[davem]

The style I'm most uncomfortable with is the 'mighty thewed barbarian' - which I find borders on a fascistic, Ubermensch approach, & totally alien to Tolkien's creation. Conan always defeats the demons & monsters & attains victory through his physical strength & use of weapons. Turin, for example, is an inversion of the Ubermensch ideal. In fact Tolkien seems to be pointing up the stupidity & falsity of such an 'ideal' in the real world. The image of Hurin I linked to earlier is a classic example of everything Tolkien's work condemns.

I recall an interview with one of the editors at Harper Collins discussing Alan Lee's M-e work. She stated that she preferred Lee's work to that of other Tolkien artists, because too many depictions of Tolkien's characters had them looking directly at us, but she felt that that was wrong, & that the 'view' should be the other way - we should gaze into their world, they shouldn't look out into ours. I take her point. We're looking at a world long gone & he imagery should reflect that - those beings & places have long since passed from the world. The imagery shouldn't be 'dynamic', or make us feel the events are happening 'now'.

'For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground & tell sad stories of the death of Kings'. In Tolkien's tales we are looking back on things that happened before recorded history, & its essential that that mood is communicated by the artist - M-e is not another world in which events are happening 'now', but this world many, many ages past. That's why Baynes' & Juchimov's illustrations (& Eric Fraser's 'woodcut' style illustrations for the Folio Society Hobbit & LotR) work so well for me. (I think this is why I especially disliked the movie characters' regular lapses into contemporary idiom - nothing about M-e should feel 'modern': it should always feel 'old' & long past. Perhaps this is why dramatisation can't really work as well as reading or hearing the story......)