black clearly refers to him as "a golden-haired
angel".

And now consider the fact that the film was translated into American
English from the original Italian (well, I presume it was originally
in Italian). That is, this was expected to make sense to an American
audience.

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2018-02-25, Paul S Person <pspe...@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
> That said, Aragorn has a very interesting ancestry. Would dark hair
> and/or eyes actually be expected from such an ancestry? Did Faramir,
> explicitly said to look like one of the Men of Numenor from of old,
> have dark hair or eyes?

Faramir had black hair ("raven", when his hair mingles with Éowyn's
streaming in the wind) and grey eyes.

[JJ]

On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 10:49:08 PM UTC, Bill O'Meally wrote:

> I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.
>

All of the schools which I attended in England were 100% white; there were almost no ethnics in the country. Tolkien, who was two generations older than me, would never have seen a coloured person since leaving South Africa as a child. As 'Middle Earth' was intended to be 'the north-west of the Old World', I think that we can take it that all of the characters mentioned were white unless it is expressly stated otherwise.
This may seem racist to any trendies out there, but the whole thrust of this thread is racist, as was the picture of the so-called 'Cheddar man'; I don't believe it.

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2018-02-26, JJ <johnjo...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> All of the schools which I attended in England were 100% white;
> there were almost no ethnics in the country. Tolkien, who was two
> generations older than me, would never have seen a coloured person
> since leaving South Africa as a child. As 'Middle Earth' was

You exaggerate a bit. Britain had a small black population since Roman
times, and the West Midlands, where Tolkien grew up, was an area of
(modest) African immigration (and earlier, forced immigration as
slaves) in the 18th and 19th centuries. Also, there was a small but
steady stream of Africans studying at Oxford from the mid-19th
century.

[Paul S. Person]

I'd say that's a point in favor of "darker hair".

[Paul S. Person]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2018 03:15:00 -0800 (PST), JJ
<johnjo...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 10:49:08 PM UTC, Bill O'Meally wrote:
>> I mean, I don't recall him ever specifically being described as white.
>>
>
>
>All of the schools which I attended in England were 100% white;

<snippo>

The same here, in Seattle, WA, USA -- up till the 12 grade or so --
but that doesn't mean there were no African-Americans in Seattle.

Indeed, 2 African-Americans were bussed in to "integrate" my High
School when I was in (IIRC) the 12th grade. Since there were a good
3000+ European (and Jewish) kids there, this didn't do much. But
tokenism is always the first reaction of racists forced to change
their behavior by the courts/laws.

So I share your sense of impoverishment -- and what else can an
educational environment in which /everybody looks alike/ be called by
"impoverished" when the world is so different?

An education that only teaches you how to treat people who look like
you is no education at all.

I would, however, generally agree with this:

>As 'Middle Earth' was intended to be 'the north-west of the Old World', I think that we can take it that all of the characters mentioned were white unless it is expressly stated otherwise.

I would, however, note the similarities between the Jews and the
Dwarves (special language, various stereotypical features) and those
between the Orcs and the Mongols (as discussed before several times)
-- including sallow (yellow) skin.

And, of course, Sauron, having lost the ability to appear pleasing,
was black. But, beyond this equating of "black" with "ugly", I don't
recall any other racist stereotyping being applied.

Oh, and Treebeard was probably some shade of brown.

[JJ]

No - I live in the West Midlands, and I assure you that there were no Africans (there were a very few lascars in London and Liverpool) and there were certainly never any slaves - this was in fact illegal. This idea that 'Britain had a small black population since Roman times' is a myth: there were only a few individuals after colonialism started.

[Julian Bradfield]

I could believe you, or I could believe actual historians, who
estimate a black population of around 15000 in Britain by the late
18th century, mostly domestic servants.
Slavery wasn't established as unlawful within Britain until 1772, when
Lord Mansfield delivered his famous judgment.

Your all white experience at school need not have been representative
of the country, or even the region. There were no British blacks at
any of my schools either, only 50 miles from London in the 1970s.
Even now, in my entire 30-year teaching career in Edinburgh
University, I have had exactly two British blacks in my classes!

[John W Kennedy]

It was /ruled/ illegal in 1772, in Somerset v. Steward, when Lord
Mansfield held that neither Common Law nor Parliamentary statute had
ever permitted slavery in the English homeland, but, before then, it had
been assumed that Common Law allowed slavery, and there were about
15,000 held as bondsmen in England at the time. (I have no idea what the
situation was in Scotland.)

It may be of some interest here that, in “Ivanhoe”, Scott gives Brian de
Bois-Guilbert black slaves in 1194, pleading in an endnote that Sir
Brian, a Templar, would have picked up the practice in the East, and
going on to an ancient story of a man who had used a blackface disguise,
proving that the sight of a black man in Norman England was not utterly
outré.



--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"

[Bill O'Meally]

How is this thread, or the picture of Cheddar Man racist? What I would
consider to be racist would be the tendency to disbelieve DNA evidence
because it does not jibe with one's preconceived notions of what his
ancestors looked like.
--
Bill O'Meally

[Paul S. Person]

And yet Boswell's /The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D./ records a case
in which Johnson was involved which was /precisely/ the attempt of an
African slave in (IRRC) Scotland to obtain his freedom.

So, I take it your lilly-white education didn't include Boswell.

[Paul S. Person]

Good point.

We should /never/ underestimate the extent to which the Crusades
affected Europe. Not only for the bad (slavery) but also for the good
(hospitals, IIRC).

[John W Kennedy]

Lord Mansfield’s ruling had applied only to England; Scotland has an
entirely different legal system. But, in 1777, the Court of Session made
a similar ruling, that slavery was not recognized in the northern
kingdom, either. Johnson and Boswell had assisted in preparing the case.

However, although Scots owned a great many colonial slaves, there were
never so many as a hundred slaves held in Scotland, itself, nothing at
all to the thousands of slaves held in England before Lord Mansfield
effectively voided their servitude. (Technically, the case ruled only on
whether a master, having taken a slave into England, could remove him
again, but Mansfield’s actual logic depended on the idea that slavery
was repugnant to English law, so it amounted to abolition in effect.)

[Stan Brown]

On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 13:14:38 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
> On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
> > On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
> >> But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The
> >> Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They
> >> were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were believed to have
> >> strange powers of sight and hearing, and to understand the languages of
> >> beasts and birds.
> >>
> >> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
> >
> > I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
> > opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.
>
> Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
> British English versus American English? Because I've never heard anyone
> say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has dark/fair/
> white hair".

Thank you for challenging me, Michael. (I do not mean any sarcasm by
that.) I was going by memory, but when I searched my copies of LotR
and Silm for "dark" I failed to turn up a single example that matched
my memory. I found it as an explicit modifier for hair or eyes, but
never used in the way I had said. I made a less careful search for
"fair", but again was unable to come up with any support for what I
had written.

I was wrong, and I thank you for pressing me, because now I know
better than I knew before.

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 2018-02-27 14:13, Stan Brown wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2018 13:14:38 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
>>> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:

>>>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>>>
>>> I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
>>> opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.
>>
>> Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
>> British English versus American English? Because I've never heard anyone
>> say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has dark/fair/
>> white hair".
>
> Thank you for challenging me, Michael. (I do not mean any sarcasm by
> that.)

You must have training/education in sciences or engineering. The "four
eyes" principle (or "peer review" to academics) is vital.

> I was going by memory, but when I searched my copies of LotR
> and Silm for "dark" I failed to turn up a single example that matched
> my memory. I found it as an explicit modifier for hair or eyes, but
> never used in the way I had said. I made a less careful search for
> "fair", but again was unable to come up with any support for what I
> had written.

Okay, thanks for re-checking that. I appreciate your taking the time
and effort. Usenet could use more of that (and could do so even back
before Eternal September).

> I was wrong, and I thank you for pressing me, because now I know
> better than I knew before.

That's how we learn!

--
Michael F. Stemper
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

[Gordon Freeman]

"Michael F. Stemper" <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>
>>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>>
>> I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
>> opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.
>
> Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
> British English versus American English? Because I've never heard
> anyone say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has
> dark/fair/ white hair".

At least in the UK, the phrase "tall dark stranger" is usually taken to
refer to hair colour not skin colour, though maybe that is changing due
to the country becoming multicultural.

The OED entry for "dark" says:

"(of a person) with deep brown or black hair, complexion, or skin."

[Michael F. Stemper]

On 2018-03-19 16:02, Gordon Freeman wrote:
> "Michael F. Stemper" <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2018-02-14 21:21, Stan Brown wrote:
>>> On Sun, 11 Feb 2018 11:06:21 -0600, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>>
>>>> The Rangers are described as being "darker than the Men of Bree".
>>>
>>> I think that refers to hair and eyes, not skin tone. It's dark as
>>> opposed to fair, not dark as opposed to white.
>>
>> Would you be willing to explain your reasoning? Is this just a case of
>> British English versus American English? Because I've never heard
>> anyone say "so-and-so is dark/fair/white" to mean "so-and-so has
>> dark/fair/ white hair".
>
> At least in the UK, the phrase "tall dark stranger" is usually taken to
> refer to hair colour not skin colour, though maybe that is changing due
> to the country becoming multicultural.

Interesting. Thanks for the info, which is exactly what I asked for.


--
Michael F. Stemper
Deuteronomy 10:18-19