Tom Nairn:
Quote:Tolkien’s parade of racial exotica and forged languages meets this bill admirably, if superficially. Viewers find themselves propelled breathlessly across a universe of combative grotesques and scary goblins. These can be brought together only in an over-arching (and endless) War upon Absolute Evil. President Reagan had to make do with the ‘evil empire’ of Brezhnev’s bungling bureaucracy. By contrast, George W. Bush has been granted both ‘Terrorism’ and the return of Tolkien. [..]
[A] key feature of Tolkien-land is that ‘…it should be “high”, purged of the gross’ — in other words, non-sexual. Ethereal Princesses swan about in The Fellowship of the Ring, oozing pedestal-wisdom. But they are without sex-appeal. [..] Morality is all, and character development is superfluous.
In Peter Jackson’s movie it is replaced by mind-numbing, non-stop action, as one wave of ogres follows another into perdition. To please children-of-all-ages, stereotypes must be unchallengeable, and adulthood is ceaselessly stunned by special effects. One emerges from beguilement blinking, and feeling it’s a terribly long way to Mordor (the equivalent of the Battle of Berlin, where Hitler/bin Laden must meet his doom).
K.A. Dilday:
Quote:When I look at the Lord of the Rings as the fable its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, intended it to be, I see a world clearly divided into races and regions of leader and followers, I see Calvinist pre-determinism and I see the vindication and veneration of empire unfolding in frame after frame. [..]
Tolkien’s physical descriptions are spare and therefore liberating for a director, yet Peter Jackson has cast the film according to codes of East vs West and black vs white. The evil creatures have darker skin and flat broad features, some wear turbans, others ride atop elephants in flat gazebos reminiscent of those that carried Indian maharajas. [..]
[The] conflict in the human heart, is barely audible in Lord of the Rings, either in film or on paper. Character development is sparse and the only conflict seems to be with one’s destiny. [O]f the enemy’s struggles or motives we know nothing save that Sauron wants dominion over all. Do the Orcs follow him for love of the same? Money seems to figure little in Middle Earth. We hear only of power, of bending people to their will. The Orcs seem to be motivated primarily by a desire to eat their enemy. For all we know the realm of Mordor is barren, driving them out to seek food and fertile land. Tolkien and Jackson give us little to interpret.
Both these articles are on openDemocracy.net. Mind you, despite the clever soundbites above, neither is very good. So thank me for kindling the ingenious bits for you. There is also a third article, in response to Dilday, which passionately defends the movies,
by Douglas Murray. I haven't read that one.
The
real attraction here, however, is the
Forum thread with 12 comments on these articles, almost all by first-time posters, and often admirably elaborate, articulate and humorous. Nairn and Dilday are put in their place with a clever turn of phrase, an original thought and a smile, without any of the holy indignation that defines many of the LOTR-defenders.
