Lord of the Rings The Tolkien Thread

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I guess we don't have a thread to discuss Tolkien and his works and influence and other fandom related things yet so... here we go.

And to start us off... what does His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman still think of Tolkien? 💩


Why of course he thinks Lord of the Rings is still shite... and misogynist as well!

Philip Pullman said:
I’d want to know why he lets women play such a small part in the story of the ring. There is absolutely no awareness of sexual power and mystery in the book. Children might as well be delivered by post. I think that, like many Englishmen of his generation, he was actually afraid of women and much preferred the company of men (no women among the Inklings). ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is a dead-end, in my opinion.

Sexual power and mystery? If only Samwise had some sort of sexual awakening... like he starts the saga by trimming the bushes outside of Rose's window... before moving onto trimming her bushes and scouring her Shire in the climax of the third book. Also apparently Eowyn and Faramir, Aragorn and Arwen... their romances were clearly so chaste and innocent that they didn't actually have children via sex but actually they sprouted from the ground like some manner of Dwarf.

As for women playing a small part in the saga, Yes I actually agree with him. I can't think of any female characters by name from the Lord of the Rings. NOT... A... SINGLE... ONE! 👆

To be fair to Pullman, a lot of the above article seems to be the Journalist, showing his evenhandedness, bringing up the generic, stale arguments against Tolkien (and CS Lewis) like how CS Lewis apparently loathes women and portrays them poorly based off an open ended two line statement made in one book (of the five or whatever books he actually wrote populated with all manner of female characters) but I digress.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Pullman, like all those of his ilk, is motivated purely by a seething hatred against Christianity. (They market this as "criticism of religion", but it's always Christianity that's targeted.) He hates Tolkien because Tolkien was capable of writing up a completely fictional world that was still completely infused with Catholic metaphysics, ethics, et cetera. To someone who is motived by hatred of Christianity, that's extremely dangerous, because it proves that those underlying things are indeed universal. Same with Lewis (although he wasn't as masterful as Tolkien, if you ask me).

There is this part in Return of the King where Sam lies, already exhausted and on the brink of utter collapse, amidst the lifeless rocks of Mordor. And then, through the choking sulphurous clouds, he catches a glimpse of a star, far above:

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

You can imagine, perhaps, why a Pullman would hate the very essence of that moment. For starters, it powerfully impresses upon us the reality that there are things beyond the purely material. And that those things are of greater worth than any crass materialist might hope to comprehend. One can see why a devoted materialist might be seething at that.

But it goes deeper still. The one who created that barren and ash-covered land, of course, is Sauron. And Sauron can't understand "high beauty" at all. Sauron is, explicitly, dedicated to order and rationality and progress and materialism. Sauron is, in short, the very archetype of the Pullman-esque crowd.

Of course Pullman and people like him hate The Lord of the Rings. It shows us beauty they cant understand and this enrages them. But what's more: it also shows us the devil, and he looks like them.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Tolkien tried to wrote about fall of Gondor - but he failed,becouse it must be pitiful.And becouse people would lost faith in their cyvilisation - mason-like elites worshipping Sauron,and mobs behaving as orks.
Just like our cyvilisation now.

P.S fun thing - i read at least two translations of russian writers where Sauron was good dude creating technology,and elves bad opressors.Apparently,soviet heritage is strong there.They must defend their Mordor.
 
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ATP

Well-known member
Its not about sex or wahmens, its a classic tale about a group of heros defeating evil.
That.But Tolkien created that as his "Mythology for England" ,becouse as english patriot he always feel pain that italians,greek and germans have bigger mythology.
Well,i am from Poland,and we have even less,but nobody wrote polish mythology.The same for other nations with poor mythologies.Apparently,Tolkien could be only one.
 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
That.But Tolkien created that as his "Mythology for England" ,becouse as english patriot he always feel pain that italians,greek and germans have bigger mythology.
Well,i am from Poland,and we have even less,but nobody wrote polish mythology.The same for other nations with poor mythologies.Apparently,Tolkien could be only one.

So what your saying is Poland needs its own iconic Fantasy author to create a Mythology for the Polish Nation, like some sort of Polkien?

I'll see myself out...
 

ATP

Well-known member
So what your saying is Poland needs its own iconic Fantasy author to create a Mythology for the Polish Nation, like some sort of Polkien?

I'll see myself out...
Yes.Many tried with stories about ancient Piasts,but it was never that.
And i think that all nation which do not have their own rich mythology need their own Tolkien.
 

AnimalNoodles

Well-known member
That.But Tolkien created that as his "Mythology for England" ,becouse as english patriot he always feel pain that italians,greek and germans have bigger mythology.
Well,i am from Poland,and we have even less,but nobody wrote polish mythology.The same for other nations with poor mythologies.Apparently,Tolkien could be only one.

Tolkien was very impressed with the Kalevala and it inspired him to create his mythos.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Tolkien was very impressed with the Kalevala and it inspired him to create his mythos.
Indeed.And considering,that Kalavela was probably partially made by man who gathered old songs,he could be considered Tolkien for Finns people before Tolkien wrote anything.
 

Typhonis

Well-known member
Here is a question about Tolkien. Is the armor, in the Hobbit and LOTR Chainmail or scale mail?
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
While we're talking about the 50 people on earth that can maintain a hate boner for Tolkien, what was Michael Moorcock's beef with him?
Was? "Is", I assume, since Moorcock is still alive. (Which is funny: he's already irrelevant, to the point most people think -- or at least speak about him as if -- he's already dead. Whereas Tolkien is still universally relevant...)

Anyway, Moorcock strongly dislikes Tolkien's traditionalist views, and especially the depiction of rural, country communities with old-fashioned social structures as a positive thing. Moorcock subscribes to the "modern = good, nostalgia for the past = bad" kind of view, so he detests the Shire. (And he's expressly proud of putting "modern" values in his own fantasy stuff.)

He also dislikes Lewis, and Heinlein, and -- as far as I can tell -- every writer who's not overtly left-wing/progressive. But to be fair, he only dislikes these authors politically. He liked Tolkien and Lewis as persons, for instance (having met both). And while his political criticism of Tolkien was basically "butthurt: the essay", his actual review of LotR was rather positive. (He hates the supposed politics, but has to admit the work is great.)
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I have no idea who this guy is or why I should care.
Moorcock is, to be sure, extremely influential in sci-fi and his writings have left a huge mark on roleplaying games and numerous fantasy works. He's not quite at Tolkien's level (I'm not sure anybody is) but he's probably in the lower top 10.

His most famous creation is Elric of Melniboné. Elric is... well imagine taking Conan the Barbarian and then reversing every single trait 100%. Elric is a frail, sickly albino who needs to take a big pile of drugs just to get out of the bed in the morning, and uses sorcery and summoned demons for most tasks. The only reason he gets anything done is because he has the magic sword Stormbringer to do the heavy lifting, oh but he has to constantly feed the sword human souls to keep it running, and he doesn't really get anything done even then due to his constant self-loathing and lack of confidence.

Basically Elric is the ur-self-destructive Goth. Though I rant a bit, honestly the books aren't bad at all so long as you realize you're looking at a doomed villain protagonist and deconstruction of heroic fantasy. I wouldn't see them as special today but when they were written this was very new and different from what had come before and Moorcock does deserve some respect for what he did.
 

f1onagher

Well-known member
Moorcock is, to be sure, extremely influential in sci-fi and his writings have left a huge mark on roleplaying games and numerous fantasy works. He's not quite at Tolkien's level (I'm not sure anybody is) but he's probably in the lower top 10.

His most famous creation is Elric of Melniboné. Elric is... well imagine taking Conan the Barbarian and then reversing every single trait 100%. Elric is a frail, sickly albino who needs to take a big pile of drugs just to get out of the bed in the morning, and uses sorcery and summoned demons for most tasks. The only reason he gets anything done is because he has the magic sword Stormbringer to do the heavy lifting, oh but he has to constantly feed the sword human souls to keep it running, and he doesn't really get anything done even then due to his constant self-loathing and lack of confidence.

Basically Elric is the ur-self-destructive Goth. Though I rant a bit, honestly the books aren't bad at all so long as you realize you're looking at a doomed villain protagonist and deconstruction of heroic fantasy. I wouldn't see them as special today but when they were written this was very new and different from what had come before and Moorcock does deserve some respect for what he did.
From what I understand Elric was also an inspiration for the Witcher.
 

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