New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Lalwendë]

The works would have fallen out of copyright at some point anyway, so once a successful adaptation was made, this was inevitable. Such is the nature of making money, like it or loathe it.

This policy, however, has not protected the family from the reality that the work now belongs to a gigantic audience, culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it.

Here's a key quote. I'm sure you could say that this is evidence that 'the author is dead' and that Barthes etc were correct about the post-modern world. On a happy note, it means that alongside Jackson's 'vision' there are many thousands of 'visions', and indeed even here many have taken up their pens and brushes and indulged in some subcreation.

On a different note - what does the journalist mean by a "gigantic audience, culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it"? Obviously in a literal sense, almost everyone is 'culturally far removed' from Tolkien, an academic who has long since passed away, he's effectively from another world, and even while alive he lived in a rareified world. Does the writer mean that the masses 'culturally far removed' cannot understand just what Tolkien meant? Or does this have a more post-modern meaning, that now his works are out there, adapted, sub-created, thoroughly well used, that the readers/audience have more 'ownership' than those who currently hold the copyright?

I have to say, good for the Estate that they finally got a cut of the profits, though they would not have them had Tolkien not sold over those rights. I wonder what they would rather have?