Giants: Medieval Monster to Tabletop Terror

             It is unsurprising that the giant, a prevalent theme throughout medieval texts, as well as being described at length in Of Giants, Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages, would appear in the popular roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. However, what may come as something of a surprise is the relative closeness these modern interpretations have to their storied ancestors. In appearance, dress, actions, and habits the giants of Dungeons and Dragons (in particular the Hill Giants) adhere to classic ideals surrounding the giants, penned in such texts as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

               The most obvious connection to be established is the massive size of the giants being portrayed. This continual focus on the stature of the creature could be seen as the continual appearance of excess in society. With the remainder of such a trait/concept in society, it is unsurprising that the giants of legend as well as their actual forms would remain significant in modern media. This is especially true based on the continual depiction of the giants as having distinctly human features, compared to the other more “bestial” creatures throughout the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual.

               A smaller and more easily overlooked similarity is the creatures preference of extreme environments. Throughout The Travels of Sir John Mandeville the importance of climate and surroundings is continually stressed; the more severe the area the more monstrous its inhabitants. The same is explicitly stated in the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual in regard to the giant race: “Giants and titans tend to lair in extreme environments, including scrublands, mountain peaks, volcanic calderas, and searing deserts.” While the in-game purposes of this can be summarized as simply the establishment of character/location, the actual lore reasoning is a bit less clear. While their connection to the natural world is noted in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, this living preference could be linked to the giants’ continual representation of excess, with their extreme size and being only truly fitting in in an equally extreme environment.

               Also to consider is Dungeons and Dragon’s description of the giants as a wicked, malicious race. With D&D essentially being a world of infinite possibility and change, it comes as something of a surprise that the giants are virtually never depicted in a heroic, or even neutral role. The argument could be raised that this is due to constraints of the games format itself, with the size difference between a giant and almost any other race an adventurer can assume being too great to make it a feasible option. However, this argument loses credibility in when considered alongside the novels written regarding the Dungeons and Dragons world. Even in these, where portraying a giant as a hero would come (one would think) as little issue, the massive humanoids are always cast as the aggressor/villain. Such adherence to the medieval depictions of giants as monstrous kidnappers and annihilators could potentially be a sign of man’s continual uneasiness towards this particular race of monsters, the massive creatures twisted mirroring of human traits and ideals too much to overlook. 

Mandeville, Baartman, Kardashian: A Story of Fascination & Fetishization

The photos from Paper magazine's recent shoot with Kim Kardashian have generated a storm of debate online, apparently delivering on their promise to "break the Internet." These photos of the self-made celebrity have been accused of being many things (including both "feminist" and "anti-feminist"), but one of the more interesting debates has centered on race: namely, the dynamics of race and power seen in the translation of an original 1976 photo (featuring model Carolina Beaumont) to its 2014 successor featuring Kardashian. The photograph of Kardashian, writes Hannah Ongley of Stileite, communicates an entirely different message than that of Beaumont, one in which Kardashian implicitly endorses the fetishization of the original model's body by adopting her stance, physique, and actions without sacrificing very obvious status symbols such as her pearls and dress.

Carolina Beaumont, pictured left; Kim Kardashian, pictured right. Image courtesy Stileite.

This incident of fetishization—intentional or otherwise—is the latest in a long history of appropriation and commodification that haunts the body of the racial Other. Specifically, the focus on the naked body of the Other (racial, cultural, sexual, or otherwise) draws attention away from the thinking, feeling selves to whom these bodies belong.

Thankfully, modern communications technology restores speaking power to those whose bodies are Othered, a fact highlighted by an episode in June 2013 when American singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer resisted the body narrative placed upon her by British tabloid the Daily Mail. However, social media platforms and equal-opportunity share spaces are a relatively new invention, and this freedom to defend one's personhood through broadcast media is a relatively new one.

A more famous episode of fetishization comes from the early 19th century, when Khoikhoi woman Saartjie Baartman (known internationally as the “Hottentot Venus”) was exhibited in British and French sideshows for the benefit of her managers and wealthy exhibition-goers. Unlike Beaumont and Palmer, the issue of Baartman's consent and agency persists, still debated by those who defend her right to commercialize herself and those who protest she was abused by her managers. Records survive of an interview with Baarman in which she expressed that she participated in these sideshows of her own free will. Her early death (Baartman died at the age of 25) does however suggest that she endured toxic physical and mental conditions. These conditions were evidently ignored in order to better exploit and fetishize her body.

A 19th century print depicting Baartman, here surrounded by an audience. Image courtesy Wikipedia.

In all of these cases, money has played a pivotal role in the fetishization of the racial and sexual Other. Whether it be selling magazines or hawking sideshow tickets, the body of the Other is a valuable commodity and one which generates the best profits when stripped naked.

These same trends are seen in the “travelogue” of Sir John Mandeville, a rambling bit of fiction which takes great joy in inventing and detailing monstrous and intensely physical racial Others. Whether describing Indian men whose testicles hang to their thighs, Amazons who cut off their breasts, “hermaphrodite” people on an island in the Indian Ocean, or men with dogs' heads, Mandeville invests significant time describing the appearance of the racial Other and substantially less detailing her personality or pursuits. When he does describe the habits or disposition of these people, they—like their bodily descriptions—are visceral and corporeal, often involving bathing, eating, and other such body-centric activities.

Some of the types of "people" found in the East, according to Sir John Mandeville. Image courtesy Anatomy of Norbiton.

Only those Others of great esteem (for instance, the Sultan or the Great Khan and his people) are described primarily by their behaviors and their thoughts; these same Others are saved the embarrassing full-body reveal so often given to the “strange” peoples of the East.

I argue that Mandeville—like a modern magazine editor or 19th century sideshow manager—was invested in the sale of his book and relied upon the body of the racial Other to generate fetish value and to increase his sales. Though it could be argued that Mandeville's appropriation was a victimless one (as most of his “strange peoples” were made up and thus could hardly be maligned), they contributed to a stereotype of Easterners as sexually submissive, violent, and—above all else—limited to their bodies and to physicality. Some of these stereotypes persist in the 21st century, indicating the effectiveness of such fetishization but also its power to have long-term consequences.

Little People, Big [Medieval] World

In “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville” it is very evident of the disgust Mandeville feels towards certain groups of people, especially on the perceived outsides of the world. Mandeville is quick to judge and purposely other those of other races. For the time, it was easier to make the races on the opposite side of the world from Europe just that, the opposite. For many of the races Mandeville expresses disgust, however Mandeville seems to quite fond of the Pigmens [pygmies]. Although Mandeville almost instantly describes them for their differences, he uses positive adjectives to surround their appearance as well. Mandeville loves the little people.

Medieval depiction of Pygmies

Since John Mandeville, who probably isn’t even a real person, is as even bigger liar than Fletcher Reede (Jim Carey) in Liar Liar, it is safe to assume that his contact with the Pygmies was also fictional. Many critics have come to the conclusion that Mandeville wrote his “travels” based off whatever manuscripts, stories, and myths that were available to him at the time. The Pygmies he encountered came from the Greek myth.

Pygmy has root in Greek language meaning “the length of the forearm.” According to the Greek myth the pygmies were a tribe of people of extremely small stature who were constantly at war with cranes, which Mandeville states in his travels. Greek geographers tried to place the pygmies in a geographical context and often placed them in India or middle of eastern Africa. It is no coincidence that Mandeville’s encounter is contextually and proximately similar to how it is depicted in Greek Myth, because he more than likely took the story directly from the myth, which he would have had access to.

Greek mythology depiction of Pygmies

        Surprisingly enough, there is some truth to Mandeville’s claims in today’s world. In the 19^th century European explorers came across several African tribes in Central Africa and named them the Pygmy tribe after the Greek myths. Anthropologists define pygmy as any member of a group where the full grown male is on average less 4 feet and 11 inches in stature. There is some controversy surrounding this term as it seems derogatory and surrounding the issue that stature is not an accurate representation to a culture.

            The Pygmy clans of Africa have lived among the harsh conditions of the tropical rainforest since their existence. They have lived in rural small rural villages together scavenging through the forests.  They are the largest hunter-gathering culture in the world today. Sadly, their culture is being threatened each day. Different governments are establishing laws prohibiting the pygmy clans from living in the rainforests, which is key to their culture. Based on Mandeville’s positive outlook on the Pygmies I’m sure he also would have been saddened that the Pygmies way of life is being threatened.

A Pygmy clan from Africa