Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

Re LOTR, a friend visiting today made the same observation. I've sent her the link, she'll be very interested in the article, thanks.

And thanks for your bounteous blogging, and have a cornucopious new year!

Thanks, I'd like to know what she thinks of it.

Oh, for heaven's sake (this imprecation directed at your first link). We're all shocked, shocked that The Lord of the Rings is not a postmodern, modishly multivalent/multicultural work, lovingly rendered in shades of gray from a perspective that ironizes everything except its own assumed virtue. I swear, sometimes I wonder if education is overrated. People who think a mythical tale of good vs evil is inherently racist/classist/whatever have been educated right out of the ability to appreciate some of the greatest works humanity has produced. Not that I'm putting Tolkien up there with the greats, but he deserves to be measured against the standards appropriate to what he was trying to do, not some mishmosh of subaltern studies and the latest French lit crit. Sheesh. (Now, Bakshi and the Zulus is a different kettle of fish altogether, and smells accordingly.)

Oh, and happy new year!

I forgot to add that this did not endear Dilday to me: "It may have been easy for me to yield to this fantastical secondary world had I come with adolescent naiveté." If you're going to use fancy inverted constructions, get yer damn verb forms right.

Oh dear, oh my. You know when I first read your entry the other day, my first reaction was: who says / writes that? Now I can't seem to cut my way out of the thicket of may haves. Happy new year, and may your qualtagh be without red hair.

Ollick ghennal erriu, as blein feer vie;
Seihll as slaynt da'n slane lught thie!

If I can peevish for a moment, I just got done politely agreeing with a noted scholar of cultural studies that hardly anybody holds the opinions that Dilday does, only fringe elements who don't represent anybody of note. Oh, except for the reviewer in the Guardian, and some left-wing bloggers, and some of the participants in cultstud-l, and some of my colleagues, and...

It's getting a bit hard to be polite about saying, "Terribly sorry about my caricatured positions, they don't really apply to anyone" when in fact they do seem to apply to a meaningful constituency.

So sign me up for whatever languagehat is drinking, and make it a double. It's not just that slamming LOTR for racism, classism and whatever other easy invectives you've got rattling around in your bag is lazy, bad cultural analysis, it's also, quite secondarily, a quite predictably repetitious form of political hari-kari for the schoolmarm left, a way of screaming from the rooftops one's completely elite distance from anything remotely resembling the moral and cultural logics of everyday life.

TB: Sorry about your dyspepsia; drink deeply and be well, but what exactly did you expect from a website called Open Democracy? A map of WMD? Not to disagree with you, but Dilday's review of the film seemed a lot like what normal folks do when they talk about movies. And, what exactly are "the moral and cultural logics of everyday life"? I'm not sure what planet you live on, but shitty analyses, cultural and otherwise, are the order of the day among people I come into contact with from academia on up to kids working at the food court in the local mall, and logic of any kind has little to do with it. Reviewing a film usually consists of saying that you liked it or hated it, and then continues with some half-assed recreation of the reviewer's favorite scenes. I'm sorry if my attitude seems elitist and apologize in advance.

I liked Dilday's review, not because it was convincing or well argued, but because she at least panned a movie franchise that nearly all have been praising a wee bit too much. First, let me say that I enjoyed LOTR when I read it in 7th grade or thereabouts. The appendices in the ROTK were the best, followed by the FOTR, with TT and ROTK trailing and petering out in general. Maybe I just felt it went on too long and the writing wasn't quite up to its task. I liked the first Jackson film, but curiously didn't feel the need to revisit it. The second flick, which I didn't even bother to see in the theatres, was less satisfactory, and I'll let you know about the last one when I rent it and watch it.

BTW, I enjoy your blog and especially enjoyed your entry last month on the current state of the fantasy genre.

Where's the happy medium between anachronistic criticism of previous era's works, on the one hand, and choosing to ignore the subtle and unsubtle bigotry that exist in those works, on the other?

I dunno. It's easier for me to escape in Tolkein's faerie tales, and therefore suspend my criticism, than it is for me to do the same to, say, Heidegger's philosophy. That may say more about where my sympathies lie than anything about the works themselves.

For what it's worth: a) after re-reading the LOTR as an adult, I noted many of the elements listed in Dilday's criticisms, and sort of mentally cringed b) that attitude, taken far enough, misses the point c) the lack of public outcry probably means that Jackson was far more successful than George Lucas in creating a popular entertainment.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to hold Heidegger, a philosopher, to a different standard than Tolkien, a fabulist. Personally, I cringe more at attempts to make art answer to ideas of political virtue than at art that perpetuates ideas the better sort have long outgrown. Artists are not meant to be moralists.

My comments grew too long and turned into a post on my blog. You can read them here.

language hat:
To play the Devil's Advocate for a moment, who has more influence, Tolkein or Heidegger? How many people have read The Lord of the Rings versus Sein und Zeit? What had a more profound influence on German attitudes in the 1930s, Leni Riefenstahl's films or Heidegger's speeches about the German people's "call to Being?"

As for me, I love LOTR. They were my favourite books as a child, and I still love them and the films. I still have a respect for Tolkien as a historian, mythologist and linguist.