Gollum's Soliloquy

Family News In Focus ^ | 07 Jan 04 | Gary Schneeberger

[AreaMan]

Gollum's Soliloquy

by Gary Schneeberger, CitizenLink editor

Audience reaction to a key scene in the latest "Lord of the Rings" movie puts the culture war into perspective.

It's been a few weeks since I saw "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," and one scene is still stuck in my head. It's not one of the battle sequences, as breathtaking as those are; it's not one of the concluding vignettes, as emotionally satisfying as those are; in fact, it's not even a scene that owes its impact on me to director Peter Jackson's artistry, as prodigious as that is.

It's a moment early in the film when Gollum, the shriveled little creature leading Sam and Frodo to Mordor, talks to himself while contemplating his reflection in a stream. Again, though the scene is a technical marvel, it's not the special effects that grabbed me. It's not even the nature of the conversation Gollum has with himself — a tortured exchange pitting whatever shred of goodness is left in him against the grotesque he has become in the wake of his obsession with the ring of the trilogy's title.

No, what continues to haunt me about that scene has less to do with what happens on the screen as with what happened in the theater.

In the screening I attended, packed to the very worst seat in the house, there was no shortage of laughter as this pathetic character, physically and emotionally destroyed by his lust for his "precious," sinks into complete and hopeless depravity. It is a heart-wrenching, desperate moment, painfully familiar to those of us who know how it feels to be simultaneously enticed by sin and aware that it distorts us on the inside every bit as much as it distorts Gollum on the outside.

And yet some people sharing the theater with me thought it was something to snicker about.

What strikes me about this, why I can't stop it from unspooling in my mind, is that it puts into the starkest relief just what we're up against in the battle to restore righteousness to the public square. It's hard enough to coax the culture back from the precipice of self-destruction when fewer and fewer people recognize sin as sin. But when sin, and its terrible power to destroy, becomes just another excuse to share a few giggles and grins, it's an altogether different, and altogether sadder, story.

Someone I used to work with told me a couple of years ago, after we watched the Christmas classic "It's a Wonderful Life," that it was hard for him to really enjoy the movie anymore, because he didn't feel right laughing at one particular scene. It's when daffy old Uncle Billy gets drunk and acts daffier than usual — a scene obviously designed to tickle the audience's funny bone. My friend said he felt bad about it because it was taking a sin — drunkenness — lightly, and then exploiting someone's struggles with that sin as entertainment.

Truth be told, I dismissed his concerns as more than a little legalistic, but now I'm not so sure. I mean, as hackneyed as some might think the phrase has become, as Christians we are called to "love the sinner and hate the sin." When we laugh at somebody suffering in his sin — whether it's Gollum or Uncle Billy — don't we have the equation exactly backwards? And if we can't get it right, what hope do we have of helping the culture catch on?

The answer to that question seemed to be "zero" the other night, when I flipped through the cable channels and happened upon a stand-up comedian who closed her act by thanking the audience for giving her "the best anniversary of my abortion ever." Shock doesn't begin to cover my reaction — and I don't shock easily. A joke about murdering babies. In prime time. Not one note of offense sounded by the audience. Lord help us.

And that, really, is the only hope we have. That the Lord will help us. It's the only way, ultimately, we'll achieve even fleeting victory on any of the dozens of fronts where the culture war is being waged. I'm ashamed to tell you how often I forget that — how often I fail to pray over the stories we publish in CitizenLink before we post them on the Web or send them to you via e-mail. Maybe that's what God has been trying to tell me by weaving that memory of "The Return of the King" through my synapses. Maybe the point is to prompt me to reverse my oversight, to seek in all we do the only Power that's ever separated anyone from sin, to remember to ask friends like you to remember us in your prayers, to always keep in perspective the reality of the battle: That we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Just like Gollum.

And anyone who mistakes his tragedy for comedy.

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[cornelis]

But, but Gary, their laughter is the cathartic confession, theatrical absolution.

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[Objective Reality]

nicely told - I've rarely felt as much general disgust toward the unwashed masses as I have when I heard the lowing, lowly, stupid herds of them snickering like imbeciles at Gollum's misery.

Gollum symbolizes every moral reason why the Ring of Power must be destroyed. The Ring of Power itself symbolizes the mortal's sick fantasy of imbuing its corrupt and sinful nature with the power of a God - this is why every reference of the Ring, when considered in relation to its possession by a Man, is accompanied by dire acknowledgement that Man has Fallen, and would, given the opportunity, fall further still. Not a single good character, save Frodo, entrusts himself with possession of the Ring - including no less than Gandalf The Grey, or The White.

[Objective Reality]

As an addendum, I wonder what percentage of these vermin will be similarly snickering at the scourging of the Christ when Gibson's film comes out next month. Likely a large one - I recall the story of a bunch of gangbangers in L.A. being "creatively sentenced" to view a screening of Schindler's List. As I recall, they laughed hysterically throughout.

[Samwise]

Was this the thread? :^)

[Porterville]

The guy needs to relax, maturity comes with time not all at once and never at a movie theatre... except when I was 16 with my girlfriend.

[stands2reason]

No, it was the other Gollum thread.




Sorry, yes, it was this one.
BTW Samwise is my absolute favorite LOTR character!

[Quix]

Reminds me of the time 3 Navy shipmates and I set out from Long Beach at about 15:00 to go to Hollywood to see a first run new movie . . . in my VW Beetle. Crazy hayseeds, us.

6+ hours later we finally get to Hollyweed and decide to see CLOCKWORK ORANGE.

And the audience responses to the movie were proving the main points of the movie. It was exceedingly surreal, to me. The laughter was in precisely the spots to prove the points of the very dark movie. And that people were clueless was even darker.

My shipmates just chalked my response up the my standard strangeness.

[Porterville]

Oh come on, Clock Work Orange was a hoot. It is like that Monty Python comercial where the guy sings "I Love You" and then smashes his head with two bricks... great stuff. It is all about the contrast of extremes at the same moment.

[glorgau]

This is one of my regrets about the direction of the movie. The book, Lord of the Rings, is a great morality tale. This was not made as clear as in the books. It was hidden, and more "flash" was emphasized.

[singletrack]

Sam was as good a charecter as Frodo , and he trusted himself with the ring.

[Quix]

Clockwork Orange was a vivid demonstration about how in our society the . . . 'intellectuals' have screwed society unroyally.

It vividly demonstrated that NO major INSTITUTION left in society had a shred of stable values, integrity, notion of right/wrong left in any real sense of any real use at all.

And the laughter in the audience confirmed it. Values, life, everything was up for grabs.

I may as well shoot you as give you roses; Bar-B-Q your body parts as feed you T-bone steak.

There was no shred of any notion of right vs wrong left from early in the film and definitely by the end. It was a screamingly sad commentary on the foundational origins of the assault on our Constitution and way of life by relatvism etc.

Nothing remotely absolute was left standing by the end of the film.

[Fledermaus]

In the screening I attended, packed to the very worst seat in the house, there was no shortage of laughter as this pathetic character, physically and emotionally destroyed by his lust for his "precious," sinks into complete and hopeless depravity. It is a heart-wrenching, desperate moment, painfully familiar to those of us who know how it feels to be simultaneously enticed by sin and aware that it distorts us on the inside every bit as much as it distorts Gollum on the outside.

Was the writer watching "The Return of the King" or the most recent Democratic presidential debate?

[saradippity]

I hope you are kidding!You are aren't you?

[lelio]

But when sin, and its terrible power to destroy, becomes just another excuse to share a few giggles and grins,

I share your same experience, but I think its more due to people being idiots and saying "Oh look its a small gray creature talking to himself. Hah-hah!" I suppose it saves them from listening to someone battle his inner demons and instead laugh as they can't understand it.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Nothing remotely absolute was left standing by the end of the film.

If you mean decency, I'll grant you that. But not ALL absolutes. And it that was the key to the movie's message for me.

The minister's lust for power was demonstrated for all to see -- in a movie completed in 1969 that was destined to be iconographic. Any liberal of that time was given a good hard look where Leftists would take their soft-headedness -- to the absolute limits of loosing evil on society solely for the sake of keeping power.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

And it in that was...

[larryav8r]

I'd have to disagree. I think there were very strong moral messages in all the movies. Frodo taking on the burden of the ring when he sees its effects in the Council of Elrond. Gandalf sacrificing himself for his friends. Merry and Pippin not fully understanding at first, but willingly risking all to go with Frodo only because he was their friend. And of course the steadfast courage and companionship of Samwise. Aaragorn's struggle with accepting his responsibilities as heir to the throne.

All of these were brilliantly portrayed in the film. I think it is a testament to the power of Tolkien's tale that even in the hands of Hollywood these truths cannot help but be revealed.