Tolkien, Serling, and their unlikely fans

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?

7 Days in May....book was even better. Lots of plot and details omitted from the movie are in the book. Great reading, especially when one studies the Friends of Bill list and places those events in a timeline. Almost as if a serial killer was somewhere in that Administration following the book's plot and acting in advance with ulterior motives.

It is true that Tolkien was indeed a very right-wing Roman Catholic (though apparently subscribed to historical criticism of the Bible, if he indeed contributed to the commentary of The Jerusalem Bible). However, there are also problematic aspects to his work.

LOTR did indeed spawn the whole "Dungeons and Dragons" and (ultimately) Harry Potter phenomena. Yet many conservatives who relentlessly attack the fantasy genre give a free pass to Tolkien. Also, in his appendix to The Return of the King he says that there was no language like Hebrew in Middle Earth (a strange opinion for a conservative chr*stian and for someone with an interest in ancient languages). I once purchased a "LOTR" fantasy roll playing game (which I never played; it was too complicated!) and the description of Gollum struck me as eerily similar to the anti-Semitic view of the Jews (though of course Tolkien did not write this description!).

Despite its chr*stianity, Chr*st is not present in the work and the creation myth of Silmarillion seems ultimately ad odds with Monotheism.

But then, I am viewing things through my own particular lens, which is a Fundamentalist one. This means adaptation of chr*stianity to pre-chr*stian European culture is seen as a defilement and departure from the Hebrew original, which must be restored (hence the Fundamentalist rejection of liturgical chr*stianity while adopting Jewish elements instead).

The fantasy writer Peter S. Beagle said he would go to Middle Earth "like a shot." That accounts for so many of the '60s hippies being fans of his.

In his foreword to the Ballantine paperback edition of LOTR, Peter Beagle wrote:

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers--thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

How could one read Tolkien and have such a worldview? And what would Tolkien have thought of these sentiments?

TZ is perhaps my top show of all time. Though he was clearly a liberal, he was staunchly anti-communist, just as Gene Roddenberry was (creator of another great show).

Given the different way Nazism and Communism are treated in ST, I can't agree with that. However, Roddenberry certainly was an old-school, patriotic humanist who saw the United States as the greatest step forward for humanist beliefs. Recall the episode with Elisha Cook Jr. as the lawyer defending Kirk, invoking the Bible and the Constitution as important steps to their current beliefs. Also, who can not be moved by the "Yangs vs. Coms" episode (and the "sacred words" of the "E plebnista")?

Tolkien loved trees and nature and hated modern machinery. In the latter part of his life he never rode in a car (he converted his garage into a study).

This is quite an interesting topic. While classical conservatives celebrated nature and deprecated modernity, contemporary conservatism is often characterized by a "if it's green, pave it" mentality. As a rural person myself I sometimes feel out of place in the attacks on "bird watchers" and "butterfly chasers" in some contemporary conservative literature. Isn't the exaltation of man humanism? And wouldn't the "re-wilding" of the land or the extinction of humanity be suicidal for the left?

Interestingly, for all its current association with environmentalism, Marxism was originally unapologetically industrialist. It was Communism that industrialized Russia, which meant Communism was often associated by Russians with modern technology just as American leftists associate it with capitalism and seem to see Marx as some sort of bucolic figure.

Tolkien and his decidedly pre-modern vision

Pre-medieval, actually

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/tolkien.htm

The notions of the magical and supernatural on which Tolkien draws through the trilogy came from his deep love of Northern myth, and especially the Old Norse sagas and Anglo Saxon poetry of the heroic age. The elves and the dwarves of The Lord of the Rings are creatures out of northern mythology. The dragon in The Hobbit and Farmer Giles of Ham is the same dragon against which the aging Beowulf fights a last doomed battle in the great Old English epic Beowulf.

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.

That particular phase in youth culture was heavily rejectionist. It sought to turn away from everything established, everything previous generations had taken for granted, most especially what it saw as the "materialism" of America -- a set of influences that appeared to be absent from Tolkien's fantasy world. It was foolish, of course, and not really germane to Tolkien's vision, but note this: very little space in The Lord Of The Rings goes to descriptions of the workaday world of Middle-Earth. Almost all of its focuses narrowly on the wars that close the Third Age, and the incredible adventure of the Fellowship, particularly Frodo and Sam, as they wrought the destruction of the One Ring.

I was a kid during the Sixties, and the images of the Counterculture I saw on television indelibly impressed themselves on my mind.

There is more to modernity than machinery, and I always looked on the hippies as the absolute epitome of everything modern. I think I can understand the appeal of the "escapism" to these people (though attacks on "materialism" by people who believe that only matter exists has always seemed hypocritical to me). But I cannot understand the appeal of the particular escape provided by Tolkien to people whose general idea of escape was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The cleavage between the two seems absolutely unbridgeable.

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).

That may be, but there is also the episode where Kirk tries to talk the people of the planet Gideon into practicing population control.

(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.

I don't remember the original ABC run of OL, but I did see it when it went into syndication later in the Sixties. I loved the show because every episode had a "monster" and little kids love monsters!

Has anyone else ever wondered if the OL episode "The Guests" was the inspiration to the Eagles' Hotel California?

Sorry to hear about Mr. Stevens' new age liberalism, though.

"In the beginning Eru, the One, who in Elvish tongue is named Iluvatar, made the Ainur of his thought; and they made a great Music before him. In this Music the World was begun; for Iluvatar made visible the song of the Ainur, and they beheld it as a light in the darkness."

Valaquenta from the Silmarillion.

Whatever the reasons people have for 'grooving' on the Silmarilion they can never diminish its beauty.

If you are a fan of Tolkien (or the Fantasy genre for that matter) I would highly recommend you read "Narn I Hin Hurin" from "Unfinished Tales"

One more month!!!!

But I cannot understand the appeal of the particular escape provided by Tolkien to people whose general idea of escape was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The cleavage between the two seems absolutely unbridgeable.

Vaclav Havel wrote on this in his Open Letters (1991). The civilization that is modern and industrial (or, corporate, if you will) has sublimated the inexplicable, but only on the surface. He mentions "Thriller".

It seems to me that man has what we call a human heart, but that he also has something of the baboon within him. The modern age treats the heart as a pump and denies the presence of the baboon within us. And so again and again, this officially nonexistent baboon, unobserved, goes on the rampage, either as the personal bodyguard of a politician, or wearing the unifrom of the most scientific police force in the world.
Modern man, that methodical civil servant in the great bureaucracy of the world, mildly frustrated by the collapse of his "scientific" world view, finally switches on his video recorder to watch Michael Jackson playing a vampire in "Thriller," the best-selling video cassette in thehistory of the world, then goes into the kitchen to remove from a thermos flask--behind the backs of all animal welfare societies--the stillw arm heart of a hoopoe. And he swallows it, hoping to have the gift of prophecy conferred upon him.

LOTR did indeed spawn the whole "Dungeons and Dragons" and (ultimately) Harry Potter phenomena.

What's wrong with D&D and Harry Potter? I'll admit to playing D&D once (and I'd only play it with the particular group I played it in, since it was all Christians and thus kept pretty tame), and have never read Harry Potter.

And I absolutely am not a fundamentalist. I tend to be more evangelical or Reformed in my outlooks. Thus, I do not feel constrained to abhour the mythical stories of pre-Christian Europe.

Why do you say the Christian liturgy must be abandoned and Judiaism embraced? Is this yet another reversion to the law?

I've noticed that Freepers sometimes get carried away by their hatred of left-wing environmentalists. There's nothing wrong with sensible environmentalism. It's the kooks and whackos who have given it a bad name. Conservatives need to take back the environmental movement, not kill it, or in the long run they will badly damage themselves. It won't endear conservatism to decent people if they are identified with damaging the environment and destroying nature--which is exactly what the leftists accuse them of doing. That doesn't mean you have to support the Kyoto treaty, but you should support reasonable and cost-effective environmental regulations.

Same with animal rights advocates. Freepers rightly make fun of them. But animals deserve to be well treated, and I'm sure most Freepers, who all seem to own dogs or cats, would agree with that. These days the SPCA is loony, but we still need some such organization. We just need to straighten it out.

This is an important point, and probably deserves a thread of its own. My understanding is that the political term "Conservative" came from the conservation of Teddy Roosevelt. This involved intelligent stewardship of natural resources, which is hard to be against.

This should not be confused with Gaea-worshipping whacko enviralmentalism. Ozone depletion by cloro-fluorocarbons, CO2 / Kyoto, and idiot forest (mis-)management leading to huge wildfires are just a few of the bad outcomes created by whacko enviralmentalism.

Republicans are losing votes because we are unclear about this distinction. I think this issue is part of how Republicans can keep on the winning track by taking issues from the Left. Plenty of intelligent concerned citizens (who vote!) care greatly about the environment, and think the Dems are the only choice. Smart conservatism, in the original sense of the word, can win over these voters.

That may be, but there is also the episode where Kirk tries to talk the people of the planet Gideon into practicing population control.

I don't remember the discussion being all that specific, nor did I get the impression he was talking about abortion. I'm not saying Original Star Trek was perfectly conservative (there was that whole "no money" angle, of course) but it certainly had some strong conservative themes in many episodes. It was certainly better than the later Treks.

Of course it, it would make some sense for Kirk to be pro-choice. Most womanizers seem to be for obvious reasons ("Here's $200. Go take care of it for me.")

I like Serling, but only by overlooking the liberal 2-by-4 he swung around so often. I'm sure there were a few Conservative messages here and there. But the Twilight Zone was more often a slam on "Bougouise values." I find it hard to imagine that the future dystopias in the Twilight Zone were meant to represent or were understood to represent the ulitimate result of socialism.

More likely they were meant to be an exagerated picture of what the left of the day saw as Levit Town Gulags. And of course there's the requiste whining about man's supposed self-destructivness that's meant to defame even preparing for self-defense.

I'm the only person on Earth that hasn't read J.R.R Tolkein. So I have no comment on that.

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