Why Is Azog Called the White Orc?

6 comments

Q: Why Is Azog Called the White Orc?

ANSWER: The full question reads: “Weren’t the Orcs supposed to be black-skinned? Why are Azog and the Goblin King (sic) and their followers white?” The Goblin King is actually the Great Goblin.

So, while I cannot speak for Peter Jackson and his creative team, I suspect that the “basic Orcs” of both “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” (the two movie trilogies) were depicted as light-skinned at the very least to distinguish them from the Uruk-hai of Isengard, who were indeed black-skinned Orcs.

In the books Tolkien seems to imply that Azog was an Uruk:

Then Náin stood before the Gate and cried with a great voice: ‘Azog! If you are in come out! Or is the play in the valley too rough?’

Thereupon Azog came forth, and he was a great Orc with a huge iron-clad head, and yet agile and strong. With him came many like him, the fighters of his guard….

Azog’s size alone does not convince everyone that he was an Uruk, but Sauron had sent his servants to populate the Misty Mountains about 300 years earlier, only a generation or so after the first Uruks had attacked Ithilien (“In the last years of Denethor I the race of uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor, and in 2475 they swept across Ithilien and took Osgiliath.”). It seems a reasonable inference to me to identify Azog and Bolg as Uruks, but not everyone is convinced.

Azog is certainly BIG when compared to most of the other Orcs in the movie; the Great Goblin is also huge, but in a different way (he is obviously fat and slothful). One of the concerns I recall people raising in anticipation of the “Lord of the Rings” movies was how the Orcs should be depicted. Some people were concerned that the movies might be accused of racism if Peter followed Tolkien’s descriptions too closely (most if not all of the Orcs in the books are described as being dark-skinned or black-skinned).

So naturally people might assume that Peter and his creative team depicted some of the Orcs as white-skinned in order to defuse concerns about racism. But it also seems to me that they can use the different skin colors to help the audience easily distinguish between the “usual Orcs” and Saruman’s Uruk-hai. In which case, making Azog and Bolg and other Orcs of their stature or calibre white-skinned makes sense, as it maintains consistency with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. In “The Lord of the Rings” color schemes were used to distinguish between the Elves of the Second Age and the Elves of the Third Age; also, Rivendell’s Elves are portrayed as dark-haired whereas the Wood-elves are portrayed as golden-haired. Other visual cues are used to help the audience distinguish between similar groups from different regions; for example, the Rohirrim wear chain mail and the Gondorian soldiers wear half-plate armor.

These visual distinctions may strike some as unnecessary but the movies are fast-paced and creating stark contrasts between the various groups helps the audience follow the action sequences. Hence, Azog’s honorific of “the White Orc” may simply be an acknowledgement of the arbitrary distinctions the film-makers use to help the audience avoid confusion. Also — it was a reasonable cinematic plot device to keep Thorin in the dark about the fact that Azog was still alive.

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6 comments

  1. Maybe the white skin of Azog in the movie is some nod to disfigured orc Gothmog from Return of the King, symbolically representing stronger breed of orcs who becomes leaders, just a random thought. Ohh and another question from those stupid sort :), in ,,The Hobbit” book there is surprising thing I didn’t pay attention before:
    “Some called for ale, and some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the hobbit was kept very busy for a while. A big jug of coffee had just been set in the hearth, the seedcakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of scones…” Sooo, coffee in Middle Earth?! As I read about coffee on Wikipedia there is written that said famous drink is part of the Old World, precisely from Ethiopia, Africa so what to make of it in context to larger legendarium? (I read already your great essay about food ,,Pasta La Feasta, Baby” and there is also matter of such things as potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco if I remember right, yet there is no mention of coffee in your text maybe it’s too irrelevant and shouldn’t be considered at all, in Lotr we don’t have the slightest mention about it, and one more: is tea also present somewhere in the books or I just made it up by the influence of the movies). It would be rather troublesome to grow such plants in the Shire which has moderate climate and importing would create another problem, who would travel to the Shire to trade it to them? Dwarves? They were merchants after all but does it not sound too far-fetched, they were mostly buying food not selling and especially not so exotic.

  4. albinism is a lack of pigmentation, genetic in origin. It is usually accompanied by pinkish eyes, or “ice blue” whitish eyes. Don’t you think it is stretching the criticism a bit far to claim that PJackson is reviving a stereotype based on white skin and blue eyes. If so, then all of the Norway can be accused of the same thinking.

    BMFILYER

  5. I seem to remember ‘sallow’ getting used in conjunction with orcs, especially the smaller Misty Mountain ones when Merry and Pippin were prisoners, or of course in the suspected half-orcs. Also maybe “maggots” as an insult by the uruks, which might imply paleness. I never thought of orcs as dark-skined myself.

    1. Yes, Tolkien uses “sallow-skinned” in a number of passages when describing orcs. However, although we tend to use “sallow” to mean “yellowish” today, he was using it in its older sense of “dusky, dark” (although it could be argued that a yellowish skin is still “dark” compared to a whitish skin).

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