New Salon LOTR Article
 

Im sure that we are in for a slew of popular press articles in the run up to the Hobbit film. I link for your reading (dis)pleasure an article that I find to be almost entirely glib and off target. http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/geek...j_r_r_tolkien/

I have to say I am not very impressed with the article for a number of reasons.

Firstly, a major point of the article (if there are any at all, which is hard to tell) is that Tolkien is English. The author has to get a Nobel prize for this discovery! The sky is blue too, did you ever notice? :rolleyes:

Secondly, the author's negativity toward Tolkien and fantasy in general is because of... what exactly? When he was 18 y/o he read the entire trilogy in 4 days and then spent 10 years collecting Rings-related space-takers-up. Then one day he decides that he "nearly choked on rank, stagnant rip-offs" so he gets rid of everything and puts fantasy out of his thoughts. Well who's to blame that he was first fascinated by LOTR and then his passion ebbed? Let's go blame the author for writing a book - how dare he write a book that will interest you for a time. And who's to blame that he purchased so many "rank stagnant rip-offs"? You think it's a rip-off - don't buy it! Or buy it and don't complain. But don't do it out of your own choice and then complain that you're choking with trash.

Thirdly, it's ok to realize that your tastes have changed and you don't like something anymore. But the author decides that he stopped liking LOTR and therefore fantasy is rubbish. So if you dislike one book you put a taboo on the whole genre?

Moreover, the whole story just seems so exaggerated that it's hypocritical. First you're in love with it, then it's slowly killing you, then omg I actually still love it. What next? I think I'll let it kill me some more?



I could go on, but I've listed my pet peeves. I certainly hope that the internet will not be stuffed with the like. I am unsure if I want to ignore such articles or to read them just to prove to myself that I was right about it being pretty bad.

Yeah. I think that the "Englishness" point is both stunningly obvious and fundamentally misguided. First, I think that Tolkien had something altogether older and more universal than Englishness in mind, though it is of course fair to say that the hobbits did represent that characteristic. Second, it is incredibly reductive to say that the hobbits represented Englishness that basically saved the day. It is just plain wrong because the hobbits never would have accomplished anything without the power, authority, nobility etc represented by Gandalf, Aragorn and company (though of course it is just as fair to say that the powerful would have accomplished nothing without the hobbits). But the truly important point, which the article seems to entirely miss, is the importance of protecting everything that the hobbits represented from the oppressive and corrupting effects of power, and the wonderful resilience of of the hobbits from those very effects, precisely because of their "Englishness." Englishness is not power, but rather immunity from all of power's ill effects.