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What's the appeal? Reconsidering "The Lord of the Rings"
Saint Louis Dispatch ^ | 12/13/2003 | Sarah Bryan Miller

Posted on 12/13/2003 12:49:52 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist

What's the appeal? Reconsidering "The Lord of the Rings"

By Sarah Bryan Miller
Post-Dispatch
12/13/2003

Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of The King.' (New Line)

Actor Viggo Mortensen isn't everyone's idea of Aragorn, the Ranger turned ruler in "The Return of the King." But that's all right with the legions who love "The Lord of the Rings." Their overwhelming desire to see a film version of the classic books they love draws even the critical to return to each new video chapter. Millions more who have never picked up the books are glued to the movies and the story they recount.

What accounts for their devotion?

Since the mid-1960s, when his trilogy burst on the scene as a featured component of the baby boomers' adolescent angst, J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) easily has been the world's most popular and best-known fantasy writer. "Rings," its prelude, "The Hobbit" and volumes of ancillary material such as "The Silmarillion" continue to sell steadily, eclipsing the works of all of Tolkien's near-contemporaries, and even shoving his good friend C.S. Lewis into the shadowlands.

What keeps his stories in the spotlight of popular culture while many other fine works languish in the twilight? What makes "The Lord of the Rings" a fit subject for the Harvard Lampoon, whose classic parody "Bored of the Rings" was recently reissued? Why would anyone waste five minutes on Ralph Bakshi's deplorable animated version?

The answer is not the obvious one, given that this is a series built around a fantasy world. Stranger than fiction, it's the reality of Middle Earth that gives it its staying power.

Adolescent boys may flock to these movies to enjoy the myriad sound-effect-enhanced ways in which Our Heroes hack up Our Villains. Some nostalgia-ridden boomers may be revisiting an early interest. But others are drawn by the physical settings: the kings of the Argonath, the tower of Isengard, the elven magic of Lothlorien, the valley of Rivendell. Those who love the books have an intense desire to see the familiar places of this mighty epic.

The books are mythical in feel, but they are far more nuanced than actual myth. The story is more about conservation of the old and the inevitability of change than it is about alabaster gods and heroes. Those who were once good can turn to evil - and even those long soaked in evil can still do good, even unwittingly. So "The Lord of the Rings," in both its book and film versions, meshes better with the gestalt of today's pop culture than all of the old Hercules movies of the 1960s.

No other author has built a world with such detail and scope as Tolkien's creation. Other writers' efforts are more akin to fairy tales. They may illustrate a point of human nature, shed light on virtue or vice, or touch us emotionally, but like any parable they do not strive to be taken as reality.

A rich background

Tolkien's chosen field was linguistics, and his learning is reflected in the 15 languages he created or synthesized for his books, all with rules of grammar and pronunciation, vocabularies and well-developed cultures to match. That makes for a richness of background that no other fantasy world can offer.

There are parallels with our own history (ever notice the similarities between the Numenorian kingdoms in exile and the failing Roman empire?) and cultures. The Rohirrim are simply Anglo-Saxons with horses, right down to their language, poetry and funerary customs: Beowulf and Co. as equestrians. There is even a theology for Middle Earth; it seems to be basically Zoroastrian in nature, with a single powerful god ruling over competing spirits of good and evil.

But Tolkien's own theology was Christian; he was a devout Roman Catholic. He populated his world with fantasy creatures like dwarves (Tolkien's preferred spelling for the plural of dwarf), elves, orcs and hobbits. These resemble the best-drawn of science fiction characters, partaking of the human, yet not human (well, the hobbits are pretty thoroughly human), and a part of their own convincing reality.

Men and hobbits have free will: They can choose the light or the dark, the cause of good or of evil. But Tolkien's high elves are above human nature; his orcs (closely related to the ogres of fairy tale) are below it. In this, they mirror the Judeo-Christian tradition of angels and demons.

Angels, before they devolved in popular culture into avatars of the Cute, had a terrible beauty that awed their human observers, as do elves like the Lady Galadriel. Angelic messengers had to start out with reassurance - "Fear not!" - before they could get to the point. Orcs are entirely demonic, and just as devils are fallen angels, so orcs are degenerate descendents of elves. Neither gets a real choice about whether to be good or bad: They are what they are.

Critic Sarah Bryan Miller
e-mail: sbmiller@post-dispatch.com
forum: stltoday.com/thedresscircle
telephone: 314-340-8249

(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; The Hobbit Hole
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To: GeronL
lol...Merry Christmas, G-Lo!
21 posted on 12/17/2003 11:05:52 PM PST by Psycho_Bunny
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To: Psycho_Bunny
G-Lo, G-Loo.... whats the difference?? O... right.

Say aaahhhhhhh Saddam

22 posted on 12/17/2003 11:07:38 PM PST by GeronL (Saddam is out of the hole and into the quagmire!)
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