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Tolkien, Serling, and their unlikely fans
Vanity | 11/16/02 | Zionist Conspirator

Posted on 11/16/2002 5:26:51 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator

I have often wondered if there are any conservatives who are fans of "The Twilight Zone," the classic series created by the notorious liberal Rod Serling.

Then earlier today I saw a PBS show about J.R.R. Tolkien and was reminded that this conservative icon not only was a hero to radical flower children in the Sixties (with which his work seems to have no connection whatsoever) but also spawned the entire "fantasy" genre, which many conservatives condemn as being evil and satanic, even while giving Tolkien a free pass.

What was there about Tolkien and his decidedly pre-modern vision that appealed to those "ultimate modernists" of the Sixties? How did their "peace and love" philosophy find anything in Tolkien's extremely dualistic, military epic that appealed to it?

As to Serling (my original intended topic), while he was well known as a militant liberal, many of his shows seem to contradict the liberal stereotype (for example, the alien plot to destroy manking through the drinking water, in which the paranoids are right and the normal people are wrong).

It is often claimed that Serling had to disguise his liberal messages to get them past the censors, but some of his liberal messages seem to be buried very deeply. Are not his critiques of the totalitarian, groupthink society (in such eps as "Eye of the Beholder" or the episodes in which everyone picks an attractive body to be transplanted into or the episode in which Hollywood leftist Burgess Meredith defends the existence of G-d) just as "conservative" as they are "liberal?" He also used conservative actors a lot (perhaps because they were available) and he also cast or presented several stories in which the upland South "hillbilly" culture is presented sympathetically (perhaps as a cipher for Black culture). Chr*stian references are also quite common (Serling was born on chr*stmas day).

I am sure that he became in his later years--and would be today were he alive--a much more conventional leftist, but I am asking specifically about the classic series of 1959-1963.

Does Serling have any conservative fans here? Any thoughts about Tolkien's seemingly unusual fandom?


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; Philosophy; Unclassified; Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: fans; serling; tolkien
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Comment #41 Removed by Moderator

Comment #42 Removed by Moderator

To: souris
That's OK - I used to rock my kids asleep while telling them about those episodes *wink wink*
43 posted on 11/16/2002 8:10:02 PM PST by Senator Pardek
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To: fporretto
I would say that Tolkien's appeal to the youth of the Sixties and early Seventies was rooted in the richness of his imaginary world and the support it lent to their escapist impulses.

It would depend on where you spent your youth in the 60's and 70's. My buddy first read LOTR while on a PBR cruising the Mekong in 1968. He seemed to remember it as a story of a bunch of guys humpin' the boonies with waves of bad guys trying to overrun them, while folks back home never even heard there was a war going on.

I read somewhere that the hippies grooved on the Silmarilion even more than LOTR. It supposedly gave them a view of an older, purer world that the nastiness shown in LOTR. A few hits on the bong, and they could see themselves as elves, groovin' through history leading lives of beauty and peace, and not having to hustle for a buck.

It's strange, but in the movie, at the great battle before the gates of Mordor, I don't remember any elves flashing a peace sign at that ocean of orcs.

44 posted on 11/16/2002 8:15:25 PM PST by 300winmag
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To: jude24
nor was there any nudity --

There's a chance of nudity in The Two Towers. Gandalf says in the book:

"Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell. 'Naked I was sent back - for a brief time, until my task is done. And naked I lay upon the mountain-top."

I suspect it will be done with taste, however...the FOTR being so excellent.

45 posted on 11/16/2002 8:19:08 PM PST by 2Jedismom
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To: Livfreeordi
Russell Kirk was about as famous for his horror stories as he was for "A Conservative Mind"
46 posted on 11/16/2002 8:25:37 PM PST by Tribune7
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To: AbbaDabba
If you liked Emphyrio, you'll probably also enjoy the Cadwal Chronicles -- the trilogy starts with Araminta Station. The hero, who is somewhat similar to Emphyrio, has to contend with a charming group who call themselves the "Life, Peace and Freedom party." Vance's conservatism is more explicit in some works than others, but it's always there. One of the more clear-cut examples is Wyst: Alastor 1716, which provides a devastating portrait of a morality-challenged collectivist culture.
47 posted on 11/16/2002 8:30:09 PM PST by Interesting Times
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I am re-reading the trilogy by Tolkien now and today I was thinking just this. It is about war, honor, patriotism, being true to the honor of their race, standing up against evil... Things libs hate. In one passage King Theoden says "we will have peace when ....you and all your works have perished." Pretty tough talk. Not very "tolerant." I think the libs got lost in this story and forgot they were "supposed" to hate "war" & such. :)
48 posted on 11/16/2002 8:47:35 PM PST by Libertina
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To: Zionist Conspirator
I *love* the old Twilight Zone, as well as lots of other types of fantasy and sci-fi: Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, CS Lewis, the Harry Potter books, etc. And I am conservative too!
49 posted on 11/16/2002 9:01:06 PM PST by valkyrieanne
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To: Zionist Conspirator
A lot of liberal science fiction and fantasy often works for conservatives. You can't get much more liberal than Gene Roddenberry (the creator of Star Trek) yet the original series is full of conservative ideas (you can't get much stronger pro-life messages in science fiction than those found in Friday's Child and Devil in the Dark). A lot of good science fiction and fantasy is simply thought provoking, which can be useful, regardles of your political leanings. J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, is a staunch atheist and quite the liberal on many issues. Yet he knows how to write believable conservatives and religious people, which just shows that he's a good writer.
50 posted on 11/16/2002 9:03:11 PM PST by Question_Assumptions
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To: The Duke
And then of course the story of the librarian with the inch-thick glasses played by Burgess Meredith - who only wanted to be left alone to browse Free Republic....er...read his books. Then one day, thanks to some sort of nuclear war, he finds himself alone with his beloved books - however his glasses lay broken on the ground.

That is similar to a fantasy I often have had lately of being able to go back in time to the year 1900 with an empty mansion so that I could relive the entire century. Of course, the fantasy involves not aging so that I will return to the present 102 years later at my current age! The idea is that I would have 100+ years to absorb as many books as I could and build a huge collection of 20th century memorabilia such as books, newspapers, music and even baseball cards that would gradually fill my huge mansion.

I don't wear glasses so I would have it made!

51 posted on 11/16/2002 9:07:02 PM PST by SamAdams76
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To: The Duke
I liked the one where the man living in a fascist society is condemned for rejecting the autocratic regime and believing in God.
52 posted on 11/16/2002 9:10:28 PM PST by Bogey780
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To: jude24
I am a Christian also, and I also love J.R.R. Tolkien's works.

Tolkein was a WW I vet--and that profoundly influenced him. His imagery of hiking, climate, dawns, twilight, storms, geography, etc were heavily drawn upon the time he spend in the military.

Moreover, if you read some of the PC critics of Tolkein, they are outraged, simply outraged! by his "paternalistic and simplistic" treatment of good vs. evil. His critics are also upset that in his stories, Western characters are the heroes (very English and Dutch-like), while the villains speak a language that is an amalgamation of Russian and Arabic. (I am not kidding--there are whole articles pointing this out and ridiculing Tolkein on this).

Tolkien was an amazing philologist and a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. I expect what alarms his critics is that Tolkein saw a greater good in Judeo-Christian values than they do.

But, critics find what the wish: homosexuals have seized on the friendship of Sam and Frodo to suggest they were "gay." This projection shows the hole in their own souls--not in Tolkein's. John Ronald Reuel Tolkein knew the value of supreme friendship through his military service and what he and his comrades went through. I guess we cannot expect people who worship at the altar of buggery to understand this.

53 posted on 11/16/2002 10:03:10 PM PST by SkyPilot
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To: Senator Pardek
I like Star Trek but only the Next Generation( with the borg being the leading bad guys in a lot of the episodes) can be considered anti communist. The economic system of the Federation was very marxist. Babylon 5 was very conservative in outlook.
54 posted on 11/16/2002 10:47:31 PM PST by weikel
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To: Beth
The moral message in the works you cited stems from the fact that C. S. Lewis was an unabashed Christian, as was Tolkein. While the fantasies they weaved weren't Biblically based, they are of Christian "origin", so to speak...

the infowarrior

55 posted on 11/16/2002 10:53:10 PM PST by infowarrior
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To: tscislaw
>>...What was there about Tolkien and his decidedly pre-modern vision that appealed to those "ultimate modernists" of the Sixties? ...<<

Elves.

'Shrooms, pipeweed,, and trees.

56 posted on 11/16/2002 11:50:53 PM PST by BradyLS
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To: Zionist Conspirator
(Raises hand) Here's another conservative TZ fan. I also like the original Outer Limits although the series was made by Leslie Stevens, reportedly an out-there New-Age-before-it-was-called-New-Age liberal - and excellent creator of a TV show that's stood the test of time. Some things transcend the conservative or liberal label.
57 posted on 11/17/2002 12:05:02 AM PST by Moonmad27
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To: Beth
It had been several years since I read them, but CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength came to my mind. Maybe other Freepers can say more, but I remember these three works as having insightful, moral lessons.

They are amazing books. They are classed as science fiction but the are much different than what most think of when referring to science fiction. Out of The Silent Planet takes Professor Ransom to Malacandra (our Mars), where he visits a dying world as God created it but Lucifer mauled it. Perelandra takes Ransom to Venus, where God is ready to awaken the planet from it's Eden-esque slumber. Lucifer attempts to do to Perelandra (Venus) what he did to Tellus (Earth). That Hideous Strength finds Ransom back on Earth with a seemingly impossible task to perform. But he is granted assistance from a remarkable personage of the past... Best of all are Ransom's interactions with the oyarses, archons of the heavens that inhabit the solar system. His description of them will enthrall you.

A stunning trilogy! I heartily recommend them.

58 posted on 11/17/2002 12:08:05 AM PST by BradyLS
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To: MikalM
Remember, Heinlein also penned Stranger in a Strange Land, which was a HUGE influence on the Hippie culture, especially in its endorsement of casual nudity and group sex. It's still a big seller among "polyamory" and alternative-lifestyle types...

And nearly every book he wrote after rehashed it again and again. Very banal and irritating dialog. Obsessive stuff. I like most all of Heinlein's earlier stuff.

59 posted on 11/17/2002 12:13:51 AM PST by Rightwing Conspiratr1
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To: LenS
We appear to be working from discordant sources of information. But I did not say that Tolkien didn't work on the enormous, Bible-like backstory excerpted in The Silmarillion. Indeed, after his wife's death, working on it was nearly all he did. After the early enthusiasm you described for a single, integrated release with The Lord Of The Rings, he pondered for a long time over whether to publish The Silmarillion separately. Yes, he did eventually decide to do so, but other parties involved themselves in the decision, particularly C. S. Lewis.

Lewis, one of Tolkien's closest friends until Lewis's death in 1964, counseled against making The Silmarillion a "public" work. He disliked the shallow enthusiasm for The Lord Of The Rings among younger readers who had obviously missed its profound central message, and recoiled at the suggestion that Tolkien was creating a new religion, for the obvious reason. That having been said, Lewis was delighted by, and in some ways a participant in, Tolkien's ongoing act of creation, as one can see from the references to it in his novel That Hideous Strength.

The Silmarillion was finally published in 1977, more than three years after Tolkien's death. Christopher Tolkien, who performed the final editing and collation of stories to be included in the volume, was apparently acting on his father's wish, but earlier correspondence between Tolkien and Lewis indicates Tolkien's misgivings about the matter, both out of concern for Lewis's arguments and because the fantasist was, for a time, concerned about looking like an obsessed nut.

(An aside: Did you know that Lewis's hero Elwin Ransom, the central figure in Lewis's Space Trilogy, was patterned on Tolkien? Lewis felt he owed a great debt to Tolkien, who had persuaded him into Christianity and helped to nurture Lewis's own fictional gift. In return, he cast a Tolkien-like figure as a world-savior in his own books.)

Ironically, The Silmarillion diverged greatly, more so than The Lord Of The Rings, from Tolkien's original reasons for writing the books. Tolkien was a student and enthusiast of language, and the invented languages (i.e., Elvish, Dwarvish, etc.) he stippled his creation with were the great pride of his life. His fantasies were originally his way of giving his linguistic creations to voices that would use them. Yet the two "finished products" he issued were stripped of the bulk of what must have been the dearest part of his labors -- the use of the languages themselves by their intended speakers.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

60 posted on 11/17/2002 4:22:39 AM PST by fporretto
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