Noticed a lot people talking about Tolkien’s works and philosophy. So, I created a thread specifically dedicated for that and other things related to it, like the movies and games.
The fact that Nazis are into Tolkien’s works has always surprised me. I can understand at a surface level that Tolkien based his works off Norse/Anglo-Saxon culture. For example, the Rohirrim are just straight copied from Anglo-Saxon Culture, hell they even speak Old English. But excluding that, Tolkien was hard-core Catholic and he himself described the Lord of the Rings as a Catholic work “unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision”(Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, letter 142). Secondly, The Nazi’s asked Tolkien about his “Aryan” heritage. He wrote back to them saying that his family was German, and Tolkien said that their real reason for asking him about his heritage is to see if was Jewish. Which he replied he was not, but he did call them “gifted people” (letter 30). Finally, Tolkien stated his huge dislike of Adolf Hitler “I have in this War a burning private grudge against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler. Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making forever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.” (letter 45)
Nice thread
Since Tolkien and Lord of the Rings are pretty good stuff I'm going to link Tolkien posts from the Fantasy thread
The Last Ringbearer
>>1214Tolkien's politics and 'racism' in his story and his life
>>4152>>4171>>10987 >>10993Elf Politics
>>2052>>11484>>11676>Ghân-buri-GhânOf him specifically, nothing besides what is given in the book. But he was part of the Drúedain, who are related to men. They are described as being shorter and fatter than regular men, and overall have primitive and wild culture and appearance. They are good natured, and have always fought on the side of good. Unfortunately they have been persecuted by wicked or ignorant men, who see them as evil based on their appearance. Because of this persecution they are very secretive and keep to themselves and a couple of stories have shown them to use magic, that ordinary have no knowledge of.
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Dr%C3%BAedain#cite_note-TD-1One theory about them that I find interesting in that they could be men who weren't corrupted by discord caused by Melkor during the Ainulindalë (The Music of the Ainur)
>>11678Neanderthal parallel?
Pretty forward thinking of Tolkien if so, and an interesting way to work them into the mythology.
>>11718I mean, knowledge of them had proliferated quite a bit by that point, and Wells even wrote a story of them as 'barbarous beasts' by 1911.
Which does fit in well with the typical views held by Tolkien's 'ignorant men;'
granted, the idea that Neanderthals were effectively humans in terms of their brainpower is a relatively modern understanding,
so perhaps he really did just get lucky in his depiction of related but slightly different from men primitive humans.
>>11744 (me)
Well one anon already said that
>>1196 >>11619>RacismSupposedly Tolkien stated that one of his regrets was that he didn't give the Orcs much sympathy and that they were treated like slaves that often didn't get a choice rather being evil.
I've always found some of the most interesting parts of the Lord of the Rings is when the orcs get to talk and share some of their thoughts, like when merry and Pippen are overhearing the three different groups of orcs bickering (Urak-hai from Isengard, Black Uruks from mordor and the smaller orcs from the Mines of Moria), when Sam overhears Gorebag and Shagrat, or in gorgoroth when Sam and frodo overhear the large soldier and the tracker…. It makes the orcs more than mindless drones and I think it would have been cool to hear a lot more of that and for them to be "humanized" a bit more… Like when Gorbag refers to frodo being left for dead as a "typical elf trick", it implies they have a morality that looks down upon leaving a wounded comrade
If you're after a scholarly defense of Tolkien from the progressive/left I really love this book from Patrick Curry.
>>11757yes was thinking the same thing recently, when going back over the part where they are talking about Shelob. Those orcs are not mere animals, but are fully fleshed people with thoughts and feelings
I'm a huge tolkien nerd, but it's one of the faults with the legendarium that he didn't really give as much depth of thought to the Orcs.
>>11761 Honestly Orcs are quite well expanded upon in World of Warcraft, as I've stated before in the Fantasy thread.
Something I've read in a rather amusing crossover fanfic of Middle Earth and Naruto by Neon Zangetsu expands on this a bit by having Orc mentalities explained by a rule of strength and by instinct due to how harsh their lives are in general, there is no time to be picky about what you eat or asking questions before attacking because it could cost them their lives.
Gimli destroys the ring
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUrJdsN_-B0I wish this happened TBH
I always wondered what Smaug would do if he had the One Ring.
Gandalf states:
“the dragon, Sauron might use with terrible effects"-
The Lord of the Rings - Appendices (Durin’s Folk)
https://archive.is/a5K1zSauron's view on Gandalf and the rest of the Istari.
If he thought about the Istari, especially Saruman and Gandalf, he imagined them as emissaries from the Valar, seeking to establish their lost power again and 'colonize' Middle-earth, as a mere effort of defeated imperialists (without knowledge or sanction of Eru). His cynicism, which (sincerely) regarded the motives of Manwe as precisely the same as his own, seemed fully justified in Saruman. Gandalf he did not understand. But certainly he had already become evil, and therefore stupid, enough to imagine that his different behaviour was due simply to weaker intelligence and lack of firm masterful purpose. He was only a rather cleverer Radagast - cleverer, because it is more profitable (more productive of power) to become absorbed in the study of people than of animals.
History of Middle Earth, Volume X "Morgoth's Ring", Chapter 5 Myths transformed.
>>11794he'd just get more gold
dragons are fiending for that gold high
A liberal homosexual feminist Protestant was teaching a class on George R.R. Martin, known hack
”Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Gurm and accept that Planetos is the greatest fantasy setting of all time even greater than Arda!”
At this moment, a brave, patriotic, British WW1 veteran who had served 1500 tours of duty on the Somme and understood the necessity of war and fully supported all decisions made by Butcher Haig stood up.
”What are the linguistic differences among the peoples of Westeros?”
The arrogant proddie smirked quite schismatically and smugly replied “There is the Old Tongue and the Common Tongue, you stupid warmonger”
”Wrong. There should be hundreds of dialects. If the Wall is 8000 years old as you say, how can the Wildlings and Northmen understand one another?”
The HBO shill was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of A World of Ice and Fire. He stormed out of the room crying those redditor crocodile tears. The same tears redditors (who today live in such luxury most can afford sex changes) cried when Missandei was beheaded. There is no doubt that at this point our sola scriptura-faggot wished he had pulled himself up by his bootstraps and become more than a garbage pulp fiction fan. He wished so much he could die a glorious death in battle, but he had sworn to always be a draft dodger!
The students applauded and became Tolkien fans that day and accepted the Pope as their Lord and Master. A giant eagle named “Thorondor” flew into the room and perched atop the flag of Gondor and shed a tear on the White Tree. Beowulf was read in the original Old English several times, and Eru Ilúvatar himself showed up and enacted Aragorn's flat rate tax policy across the universe.
The Lutheran was fired the next day and sunset found him squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up he was shitting brown water.
>>12083The Valars were pieces of shit. If they were more proactive nothing of this shit would've happened.
If they cared about humans as much as they cared about Elves, the humans wouldn't be fully exposed to the wiles of Morgoth, convincing them that the world is ruled by a cruel god.
>>19010Yeah that would be cool. My concern is that it just looks like every generic anime made today.
I actually wouldn't mind a 2D animated movie that looks like a smoother version of the old Rankin-Bass movies, where it has that kind of weird, old-school fairy tale look, but they don't really make them like that anymore.
>>19031>it just looks like every generic animeWait, have they released concept art/trailers?
>a 2D animated movie that looks like a smoother version of the old Rankin-Bass moviesYeah that's not happening. I knew a dude on DA who was part of a reboot for Flight of Dragons but it got cancelled with only some refurbished concept art he had posted on his account left.
>>19453Proofs?
Also
>muh Christianzzzzz You sound very asshurt. Cope harder
>>22635>He wasn't even originalHe is, having created several languages in his verse and having only inspiration from Faustian and pre-Faustian Germanic mythology. Nobody has ever claimed he created it all on his own, but the Hobbit or LoTR are not emulating any specific mythological legend of Northern Europe that he based his ideas off of.
>People act like he invented the fantasy genreIn essence he is a founding father of the modern concept of fantasy genre, thus numerous media are heavily based on his foundation of fantasy, from Warcraft to DnD.
>>11757Yeah, but on the other hand, they do seem to literally eat eachother.
Tolkien kind of dropped the ball fleshing out their society more.
Same with the Easterlings
>>23370On the topic of Ponomarkenko, they're a total glowie and even used a fake Pentagon advisor called "David Jewburg" for their articles (mostly cause he thought most slavs aren't going to realize the jape due to it being an English term)
>>>/edu/10009 >>23487>Everyone starts complaining about there being a black dwarf ladyBecause they're idiots, ironically the main issue is the lack of a beard.
>lotr is catholic
NO! There's nothing universal about it, no redemption, no universal love.
Like Tolkien said, LOTR is a mythology for England. And indeed it is. A mythology not for any past England, like he wanted, but for a twentieth century fascistic, genocidal inbred empire with all of their racial prejudices put into the book.
LOTR is exactly how fascists and the nazis saw and see the world, and Tolkien is just another fascist. Don't believe that midwit about alegories, everyone with eyes can see what he meant with orcs, elves, mordor, etc.
>>23548shut the fuck up dude, just say you like it even if it's fascist trash
There's no fucking excuse for Orcs, go read the Iliad and learn how a real epic treats enemies.
>>23549 >>23546 >Muh racist orks!>reddit spacingYeah go back you fucking snowflake. You are also utterly ignorant of the Illiad if you're saying this unironically. You're comparing a legendized war between men caused by the meddling of gods to an utterly fictional work based on the mythology of Northern Europe. Elves are the forest spirits of said lore and Orcs, if you had any basic comprehension are born from a group of corrupted elves that turned to evil and served a the physical manifestation of a literal GOD of evil.
>LOTR is exactly how fascists and the nazis saw and see the world <Tolkien is just another fascistYeah the fascist that sent letters to Hitler telling him that his actions made him ashamed to be a Northern European. The fascist that expressed himself as a primitivist and monarchist.
Your "muh allegories reel" shit is, as usual projected racism of liberals.
>>23547>every single race of non-monster humanoid on one side and then the arabs on team monsterYou people really haven't read the books you're bitching about, have you?
>>23546The Orcs are the Kin of Cain. In Christian Mythology, after Cain murdered his brother Abel and was cursed by God, he left to wander the Earth with his wife Lilith, and sired many children with her who also bore his curse in their blood, often becoming monstrous or rising from the grave as undead when neither Heaven nor Hell would have them. When the Germanic tribes began to Christianize, they began to associate many of the monsters in their own mythology with the the Kin of Cain. If Tolkien's goal was to to create a sort of mythology of England, he couldn't ignore how popular and widespread the belief in the Kin of Cain was. Similarly, "orc" was a word that had spread around Europe meaning monster or demon, almost certainly a reference to the Roman God of the Underworld Orcus, and showed up in Beowulf which is where Tolkien probably first encountered it, and since Tolkien was a massive Beowulf fanboy, he also likely wanted the main baddies to be Mini Me Grendels (who was also stated in the epic poem to be one of the Kin of Cain).
Lord of the Rings has pretty big Christian influences, and it doesn't take a scholar of theology to see that the plot is influenced by the Christian apocalypse, with the Anti-Christ (Sauron) seizing the world in the name of Satan (Melkor) and, naturally, having the Kin of Cain (orcs) leave the shadows to gather under his banner.
>>23547The primary race supporting Sauron, other than orcs, are the "Black Númenóreans", the exact same race of people as Aragorn, Boromir and the citizens of Gondor. They're just not seen in his novels beyond characters like the Mouth of Sauron because they're implied to all be dicking around in Mordor. The books at least state that the Easterlings were noble, but tricked and lied to in order to secure their loyalty to Sauron. The same courtesy isn't extended to the Black Númenóreans.
>>23565He openly denounced it and the nazis that espoused racial 'science'. He did not have any racist writings and specifically dismissed any attempt to try and project human races onto his fictional works.
>inb4 hiding it Tolkien lived in a time that had people lynch blacks in the South with no repercussion and the British Empire gassed African villages that refused to bend a knee to their rule, People hardly would care about a racist caricature had he intended it, but he did not.
>>23571I’d say the racialism in Tolkien’s works have nothing at all to do with the orcs, but rather the fact that only the whites of the West are heroic freedom fighters fighting to ensure Morgoth and Sauron do not rule Middle Earth, the peoples of the East and the South are said to have mostly bowed down to Morgoth’s rule and then Sauron’s after him. Of course there are also other iffy ideas, like the obsession with bloodlines and royal blood, how the Numenoreans have a “superior” bloodline to all other human cultures.
Biggest issue is that the non-white cultures of the world are all servants of Sauron….
>>27282Orcs are corrupted elves, made into a twisted mockery of their former selves by Morgoth. He did this with many creatures. For instance, the trolls are a corrupted, twisted form of the ents.
They have a pretty close correlation with the Kin of Cain from Christian Mythology, which was treated as a lesser type of demon beneath Lucifer and fallen angels, and it's what Grendel was stated to have been in Beowulf, and Tolkien was a massive Beowulf fanboy.
>>27278>fascists<Implying that fascists don't simply latch on to anything that seemingly on the surface supports their ideas because they are a bunch of shallow retards that can't look deeper into the works that they like. Tolkien himself hated fascists and was against their race science. Amazon is only making that LOTR series out of cynical greed. Why do you liberals support corporations so long as they have the "right" races or genders in their products.
You liberals are exactly like the fascists you say you hate.
Having watched the two episodes that came out im cautiously optimistic. It's a slow start but i like the slower pacing and though things are far from perfect, the dialogue feels a bit stilted too often for comfort, its still pretty enjoyable and im looking forward to seeing the rest of it.
There's a whole host of lore issues/decisions i think are questionable (Galadriel's main motivation being venegance quest rather than being queen of eregion and then lothlorien, her husband and kids being nowhere to be seen, her jumping from the boat to valinor, and being on it in the first place is stupid, but i guess they had no better way to get her to numenor. didn't like the heavenly gates to valinor or whatever that was either, i suppose they needed a dramatic point of no return for galadriel to make a decision at, but prior to the sundering Valinor should be a physical place contiguous with the rest of arda, Tol Eressea was visible from Numenor on clear days and elves travelled back and forth between them so there being a metaphysical barrier between aman and the rest of arda is a bit upsetting)
Probably my main issue is how the timeline seems squished and i was always worried about this when they said they were making a second age show about the fall of numenor and stuff, because the forging of the rings of power and the fall of numenor are almost 2000 years apart and even if they have like 12 seasons or whatever it would be difficult to keep switching out non-elven or maiar characters every season as the plot takes place over dozens of human/dwarf/hobbit generations, so they seem to be insanely condensing the plot to where we start before the rings are forged, sauron & celebrimbor forge the rings, the immediately war, sauron probably already gets captured in that war and taken to numenor and causes its fall, all in the scope of a single human lifetime which will be insane. The reigns of like 20 numenorean kings condensed into two, maybe three at best.
As for the race stuff, im dissapointed since i had hoped/coped that they were going to be interesting about it. I had hoped that the Arondir (the brown elf) was going to be an Avari or some silvan/laiquendi elf from the south east of those that never heeded the summons of the valar to the west and we were going to see brown/black/asian elves in general, but no he's apparentlyhe's just another elf from Lindon under the rule of high elven high king who is apparently maintaining colonial outposts as far as mordor to supervise the humans there in a millenia long post-war military occupation. Also the humans living in the southlands (future mordor) look like norther european peasants and are also overwhelmingly white, like gondor is meant to be on the latitude of turkey, mordor even when green and lush should seem warmer and have more tanned people of the swarthy easterling, or haradrim/variag variety.
The black dwarf princess was in my imaginging hopefully going to be of one of the four eastern dwarf clans from the red mountains some transplant political alliance marriage, but no, she's just a working class gal from khazad dum apparently.
Finally the brown hobbits which i was looking forward to with appropriately brown harfoots (samwise was whitewashed smdh), generally im pretty positive about them i both like their portrayal of nomadic hunter gatherers while still being quaint and hobbitish, in a more primitive way. But though there are quite a few brown/black actors playing harfoots the main character, Nori, and her best friend, are white, and in general i felt some of the harfoots are just white with faces covered in dirt like they're doing brownface to pass them off as darker skinned lol.
So my issue is, not to sound like a /pol/tard, a degree of forced racial diversity. I really wanted and still want and hope to see some societies of predominantly black/brown/asian characters. Give me a bustling hardrim city, som easterling wainriding nomads, give me black or asian dwarf clans and latino or native american elves from the east, give me all brown/black harfoot hobbits. But instead of that the creators of this show prefer what is effectively colourblind casting, instead of casting many black/brown/asian actors in a diverse set of societies they instead just sprinkle one or two in every society, in every village in a way that doesn't make sense and doesn't seem realistic. I've seen excerpts from the creators or people involved defending the casting on the basis of 'tolkien's world wasn't all white people' and 'we want to portray what the world actually looks like' and i agree with that wholeheartedly but at the end of the day this show (so far, in just these two episodes mind you) doesn't look how the real world looks like or how tolkien's world, vast and with many blank spaces to fill in, looks like. It looks like the world that the rich, white, liberal americans/europeans who make this show see in their daily lives. This middle earth doesn't have the demographics of the world, it has the demographics of america. A world in which black, brown and asian people are intrinsically, in their minds, minorities. Little specks of colour and diversity sprinkled of the the masses of white society, and of course they fit in perfectly and because the liberals are of course colourblind and don't see race so their existence is devoid of context. They can't portray societies which are predominantly black, brown or asian, where maybe there's only a single white person sprinkled in, or none, even though that's where most of those people live in the real world, what entire vast countries on this earth are like, and what entire vast realms in middle-earth should be like. But liberals are uncomfortable with and don't like thinking about those countries full of 'minorities' because it doesn't fit their essentialist view of 'minorities' in white societies and brings up all sorts of uncomfortable contradictions of imperialism and the world system so they prefer to act as if those countries simply don't exist, and representation in the media must be solely as 'minorities' and never societies.
>>28474>The show is literally for 12 year olds and the script was written by a woman who created an über kitschy fairytale rather than a truly epic prequel saga to Jackson's LOTR oeuvremade me chuckle
good job if it's a troll
>>28470The beginning of the Hobbit isn't supposed to be action packed, it's meant to build the sense of mystery and wonder. You're supposed to become curious about what's out there in the world like Bilbo.
The Lord of the Rings wasn't for children.
>tavern where they meet the edgelord guyI think I know why you don't remember it; you were watching it either half-asleep or under the effects of some sort of narcotic if you think Aragorn is an "edgy guy".
>>28482>You're supposed to become curious about what's out there in the world like Bilbo.i didn't
>you were watching it either half-asleep or under the effects of some sort of narcotic if you think Aragorn is an "edgy guy"i call him an edgelord because i remember him as the hard-boiled rogue guy with the dark cape from that scene
>>28478So far the whole thing including plot & dialogues is more blatant kitsch than Harry Potter ffs, i imagine the make-up box of a 12 year old teenager girl would look more mature and interesting.
Why did Bezos not just team up with Jackson or the creators of GOT if he would spend a lot money anyway? He also could've hired George Lucas. I mean e.g. Star Wars is also too much kitsch for my taste yet i do find it very enjoyable.
>>28484>i didn't Then you're an arse
>i remember him as the hard-boiled rogue guy with the dark cape from that scene That's not the meaning of edgy LMAO
>>28686This would have eventually been inevitable.
If I was Christopher Tolkien, I would have just let the work pass into the public domain instead of letting my shit kids milk my dad's franchise for money.
>>28691Letting it pass to the public domain honestly might have been the best move. On the one hand it wouldn't have stopped Amazon from going buck wild with the property. On the other, being in the public domain prevents it from being artificially monopolized, diminishing its attractiveness as a tentpole IP.
So when are we going to hear a hobbit say a fuck word
>>28717The same way you can write and publish all the Wizard of Oz stuff you want but MGM can't do shit about it as long as you don't base it off their movie.
That's the power of being in the public domain. The public is considered the communal owner of it, and can do whatever they want with it. It's why Disney fights for indefinite copyright extensions so hard. Once the copyright runs out and their ancient properties start entering the public domain, they can no longer maintain artificial scarcity and profit off of them.
>>28719>I bet Disney can use legally ambiguous threats of legal action to stifle any attempts at using any source material Disney has already used.I guess we'll find out.
https://www.ksat.com/entertainment/2022/01/06/disney-likely-seeing-copyrights-to-winnie-the-pooh-expire/ >>28723If Marvel is anything to go by, the writing process is severely fucked by the CGI process. The impression that I get is that in older productions, a lot of the writing is adjusted on the fly for various reasons. Maybe they realize that something is stupid or doesn't work so they just axe it. Maybe the actors have some character input that changes how a story goes. In the original LOTR trilogy you had people reading through the books and making adjustments to the script all the way up through filming, and you had actors like Christopher Lee, who was an expert on the subject matter of both LOTR and stabbing people, and that affected the production. So with a much more versatile production process, bumps and wrinkles can be smoothed out on the fly, but with productions like Marvel movies, which I think this, what, half a billion? billion dollar? Amazon series basically qualifies as, with so much money invested in it and its digital effects, there are now these bottle necks that just lock the production into being a certain way. There's a scene in the script set in Caras Galadhon or whatever and that scene cost 30 million dollars, and the digital effects slaves have been working on it for 6 months, so you can't just toss it out…
I guess really we're living in the fallout of George Lucas's prequel trilogy, where the digital effects completely run the show, and they're so expensive and integral to the show that they can't be worked around. Compare it to something like SW OT, which was dogshit when Lucas first cut it together, but his wife was able to rearrange all the parts that worked into one of the most successful movies of all time. I just don't think that's really possible any more with current production methods.
>>28738This is an interesting analysis, but I thik the opposite may in fact be true. Sure these companies have money, but the amount they're willing to spend depends on how much they think the show is likely to earn, amongst other things.
There was a comment in the TV thread (I'd link it if I knew how to link comments from other threads) about how the She-Hulk tv series was filmed. Instead of just getting a muscle mommy to play the hulk and a regular size actress for Jen, they decided to do the hulk stuff with CGI. Now Marvel has plenty of money, so they could do the entire thing in CGI if they wanted to, so you'd think this wouldn't be a problem. Well, as soon as production began the writer started getting asked to reduce the She-Hulk screen time because it was too expensive.
"Can you do this with Just Jen?" or "can you cut this scene entirely?" even though the show was called fucking She-Hulk! The writer said that they think Disney are trying to pump stuff out as cheap and fast as possible, so it could well be that the people responsible for this are doing the same. As common logic dictates, it's possible to make something fast and cheap, but the result probably won't be good. I know that isn't really materialist analysis, just a trueism, but it holds up in this instance, I believe.
>>28759>(I'd link it if I knew how to link comments from other threads)Three meme arrows >>>
The board code /hobby/
And the post number 28221
by their powers combined:
>>>/hobby/28221 >>27282>>27292He later changed due to the implications of having an entirely evil race, which Tolkien was very weary of and it conflicting with cosmology of series. He never settled on it before he died. I would suggest and reading the tolkien gateway article about it if Don't want to read HOME.
https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Orcs/OriginSide question have any you anons read "The History of Middle Earth" series? its a twelve set the goes in depth of the history of the creation of the silmarillion and lord of the rings all put together by his late son Christopher Tolkien. Some of the changes include the Aragorns original nickname to be Trodder to the Akallabêth to be a time travel story.
Not sure if will indugle this show, it seems a bit removed from Tolkien's prose and just a modern fantasy production, but I rewatched the movies recently and I am more convinced now that they aren't very good. I don't wanna ruin anybody's childhood memory but it's the truth.
It's full of popmpous dialog, it shows you constant slaughtering but there is not a single drop of blood to keep it family friendly, the slow-mos are insufferable as if I am watching a Zack Snyder movie, it's totally overacted and you never feel that the hereos are in danger especially with trying to build in comic relief during the main battles and it shies away from showing Saruman's occupation of the shire which is the bit that shows the cost of war and doesn't just glorify it. The homoerotic tension between Frodo and Sam is dumb, and Sauron looks like Morgoth. The moment they have Aragorn walking into over 50 Uruk-Hai that are man-sized and easily cutting through them in the first movie you know that there aren't any stakes.
It had some nice setpieces, the costumes were alright, and CGI was amazing for its time. But rewatching them now feels like a drag and it especially baffling people praise Peter Jackson, that fat fuck is a b-movie trash horror directer that got catapulted to be the new Francis Ford Copolla because of that LOTR shit.
The way Tolkien writes you have to set up a film adaptation more like a stage play, I don't think it's possible to make a family-friendly blockbuster with it.
>>28875>I don't wanna ruin anybody's childhood memory but it's the truth. lmao as if people don't regularly rewatch these films as adults
>The way Tolkien writes you have to set up a film adaptation more like a stage playWhat does this mean exactly?
>>28882>lmao as if people don't regularly rewatch these films as adultsFor the memberberries? Same reason people rewatch the Star Wars prequels despite the god-awful dialog. Well take it from this adult I decided to rewatch them because I felt like it and it was a slog.
>What does this mean exactly?Tolkien is clearly influenced by old Anglo-Saxon sagas like Beowulf and similar stuff, and that is how he writes, you can't set up a film adaptation like a Marvel movie but you have to do it like you'd do a Shakespeare. That doesn't mean Tolkien is up there with Shakespeare but it's the kind of vibe you have to go for and not go for Narnia or some shit.
>>28888I am not samefagging.
The first Captain America movie was released 1944.
>>29081>But Christopher Tolkien’s lament was prophetic. In the same comments from 2012, he added that “it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film.” The scope of these comments was not limited to Jackson’s films, but rather to the broader commercialization of his father’s corpus in his entirety. He saw Jackson’s trilogy and knew what was coming. Endless films in the Tolkien Cinematic Universe, big-budget action videogames, Denny’s menu, Made in China toys; all at the expense of what he loved about his father’s work.
>And he was right. The Hobbit indeed contains elements that do directly contradict the structure of Tolkien’s work, most obviously in the saccharine, cringe-inducing love triangle set up between elves Legolas and Tauriel, and dwarf Kíli. This change undercuts the tremendous focus that Tolkien gave to the symbolic significance of his genealogical structure. It also pierces the veil too deeply and thereby compromises the character of Legolas into a more pathetic cast. And, of course, all omens point to an acceleration of this commercialized disregard for Tolkien’s work in Amazon’s The Rings of Power.
>This process happens to more or less anything wildly successful. Godzilla (1954) is a beautiful and melancholy cinematographic masterpiece. But by the ’70s, Godzilla had become a pastiche of itself, an intentionally cheap and campy product for children. Godzilla’s creator Tomoyuki Tanaka later told People Magazine that turning Godzilla into a loveable hero had been a mistake and caused the decline of the franchise. (And they are still making Halloween movies.) For this reason, I am more cynical than Christopher. I’m amazed when anything big is decent twice. Yet if you rolled the dice 10,000 times you would not get another trilogy like Jackson’s.
>The Lord of the Rings – the book, not the films – is a work of remarkable depth and complexity. Tolkien’s work is one of those rare accomplishments so overshadowed by its own commercial success that academia has not yet fully appreciated its artistic merit. But as much as I hate to admit it, its success is exactly why you should expect to see Middle Earth turned into a wide variety of endless trash. I didn’t understand this ten years ago. But Christopher Tolkien did; he saw the writing on the wall and it broke his heart. >>29301More like it's nothing but Bezos' own little vanity project mostly to try to get another "Game of Thrones" clone to try to test the viability of his streaming service. It's nothing but cynical greed and hubris.
Seriously chrring on a capitalist who only runis culture just like other capitalists.
>>29323You're obviously either a troll from /pol/ pretending to be a black liberal or a idiotic retarded reddit sakaioid.
The reason why we are against it is it's simply yet another example of corporations cynically using someone else's work and simply repeating what succeeded before to try to catch up in the current cultural zeitgeist.
Not to mention that this liberal nonsense is simply just them trying to keep the status quo and basically taring anyone who sees through their marketing to see the naked black hole of endless greed behind the curtain as "racist". How does it feel that your entire liberal ideals are being used to justify imperialism and American cultural hegemony.
Besides. my big issue is that their "Original Character DONUT STEEL' dwarf doesn't have a beard. Female dwarves have beards. This shows they did absolutely no research in the setting and are just lazy.
>>29301It honestly amazes me that people have such little time on this earth and they choose to spend their precious few hours and energy they have left getting upset about shit like this.
I'm aware this is all bullshit and all of the "culture warriors" are retards getting baited by obvious manufactured outrage to get people talking about the latest product™, but I still find it baffling they fall for it every. single. time. I almost forgot LOTR and Tolkien even existed were it not for some people I know IRL asking me what I think about Amazon ruining Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon fanfiction by putting The Blacks in it. Maybe instead of whining about some shitty show just pick up a better book uygha
>>29330Ah yes, totally a of reddit-tier retard coming in here and shitting up a thread to try to make leftypol look like a bunch of "racists".
How does it show racism to assume you're either white, black, or read Sakai?
And you were the only one who mentioned Shapiro here, buddy. Do you not have any reading comprehension?
>>29329>I almost forgot LOTR and Tolkien even existed were it not for some people I know IRL asking me what I think about Amazon ruining Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon fanfiction by putting The Blacks in it.Yeah, sure you did, that totally happened and is not a part of your retarded bait at all.
>>29305>More like it's nothing but Bezos' own little vanity project mostly to try to get another "Game of Thrones" clone I had nothing to do today so I started watching it and while I don't think it's
this bad as some make it out to be, it feels nothing like a Tolkien show and I thought the exact same thing - it's heavily inspired by Game of Thrones, except the sex scenes and the f-bombs. Other than that, it is written in the exact same way as GoT and the plot feels similar too, it's a lot of political scheming and less high fantasy.
The problem is it doesn't work because the Tolkien universe is like high-high fantasy and not grounded and grimdark like GoT. If it was a standalone fantasy show without the burden of Tolkien and being a LotR prequel, I would give it a solid 6 out of 10. The biggest weakness is Galadriel. The actress has zero charisma, they should have taken someone like Evan Rachel Wood who has proven herself on Westworld instead, and she is written like a man, she is also a Mary Sue but so over the top that she can escape a dungeon in Numenor, easily defeat four guards with her bare hands and break into the royal palace. Nerf her, nerf the elves in general.
A good thing about the show is the portrayal of the orcs. They look even less than how they were described in the books than in the movie series, but that is a deviation I am okay with. They look much scarier and they are given some character, and are not mindless drones, they even showed some emotion when one of their comrades died.
>>30033And here we have yet another ignorant dumbass who doesn't know LOTR is based of of old folklore of central and northern europe.
And John Wick? You're comparing LOTR to a James Bond clone like John Wick.
Seriously the state of burgers today.
>>30136Nvm, Iooked it up.
I read unfinished tales when I was a kid. There was a section in there where he talks about it “clearing the mind” but not really getting you stoned exactly.
>>30113Real answer: there's a lot of medieval literature that Tolkien takes inspiration from. Boromir for example is loosely based on Roland, one of Charlemagne's paladins as depicted in The Song of Roland.
It's not at all a "rip off" but there are definite connections and lineages between Tolkien's characters and medieval European literature.
>>30180No, it's nothing but a fanfiction made up by a bunch of burger liberals and Jeff Bezos vanity project.
Christopher Tolkien should have just released LOTR into the Public domain.
>>30226In the scene with the captured Uruk she was super fucking racist. Like Nazi level. And we are supposed to ignore that on a allegedly "woke" show because "we are the good guys".
Perfectly captures the liberal mindset.
>>30131i was correct.
>>30180People who didn't enjoy it are fags, I thought it was good. Yehyeh it was a billion or whatever and obviously nothing like the original movies but it was never gonna be
>>30265I dunno, maybe something half-decent like GOT? Even though House of the Dragon has some dumb shit in it, it's still infinitely better than Rings of Power.
I mean for fuck's sake, you don't have to eat whatever shit is put in front of you and say it's delicious.
>>30266Idk, you can equally make crits of Rings of Power, but ultimately, they are both fairly trashy. Rings of power has more political intrigue, whereas things in Tolkien in general are always pretty clear cut, even when they are trying to give a character a bit more dimensions to them.
One is modern, one is post modern. In LOTR, there are very clearly set and defined values. In GOT, everything is a shade of grey.
Neither of them make a particularly compelling political critique or something though. LOTR pretty basic good versus evil story, GOT is, a critique of feudalism? I mean it is, but also, its not. You're sitting there rooting for what? The stability of the realm perhaps. But you're not really, because you want to see dragons lay waste to shit etc. You want to see the villains get their comeuppance perhaps, or perhaps you are an Edgelord and want to see the villains win.
They are both viewed for basically escapist reasons. In terms of building a cool world with interesting things going on, which is all they really need to be, I think they both do fine.
>>30267'Tolkien is black and white' is a monstrous strawman that every defender of this shitpile drags out, obviously Tolkien isn't GRR Martin but some of the biggest themes of his works are about how basically good people can be tempted or tricked or seduced into doing evil. There's plenty of possible material that you could use there if you wanted to make a 'post-modern' show.
For example the anti-elf racism in Numenor COULD have been used in a genuinely interesting and smart way if they stuck closer to the original plot and had it slowly bubble up over time, but instead in the show, you have a fucking rabble form around a guy yelling about how 'elves are taking our jobs!' when there's literally ONE FUCKING ELF in the entire kingdom.
You don't have to defend every piece of shit by saying 'bro it's just escapism' or 'bro you just have to turn your brain off'. Why the fuck can't we have actual smart writing? Why is that so apparently impossible for the big corporations to achieve? (Of course I know the reasons why but it's a rhetorical question and they could make a better product if anybody gave a shit instead of just looking for their next paycheck)
>>30268I wasn't saying its a good thing that lotr is black and white, but it is pretty black and white. Most of the characters are pretty one dimensional.
>For example the anti-elf racism in Numenor COULD have been used in a genuinely interesting and smart way if they stuck closer to the original plot and had it slowly bubble up over timesure, but also others have complained that it was too slow already and it already crunches the timeline bastardising some law
In terms of your bottom paragraph, the bottom part answers the top part, which is why pretty much all you are gonna get is the escapism.
In terms of putting a pretty aesthetic and some faces to names it does the job. The main plot lines hold I think, the Sauron story, which is truish to the lore, the gandalf story.
Recently on the ukraine general the topic of Hobbit Camps in Italy came up in regards to NPR discussing Giorgia Meloni (new Italian PM then) and discussing the pipeline to fascism LOTR lead to (in spite of Tolkien himself being anti-fascist and not intending any fascist allegory in the first place - disliking allegory in general in fact). I thought it was thread relevant and rather funny to share. Maybe this is the reason the USSR didn't have an official translation published for decades?
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https://translated.turbopages.org/proxy_u/it-en.en.546a1997-6359766a-ce21ebc7-74722d776562/https/it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campi_Hobbit -
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hobbit-camps-fascism-italy https://archive.ph/cb9kB>>30785You have to understand some historical context for Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the Lord of the Rings was arguably the first in what is now a proud tradition of liberals/fascists making political retard takes based on fantasy/sci-fi literature. Around the 60s, people started using it as their equivalent of "the guy we don't like is Voldemort and we're Dumbledore's Army". Ironically for these fascists, the most common political interpretation was the Mordor was Nazi Germany, but "Mordor is the USSR and the orcs are Russians" was a close second, and it's an interpretation that made its way into many of the early fan translations of the book in Eastern Europe. Apparently, one Russian translation completely ran with the idea that the Scouring of the Shire was a satire of communism.
If you haven't read the books, Mordor and the orcs are not even remotely communist, fascist, German or Russian, so these are all retard takes. However, unfortunately, it's retard takes that are apparently very popular in Europe, especially the butthurt belt.
Anyone like this channel?
https://www.youtube.com/@InDeepGeekI enjoy his LOTR lore videos, maybe just because I'm a noob who has read nothing except LOTR/Hobbit and he talks about things from other books and letters
>>12359>”What are the linguistic differences among the peoples of Westeros?”>The arrogant proddie smirked quite schismatically and smugly replied “There is the Old Tongue and the Common Tongue, you stupid warmonger”>”Wrong. There should be hundreds of dialects. If the Wall is 8000 years old as you say, how can the Wildlings and Northmen understand one another?”Meanwhile in LOTR everyone presumably speaks the same language. Even the talking spiders lol.
>Start your story by inventing 100 languages>Times it factors into the story: 0>Westron was the language of the Dúnedain of Middle-earth. By the end of the Third Age it was more or less a universal languages spoken throughout the races and peoples of the Westlands. LMAO. They had WSL courses for the fucking giant spiders.
>>33158Way to completely miss the point the guy was making.
Even today in the age of internet, a globe spanning information network, combined with economic superiority of the west, english is not spoken by every person on the planet. But for some reason this "lingua franca" is the only language that is spoken by people it seems, because outside of somerunes of the door, none other languages are encountered, the supposed language diversity have zero bearings on the plot or characters. It is spoken by everything - from fucking trees to spider that is thousands years old that was residing under literal rock for those thousands of years eating everyone she encountered. How exactly Shelob is supposed to know this "lingua franca"?
>>33138>>Times it factors into the story: 0Everyone and their dog knows about Durin's Door lmao. There are multiple occasions where reading, speaking, or translating text is important as well. Not to mention all the times characters discuss minor discrepancies of terminology like hobbit vs halfling.
>>33160The general point about everything speaking Westron is a fair criticism, but mainly insofar as it constitutes missed opportunity. People are often multilingual so it's not much of a stretch for some characters in large regions being able to communicate with each other through a common tongue, not unlike with Latin. And this does indeed happen. One example is when Treebeard speaks to Merry and Pippin in Westron but to the other Ents in Entish. As for Shelob, she was actively hunting intelligent creatures who spoke the lingua franca and she is also intelligent so it's not really surprising she would learn it. Not that she speaks in the story except by implication since she communicates with Gollum somehow.
>>33161>People are often multilingualNot in LOTR. There is difference between being multilingual and everybody speaking the same language. Characters aren't written as nultilinguals who have to communicate with each other using one of the languages, they are written as if all of them speak the same language. Even fucking spiders.
>she was actively hunting intelligent creatures who spoke the lingua francaHunting and eating, not speaking to them. And definitely not learning their language ffs. This is just a ridiculous argument.
>but to the other Ents in EntishOe maybe same language but slower.
>but mainly insofar as it constitutes missed opportunityMore like bad writing. And that means that lotrs fans don't have any high ground about "muh invented languages" over got fans. Tolkien just as shitty writer as Martin is. Actually even worse since later managed to write at least a couple of decent books.
>>33138>>33162This is the dumbest criticism of Tolkien I've ever seen and it is astonishing. Language comes up every fucking time in his stories. It's like the very core everything else is built around even. It's pure linguist porn.
Book 1
>' "If indeed you look only, as you say, for records of ancient days, and the beginnings of the City, read on! " he said. "For to me what was is less dark than what is to come, and that is my care. But unless you have more skill even than Saruman, who has studied here long, you will find naught that is not well known to me, who am master of the lore of this City.">`So said Denethor. And yet there lie in his hoards many records that few now can read, even of the lore-masters, for their scripts and tongues have become dark to later men. And Boromir, there lies in Minas Tirith still, unread, I guess, by any save Saruman and myself since the kings failed, a scroll that Isildur made himself.Book 2
>`Welcome!' the Elf then said again in the Common Language, speaking slowly. 'We seldom use any tongue but our own; for we dwell now in the heart of the forest, and do not willingly have dealings with any other folk. Even our own kindred in the North are sundered from us. But there are some of us still who go abroad for the gathering of news and the watching of our enemies, and they speak the languages of other lands. I am one. Haldir is my name. My brothers, Rúmil and Orophin, speak little of your tongue.Book 3
>There sat many men in bright mail, who sprang at once to their feet and barred the way with spears. 'Stay, strangers here unknown!' they cried in the tongue of the Riddermark, demanding the names and errand of the strangers. Wonder was in their eyes but little friendliness; and they looked darkly upon Gandalf.>'Well do I understand your speech,' he answered in the same language; 'yet few strangers do so. Why then do you not speak in the Common Tongue, as is the custom in the West, if you wish to be answered?'Book 4
>They spoke together in soft voices, at first using the Common Speech, but after the of older days, and then changing to another language of their own. To his amazement, as he listened Frodo became aware that it was the Elven-tongue that they spoke, or one but little different; and he looked at them with wonder, for he knew then that they must be Dúnedain of the South, men of the line of the Lords of Westernesse.Book 5
>In vain men shook their fists at the pitiless foes that swarmed before the Gate. Curses they heeded not, nor understood the tongues of western men; crying with harsh voices like beasts and carrion-birds.And this is by no means an exhaustive list. I can only conclude that you never even read these books.
>>33194Lol. And almost every time "hey we speak common, so all other languages are gonna be at best mentioned once or twice and never gonna be a plot point". Ever heard of "show, don't tell"?
>It's like the very core everything else is built around even. It's pure linguist porn.Ahahhahahaha, no, it's not. It's just jerking off to medieval epics.
>>33195>Ever heard of "show, don't tell"?Yes, something the CIA came up with because they thought books with too much exposition were causing people to have a bit too much to think.
No, seriously. The CIA were heavily involved in the mid-20th century writing organizations who thought up rules like "show, don't tell."
>>33431>>33430
> “Write from experience.” “Show, don’t tell.” Self-knowledge. Self-discipline. Well-known conventions like these, whether delivered in classrooms, writing seminars or simply from one writer to another, often anchor traditional writing advice for literary authors and journalists alike in the United States.
>While these conventions may seem benign and often useful, they also have a history of political utility. Thanks to a network of underwritten cultural projects and front groups, state organs like the CIA and State Department collaborated with creative-writing programs like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and publications like the Paris Review to cultivate and reinforce writing tenets like these. The aim: to focus literature and journalism on the individual, feelings, sensory details, rather than on community, political theory, and large-scale political concepts.https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-144-how-the-cold-war-shaped-first-person-journalism-and-literary-conventionss-42bf68ccaefhttps://www.vice.com/en/article/4x3vg3/how-the-cia-turned-american-literature-into-a-content-farmhttps://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-american-creative-writing-famous-iowa-writers-workshop.htmlhttps://www.chronicle.com/article/how-iowa-flattened-literature/https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/how-creative-writing-programs-de-politicized-fiction >>33437Zamn
>>33431Burgers/the CIA certaindly do their best to turn me into a shizo
>>33431My dude the CIA had their hands in all kinds of crazy shit. The amount of schizo you'd have to get to make implausible accusations about them is pretty high.
>>33437Fascinating and another important point about "show don't tell" is that it's an inherently subtle way of writing, as in it's a bit harder to understand the point than if the point was spelled out. This means that some percent of readers will miss the point, and it also makes it easier for the writer to miscommunicate in the first place. This contributes to the Death of the Author school of interpretation, since it's a lot easier to glean different meanings from a text the more ambiguous it is. That makes it easier to subvert or co-opt a text and in fact this is something we see all the time. It makes me wonder if the glowies are involved in some of the memes out there misinterpreting things like American Psycho to be some cool sigma grindset guy.
>>33451>If you emphasize showing things that puts your focus on direct experience Again, that's not what "show, don't tell" is. It's not just about individual perspective - (and there's nothing wrong with that either, since characters have to be characters and not self-inserts) - show don't tell is to use actions and visual descriptions carry across ideas, knowledge, etc. rather than exposition. A person doesn't go around announcing their actions and describing their surroundings all the time, out loud or in their head unless the situation calls for it.
>If you emphasize concepts those tend to be interconnected, broadly applicable, and can be held in common across different perspectives. Well yes, because there are broader concepts nearly universal within humanity, it's why many societies utterly separate from one another developed in similar manners, with similar ideologies and socio-economic systems.
>>33429 "Show don't tell" is a concept in writing that exists in many cultures, such as Soviet writing and Chinese writing, are they also CIA? Just because the CIA had its thumb in every pie of US culture doesn't mean that they controlled it all. The idea that exposition causes people to think too much is fucking inane because that's not how that works at all. It's about the base education system and the concept of critical thinking in the first place. A person that does not think critically, will not be questioning narratives or taking action even if blatantly told in their face, we see the result of this today, when CIA projects like MK ULTRA are public knowledge and the outrage of the public is virtually non-existent. The ability to critically think means that if said person were to read a book that isn't exposition dumping its ideas, they'll still understand it since they actually think while reading, which is why the CIA discouraged thinking.
TL;DR: Preaching rhetoric to people through exposition is boring, bad writing and plays into CIA hands just as much as any schizo shit about "muh show don't tell"
>“Write from experience.” “Show, don’t tell.” Self-knowledge. Self-discipline. Well-known conventions like these, whether delivered in classrooms, writing seminars or simply from one writer to another, often anchor traditional writing advice for literary authors and journalists alike in the United States.
>While these conventions may seem benign and often useful, they also have a history of political utility. Thanks to a network of underwritten cultural projects and front groups, state organs like the CIA and State Department collaborated with creative-writing programs like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and publications like the Paris Review to cultivate and reinforce writing tenets like these. The aim: to focus literature and journalism on the individual, feelings, sensory details, rather than on community, political theory, and large-scale political concepts.https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-144-how-the-cold-war-shaped-first-person-journalism-and-literary-conventionss-42bf68ccaefhttps://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-144-how-the-cold-war-shaped-first-person-journalism-and-literary-conventions >>36503Reposting the claims and statements of others that you've already posted, from links that you already posted is not an argument. Ironic that you speak of political utility and its use of preventing critical thought, yet seem to have no critical thought of your own, and perhaps are simply defending your poor writing skills, by blaming the establishment, which is rather lazy and ignores Marx, wherein by this theory that while an individual is often confined by the institutions and social consciousness they of their society, it doesn't preclude the ability to expand and think for oneself and develop.
>>36504>we live in a world of profound misunderstanding and ignorance of what literary/media works even mean and what the basic themes are.That has nothing to do with "Show, Don't Tell"* and everything to do with the social environment and education of the society. The same can be said for "write from experience" as the meaning of the term is also seen in Russian literary schools since Soviet times at the very least. People misinterpreting this to be "only write what you know" is misleading and false and is again a result of lack of critical thought, which is what the CIA wants, not the the concepts are inherently ill to begin with, given that they are precisely the method of making a written work genuine and interesting. An impersonal work, makes for boring, disjointed writing, and telling rather than showing is the same thing, a good example is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which is a boring, dull doorstop of a book that uses far too much exposition, extremely dry descriptions and is a political fantasy of the author, rather than anything based on real experience, which is why it's so distant from anything relatable to most people. This is also why Mein Kampf or All Quiet on the Western Front were so influential, they were written from the heart, regardless of intentions and spoke to people.
*The concept regards writing in a manner that isn't childish exposition, and is something that many cultures over the past centuries have also purported, including the USSR, which means that the CIA can't have been "cultivating" such tenets since these tenets have existed long before the CIA existed and are not endemic to it or its ideology, I would hardly consider Soviet education to be a CIA project, would you?
>>36500>"Show don't tell" is a concept in writing that exists in many cultures, such as Soviet writing and Chinese writingProofs?
>The idea that exposition causes people to think too much is fucking inaneTell me how Isaac Asimov could have written his famous Foundation series without heavy use of exposition. Or Arthur C. Clarke could have written Childhood's End without significant amounts of exposition.
>A person that does not think critically, will not be questioning narratives or taking action even if blatantly told in their faceThat has nothing to do with it. It is very hard to express broad, complex ideas that extend beyond the scope of a single, individual experience through the lens of a narrative that is exclusively a personal, individual narrative. Once again, Asimov's Foundation series is about history being moved and shaped by broad social and historical forces, which requires exposition to explain and cannot be relayed purely through the individual experience of the characters.
In fact, the reason why the "Golden Age of Sci-fi" passed and most modern sci-fi just isn't the same as classic sci-fi is specifically because these days all the great works of classic sci-fi (which were almost always ideas-driven rather than character-driven) would be regarded as "poorly written."
And that may be on purpose. The FBI admitted to having monitored Asimov and having suspected him of being a pinko.
>>36572>Proofs?Besides it being self-evident in literature that I've read (from Russian literature of various eras, to French classics, to German novels and Japanese folktales), and my personal anecdote of being taught this by my Soviet-school teachers, and all of my family being taught these things in Soviet times? I can cite you Chehov
>“Не говори мне про свет луны; лучше покажи мне, как лунный свет мерцает в треснутом бокале”. - Антон Чехов Which translates to
>“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Chehov died in 1904, and wrote this long before the CIA was ever formed, let alone beginning its social engineering.
>how Isaac Asimov could have written his famous Foundation series without heavy use of exposition.This is a strawman, especially in reference to the greentext excerpt you selected, which was speaking of exposition in regards to getting people to think. By that metric I may as well ask, how did Asimov's books make people think too much? If that were true, why are they still some of the most popular science-fiction books in Western literature? Surely the CIA would recognize their 'danger'!?
And as for how, it is completely possible to do so, as we see in things such as the novelization of the Terminator screenplay, or in any number of science-fiction books by William Gibson. More importantly exposition is not in itself bad, nor did I imply this argument, the point is that exposition itself must be necessary to the story and scenario and written in such a fashion as to immerse the reader in the environment or situation being described, not simply state things, otherwise it's just a crutch to prop up poor descriptive writing.
I think you may not understand what exposition and Show, Don't Tell mean:
“Show, don't tell” is a writing technique that allows the reader to experience expository details of the story through actions, sensory details, words, or the expression of characters' emotions, as opposed to through the author's own description of events.In other words rather than the Author preaching at the reader, they express and show examples of actions, themes or surroundings with descriptions that we can relate to with our 5 senses, or emotions, or rational thinking. You don't just say "Bad man is bad" because that's childish, you describe them, whether they are unpleasant to look at, what actions they are taking, or who they are. See pic related - the example of "showing" is a form of exposition, but used naturally, as opposed to just simplistic descriptions.
This idea that show, don't tell and exposition are opposed to each other comes from Ursula Le Guin's description of her writing classes being afraid of the latter.
>Childhood's EndA socio-political novel with science-fiction elements being a background to the story's plot. Moreover exposition is primarily used to introduce the broader setting, or discuss things that are not in the immediate vicinity of the characters involved - thus the commentary about democracy and the Soviet researchers being descriptive, as it is written from the perspective and through characters living in the United States, through natural dialogue. More importantly the story SHOWS its broader themes and ideas, through the exposition, but it doesn't outright bark it at you.
>That has nothing to do with it It has EVERYTHING to do with it. Being unable to question a narrative or story, means that you're not thinking about what's going on, just passively watching and following the flow, not observing.
>It is very hard to express broad, complex ideas that extend beyond the scope of a single, individual experience through the lens of a narrative that is exclusively a personal, individual narrative.Which is what differentiates good writing of broader ideas from bad writing of such, just because it's hard, is not an excuse for poor writing.
>Asimov's Foundation series is about history being moved and shaped by broad social and historical forces, which requires exposition to explain and cannot be relayed purely through the individual experience of the characters. You are again arguing a strawman and pushing a false dichotomy. The broad social and historical forces are described in exposition, but they are also seen in show-don't-tell writing, with the exposition just setting a background, but by the nature of humans being intrinsically linked to empathy as a driving force of our social development, the need for a more individual or personal experience/description grounds such descriptions to people.
>the reason why the "Golden Age of Sci-fi" passed and most modern sci-fi just isn't the same as classic sci-fi is specifically because these days all the great works of classic sci-fi (which were almost always ideas-driven rather than character-driven) would be regarded as "poorly written." Absolute nonsense. The reason it passed is the same reason anything else passes, dialectical progression of society. Star Trek (while a visual medium) is a classic scifi series that has broad exposition but is also character driven, and this is seen in the novels as well (for example Star Trek TNG: Strike Zone). Yet current trek is garbage, despite also being character driven, because the writing is blatant, in your face exposition dumping and characters are just flat caricatures that are walking messages, rather than being actual characters. As I said before, exposition is not the opposite of show-don't-tell, it is how exposition is used and to what end. If you just exposit a situation with some character that does things based purely on a politics driven depiction, you're going to get a boring, poorly written caricature that only works for a short satirical skit or a childrens comic.
>The FBI admitted to having monitored Asimov and having suspected him of being a pinko So what? Modern sci-fi is shit because modern culture is obsessively hyper-consumerist, this isn't because the FBI saw Asimov's (at the time) obscure novels and clutched their pearls in terror, but because they actively shaped the socio-economic situation in the West to have certain narratives they wanted. Asimov's books are more popular and well known today than they were in his own time, being the source of inspiration or reference for culture to this day. People still discuss the 3 Laws of Robotics he wrote, forming the depiction of androids and AI for decades to come.
>>365751) Chekhov was a playwright, not a novelist.
2) No one is saying that any particular novel or series of novels were super dangerous and the CIA wanted to censor them. The point is that they wanted to steer the direction of literature and media in general away from discussing broad social topics and abstract concepts towards more individual, character-driven narratives for the exact reason that these sorts of narratives don't lend themselves well to anything outside of individual experience. An individual can easily experience a crowded hallway, its much harder to think of any individual experiencing broad social forces driving history, for instance. The closest your going to get is having a character explain the concept, which everyone is going to immediately identify as exposition even if the exposition isn't being given directly by the author.
3) Going back to the point, Tolkien doesn't really have a problem with "show, don't tell" as you define it. The original post that started this seemed to be complaining more about the "Chekhov's Gun" principle. Multiple languages are referenced, but not used as a plot point and most people speak common with each other. Except, once again, Chekhov was a playwright, not a novelist. Sure, in theater its a good idea to cut out all extraneous details that aren't directly related to the plot because you're trying to fit your story into a limited time window, but there's no reason to do this in a novel. Novels can have as many extraneous details as they want, so long as they don't become too burdensome on the narrative. In a format where you have limited space, it makes sense to establish that if there's a loaded gun on the wall, it must go off later on, but there is no such space limitation for novels and you can absolutely state that there's a loaded gun on the wall and not have to bring it up again. If anything, the "Chekhov's Gun" principle can make narratives incredibly predictable, because as this has been enforced more and more as "good writing," the audience immediately comes to expect that the loaded gun will go off the moment you establish its existence.
If anything, the use of extraneous detail is what gives Tolkien's Middle Earth its famous sense of verisimilitude, of being this real, legitimate, lived-in place. This would be ruined by trying to cook up some contrivance to make every single detail have some direct relevance to the plot.
>>36586>Chekhov was a playwright, not a novelist. Irrelevant nitpicking, his works are among those considered classic literature.
>No one is saying that any particular novel or series of novels were super dangerous and the CIA wanted to censor them Ahem
>["show, don't tell" was] something the CIA came up with because they thought books with too much exposition were causing people to have a bit too much to think. So yes people are saying precisely this, and it is what I am arguing against.
>he point is that they wanted to steer the direction of literature and media in generalNo shit, they did this with everything
>away from discussing broad social topics and abstract concepts towards more individual, character-driven narratives for the exact reason that these sorts of narratives don't lend themselves well to anything outside of individual experience. Blatantly untrue and falsely dichotomous; character driven stories have been a part of literature since humanity began telling stories. Greek Mythology is character driven and also tells of broader social and abstract concepts like fate or inequality. Unironically read books that aren't burger literature FFS.
>its much harder to think of any individual experiencing broad social forces driving history Because you're ill-read. I can think of dozens of such works pertaining to the Bolshevik revolution alone, let alone other cultures and histories.
>An individual can easily experience a crowded hallway An individual can as easily experience oppression, prejudice, propaganda etc. You're creating a false narrative, that you cannot have broad ideas with proper detailed writing.
>Going back to the pointIf we're going to do that, then this entire argument about "broad ideas" is an utter non sequitur
>Tolkien doesn't really have a problem with "show, don't tell" as you define it Nobody said he had a problem with "show, don't tell", the point was that in regards to language Tolkien would introduce them, but many o the languages he spent years creating, ended up never being used past a passing reference by character exposition, we don't get to see or experience much of it outside of Elvish languages and letters and people all speak the same basic languages. It doesn't make Tolkien bad, but that was never the point.
>The original post that started this seemed to be complaining more about the "Chekhov's Gun" principle. Which is a valid argument, there's a difference between just fleshing out your world, and creating false-positives
>Chekhov was a playwright Except once again that's fucking irrelevant because the principle of Chekhov's gun is relevant to story telling, regardless of the medium.
Also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov_bibliography?useskin=vector#Novel >If anything, the "Chekhov's Gun" principle can make narratives incredibly predictableIf you're a hack writer, sure. Chehov's Gun is just a name for something that, again. has existed in literature for centuries. A detail in exposition coming up later in the plot is usually subtle and only noticed if a reader is hyper-attentive to such details. For example in Lord of the Rings, it is said that no man can slay the Witch King, and much later this gun fires in the form of him being slain by a woman, Eowyn. This reflects a much older Chehov's gun in the form of Macbeth's prophecy and how it is carried out. These things are unpredictable unless you know the story already.
>the audience immediately comes to expect that the loaded gun will go off the moment you establish its existence. Because modern writers are terrible at writing these things and think MacGuffin's and Deus Ex Machina are the same thing as a Chehov's Gun, again this is a result of poor writing and poorly read audiences, not the actual trope.
>in theater its a good idea to cut out all extraneous details that aren't directly related to the plot because you're trying to fit your story into a limited time windowUtterly ignorant statement. A theatre performance is easier in that regard because you don't have to use dialogue or detailed exposition, as you SEE the actual performance of the play, a picture is worth a thousand words, you can spend more time on character interactions and dialogues, because the environment and actions will literally be SEEN, a play written in book format is little different to a novel except in a few small areas, as the exposition format is nearly the same and in fact has to be even more detailed because actors must be able to interpret how a scene goes and emulate the experience.
>Novels can have as many extraneous details as they want, so long as they don't become too burdensome on the narrative That's literally the argument I've been making FFS, you're just being contrarian here.
>This would be ruined by trying to cook up some contrivance to make every single detail have some direct relevance to the plot.Jesse how the fuck did you reach this conclusion? When people criticize the lack of usage of Tolkien's immense linguistic efforts being poorly utilized in the story, it's not because "Everything must be contrivedly plot relevant for the sake of story economy" but because it is too sparse and under-utilized for such a relatively key part of the races and peoples of the narrative, it is in itself relevant to the plot because the elves and dwarves hate each other and hobbits are isolationist and that's not even talking about mankind. There should naturally be linguistic barriers and plot relevance that simply isn't there in spite of the actual languages existing because Tolkien created them, only to barely reference them. It's like cooking a banquet only to give party guests a few toothpick-samples of a couple of them.
>>36588You contradict yourself in your own post.
>Which is a valid argument, there's a difference between just fleshing out your world, and creating false-positives<When people criticize the lack of usage of Tolkien's immense linguistic efforts being poorly utilized in the story, it's not because "Everything must be contrivedly plot relevant for the sake of story economy"You openly think that the languages of Middle Earth are an un-fired Chekhov's Gun, that they needed to play some crucial part in the story in order to justify their existence and it can't just be there as a part of fleshing out the world. Don't deny it.
You also simultaneously defend the Chekhov's Gun principle, and then say that you've been saying that novels don't need the Chekhov's Gun principle all along and that its fine to have lots of extraneous details peppered in that aren't directly related to the plot.
As to the whole "show, don't tell" thing, there's not much to say if the whole argument against me is essentially "nuh-uh you can make it work if you're a good enough writer" and then use examples of non-fiction (or historical fiction) of someone experiencing a historical event as an example of how someone can individually experience the concept of broad social forces driving history in the context of fiction.
>>36593>You contradict yourself in your own post.<proceeds to post 2 things that are not contradictive at all You need to improve your reading comprehension. The point isn't that Tolkien should have used every single language and make it all very plot relevant, but that for wasting time on that much effort, to not actually use it within the story is wasteful and stupid, and takes away from an otherwise brilliant work.
>You openly think that the languages of Middle Earth are an un-fired Chekhov's Gun No, you're trying to project a strawman onto my argument. I've stated no such thing.
>they needed to play some crucial part in the story in order to justify their existence No, I stated that the languages should have some plot relevance, at least for some of the more immediate ones like Black Speech, Elvish, etc. because they ARE relevant to the plot, yet are not explored within the story in spite of this.
>Don't deny it Go fuck yourself.
>You also simultaneously defend the Chekhov's Gun principle, and then say that you've been saying that novels don't need the Chekhov's Gun principle all along and that its fine to have lots of extraneous details peppered in that aren't directly related to the plot. yet another false dichotomy of a strawman living rent free in your head. I stated the the Chehov's gun principle is relevant and necessary to a plot driven story, such as LOTR, and provided an example of that within said story, without which the scenes we see would have less striking impact then they otherwise would. More importantly, just because Chehov's gun should be used for important plot elements, does not mean things that are meant to simply flesh the world out cannot also be in the story, I directly stated this. I also explained that a proper Chehov's gun is subtle and woven in among such details but is subtly more plot relevant than the others we see described. That's good writing.
>"nuh-uh you can make it work if you're a good enough writer" Going by the repeated and increasing strawman arguments, non sequitur goal-post shifting etc. you're just flailing about angrily and projecting your lack of argument onto me. This is just another blatant example; I stated clearly that yor argument is blatantly false because even your own examples of "non-character-driven" works utilize show-don't tell and that said writing concept can easily carry across broad social issues to a reader, because that's how any good writing goes. Furthermore I provided examples of literature, writers, etc. that were from cultures not within CIA influence or were from before the CIA's existence that also utilized character driven story telling, show, don't tell rhetoric and more, disproving this inane idea that somehow show, don't tell is a way of making people stupid or think less or be more easily manipulated.
>then use examples of non-fiction (or historical fiction) of someone experiencing a historical eventLMAO irrelevant deflection, How the Steel Was Tempered is based on the experiences of the writer, and it carries across the ideas, ideology and broad social issues of the environment it describes, it is fictional, as is All Quiet on the Western Front, or Capitaine Casse-Cou, or Quiet Flows the Don. You did not state genre-specifics, and if you had, then you'd have disqualified yourself by default, since you refer to a single example of Azimov's Science Fiction literature rather than Fantasy as is LOTR. And moreover I provided examples of btoh of those as well; Greek Mythology, William Gibson's books such as Neuromancer, Terminator's first novelization, Star Trek TNG: Strike Zone, and Azimov's short-stories on which I, Robot and Bi-Centennial Man were based upon. All of those disprove your narrative and prove mine that "someone can individually experience the concept of broad social forces driving history in the context of fiction." and so carry across the same messages even within the "Show, Don't Tell" and "individual experience" framework.
>>12359TolKKKien:
>Story is simple good vs evil fight>No boobs>Every grass somehow has a backstory>Thanks to him chvds now use orc and mordor unironically against anyone that is not EvropeanGeorge RR Martin:
>Has boobs>Story is not just le bad guys vs le good guys>Based Developmentalist dictators like Stannis >The big bad is a metaphor for climate crisis that transcends petty political and ethnic divide >>235461938 Tolkein wrote this to his publisher regarding getting the hobbit published in german:
>I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of ‘arisch’ origin from all persons of all countries? Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung [confirmation] (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine. You are primarily concerned, and I cannot jeopardize the chance of a German publication without your approval. So I submit two drafts of possible answers.Tolkein then wrote this to the German publishers who were trying to figure out if he was pureblooded aryan or not:
>Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride. Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung. >>37052They description of their enemies aren't all generalities though. IIRC the Easterlings and Haradrim they do mention in particular are described in the same sort of heroic tones as the Prince of Dol Amroth and that kind of thing.
It's been a minute since I've read the books, but I don't think the foreigners are called
evil, either, but rather
wicked, and of course there's that scene where they talk about what lies or threats brought these people into Gondor in the first place.
>Tolkien was a monarchist in the sense of old legends rather than real life and while the returning king is an important plot point, the main thrust of the story is clearly anti-imperialist and environmentalist. Tolkiens personal politics aside, I think the politics of LOTR are for the most part medievalist, updated with Tolkien's more modern perspective. If you read The Song of Roland, you can see a lot of the influences that would go into LOTR. TSR has a lot of "evil foreigner" type sentiments in it which at the time might have been due to pandering or naivete or outright xenophobia, but which wouldn't make sense to Tolkien from his perspective 800 years later and his knowledge that the Iberians weren't perfidious idol worshiping pagans etc.
>You'd think this would be obvious to readers, since culture clash and ethnic conflict is one of the central themes of the stories.I think I would differ somewhat in that the conflict don't necessarily come from clashes of culture or ethnicity. They are certainly factors in these clashes, but the causal factors are more ones of
sin. The conflicts aren't necessarily due to the Elves' elvishness or the Dwarves dwarvishness, but because they give in to sins of pride or greed or wrath, and then maintain the grudges that arise from them for hundreds or thousands of years. I think what LOTR goes out of its way to show is that their cultures aren't in conflict when they give these things up, and that once "sin" is removed and symbolically defeated with the destruction of Sauron, their cultures thrive together.
>>37055As I stated, it's /pol/'s retarded take on LOTR
>>37054 >I don't think the foreigners are called evil, either, but rather wicked, and of course there's that scene where they talk about what lies or threats brought these people into Gondor in the first place.True, but wickedness is often hand-in-hand with evil in old stories and they are technically fighting on the side of Sauron according to the narrative.
> If you read The Song of Roland, you can see a lot of the influences that would go into LOTR. Makes sense since Tolkien wove together LOTR based on old stories, legends and legends of early Northern European lore
>TSR has a lot of "evil foreigner" type sentiments in it which at the time might have been due to pandering or naivete or outright xenophobia, but which wouldn't make sense to Tolkien from his perspective 800 years later and his knowledge that the Iberians weren't perfidious idol worshiping pagans etc.Which I attribute to a mix of a romanticized good vs evil narrative (nothing inherently wrong with that sort of story if done right) and the fact that this is told from the Hobbit's perspective as I said.
>the conflict don't necessarily come from clashes of culture or ethnicity. Not only culture and ethnicity, but we see this when the fellowship is being formed and the elves, hobbits, men and dwarves are all at each others throats apart from Frodo and a few other more level-headed characters. Moreover its a remnant of conflicts decades and centuries before LOTR begins, which we see in The Hobbit and described in the Silmarillion.
>aren't necessarily due to the Elves' elvishness or the Dwarves dwarvishness, but because they give in to sins of pride or greed or wrath, and then maintain the grudges that arise from them for hundreds or thousands of years Also true - a reflection of sentient beings and the pitfalls or shortcomings they have as being living individuals.
>LOTR goes out of its way to show is that their cultures aren't in conflict when they give these things up, and that once "sin" is removed and symbolically defeated with the destruction of Sauron, their cultures thrive together. THIS, absolutely.
>>37057
>True, but wickedness is often hand-in-hand with evil in old stories and they are technically fighting on the side of Sauron according to the narrative. That's true, but with Tolkien being such a word nerd I think it's an important distinction to make that these people are
wicked rather than
evil, with the implication being that the bad things that they do aren't because of some inherent defect but because of outside influences, and that what the "good races" are just as capable and susceptible to "wickedness" as the people they're fighting.
>THIS, absolutely.One of the passages I love the most in LOTR is when Gimli talks about Galadriel's gift to him, and also when he talks about the beauty of the caves behind Helm's Deep to Legolas (iirc). It's really beautiful how Gimli goes from a Dwarf chauvinist to loving the Elves and being able to share his own loves with them, to the point that he and Legolas both go to the undying lands together. Simply wonderful.
>>37061>with Tolkien being such a word nerd I think it's an important distinction to make that these people are wicked rather than evil, with the implication being that the bad things that they do aren't because of some inherent defect but because of outside influences, and that what the "good races" are just as capable and susceptible to "wickedness" as the people they're fighting. Fair point
>when Gimli talks about Galadriel's gift to him, and also when he talks about the beauty of the caves behind Helm's Deep to Legolas (iirc). It's really beautiful how Gimli goes from a Dwarf chauvinist to loving the Elves and being able to share his own loves with them, to the point that he and Legolas both go to the undying lands together. Yes, it's a wholesome enemies to friends story that unfortunately gets done to death in modern stories.
>>37052>that videodidn't we manage to take their account banned?
also that aged like milk. the cringe is unreal.
>>37118If you want to insert a political subtext on Lord of the Rings, you can do that. The thing is, you can do that with any brand of politics since LotR's "politics" doesn't really go much more beyond Good vs Evil.
For instance, prove that the Free Peoples of Middle Earth can't be interpreted as communists and socialists and Mordor as fascists, neoliberals and imperialists and that it HAS to be the other way around. You can't. You could say that this clearly wasn't Tolkien's intent, but we're ignoring intent here.
>>37161That's because it's based on old myths and legends that were produced by aristocratic monarchies. And Mordor is no less an aristocratic monarchy than Gondor.
What's more, these monarchies don't operate like any modern day, real world society. For one, modern capitalist societies are republics or "monarchies" that operate as de facto republics. Secondly, LotR monarchies aren't organized like actual, real world monarchies. For instance Aragorn clearly believes in marrying for love and political marriage doesn't even cross his mind, and the proof of him as the rightful king has less to do with who is dad was (though Aragorn is ultimately a descendant of Isildur) and more to do with him fulfilling various prophesies. This is because he's a king in the sense of mythology, old legends and chivalric romance rather than a king in the sense of political monarchism.
>>37164>the general sowing of fbi.gov and corruption. lmao
> it's frankly a dry book compared to Lord of the Rings or The HobbitYeah, it's just the bare bones of a story without much flourish because it's constructed from Tolkien's notes rather than being a finished work with all the polish that LOTR got.
>the fall of NumenorSauron was trying to conquer the world, and Numenor in the height of its power came and wrecked his shit. It's a seriously one-sided fight, and they take Sauron captive and haul his ass back to Numenor. He plays nice for a while and acts like he's reformed, doling out secrets and information that makes the Numenorians even more powerful, while sowing seeds of doubt and fbi.gov between the humans and the elves, especially leading them to believe that the elves know the secret to immortality but just won't tell the humans about it.
Over the course of a hundred years or so, the humans and elves grow distant and distrustful and the Numenorians become cruel and wicked. IIRC Ar Pharazon, the same king that defeated Sauron, is old and terrified of the thought of dying. Sauron convinces him that if he goes West to Valinor, he'll be able to wrest immortality from the gods.
So he gets a huge army together, sails West to Valinor, and disembarks with his army, only for the ground to open up and swallow them all whole. As punishment, the gods destroy Numenor and sink it beneath the ocean. The only survivors are from the peninsula of Numenor closest to Valinor, which kept good relations between them and the elves and left after they found out what the king was doing. They'd go on to make Arnor and Gondor. Sauron was still on the island when it was destroyed, and that's when he loses his physical form and the ability to "take pleasing shapes."
>>37165Yes, exactly. But at the same time they can hardly be called liberals or fascists, who aren't exactly feudal monarchists either. If you're trying to make them allegorical, so that even though liberals and fascists generally are not monarchist, you say that these are medieval kingdoms
representing liberalism or fascism, there's nothing to say that you couldn't have a medieval fantasy kingdom that was
allegorical for the socialist and communist movements, and there's nothing in the book that would point to Rohan, Gondor or Lothlórien being
allegorical for liberals or fascists and NOT socialists or communists.
Tolkien strictly denied that Lord of the Rings was allegorical for anything. It was just inspired by mythology, old legends and chivalric romance. This naturally means that all societies shown are monarchies because there are no ancient tales of parliaments and soviet republics.
Why his reactionary fascist fantasy resonates with the "progressive" cultural revolution of the 1960s is the question. How is it that the most hypercapitalist neoliberalism became fused with feudalistic fantasies found in LOTR? How did fantasy become the literary genre of neoliberalism, or at least its true believers? We know he disavows of white supremacism (letter about "aryan" heritage), but I don't trust it. In his fictional universe, things seem pretty white supremacist. Heroes have to be of worthy ancestry, and Aragorn is described very often as the perfect human due to his heritage. Each and every conflict seems to be extremely black and white. Peasantry is of no importance, they are dirty, stupid and unwashed refugees. The most powerful societies are all feudalist/monarchist, good people have extreme amounts of wealth, colonialism is good, and when a society fails this is due to a greater power such as Morgoth and Sauron, not because of societal failure. After Saruman cut down the forest to build his siege weapons, the trees came down to destroy him. Through his, Tolkien represents feudalism as a flourishing society, and industrialism of Saruman and Sauron as evil. Some creatures have a greater innate value than others, with orcs being irredeemable and elves being immortal. Another recurring theme of his is the decay through time. The world is only becoming worse, it is mentioned that everything was perfect at some point in the past, and people do not have the power to "save" the world. Those are all rather reactionary ideas.
When analyzing the matter deeper, we learn that the orcs were designed to represent the uyghurs, and Saruman and Sauron represent jews sending said uyghurs into Middle earth, representing white lands. Saruman (jew) gives the orcs (uyghurs) the mark of the white hand (intelligence quotient) and gives them technologically-advanced (white) seige engines so they are able to fight men, dwarves, and elves (white european tribes). Additionally, the hobbits represent white children. Tolkien is alluding to the 14 words by saying to his fellow reactionaries that they must destroy the jew/uyghur attack to defend the Shire if white children are to have a future. His moral meaning of being evil is being a gold-obsessed jew, represented by Sauron on his quest to retrieve the gold ring, and that future white generations (hobbits) are the key to destroying mammon through destroying the gold ring and refusing the jew's power (interest bearing loans). On the other hand, Smeagol represents the mutt, that was absolutely corrupted by the absolute power of mammon, and Tolkien uses him to serve as an example as to the fate of the white man if they get corrupted.
You would think science fiction would be the genre of silicon valley and Muskish techno-fetishism, but there is plenty of fantasy like the works of Tolkein that is basically a treatise on reactionism, which forms the root of hippie ideology. But there's something about the genre that gets too close to the essence of things. Not that it was important right now but is there any commentary on this? What do you think?
>>37938>Tolkien's work is reactionary and lies at the root of neoliberalismNo.
>Why his reactionary fascist fantasy resonates with the "progressive" cultural revolution of the 1960s is the question.Because it wasn't reactionary or fascist and also because it had anti-war, anti-racist and environmentalist themes. It was also an escapist fantasy, offering vivid and poetic depictions of the journey of the Fellowship that some hippies likened to an LSD trip. This during a time when there was growing interest in escapism and "mind expansion."
>How is it that the most hypercapitalist neoliberalism became fused with feudalistic fantasies found in LOTR?
>We know he disavows of white supremacism (letter about "aryan" heritage), but I don't trust it. In his fictional universe, things seem pretty white supremacist. Heroes have to be of worthy ancestry, and Aragorn is described very often as the perfect human due to his heritage.Aragorn is a half-elf, or at least descends from a race of half-elves. While he
is one of the most pure blooded of the Dúnedain, his worthiness is more tied to him fulfilling a series of prophesies. His ascent to kingship is more inspired by myth and legend than race science.
This also ignores the point that Aragorn is not the main hero of Lord of the Rings. The Hobbits are. In terms of power and ancestry, Hobbits are the shittiest creatures imaginable. The One Ring is stated to be an artifact of immense power. The reason why we only ever see Frodo and Bilbo turn invisible is literally because the power level of Hobbits is too low to do anything except use the One Ring's most basic bitch ability. And yet, these Hobbits are the heroes. And they're the heroes because of their courage, determination and purity of heart, which is here treated as a quality greater than any of the powers of any king or wizard.
>Each and every conflict seems to be extremely black and white.That's because it is very black and white. It's a story about good vs evil. There is some nuance, though, like the book more or less outright stating the Men of Rohan were wrong to treat the Drúedain like animals.
>Peasantry is of no importance, they are dirty, stupid and unwashed refugees.The peasantry aren't really mentioned at all except as background commoners. This isn't work about feudalism.
>The most powerful societies are all feudalist/monarchist, good people have extreme amounts of wealth, colonialism is good, and when a society fails this is due to a greater power such as Morgoth and Sauron, not because of societal failure.What are you talking about? The books absolutely state that internal social failure was behind the collapse of Arnor and the decline of Gondor.
<'It is not said that evil arts were ever practised in Gondor, or that the Nameless One was ever named in honour there; and the old wisdom and beauty brought out of the West remained long in the realm of the sons of Elendil the Fair, and they linger there still. Yet even so it was Gondor that brought about its own decay, falling by degrees into dotage, and thinking that the Enemy was asleep, who was only banished not destroyed.<'Death was ever present, because the Numenoreans still, as they had in their old kingdom, and so lost it, hungered after endless life unchanging. Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anarion had no heir.
>After Saruman cut down the forest to build his siege weapons, the trees came down to destroy him. Through his, Tolkien represents feudalism as a flourishing society, and industrialism of Saruman and Sauron as evil.?
How is Saruman getting attacked by the Ents an endorsement of feudalism? Do you think the Ents are a feudal society? I don't see any evidence of that.
>Another recurring theme of his is the decay through time. The world is only becoming worse, it is mentioned that everything was perfect at some point in the past, and people do not have the power to "save" the world. Those are all rather reactionary ideas.Yes and no. There are themes of decay, but if you've read the Silmarillion, you'd know that the past was no utopia. I don't see how themes of decay are reactionary, either. Do communists not claim that capitalism is in a state of progressive decay?
>When analyzing the matter deeper, we learn that the orcs were designed to represent the uyghurs, and Saruman and Sauron represent jews sending said uyghurs into Middle earth, representing white lands. Saruman (jew) gives the orcs (uyghurs) the mark of the white hand (intelligence quotient) and gives them technologically-advanced (white) seige engines so they are able to fight men, dwarves, and elves (white european tribes). Additionally, the hobbits represent white children. Tolkien is alluding to the 14 words by saying to his fellow reactionaries that they must destroy the jew/uyghur attack to defend the Shire if white children are to have a future. His moral meaning of being evil is being a gold-obsessed jew, represented by Sauron on his quest to retrieve the gold ring, and that future white generations (hobbits) are the key to destroying mammon through destroying the gold ring and refusing the jew's power (interest bearing loans). On the other hand, Smeagol represents the mutt, that was absolutely corrupted by the absolute power of mammon, and Tolkien uses him to serve as an example as to the fate of the white man if they get corrupted. ???
>>37941>LOTR>Anti-RacistIf you watch the original trilogy you'll see that every evil human faction is Arab/Persian and even when white people like Sauraman or Wormtongue are evil they command literal orcs to pillage and rape le pure white men and elves or whatever the fuck.
>But the new Amazon series-shut the fuck up that's basically fanfiction and tokenism to try to address the glaring racism of the original trilogy
>>37948>le pure white menAragorn (the man crowned king) is mixed race. And he goes on to wed an elf who also has mixed ancestry. This is portrayed as a good thing.
The reason the bad factions are bad is because they side with the bad guy, not their race. The Watsonian explanation why Sauron's human forces are ethnically distinct is because in-universe his control is bounded to specific territories. The Doylean explanation is that Tolkien was building on very old mythic tropes that had roots in actual history and an orientalist lens. In that respect it's a fantasy from a European perspective, which can't help but be racist. Europe is in many ways defined by racism. Insofar as race is explicitly referenced in the story and not just being informed by background prejudice, anti-racism is among the most overt themes. The core of the story is about people of many races cooperating with each other.
>>37948 Nobody talks about the Amazon series, it's garbage and doesn't try to fix anything, it is in fact far MORE racist.
>If you watch the original trilogy you'll see that every evil human faction is Arab/Persian 1) That's the films, those are not the same thing as the books
2) They are not 'evil', that's nev is thater been Tolkien's assertion for the men that sided with Sauron such as the Easterlings, they hope to be conquerors (like many other groups of men in medieval settings) and are manipulated by Sauron unwittingly
>even when white people like Sauraman or Wormtongue are evil they command literal orcs to pillage and rape le pure white men and elves <Ah yes the orcs who are a real race in the human world???This reeks of projection and ignores entirely the origins of the orcs, why they're so vile and why Saruman commands them. Your race obsession and projection says more about you being racist than LOTR.
The thread has literally gone into details about the Orcs, debunking the "racism" card, scroll up.
TLDR: If you think orcs are "black-coded" or whatever the hip new liberal term is, You've got issues.
Reposting some takes about Sauron and the story from an old thread regardless of my own agreement
Anon 1:
>Capitalism is all the free people's of middle earth in gradual decline with elves leaving, the Men of Gondor without a King for century's and in decline not to mention men like the Haradrim and Easterlings wanting to side with us.
>We are Sauron the necromancer hiding out in Mirkwood we are rapidly building our power in the background and following the ideal theory to get more power.
>We will continue gaining power and achieve world domination or in this case world communism unless the capitalists can achieve a miracle akin to throwing the ring in mount doom.
Anon 2:
>Sauron is capitalism. He enroaches everything with his presence.
>Saruman was a social democrat turned fascist. He was a scientist, an engineer, and a visionary. He became corrupted by capitalism and used his ingenuity for industrial genocide.
>The race of Men are the Slavs. They were once great, and fought nobly against capitalism (USSR), but eventually became corrupted by the power of capitalism (the ring) and greed.
>The elves are the Chinese. They fought against capital with the Slavs at some point, but when Men became corrupted, they broke relations entirely.
>The dwarves are ex-Yugoslavia. No, I will not elaborate.
>Aragorn is the next Lenin, essentially.
>The hobbits are the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
>When the time comes, we will have to make a last stand to distract capital, force it's gaze upon us, while the hobbits do their final work and decimate the rate of profit.
Anon 3:
>Mordor is communist. They have industry and all the orca live in the same material conditions. Even their generals and captains sleep and eat with the enlisted orcs. Sauron and Saruman are your Maos and Kims and Stalins.
>Everyone else lives in a social democrat petit bourgeois utopia. People have small businesses, own lands that others toil. Sam is Frodo's gardner, is visibly poorer, but they're best friends.
>Gondor is a reactionary hellhole, no tax policy and just letting people fend for themselves. If anyone gets too uppity they crush them.
>Rohan is feudal. You have the royals, the soldiers and everyone else is a peasant who lives in literal horse shit.
>Dwarves are greedy fucks nobody likes, that just dig shiny things everyone wants but still looks down on Dwarves.
>Woodland Elves are egotistical hippies that enjoy fucking with everyone who is different from them.
>High Elves are cultists.
>And they all tolerate each other. But here comes someone who sees through the fucking charade, decides to fuck over everyone who decided to make for themselves "rings of power", even though they had power over the land in every meaningful way but nah, needed a physical representation on their finger.
>Who does Sauron use to shake things up? The orcs, the goblins, the giants, everyone who has been chased away because they don't fit into bougie paradise. Orcs literally come from the ground. But no, preserving trees is much more important than giving orcs jobs and places to live.
Tolkien:
>I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien
>>40788The simplistic "forces of good vs forces of evil" don't really work then since national chauvinism, like anything people call "evil," is just false consciousness. There is no good and evil as ideologies, these are simply ideological judgements of others. It's all just spooks in your head, people are evil because they think
they are the good guys. Orks should think they did nuffin rong and that they are blessed by Jesus.
>>40791Okay, so
1) Tolkien stated multiple times that Lord of the Rings wasn't an allegory for anything. His example in my post was what the story would have looked like if he
was making it some kind of political allegory, namely for WWII.
2) Tolkien didn't necessarily deal strictly with Malthusian evil. He plays with the idea, but Malthusian evil (which is evil as its own motive force opposite to good) takes a huge thematic backseat to "evil as an absence of good" or "evil as an absence of virtue."
>>40666The haradrim reads to me as more garden vs the jungle chauvanism (sublimated racism) than outright racism. I don't recall Tolkien ever dwelling on the physiognomy or anything like that.
>>36576This. No amazon show can be bad enough to be a worse legacy for Tolkien than his cheap imitators.
>>11616Varg's love of LotR in particular surprises me. Chances are he either read it so long ago he forgot the message or just remembers his MERP games more than the actual books. Tolkien's message is typically christian about the humble little people triumphing after enduring hardship. All the heroics are either futile like the last ditch assault on mordor or downright counter-productive in Boromir's case.
>>41850>The haradrim reads to me as more garden vs the jungle chauvanism (sublimated racism) than outright racism. I don't recall Tolkien ever dwelling on the physiognomy or anything like that.I don't know if that kind of paradigm makes sense in this case. The dichotomy for people in Tolkien's stories seems less like "civilized v barbarian" than "honest vs deceived." Like the haradrim aren't evil because they're a different color and culture, they're evil because they've been deceived by Sauron and are doing his bidding. In the books, the big victory over evil wouldn't have been possible without the help of the gondorian pygmies that iirc are implied to be more related to the original humans rather than the human/elf hybrids of Gondor. They've got their own ways and customs and are implied to be "primitive" but they're not evil.
Personally I think the lotr show should have just ignored all the parts of middle earth that we saw in the movies and instead gone off the edge of the map and made up their own stuff. There's those blue wizards we know nothing about, and it would give us a chance to see what was going on with the haradrim and rhun or whatever to flesh them out beyond "scary foreign bad guys."
>>41882Main character has to be somebody recognizable while also not re-treading the stories that people have already seen adapted. So the hobbits, humans, and dwarves are right out.
This basically leaves the wizards and elves, and nobody wants to have their MC compared to giants like Ian McKellan and Christopher Lee. Plus the wizards don't work well as protagonists since most of what they do is act like plot devices.
That leaves the elves, and who among the elves is memorable and makes sense as a protagonist outside of the existing adapted stories? You are looking at two options: Galadriel and Elrond. And between Elrond being less interesting and the girlboss zeitgeist it's obvious they'd choose Galadriel.
Sure, there's a million other things to adapt that could be more interesting, but Amazon isn't in the business of being Fox Searchlight. They are fishing for a flagship prestige TV show that will blow people away. They were planning to spend a BILLION DOLLARS producing it.
>>41883Or you can make Gollum the main character
https://www.google.com/amp/s/variety.com/2024/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-movie-2026-release-warner-bros-1235997102/amp/
>Warner Bros. to Release New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie ‘The Hunt for Gollum’ in 2026, Peter Jackson to Produce and Andy Serkis to Direct
>"For over two decades, moviegoers have embraced the ‘Lord of the Rings’ film trilogy because of the undeniable devotion Peter, Fran and Philippa have shown towards protecting the legacy of Tolkien’s works, and to ensure audiences could experience the incredible world he created in a way that honors his literary vision,” De Luca and Abdy said in a statement Thursday. “We are honored they have agreed be our partners on these two new films. With Andy coming aboard to direct ‘Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,’ we continue an important commitment to excellence that is a true hallmark of how we all want to venture ahead and further contribute to the ‘Lord of the Rings’ cinematic history.”
>Jackson, Walsh and Boyens added: “It is an honour and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that Stinker — Gollum! As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”
>"Yesssss, Precious,” Serkis said. “The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle Earth Peter, Fran and Philippa. With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our filmmaking family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious…” >>41912had to be just WB handing them a fat stack of money to revive one of their beloved Franchises™. The time is right too - the trilogy is over 20 years old so it has the nostalgia factor, plus Rings of Power was mid so people want a return to the Peeta Jickson version of Middle Earth. I'm expecting more Hobbit-tier schlock though.
Also why the fuck is the obsession with Gollum? First that awful game, now this? Do they want him to be the memeable mascot or something?
>>41913Gollum as a property has the benefit of being big enough to be immediately recognizable but also have enough blank spots in his narrative that you could conceivably do something with him. Also as a grey little gremlin weirdo he doesn't have any racial or gender aspects to navigate, like black hobbits or whatever.
But you'd think after that fucking video game they'd know better.
>>42068Viggo didnt want to come back for the Hobbit and he was critical of the CGI use in the LOTR trilogy, I doubt he wants to come back for this.
>>42071Eagles get hungry, they would have ate them.
>>42088No, the real reason is because Tolkien thought not using eagles would make for a more interesting story. If we want to look at it realistically, whatever the risk of eagles, its clearly outweigh by trekking across entire Middle-earth while pursued by nazguls and goblins. You dont have to fly all the way to Mount Doom on them, they could have dropped fellowship off at whatever convenient location.
In fact this got me thinking, what was the original plan? Like if everything went smoothly and fellowship never slip up, how did Elrond and Gandalf plan to get to Mordor? Did they always plan to create some sort of distraction and then send the hobbits alone across Gorgoroth with pat on a back and kiss on a cheek, hoping for the best?
>>42090Sauron has birds as spies and Sauron's forces are hardly grounded themselves, if you've forgotten the fell beasts the Nazgul ride on.
The whole point was to be somewhat stealthy. Riding the eagles anywhere would not have been stealthy.
I think the original plan was for the whole Fellowship to sneak into Mordor, but with a definite "we'll figure it out when we get there" attitude. The war was already on when the Fellowship formed, so I think they were hoping that this would keep Sauron distracted.
>>42093Saruman did not know their location. Both Sauron and Saruman only had a vague sense of where they were or even who they were.
It is something of a plot point that the Fellowship hadn't been spotted yet which at least informs their decision to go through Moria because they were surrounded on all sides by patrols and the way they had wanted to go through had become impassible.
There's also the fact that the eagles aren't Gandalf's pets. They're intelligent creatures that owe Gandalf a favor and would want an explanation as to why they're hauling a bunch of strangers halfway to Mordor.
>>42087I actually don't mind that they're making MCU fanfics.
That's clearly what they wanted to do with The Rings of Power. Let them make up their own little stories set in Middle Earth. There's actually a chance it might be good if they're basically just telling their own story instead of stumbling over existing material and butchering it.
>>42094Well they had to come up with filler to turn it into 3 movies. Realistically the book only has content for 1. It seems like the studio was diving it hoping to make a shitload of money which they did btw. Collectively they made almost 3 billion dollars against a budget around $700 million. A big part of this was the sheer spectacle since they made a big deal out of shooting natively in 3D at 5k resolution and 48fps throughout. They made a really big deal of the format and charged more for tickets with 3D and HFR. A bunch of theaters even had to install new projectors just to be able to do this. It was part of a push to build on what Avatar had already done to try to make 3D really take off. Unlike Avatar though they did a
lot of the cliche 3D movie thing of deliberately drawing attention to the 3D effects, shoving shit at the camera and doing a lot of excessive camera movements that felt really un-grounded in reality unlike the original. The result is the movies were very bloated and obnoxious instead of feeling more immersive.
They also had a lot of "growing pain" type of issues experimenting with the format, like having to redo a lot of makeup, props, and practical effects when they realized they don't look good in 3D/HFR/5k. They also completely abandoned the technique of forced perspective that allowed actors playing characters of different sizes to be in the same shot together (3D ruins the illusion by showing the depth), so they had to shoot these scenes on separate sets. This made it a lot harder for actors to convincingly do the scenes because they could no longer react to each other at all. This alone should have made anybody with a brain realize this was the wrong franchise to try this with. Do it with Star Wars or something.
>>42120Yeah IIRC when the GOT show hired a guy to make conlangs for Dothraki, High Valyrian, etc and asked GRRM for his notes he was just like "yeah the four or five words in the books are all I came up with." Like it's fine to not be on Tolkien's level with that, but it's kind of a major thing to think about if you aren't just hand-waving language altogether. Especially if you're then going to pretend you are doing more homework on the worldbuilding than the all time champ. GRRM also notoriously has little grasp of math and when he saw how what the Wall actually would look like at 700 feet tall and wide enough for a dozen horsemen to ride side by side along it he was like "oh wow that's a lot bigger than I thought lol."
GRRM's point is really more about the political realities though, so it's more fair to criticize over that, like how the realm managed to last for thousands of years despite the irregular winters periodically causing mass famines.
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