Planet of the Apes
The original Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston and released in 1968, served as a “what if the shoe was on the other foot”-type scenario, where white men experience the type of discrimination regularly experienced by Black people. Though it was intended to show support for Black people’s fight for human rights, it reinforced the racist notion of Blacks not being fully human, choosing apes and monkey of all animals as stand-ins for Black people. It also played into the issues of skin-color hierarchy, making lighter apes more intelligent than their darker, more uncivilized counterparts.
Lord of the Rings
The motion picture trilogy and the novel by J.R.R Tolkien, upon which it is based, has been accused of being racist for having all the good guys white-skinned, mostly blond and mostly blue-eyed. The bad guys, on the other hand, are described with combinations of black, slant-eyed, unattractive, inarticulate or a psychologically undeveloped horde. Although Tolkien had an entire Black civilization in his novel, director Peter Jackson didn’t include it or any Black actors, for that matter.

