labingi | Entries tagged with lotr

In the great crossover 'verse in my head, this is the 45th anniversary of the Downfall of Sauron. I don't have any brilliant new thoughts on Middle-earth to share right now, but I appreciate that this day usually falls during my spring break, thus allowing me to celebrate it at home in Glen Ellen, which, being the land where I grew up, has always been Middle-earth to me, especially in the spring.

It's scary hot out for March right now, into the lower '80's F today, a reminder that the old world has gone, and, as our tenants pointed out, you never know what the weather is going to do from day to day. I will say this, though: I see real recovery from the fire. It feels like the first time the scars have looked significantly healed. Our two surviving legacy oaks, Drus and Maxima, who were surely dealt lethal blows in the fire (in 2017) both look surprisingly happy. Maxima has so much new growth it practically looks like a tree again. I don't know how this can be because neither of them have a square foot of healthy bark left anywhere, but they are still trucking along and the more power to them.

There's been a lot of rain this year, and the creeks are higher than I've seen them in a long time, which is always pleasant and welcome.

These are not specifically Middle-earth thoughts, but I think they are Middle-earthy. To have a keen eye for the land you love is very Middle-earthy thing.

I was actually reading Wilde a few months ago, so apologies if my memory is dim. RL busy-ness and chronic pain have pushed updating DW to a back burner. In any case, I had somehow managed to get through life without reading either of these works and am glad I now have. Spoilers for those living in a cave for the past 130-odd years.

Salome

This tale of John the Baptist and Salome is a one act play. It is highly abbreviated and operates at a high level of symbolic removal from realism, which is a nice way of saying I found the characters one dimensional and uninteresting. I'm sure it all depends on how a specific performance handles it. It is also translated into English from French, so kudos to Wilde for being able to write drama in a foreign language, but this might explain why the voice doesn't sound all that much like "Wilde" to me.

I confess I didn't realize that Wilde's play is apparently the genesis of the idea that Salome was in love with John. I grew up with that story as the standard pop cultural narrative, popularized no doubt by Strauss, but it seems Strauss got it from Wilde. So I have to give him credit for rewriting the Bible in a way that, at least to some extent, has superseded the biblical account in cultural prominence. I give it 10/10 for cultural influence and 3/10 for execution.

The Picture of Dorian Grey

Honestly, I had expected to be a bit bored. I somehow had it in my head that this was a slight story made famous because it had a resonant core concept (like Salome?). I was pleasantly surprised to find it a very well written short novel. But what surprised me most was the realization--having just watched season 2 of Rings of Power--that Wilde's moral orientation in this story is much the same as Tolkien's. Who'd have thought?

Lord Henry is pretty much in the position of a Second Age Sauron here, filling the role of tempter and purveyor of bad advice. Of course, Lord Henry is a much more human-feeling character than Sauron, dealing with his own disillusion and--interestingly--the one to voice a lot of classic Wildean aphorisms. But both advocate a self-centered approach of what is metaphorically "shiny," power, beauty, etc. Both are radically divorced from basic human empathy (though Lord Henry has some for Dorian and enough vestiges of it left to sometimes understand well how others think). Both lead those who listen to them into misery and tragedy by prescribing selfishness at the expense of care of one's fellow people.

I was surprised a while ago to learn that Wilde was quite a devout Catholic convert, though I can only imagine in a somewhat non-dogmatic way. I wonder if there is an underlying Catholic orientation I'm sensing in this similarity to Tolkien. In any case, it's not what I expected to unearth.

The verdict: This story is written like fan fic by a high schooler. It’s amazing the production team let this get through. That said, it has some elements I really like and wish had a better show to breathe in. (Note: I’m skipping all accent marks out of fatigue.)

Overall Production:

The Good

Visual effects, music, costumes. Acting! These are good actors, and they deserve better material. In some cases, they are even very well cast, and they are acting the heck out of what little they’ve been given. In terms of story, the fleshing out of Sauron is generally good in my book.

The Bad

The writing overall. Especially toward the end, it’s paint-by-the-numbers. It’s full of lines like “I am the light.” “No, you are the darkness.” That’s not a quote, but it’s indicative of the basic pattern of stock lines and responses. It also does set-up and pay-off poorly, like introducing a nameless Elf who gets pep-talked along the lines of “I know you’ll do your best” and then dies doing their best one minute later.

The Hit and Miss

Directing and editing. Sometimes, it’s really good: good shots, creative angles, well paced, nice variety. Sometimes, it feels borderline amateur—like there’s a scene where Elendil’s daughter tells a soldier (paraphrased), “There’s nothing to see here. Move along,” and a second later follows up with (paraphrased), “Do I have to report you for insubordination?” The only insubordinate thing I saw was that, for a second, he slightly moved his head; there was no camera work or direction that indicated he was disobeying her. That sort of flub in basic craft, while rare overall, is surprisingly common in this most expensive show ever.

Note: some bits that seem like editing problems may be script problems, like lots of late-Game-of-Thrones “teleportation.” The show has a tendency to do something like, “So-and-So is coming,” and the very next cut, So-and-So is there. If you want to express either distance or tension, you could at least intercut with another scene between announcing someone is on the move and having them suddenly arrive.

Spoilers for plot stuff follow.( Read more... )

My Wish List for a Second Age TV Series

Happy Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, all! (In the great crossover ‘verse in my head, Frodo is 95 today.) Here’s a Middle-earthy post in honor.

I think Rings of Power S2, overall, is better than S1, and I have been enjoying some of it. On the whole, however, it’s a lost cause for me, so I’m going to lay out some things I’d like to see if the Tolkien estate ever grants rights to adapt The Silmarillion. (I know RoP is hampered by not being able to do this.)

Here are my broad contentions: 1) It should focus on the Elves and 2) it should follow Tolkien’s timeline. My picks for protagonist would be either Gil-galad or Elrond. For me, RoP’s biggest contribution to Middle-earth worldbuilding is Adar, and while he couldn’t be used in this hypothetical adaptation due to copyright, I will take inspiration from his plotline. Expect spoilers for any Tolkien lore and vague references to RoP stuff.

Disclaimers: My memory of a lot of The Silmarillion of is vague. I’m writing this in the midst of a pain flare up from too much screen time, so I’m not bothering to look up details like accent marks. Sorry for mistakes.( Read more... )

What's on your wish list? I'd love to hear.

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! In the LOTR-verse in my head, this is anniversary 44 if I do my math aright.

In universe I actually inhabit, I’m in the home stretch of completing my book on relationship cutoff, Being Cut. In honor of ramping up for publication, I’m going to use this DS Day post to address a question that comes up repeatedly in this book, the question of friendship. Warning for references to relationship cutoff. Also spoilers for LOTR.

We have a strong cultural belief that friend cutoff isn’t a big deal, because friendship isn’t a big deal. I can’t count the times I’ve heard variations of “What’s the big deal? Most friendships end,” “Friendship isn’t a commitment,” “Friendship isn’t a serious relationship,” “Friendship is just based on whether it’s working for each person.”

Some friendships are like that, yes. We often use the word to mean “person I share a hobby with” or “amicable coworker I don’t really talk to outside of work” or “kid I played with twenty years ago.” But my book focuses on serious relationships, and capital “F” Friendship is serious.

Whenever I hear friendship dismissed in this way, the first place my mind goes is The Lord of the Rings. That book understands Friendship. For example (note: I’m vacation without my LOTR so I’m going to para-quote from memory), as Merry remarks to Frodo, “You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin to the bitter end, but you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone and go off without a word. We’re your friends...” Two of them are his cousins, too, but they are with him because they’re his friends. When Frodo calls Sam, “friend of friends,” he’s talking about going off to die together.

Or consider when Frodo tells Faramir and crew that Boromir was his friend. Now, he’s with people who are not necessarily his allies and is having to be strategic in what he says, but there’s strategic and then there’s lying, and that is not a lie, even though his last experience of Boromir is being physically attacked by him. Our pop-psychology today would probably call that a toxic relationship and dismiss Boromir as a “garbage person” who deserves nothing but dismissal and avoidance. And Frodo is avoiding him, yes, but within a very particular context that Frodo, as Ringbearer, understands perfectly well. Boromir was still his friend, and had he lived, I do not doubt they would have fairly quickly mended their fences. That doesn’t mean that no scar would remain, but there’s a difference between a scarred relationship and a destroyed one. Their friendship was not and would not have been destroyed. That is what true friendship is.

I don’t say that no serious friendship should ever end, just as I’d never say that no couple should ever get divorced. I don’t mean cutoff is never the best answer. I do mean that real friendship matters, like marriage matters. It is committed and loyal and willing to endure some hard times. It is at least as selfless as it is selfish; it does not stop at a facile assessment of “what’s working,” and, as a concept, it deserves much better than our current society gives it.

Happy DS Day! May your friends stick to you through thick and thin.

Happy Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, all! In the crossover ‘verse in my head, I do believe Frodo is 94 today, though I’m holding onto following that timeline by a thread. (Basically, it’s my age + 46.)

I have some Tolkienesque thoughts and weird sense of déjà vu that I’ve already written this essay, but I don’t see it in my stuff, so it may have just been in my head. It’s on Tolkien and moral culpability, based on thinky thoughts raised by this interesting video (qv):

Watch on YouTube

If you’re not watching the video right now, basically Tolkien held that people could not be held morally culpable for failure to do something beyond their capacity (a very understandable view for a WWI vet, by the way). He, therefore, held that while Frodo failed to destroy the Ring (spoilers!), he wasn’t morally culpable for that failure because he had been pushed well beyond his own capacity. (Have I really not already written this? Let me know you’ve seen this somewhere—by me.)

I totally respect this view, and it’s different from mine. Tolkien’s reasoning stood about to me because one could argue my views of moral culpability are actually more judgmental than his. And I’m not used to feeling more morally judgmental than a traditional Catholic. :-) But I think his Catholicism—and my Buddhism—are in play here. ( Read more... )

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! This is the 43rd anniversary in the great crossover 'verse in my head. I'm quite sure it's also the first DS Day I have experienced on which it has snowed, yes, snow in Portland, March 25. This year I'm missing my trip to California, which is usually a DS Day ritual. This leaves me feeling a bit disconnected and slightly incoherent.

One thing of recent Tolkien interest to me was watching a YouTube compilation of his video interviews, in which, among other things, he asserted that for daily purposes, English food was the best. This stuck with me because it's not very often one hears that. I have been thinking of Tolkien recently, though, while pondering local food movements. I think local cuisine for a temperate region would be very much like he describes the hobbits eating. Imagine no sugar, coffee, or chocolate, yet hobbits manage to feast just fine. Gives us all hope.

This show has ended up wildly skewed for me. There are parts I hate and parts I love. Therefore, I'm going to rank 'em, worst to best (as I experience it). I'll rate them 1-10, with 1 being worst, and explain why.

Scale calibration:
1 = I love Lexx, but that gender swap episode of Lexx that is just one interminable rape joke.
10 = The finale of Blake's 7, "The Body" in Buffy, Tyrion in Game of Thrones seasons 1-4.

Okay, here we go. Spoilers for Season 1 and book stuff( Read more... )

As of ep. 6, I think Adar may now be my favorite character in The Rings of Power. He's well written, well acted, and well directed, and I think his storyline is an example of how to extrapolate on a canon in challenging, "updated" ways without disrespecting it. ( spoilers follow )

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's birthday, all! In the great crossover 'verse in my head, Frodo is 93 today. (Bilbo has left us some time ago.) Well, partly owing to limited time, I'm going to post an essay I'd already written on The Rings of Power series to mark the day. I feel a bit bad about that; B and F deserve more revelry and less ranting for their birthday, but there it is.

The Rings of Power and Lack of… Cultural Diversity, Dialogism, Imagination…?

I'm going to use The Rings of Power (currently through ep. 3) to try to unpack my responses to some larger cultural issues. The Mary Sue's Rachel Ulatowski has a brief, pretty well-rounded overview of the reception of The Rings of Power that notes (a) most critics strongly like it, (b) vast swaths of fans hate it, (c) many seem to do so for racist/sexist reasons, (d) and Tolkien purist reasons, and (e), nonetheless, the scale of vitriol is puzzling. I want to try to unpack the puzzlement by exploring my own responses.

As a Tolkien fan, I am, indeed, experiencing a lot of anger at this show. Despite liking many parts of it, the parts I don't like feel disrespectful to Tolkien's worldbuilding and, frankly, dumb. This anger is exacerbated by a feeling of isolation. Yeah, almost all the pro critics seem to love the show (and not to know or care anything about Tolkien's works). And most of the fan vitriol does seem to be about race, which is not my problem. I think it's handling race really well; I'm pleased and impressed. I think it's handling gender really well, except for Galadriel, who, unfortunately, is the protagonist (I'll come back to that). I do certainly fall into "Tolkien purist" camp to a degree, in that I know his universe fairly well and care about it a great deal. So part of my sour grapes is annoyance at canon divergence. But I think there are deeper issues at work than "critics are racist/can't handle changes to canon." I want to explore some thoughts…( spoilers follow )

I have too many thoughts about The Rings of Power and the loudest are ones are negative (because I'm one of those persnickety fans). But all that negativity won't help. For one thing, I'm sure the showrunners are already living in semi-fear for their lives over social media backlash. I don't want to stoke that, even a little. For another, they are doing a good job in many ways. For a third, I don't know how anyone could produce good art in a major franchise with a giant budget in a social media cesspit where everything is a massive marketing exercise in trying to please the majority while not getting threatened by a minority. Finally, Even die-hard fans can't agree on what TRoP should look like: Often, things I can't stand others are fine with; things I'm fine with others can't stand. So it goes. So…

Because I have to say something, here's a quick "like/don't like" list. (I won't say "good/bad" because views are so divergent.) Light spoilers behind the cut. ( Read more... )

I'm probably hurting myself and limiting my imagination by being an old-school Tolkien fan here. But as of episode 3, I can't figure out what Rings of Power is trying to say. I can't figure out its philosophical underpinnings. ( cut for mostly vague spoilers )

A significant attack of neuralgia has knocked me largely off screens and spared everyone who sees my DW from a several-thousand-word-long exegesis on The Rings of Power. I will offer just a few thoughts instead.

* I liked episode 2 much more than episode 1.

* The acting is very good. I put this partly down to impressive directing as well.

* I appreciate that the script (for the most part) is willing to use more old-fashioned words and syntax. Occasional modernisms like "That's not an option" ring a tin bell for me, but they're few.

* I really like the original characters, and I suspect my favorite bits of the show are likely to be those that focus on original characters or original + canon, while the canon + canon scenes are more likely to irritate me due to how far afield they are from the source material. (Given that apparently a condition of the sale of rights was sticking with canon in major points, I'm astounded at how very far afield some of this feels.)( Cut for length--no significant spoilers )

I'm feeling inspired to do a bit of a response to James Reynolds's interesting article on the potential queering of Middle-earth in Amazon's Rings of Power series. In a nutshell, he sees a number of ways in which Tolkien's work can be read as queer coded and, thus, a lot of potential for overt queerness that feels in reasonably keeping with the source material. I agree with some parts of his case and not others. Overall, I think Reynolds's reflections speak to a broader issue many of us are considering today: how to best adapt classic works. Thought I'd weigh in.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this as an informal spew from memory, so I got no citations, and please let me know if I'm misremembering text. I've tried to get the diacritical marks right on names, but I have not bothered to check them. Apologies if they're off.

To begin with, how to adapt a text isn't an easy question. It brings up several potentially conflicting interests:

* The original author's intent/values.
* What the original text depicts/how to read the original text (a literary critical question).
* What long-time fans value about the text.
* What changes need to be made if changing media (film has different needs than books).
* What changes might draw in new fans, speak to current issues and sensibilities.
* What responsibilities the adaptation has to address social justice issues the original may not.( Read more... )

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's birthday. We got donuts to celebrate in a truly hobbitish fashion. Beyond that, there hasn't been any time for Middle-earthy reflection, alas. It's the first week of teaching and going to back to F2F teaching at two schools with all the Covid protocols is hitting me like a tone of bricks. But the donuts are welcome. I may even have second donut in the true hobbitish fashion.

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day, belated! I did actually keep the day, but didn't have time (forgot) to do a post about it. (In general, I've been backing way off posting during COVID. I like DW best of all my internet presence, but the way the internet is structured today, it feels more like a black hole of time suck than real communication. Good article on it in The Atlantic. Reaffirmed my sense that, yes, the LJ days were the last hurrah of healthy internet community and the age of Tumblr, "like" buttons, "share" buttons, and social media destroyed it. Anyway...)

March 25 was my last day of spring break in California. I missed last March due to COVID, so it had been two years since I'd seen it in spring--longest gap in my life. My main hobbit-inspired adventure was a great trek of trespassing across the neighbors property to check the fire damage and recovery. It was the first time since I was ten that I walked down the neighbors' private road, quite prepared to be stopped for trespassing, but nobody stopped me. I think all three houses on the road are still under reconstruction, so people aren't really much around. Still, I'm not a bold trespasser, so it was very Tookish for me. It was my adventure, and that's about as much as I can tie it into Middle-earth.

Going back there is, frankly, traumatizing (in a mild way, and, yes, there is such a thing as mild trauma activation). I think I have impressionistically told people in the past we may have lost 40% of our trees. On the south-facing hillsides, it's more like 90%. Almost the whole south-facing hill looking down into the Napa Valley (our property and the neighbors') is completely denuded. It is a tree graveyard with black sticks standing up in the grass like headstones.

The manzanitas are coming back on one neighbor's land, which is nice to see. Everywhere else, they are still all gone. No new seedlings. Next to no oak seedlings. Every madrone I took note of has died (though madrone seedlings are springing up very fast). Drus is mostly dead now. Of its broccoli-looking live oak remains, half is reduced to bleached bones. Maxima is not quite as dead yet but plainly dying. There is not an inch of his trunk that is not rotting, the bark just peeling away.

Since the fire, of the trees immediately around our house, we have lost Senex, Frater, Phagos, the swing tree, the tree by the library, the tree by the circle bench, two trees by the carport, one of the hammock trees, and all but one of about ten planted Christmas trees. And we will soon lose Drus and Maxima. Of the living trees on the property in general, about a fourth are so damaged it's very hard to tell if they'll ultimately make it. The rest that are alive look fairly well recovered.

The squirrels are all gone. (We used to have three or four squirrels running around in Maxima at one time.) The deer seems to be flourishing. I saw the lovely sight of four or five racing breakneck across a hill opposite me. I saw one butterfly, other than the small white cabbage butterflies. A number of flower species were blooming but not profusely. The grass is pretty but rather sparse; you can tell it's been a dry year. The flowers that used to boom around May are now blooming at the end of March (ex. the blue-eyed grass, the Brodiaea). There were some buttercups and wild iris in the usual places. The hounds tongues were doing rather well, just going to seed.

I had thought I was noticing so many acorn woodpeckers in Glen Ellen because I'm not used to seeing many in Oregon, but I've come to realize they're flourishing because of all the dead wood. They have many acorns stuffed in Maxima, for example.

And that was my adventure.

It's that day again, and it has been a lovely September 22nd here in Portland, with minimal smoke in the air. Being at the beginning of an insanely busy fall term, I didn't have much time today for hobbitish reflections, but I did take a couple short walks in the lovely fall, and we ordered dinner in so we could have a proper hobbitish feast (from Shari's).

In the LotR-verse in my head, Frodo is 91 today. It never quite struck me before that that almost correlates with how long it's been since I was first aware of LotR: that would have been 40 years ago, so one year off. I didn't plan it that way. I've only been keeping yearly track since high school, but it's funny how that worked out!

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! Remember to think before you shoot—no, that's a different fictional holiday. Coronavirus has cancelled my annual March 25th bask in the California spring, so I thought I'd celebrate with a substantial essay online instead. This is also a red-letter year in the LotR-verse in my mind: the 40th anniversary of the War of the Ring. (I've been counting this in real years since approximately high school, which, no, was not 40 years ago. My imagination had already gotten about 15 years past the war.) Finally, being back in therapy, I have been grappling with Issues, and I'm going to use LotR to talk about them, sans personal details.

With Issues in mind, I want to talk about Frodo and the Ring and the nature of evil. This train of thought arises out of discussion with my therapist over my need to develop a more stable sense of self-identity, particularly surrounding my assessment of how good or bad a person I am. So let me lay that all over Frodo… (LotR spoilers follow, if you care.)( Read more... )

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's birthday once again! Christ, in the LotR-verse in my head, this year Frodo turns 94 if I'm adding right [Edit: adding wrong: it would be 90]. (Bilbo passed away some time ago.) For the first time in a while, I have actually had Middle-earth in my head around this time of year, and I've missed it.

The other day, the family watched the Rankin/Bass Hobbit, which I will adore till I die, based largely on how it is emblazoned into my neural pathways from repeated exposure at three. This time around I was watching it while stuffing folders for a work project, which means I actually saw very little and mostly listened. This strongly replicated my original experience of listening to it on record, years before we got it on video tape. It really increased my nostalgia. However, I now realize that part of the reason I had trouble understanding the poetry as a little kid is that John Huston reads it with no inflection whatsoever. Oh well, he still achieves the amazing feat of being a believable Gandalf despite an American accent. Good times.

A bit late in the day, but Happy Downfall of Sauron Day! I am in my home town in California, as I like to be on DS Day if I can be. It has been surprisingly rainy and a bit hectic as a trip, but I did get a nice hike in today. I don't have anything clever to say about LotR. I wish I had more time to think about it--or anything really besides climate change and trying to make a living.