Evil Races? Let's Look At Two Fantasy Examples

This post does not have a point. It's just a series of my observations. 

One of the key points of Rings on Prime was their attempt to humanize the orcs, which is interesting because Tolkien himself also struggled with the idea of having an intrinsically evil race, like orcs. This video, from about 14:10-14:45 or so, does a great job explaining why RoP failed. 

I've heard things (but it's 10 PM at night and I have work tomorrow, so I'm not researching them now) about Tolkien having a hard time reconciling an "evil race" like orcs with his values of redemption. I've also read a lot of headlines about Tolkien's creation of an evil race being racist and problematic and so on and so forth. I remember also hearing about evil races being reevaluated in other forms of fantasy media, such as D&D--hence this song, for example. 

Something I realized recently, though, is that there is another "evil race" in fantasy that I have never heard this kind of theorizing about: the dementors from Harry Potter. Dear reader, I wonder why this might be? Why are fantasy readers uncomfortable with the orcs being an "evil race", but not uncomfortable with the dementors? 

I mean, I haven’t seen any D&D stuff rewriting the dementors to be sympathetic characters who have their own perspective, and NO, that is NOT A SUGGESTION. Please don’t do that! Having the unsympathetic villain makes the story more interesting, and when the characters spend the entire third book wondering about the morals of compromising with something so evil because it’s a way to punish other evil people… I mean, that’s very interesting and thought-provoking. (Especially when it turns out that they had no compunctions about punishing innocent people, because they are unrestrained evil.)

But I do have to wonder, why are intrinsically evil characters not even noticed in one series, but make lots of other people (including the writer) uncomfortable in a different series?

I suppose one possibility is the context of the story. Rowling’s books have a lot of discussion about unfair treatment to other creatures, so when she trots out one irredeemable creature, everyone kind of gives it a pass. 

Perhaps also because the only things we ever see dementors do are things that humans can’t do, and therefore we have no investment in them being redeemed. Orcs, on the other hand, engage in cruelty and violence, things that humans do and can be redeemed from, so we have an investment in their redemption.

However, I think the biggest difference is that the dementors are clearly some kind of animal, but the orcs in Tolkien were once other creatures. (The movies say they were once elves who were tortured and corrupted, and Rings on Prime really leaned into that; I’ve heard somewhere that Tolkien changed their backstory into something else, but I don’t remember what it was, and that’s not the one that everyone’s thinking of anyway, so…) Orcs are on one level the Elves are on too, while dementors are more in the category of wolves, sharks, and other animals that haunt our nightmares… except that the dementors in the book clearly talk to humans, so theoretically they should be on the same level as humans. 

To be honest, I don’t really care. There are other creatures in Tolkien’ legendarium that no one feels the need to redeem (Balrogs, barrow-wights, and Nazgûl all come to mind), so maybe I’m wasting my time wondering over this question. But I thought it was an interesting difference, and I haven’t posted in a while, so there it is. If anyone has thoughts, then the comments should be working!