Christopher Tolkien at it again....

[davem]

Bit by bit every element of our culture is being taken into private hands - even our shared history, which is effectively an attempt to stake a claim to our memories & what has made us what we are. History could then be re-written to suit the owners of the Copyright on it.

Still, as long as it stops some obscure Texan author being able to put JRR Tolkien in a novel that a few hundred people will read its worth it.....

(Puts on Helen Lovejoy voice: 'Won't somebody pleeease think of the Tolkien children!")

[Bêthberry]

If I were the Estate, I would be more inclined to take a good look at this:

filming Mordor in the tar sands

and this

a blog on the tar sands project using Jackson and Tolkien

which were outed as hoaxes on an Alberta newspaper:

One hoax to bind them

If I were Jackson I might also take a good look at how my name and stature is being used in someone else's political satire.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

The hoax is related to filming, which means that it's the studio's problem and nothing to do with Tolkien's estate. The only thing that worries me is that Peter Jackson might decide that Mordor would make a really good setting for three hours of completely new story (replacing extraneous rubbish like the conversation with Smaug) and that Alberta is the perfect place to shoot it.

As for the wider implications of the Estate's activities, I can admit to being completely wrong about their enforcement of the use of Tolkien's image and identity in fiction. I overreact occasionally to what look like attacks on Christopher Tolkien when the Tolkien Estate does something draconian. I dislike the conflation of Christopher Tolkien, the Tolkien Estate and the Estate's legal representatives, and I don't like the idea that the Estate aren't entitled to defend their rights against even their fans just because we buy the product. I'll admit, though, that I've been concerned by several of the Estate's activities of late, particularly in the suppression of Wheelbarrows at Dawn (which I can't imagine said anything damaging about anyone) and the assault on the Tolkien Society a few years back over the use of the Tolkien name. I am concerned that the Estate is making enemies of people who should rightly be its friends and its reasoning looks increasingly shaky. In the absence of further information, though, I shan't be blaming any one person.

As for the wider area of the use of factual people and events in fiction, I still hold that we ought to have progressed somewhat since Shakespeare's day. He did not have the artistic freedom to say what he liked, even if it was true; and I suspect that he would have said whatever pleased Queen Elizabeth anyway. Somebody has be a writer's patron. I object to people altering history for the sake of a good story, whilst still presenting the good story as history. That leads to all the dearly held national myths that keep people fighting wars five-hundred years after the original disagreement - which was like as not about who owned an egg. Shakespeare is only the worst offender in the English literary pantheon, followed no less ably by Scott and many, many others.

I'll address a couple of the examples, because I love to derail conversations by concentrating on minutiae. I'm sure that we're all in agreement that King Arthur isn't a real person. A mythological conflation of five or more different people is not an historical figure, and by the time Malory got his hands on him, such luminaries as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chrétien de Troyes had already removed what little personality was left and replaced the man with an ideal. In fact, Malory invents surprisingly little of the modern Arthur myth, being content to retell the story he was told, which had already been exported from Wales to France and thence to England and everywhere else. Even if somehow one could trace all the threads of Arthur back past Gildas and into real history, there wouldn't be one man, but several, one of whom may have been called something that can be rendered in Latin as Artorius. I once even read a serious argument that Arthur was Cerdic. I'd say that's fair game; indeed, I'd say that's an invitation to imagine.

The King's Speech - a very enjoyable film - suffered to my mind from its incomprehensible character assassination of Archbishop Lang. The villain of the film was obviously George VI's speech impediment, with the Austrian bogeyman waiting in the wings, so there was no need to make one out of a man who built his clerical career on work in deprived inner cities. Titanic, the value of which resides solely in its reconstruction of the ship, repeated a myth that J. Bruce Ismay gave orders that caused the entire disaster, when contemporary inquests hostile to him proved no such thing. These instances perpetuate the myth that everything is the fault of one bad person who has something to gain, or that a hero will come along and save us from the bad people. If only either of those things were true.

I can't agree with your definition of fiction, which sounds more like propaganda. Good fiction shouldn't be agenda-led, should have little to do, primarily, with beliefs and opinions; it should be more to do with the desire to perform a skill; pleasing others, not yourself; and only pleasing yourself when you trust yourself to please others

I said that writing embodies the views of its writers, not that it's always intended to promote an agenda. Tolkien wrote books that embody a Christian world view, but he wasn't pursuing an agenda. Writing sympathetic character who embodies all that we dislike is, for example, not easy. It's even harder to write a wise character who gainsays plausibly our own deeply held beliefs, or to write an outcome that we consider implausible. It is impossible to escape from our beliefs and presuppositions about the nature of the universe and humanity's place therein, hence writers embody their outlook in their work even when they don't mean to do so.

And that's all I have time for this evening. I may be back to say more later.

[davem]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I dislike the conflation of Christopher Tolkien, the Tolkien Estate and the Estate's legal representatives, and I don't like the idea that the Estate aren't entitled to defend their rights against even their fans just because we buy the product. I'll admit, though, that I've been concerned by several of the Estate's activities of late, particularly in the suppression of Wheelbarrows at Dawn (which I can't imagine said anything damaging about anyone) and the assault on the Tolkien Society a few years back over the use of the Tolkien name. I am concerned that the Estate is making enemies of people who should rightly be its friends and its reasoning looks increasingly shaky. In the absence of further information, though, I shan't be blaming any one person.

But Christopher (+ Adam) effectively are the Estate. Unless you're arguing that Manches are basically doing what they like & acting without any authority then you have to accept that Christopher + Adam k now & approve of their actions. If we were talking about one incident I could put this down to over zealous lawyers (are there any other kind?). However, we're not simply talking about one incident. There was the Tolkien Society thing you mention, Wheelbarrows at Dawn (a mis use of the spirit of Copyright Law because a privacy law was not available (nor should a privacy law cover incidents that happened nearly a century ago - especially considering all parties concerned are long dead). This attempt to prevent publication of a fantasy novel which uses Tolkien as a character but clearly states that its all pretend & that the author is exploring the Translator Conceit which Tolkien himself came up with - is pushing the idea of 'copyright' way beyond the legal definition (& as lawyers they should have know that - they probably did but thought Hilliard would back down) The incident over the (non-profit making) children's summer camp is fairly contemptible as far as I'm concerned.

I object to people altering history for the sake of a good story, whilst still presenting the good story as history. That leads to all the dearly held national myths that keep people fighting wars five-hundred years after the original disagreement - which was like as not about who owned an egg. Shakespeare is only the worst offender in the English literary pantheon, followed no less ably by Scott and many, many others.

But what would you do to stop it? Braveheart (or that American movie from a few years back that showed the yanks capturing the Enigma machine) & the like are certainly annoying, but what't the alternative? Do you have the government dictating THE FACTS, & banning historical fiction? And would you trust them to do it? I heard a few years back that in US state schools children were being taught in history lessons that the Irish potato famine was caused by the British in a deliberate act of genocide. History is written by the winners (& other cliches....) Do you want censorship (even of fiction - in fact you'd finish off the genre of historical fiction at one fell swoop as no-one would be able to make anything up. In fact why stop there - why not get rid of the other annoying genre, SF - all that stuff about faster than light travel & alien civilisations - where's the evidence for them?)
[/QUOTE]

The human imagination works through stories & all stories are ultimately 'what-ifs'. You talk as if history was all hard facts that no-one disputed & that could be set out fair & square. Going back to Shakespeare & taking Richard III as an example. Everyone with an iota of common sense knows that Richard was a good king, decent bloke (for the time he lived) & nothing like the monster created by Shakespeare. However, there are still historians who will argue that he was pretty much as bad as Shakespeare presented him (Desmond Seward & Michael Hicks spring to mind). Of course, as we get closer to the present there is (usually) less dispute, but ....And of course, whatever Richard was really like Richard III is a work of genius & 'true', even if not factual (a vital distinction, IMO).

What Hilliard does in Mirkwood is take the Translator Conceit & the lack of central female characters in LotR & play around. There's no harm in it. Its a bit silly in parts, very silly in other parts & frankly dumb here & there. As I've stated, its a pot boiler. Its fun & carries you along. I wouldn't read it again, but if I can get the sequel for a couple of quid on the Kindle I'll probably buy it just to see what happens next.

[Alfirin]

An example I am fond of of "History must be the way we said it was". A few years ago, one of the documentary shows did a program where the reconstuced the actual appearance of historical individuals from thier death masks. One of the individuals they did was Abraham Lincoln. Since the reconstructions were being done in a very good computer, the show people decied to take advantage of that and also show something that no one had probably seen since Lincoln's death; what he looked like similing. As they pointed out, the somber faced Lincoln that most people grew up with was mostly a result of how long it too to take a photo back when he lived, and what a serios business photo's were considered. The histroical record point out that Lincoln was in fact famous for his jokes and wit (it was a big part of his appeal). When I went to read online assesments of the progam (including some by fairly well established historians) you'd be surprised how many took offense at thier doing so, saying that showing Lincoln smiling was "an insult to his dignity of image".
Honestly, sometimes I fear literature is going to end up the way Ray Bradbury predicted (not in the way he imagined it in Farenheight 451 the way he imagined it in some of his other stories, like "Usher II" in The Martian Chronicles) one where only the most objective form of reality is permitted and imagination and fantasy are effectively banned.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

The hoax is related to filming, which means that it's the studio's problem and nothing to do with Tolkien's estate. The only thing that worries me is that Peter Jackson might decide that Mordor would make a really good setting for three hours of completely new story (replacing extraneous rubbish like the conversation with Smaug) and that Alberta is the perfect place to shoot it.

Imagine him having to place an acknowledgement to the hoxers in the credits for helping him find Mordor.

However, this development by the hoaxers does not appear to be based so entirely on the film, as none of the characters in the photo look like the film characters. Is this appropriating Tolkien for their own political agenda?

tar and feathering Tolkien

I'm trying to understand how this political satire using Mordor is acceptable but the Calgary children's summer camp use of Rivendell is not.

[Boromir88]

Agree or disagree with the Estate's course of action there really is no need to paint the dispute into terms of good people vs. bad people, or winners and losers.

I will not buy or support Dan Brown's books, but can't put my opinion any better than Sardy:

I agree 100% that no book should ever be censored because of the beliefs, prejudices, sensibilities, perceived offense or even hurt feelings of any person or group.

I will let my money determine what I like reading, not any person, or group of persons, trying to use the legal system to stop publication of fiction. Funny enough, the Estate may have caused more attention on Hilliard's book with the threat of a lawsuit than if they simply just ignored it.

If I recall correctly, Dan Brown also has some sort of disclaimer on his books about being historical fiction and not meant to be taken as historical fact in any way.

Now onto Hilliard = winner, Estate lost! Eh, lawsuits typically start at the most extreme and severe charges as possible. That is the nature of lawsuits, trump up and tack on whatever case you can then let the lawyers reach a settlement. I can't speak for the Estate, but I can't see how it was reasonably believed they'd succeed in the "cease and desist" order. You design lawsuits to punch however hard you can, because most of them end with some sort of compromise and neither party getting all their demands. Same way with criminal charges, the reason you charge someone with a felony such a perjury, along with a misdemeanor like "misleading a federal investigation" is if the perjury charge is dismissed, the misdemeanor charge is much easier to prove and likely returned guilty.

In this case the Estate threatened severe action. It appears both parties' lawyers met, settled, and reached a compromise to add a disclaimer. I doubt either party got exactly what they wanted, but they were both happy enough with the settlement to no longer pursue court action. Anyway, that's the nature of lawsuits, you fire out however hard you can and then *hopefully* reach a suitable agreement by all parties. There's no reason to stand up and proclaim any great victory or that the Estate will (and should) stop trying to be such lawsuit-happy bandersnatches.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

In this case the Estate threatened severe action. It appears both parties' lawyers met, settled, and reached a compromise to add a disclaimer. I doubt either party got exactly what they wanted, but they were both happy enough with the settlement to no longer pursue court action. Anyway, that's the nature of lawsuits, you fire out however hard you can and then *hopefully* reach a suitable agreement by all parties. There's no reason to stand up and proclaim any great victory or that the Estate will (and should) stop trying to be such lawsuit-happy bandersnatches.

Not exactly - what you're talking about is a situation where someone is charged & taken to court on criminal charges. This was a civil case where the Estate threatened to take Hillard to if he didn't withdraw his book & destroy all copies (I can't recall whether they asked for damages too). In this case he counter filed & effectively said 'Come & have a go, if you think you're hard enough'. At which point the Estate responded 'Er.....OK, tell you what ..just change the cover font a bit & put a line on the back cover saying the book isn't authorised, &, er, we'll say no more about it...'

Seems like the Estate expected the same response from Hillard as they got from the publishers of Wheelbarrows at Dawn & the owners of the children's camp - that he would just back down & do as he was told.

Simply put, - 1)I demand you pay me a million dollars or I'll drag you through the courts & bring down the whole weight of the Justice system on your head, 2) You refuse & tell me in no uncertain terms that you ain't paying a penny 3) We get together & have a 'discussion' & come to an agreement that you'll hand over $5.

Now, you could argue that we've come to a 'compromise' & there are no 'winners', but I don't know how many people would be convinced by that. Most of the reports I've read are of the opinion that if it had come to court the Estate would have lost as copyright simply doesn't cover the person & character of a dead individual, only their works. Its also highly questionable whether the Estate would have won the Camp Rivendell case, & I reckon that a decent lawyer could have won the case for Wheelbarrows at Dawn too. And perhaps if the Tolkien family don't agree with the actions Manches are taking they should look for new lawyers to represent them.

[davem]

http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/

John Rateliff on a recent documentary about Tolkien by Joseph Pearce.

It's not the facts but the interpretation where this piece falls down for me. The argument is not just that Tolkien is a Catholic writer -- a self-evident truth -- but that a Cathl0centric point of view is the only valid one through which to interpret his work. To try to build his case, Pearce resorts to heavy allegorization of the evidence. Thus he asserts that "Tolkien's Melkor is merely another name for Satan" and "merely different words for the same thing: Melkor IS Satan". The Lord of the Ring himself is "Sauron, the greatest of Satan's servants"..... one long scene (some fifteen minutes, out of a total running time over only about an hour) dramatizes the famous walk in which Tolkien and Lewis debated whether myths cd convey truth, which ended in Tolkien's assertion that Xianity was the one true myth. While v. well done, it contains two fairly major distortions. It presents Tolkien as doing almost all the talking while Lewis listens attentively, offering up a few respectful questions from time to time. This bears no resemblance to any account of Lewis as a conversationalist I've ever seen. It also portrays this as a dialogue, completely omitting Hugo Dyson, the third participant in that debate -- and assuming Dyson (a devout Xian but deeply bigoted against the Catholic church) held his tongue and had no influence on Lewis's decision to rejoin the Anglican church rather than become Catholic upon his return to Xianity is an iffy proposition.

Those changes can be defended on the grounds of dramatic license (after all, we only have Tolkien's account of this meeting, which doesn't include any indication of what Dyson said). But the second is far more problematic. Pearce has the actor playing Tolkien** repeat a passage from a 1958 letter to Deborah Webster Rogers: "I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories), and in fact a Roman Catholic." But this is deeply deceptive, for the very next sentence goes on add "The latter 'fact' perhaps cannot be deduced". That is, Tolkien felt that his Xianity was obvious to an attentive reader but his Catholicism was not, and Pearce seems to be manipulating the evidence to hide this fact.

This is a 'documentary' & Pearce (a Catholic Priest) would certainly, hand on heart, tell you that he was only stating the 'facts' about Tolkien in this documentary. Rateliff disputes that - & he certainly demolishes Pearce's interpretation. In this scene referred to above it seems Pearce has taken words wrote in one context & has him saying them in another, he changes a three-way conversation to one in which Tolkien pontificates & single-handedly brings Lewis back to the faith.

Is this acceptable? Anyone watching this 'documentary' could well take the events & interpretation contained as being 'factual', when clearly Pearce's intention is to strip Tolkien down to a CATHOLIC writer, who wrote Catholic stories which can only be appreciated when read as Catholic allegories (& probably only fully understood if the reader is a Catholic too - you certainly get that sense from reading Pearce's books on Tolkien).

So, is the 'documentary' any more acceptable than Hillard's novel? Both have Tolkien doing/saying things he never did (or distort things he did do & spin their meaning in Pearce's case). Yet Hillard (even before the Estate got involved) had included a clear statement that Mirkwood was a fantasy novel & that he was using Tolkien as a character, doing things he never did in real life. Pearce didn't make any such statement - because Hillard wants the reader to be under no illusion that the story they are reading is just that - a made up thing. Pearce, on the other hand is attempting to convince the viewer that his made up thing is not made up at all.