Flea: Politics and Middle Earth

January 02, 2004

Politics and Middle Earth

Some Western peoples of Middle Earth, for reasons of bourgeois comfort, selfishness, or cynical despair, want no part of the coming war, and think mistakenly that they can avoid trouble if they simply lay low. It falls to the good wizard Gandalf, the ascendant king Aragorn, and their followers to convince the West to stand fast and fight for its freedom and way of life. As many of us do when we read stories of the hideous weapons that could be in the hands of terrorists, we know how Frodo feels when he tells Gandalf that he wishes he had not been born into such a time as this.

The old prophet-wizard counsels Frodo to turn away from such futile and self-defeating conjecture, because no man can choose the times in which he lives. Says Gandalf, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Rod Dreher's review of The Two Towers remains an apt summary of the importance of the film, the trilogy of films as a whole and the book upon which they were based. Dreher points out Tolkien does not "let us off the hook" in thinking all fights against evil are so straight-forward as a confrontation with fascism and that, here parsing Solzhenitsyn, "the line between good and evil runs straight through every human heart." Fair enough, and the subject for future posts here at the Flea. It is a wonder, however, that so many fail the test of conviction in confronting contemporary fascism and a disappointment, if not a surprise, that so many who fail are also mystified by Tolkien's work.

Many of us in the non-idiotarian parts of the blogosphere have taken Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien's original masterpiece to be sources of inspiration in a troubled time. Many of us have seen idiotarian readings of the same material and many of you may have come to the same conclusion I have: we really do read much of our own motivation into even, and perhaps especially, the greatest art. There are those who understand the films to exemplify honour, loyalty and courage and there are those who take them as yet another excuse for masturbatory self-loathing. Perhaps this is another reason Gandalf counsels us to take pity on the misery-bags.

I think this more intellectual example of the Wormtongue critique of Tolkien's work is worth sharing. Here is someone glad to have shed their "adolescent naiveté" without any sense that cynicism is no replacement for wonder and moral equivalence a sad mockery of a moral centre. I want also to point out that a feeling of superiority is no substitute for an education. Take this, for example:

Can one judge a film with the morals of politics? Is Lord of the Rings seen differently in the United States than it is in Europe where the majority of people were against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? A fable is “a narration intended to enforce a useful truth.” When I look at the Lord of the Rings as the fable its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, intended it to be, I see a world clearly divided into races and regions of leader and followers, I see Calvinist pre-determinism and I see the vindication and veneration of empire unfolding in frame after frame. And I feel the quick burn of shame that I always feel when realising that as a child I was taken in by a “useful truth” that now seems odious.

Blah, blah, blah you might say (and you would be right). Most Flea-readers will have spotted the mistake. Tolkien was many things but he was not an exponent of Calvinist pre-determinism. I suppose the sneering slurs against Christianity the author was rewarded for in his/her undergraduate days meant any distinction between Tolkien's Catholicism and other faith and practice could be glossed over. It is a glaring error for someone purporting to know more about Tolkien's politics than the author himself. Here is another example:

I can’t lay the sole blame for the Lord of the Rings’ atavistic classicism, racism and xenophobia with either auteur or author. It was Peter Jackson, the director, who chose his alabaster cast and decided that the camera would lovingly caress their sky-bold eyes. But Tolkien had lived through the horror of the “great war”, and he imagined a world where the qualities of leadership were in the blood and where social and moral hierarchy was clearly identifiable through race and appearance. As the spectre of a second world war loomed, it was a soothing reordering of the world with a clear delineation of good and evil.

To this I can only quote an exchange between some central figures in the tale and in doing so breath a sigh of relief to have escaped the lies of the Mouth of Sauron. No wonder the critic loathes the book. It is an assault on the meaninglessness that has possessed him (or her).

'I think said Frodo, one of the enemy spies would - well, seem fairer and feel fouler,if you understand'. I see laughed Strider. I look foul and feel fair, is that it?...all that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost....

And then... There was a much-linked recent bit of drivel denouncing the Ring as racist that got me thinking about this post but I have not been able to find it (ahh... here it is). My googling was not in vane as it turned up something brilliant in the comments section of a post at Cato the Youngest. The following is an excerpt from a meeting of the Middle Earth Socialist Liberation Organisation (University Of Minas Tirith Sub-Branch). I had to look up "Takataapui" on the grounds I thought it was made up but it turns out not to be and I am now pleased to have learned my new word for the day. I now must start firing off irate memos accusing the administration of Takataapuiphobia if I don't see the term used in posters around the university. Also, I want to be Chair of Orc Studies.

The College Magazine reporter, who wished to be addressed as Wormtongue (until it was pointed out that this name was taken and he settled for the less satisfactory but no less apposite monicker of ‘Robert Fisk’), noted that his earlier prediction that ‘Mordor would turn out to be Gondor’s Vietnam’ may have been a little off the mark but loudly demanded a judicial inquiry, perhaps even a Special Prosecutor, to look into ‘Denethor-gate’ and the supposed ‘suicide’ of the Steward. He called for Gandalf to be placed under arrest pending the inquiry and also questioned the role played by ‘Strider, “now styling himself King Aragorn” and the quisling Faramir’. This was so resolved.

The suggestion that ‘peace-keeping’ forces be invited into Mordor from the Western Isles to keep an eye on things and check for Balrogs, Nazgul and other weapons of mass destruction was a typical case of Elvish/Gondorian neo-colonialism and would be combated by a half hour sit-in in the Dean’s Office next Tuesday at half past four.

Posted by the Flea at January 2, 2004 11:07 AM

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Ghost of a flea

January 02, 2004

Politics and Middle Earth