The Perils of Pedantry

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

It is an interesting question though, why pedantry seems to strike me (and many other people) specifically when it's about adaptations of literary works we love. Is it what we care about the most? Both a lovely and an alarming thought. I think it is certainly partly because artistic choices are so much more than just pure artistic choices - they also reflect our values and what's important to us.

You know, now I wonder about this... I think there's something unique about books and about adapting them, but I also think there's something about Tolkien specifically that brings it out more than any other author. I think that the Harry Potter movies are an instructive case: also fantasy, also in the English language, also with a massively popular series of blockbusters in the 2000s--but I don't feel like that fandom ever had the same core of nitpicking curmudgeons that Middle-earth has had.

Is this because there were middle-aged (or older) Tolkien fans who had survived the scorn of earlier, less nerd-friendly decades and those battle scars are manifesting now? Is it because the Tolkienian text just didn't translate to the screen as well (i.e. harder to adapt)? Is it that Tolkien draws in far more fans who like to be pedantic? Is it just over-determined?

I don't think Austen fans get as mad about details.

EDIT: Oh, and I've already had another thought: how much of the more sour part of the Tolkien fandom is culture war-related? At least on the western side of the Atlantic, it seems sometimes as though EVERYTHING has to be divided up into "our" side and "theirs." I remember being somewhat uneasy in my earliest 'Downsian years at the way some kinds of Christians wanted to make the LotR into a quasi-Biblical text. Is this partly a result of that--or analogous to it: is it simply that Tolkien has become yet another plaything in Great Tug o'War and the more acerbic nature of the pedantry that I'm complaining of is because the pedantry is actually a way to prove that the "REAL" LotR is on "MY" side of the war, and anything that makes me think it's becoming appropriated by the other side must be wholly discredited?

On that note, I think Mithadan's point re: how something like this would have been taken in the 1980s is an excellent point.