The question seems confused. I’d ask you “better in what”? Better in being scientifically accurate? Better in averting offense? Better for the plot of any given story?
And if you mean “morally better”, do you really think that Tolkien having his stories portray Orcs (which he invented exactly because he wanted an inexhaustible supply of enemies against which we needed feel no moral qualm) as utterly foul creatures, isn’t any morally better than if he’d chosen a real-life group, e.g. African or Mongols, to play that exact role? Isn’t Harry Potter better that it has goblins in the role of greedy banker-types instead of e.g. Jews?
People won’t be motivated to commit hate-crimes against orcs or goblins, if orcs are portrayed as uniformly bad or goblins uniformly greedy in some story.
The question seems confused. I’d ask you “better in what”? Better in being scientifically accurate? Better in averting offense? Better for the plot of any given story?
And if you mean “morally better”, do you really think that Tolkien having his stories portray Orcs (which he invented exactly because he wanted an inexhaustible supply of enemies against which we needed feel no moral qualm) as utterly foul creatures, isn’t any morally better than if he’d chosen a real-life group, e.g. African or Mongols, to play that exact role? Isn’t Harry Potter better that it has goblins in the role of greedy banker-types instead of e.g. Jews?
People won’t be motivated to commit hate-crimes against orcs or goblins, if orcs are portrayed as uniformly bad or goblins uniformly greedy in some story.