Building the Bad Guy

[Lalwendë]

There's a useless article in today's Daily Hate Mail by Antony Horowitz who writes those spy stories for boys. In it he bemoans the supposed 'fact' that it is now harder than ever to create a villain due to the mythical monster of Political Correctness.

"Um!", I thought. "Didn't a certain JRR Tolkien manage to create a whole host of bad guys who did not cause offence?" And he was writing in the dim, distant past when it was still OK to thrash small children with sticks, call disabled people 'cripples' and shove them in a corner like a parcel, and not allow black and Irish people to rent a cockroach infested bedsit from you. Yes, yet Tolkien managed to create some of the greatest villains! On rare occasions some loon will pick up on the fact that some of the armies who fight for Sauron are from the 'east', but then of course cannot continue with the argument as it never holds water.

Fact is, Tolkien was a decent writer unlike a certain person bemoaning his own ineptitude in dreaming up baddies. I'm sure I'm not alone amongst those of us who've played in RPGs on here, when I reckon that dreaming up a bad guy is actually much, much easier than trying to create a credible good guy who is not a Mary-Sue! And surely having all this supposed 'political correctness' makes it even easier?! Just have your bad guy drive a bigger car, be a homophobe and be fond of pate de fois gras and you'll be bang on

What's up then? Are Tolkien's bad guys actually not that scary or something? And if they are scary, then how did he do it so effortlessly? And without causing offence? Even in the 'PC' age...