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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
Well, it's not an issue with the Faraway Tree tales, so it is not something that I have had to address with them. As I recall, the Famous Five stories are (or were) rather 'politically incorrect', and (as Mithalwen notes) the Golliwogs of the Noddy stories have been banned. But I wouldn't label Blyton a racist, as she was very much a product of her times. One might as well label Tolkien a racist for his depiction of the Easterlings and Southerners (there is, for example, one reference to a Haradrim warrior which likens him to a half-troll). Personally, I don't think it is a big issue, as I think that there are far more influential factors in a child's upbringing. I loved the Famous Five and Noddy stories as a child, yet somehow managed to avoid growing up a white supremacist. Parental opinion and guidance is far more important, and I would most certainly address these issues with my children were they to arise.
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Well, just for the sake of clarification and hopefully not to get too far off topic, let me say that I am a bit surprised that a loyer of your disputational skills,
Sauce, would assume only a "worst case scenario". I think this scare about White Supremacists or racism overlooks the more subtle kinds of influences which affect our sensibilties. One doesn't have to believe that races of colour should be wiped out to fall prey to feelings of racial superiority and patronage. Why, just this weekend I was reading for the Chapter by Chapter discussion and came upon this passage in "Minas Tirith":
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There dwelt a hardy folk between the mountains and the sea. They were reckoned men of Gondor, yet their blood was mingled, and there were short and swarthy folk among them whose sires came more from the forgotten men who housed in the shadows of the hills in the Dark Years ere the coming of the kings . But beyond, in the great fief of Belfalas, dwelt Prince Imrahil in his castle of Dol Amroth by the sea, and he was of high blood, and his folk also, tall men and proud with sea-grey eyes.
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Of course, this passage occurs just after Pippin has indignantly defended his size to the arrogant guards of Gondor, so we are left wondering just what the narrator is trying to do or how much the narrator understands of Pippin's perspective. This isn't cruel or malevolent, yet it carries with it the wiff of habitual, pejorative denigration of 'swarthy' short races. It's the kind of thing Nevil Shute wrote of in
The chequer Board, published in 1947:
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Because he was uncertain what to do, he put his arms round her and kissed her... For a moment she yielded... then fear came to her, irrational, stark fear. When she was a little child, somebody had given her a golliwog, a black doll with staring white eyes and black curly hair, dressed in a blue coat with red trousers. It had terrified her; whenever she saw it she had screamed with fright so that it had been given to a less sensitive child. Now at the age of seventeen the same stark fear came back to her. What she had been subconsciously afraid of all her life had happened. The golliwog had got her.
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I remember reading a wonderful essay--which I cannot find now--by a Black American, really sardonically funny--about his first victim. It recounts his experience walking down a dark street at night, realising that he is a figure of fear to the white people who quickly move to get away from him. There's more to racism than overt hatred.
What does this have to do with this topic? Well, all and all it seems to me that at least some parts of this discussion are based upon the idea that
Harry Potter can have a bad influence whereas LotR has only a good influence. Part of Enid Blyton's popularity among children was due, I think, to the way that her books gave children a sense of their own power. They encouraged children not to be passive, but to be thinking creatures. I haven't read all of the HP series, but my recollection of the first book is that Rowlings does this also. They give children a sense of empowerment. But I'm not sure that LotR does this. It's enchantment and influence lies elsewhere. But with its constant emphasis on enclosing good against evil influence--even at the end when Aragorn bans men from The Shire--I cannot help but wonder if all this really creates the very passive atttiude of (some) forms of traditional religion where people are encouraged, even taught, to fear discussion.
I'm running out of time and am being called away. I'm not happy with how I've expressed this last idea, but it will have to do for now.