Christopher Tolkien at it again....

[davem]

Seems to me some people have this Tolkien shaped blindspot as far as this discussion goes. Its being seen as a case of the Tolkien Estate (Good Guys) defending JRR Tolkien (Good Guy), & therefore 'real' fans ought to align themselves with them against their 'foes' - whether that's the authors of the Hilary Tolkien biography & Stephen Hillard (Bad Guys). To oppose the Estate & object to their behaviour in these cases is seen almost as a 'betrayal' of Tolkien himself (I suspect that's certainly Garm's position reading his comments). One ought not to even question the behaviour/choices of the Estate because they simply cannot be wrong due to their connection with JRR Tolkien.

This is not about whether JRR Tolkien should be used as a character in a fantasy novel. Its about whether a writer of historical fiction should be free to use historical persons in their fiction. Or whether in a non-fiction work its acceptable to speculate on an individual's actions/motivations & play 'what -if'. To argue that they should not (because you can't write a law purely to protect JRR Tolkien from being used in such a way - its everyone or no-one who get's that protection) would put an end to most historical fiction, much biography, & would in effect turn a real once living, breathing person into a commodity. And that in effect is what the Estate is attempting here - to reduce JRR Tolken to a product which they own & can sell on or withhold.

So, you don't like JRRT being presented in such a way, turned into a character - fine - as long as you take the same position regarding every other work of historical fiction which uses real people as characters. If you support the Estate in this then get rid of your Malory, your Shakespeare, your Tolstoy, your Titanic DVD (& your Doctor Who DVDs too), your King's Speech, Lawrence of Arabia, Frost/Nixon & All the President's Men - well, you get the point.

[Morthoron]

I wonder if other famous dead people can be trademarked. I would imagine if you chose the right corpse, it could be very profitable. Like Elvis, or Marilyn Monroe. Maybe even Shakespeare.

[blantyr]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

I wonder if other famous dead people can be trademarked. I would imagine if you chose the right corpse, it could be very profitable. Like Elvis, or Marilyn Monroe. Maybe even Shakespeare.

Just as an illustration that the above is done, the Associated Press reports Lisa Marie Presley selling Elvis estate... for about $100,000,000.

The heirs of a famous person do get control of the "name and image" to some extent. There is a new profession of being an agent for dead people, helping the heirs or estate profit off the heritage of the deceased. I don't know all the details, and it likely changes from country to country, but for some dead people a lot of money is involved.

[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.

[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.