Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage

[pynchonoid]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46263-2002Dec27.html


Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage 

By Chris Mooney

Sunday, December 29, 2002; Page B03 

[...] For supporters of the war on terrorism and war
with Iraq, the relative moral clarity of its narrative
is one of the chief attractions of "The Lord of the
Rings." After all, in the conflict with al Qaeda or
Saddam Hussein, we Americans may indeed be pitted
against people who can justly be described as evil.
It's a topical connection that Peter Jackson, the
director of the cinematic version of J.R.R. Tolkien's
fantasy epic, seems to be inviting. In "The Two
Towers," Jackson improvises upon Tolkien's text by
introducing an orc suicide bomber at the battle of
Helm's Deep.

Yet an invitation to view the film in that context is
an invitation to criticism. As a commentary on
contemporary conflicts, Jackson's film has serious
limitations. The massacre of the orcs glosses over,
rather than explores, questions about the limits of
behavior in warfare. The orcs in Jackson's films are
too evil, too irredeemable. That makes killing them
too easy. The elf Legolas and the dwarf Gimli even
have a contest to see how many orcs they can
slaughter. The brutality of war becomes mere backdrop
to an inspirational adventure tale. 

In real life, we simply aren't going to encounter
baddies who would literally devour women and children
or cannibalize their own kind the way orcs do. And in
real life, it would be deeply troubling if Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told U.S. troops to show the
enemy "no mercy, for you will receive none," as the
human hero Aragorn tells his forces before battle in
"The Two Towers."

The analogy with the war on terrorism is hardly what
Tolkien had in mind when he wrote his novel more than
half a century ago. A veteran of World War I, Tolkien
once wrote that "by 1918 all but one of my close
friends were dead." For all the moral purpose of his
vision, there is also this constant drumbeat: "War is
hell." His shocking description of an enemy catapult
volley that rains severed heads in "The Return of the
King" arouses disgust toward all military forays --
even if, at times, war may ultimately turn out to be
the more humane alternative.

Readers have adapted Tolkien's trilogy to their own
present circumstances ever since it was first
published in the 1950s. The novel was written in part
during World War II, and many readers instantly saw it
as a commentary on that struggle. Its author, however,
was quick to point out that his own psyche had been
more deeply scarred by the battle against the Kaiser
than the battle against Hitler. Had he been trying to
allude to World War II, Tolkien wrote wryly, "The Ring
would have been seized and used against [the Dark
Lord] Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but
enslaved, and Barad-dûr [Sauron's fortress] would not
have been destroyed but occupied."

Later generations sought their own meanings in "The
Lord of the Rings." It was embraced as an
anti-nuclear, anti-industrialization or
pro-environment tract. According to the radical
Tolkien interpreter Patrick Curry, when Greenpeace
leader David McTaggart sailed his boat into a French
nuclear testing area in 1972, he wrote, "I have been
reading 'The Lord of the Rings.' I could not avoid
thinking about the parallels between our own little
fellowship and the long journey of the hobbits into
the volcano-haunted land of Mordor . . . . " 

In recent years, however, Tolkien has been as
influential with the right as with the left. When "The
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" hit
movie theaters just months after the World Trade
Center attacks, conservatives saw it as an allegory of
America's new struggle against terrorism. According to
former Boston Herald columnist Don Feder, Tolkien's
newfound popularity signified nothing less than a
"ringing affirmation of a moral universe" -- one in
which hobbits are like New York City firefighters and
Osama bin Laden bears more than a passing resemblance
to Tolkien's villainous Sauron.

This interpretation has triggered its own backlash.
Recently Viggo Mortensen, the actor who plays Aragorn
in Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" films, said on "The
Charlie Rose Show" that "I don't think that 'The Two
Towers' or Tolkien's writing or Peter's work or our
work has anything to do with the United States's
foreign ventures at this time." Mortensen was backed
up by Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo, and who added,
"People say it's a pro-war movie, too, which I also
have a problem with." 

Perhaps we should look more closely at Tolkien's own
text. For starters, consider the orcs, the foot
soldiers of evil. They're depicted in Jackson's film
as hopelessly savage beasts, but a passage from the
novel at least makes them more complex,
multidimensional characters. 

Near the end of "The Two Towers," Tolkien lets us
listen in on a lengthy conversation between two orcs
named Shagrat and Gorbag. The two will later have a
murderous falling out, but for a moment they're
probably as close as orcs come to being friends. The
passage is revealing. For one thing, the orcs complain
about their fear of the undead Ringwraiths in terms
very similar to the hobbits' own. ("Grrr! Those Nazgul
give me the creeps.") They also gripe about having to
work for the Dark Lord and his ilk; Gorbag notes that
"I'd like to try somewhere where there's none of 'em.
But the war's on now, and when that's over things may
be easier."

Most surprisingly of all, the orcs frown upon the
hobbit Sam's abandonment of his master Frodo, whom he
takes to be dead (actually Frodo is merely paralyzed).
"Just left him lying," says Gorbag. "Regular elvish
trick." In contrast, Gorbag suggests to Shagrat, "What
d'you say? -- if we get a chance, you and me'll slip
off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty
lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and
handy, and no big bosses." One can easily imagine a
similar conversation among lower-level al Qaeda
henchmen or Iraqi troops. If anything, the take-home
message here would seem to be that even one's most
bitter and murderous enemies can nevertheless act like
ordinary Joes sometimes.

If we're going to insist on interpreting Tolkien, we
should also consider what the curmudgeonly Oxford don
would have thought of today's United States. Tolkien
probably wouldn't have had much trouble with the
labeling of our al Qaeda enemies as "evildoers." They
are indeed totalitarian fanatics who have destroyed
the peace of the world and forced its "free peoples"
to respond. The analogy between bin Laden and Sauron
is not an empty one.

But at the same time, Tolkien would have been leery of
the immense power currently wielded by the United
States in international affairs. If he were alive and
scouring the Earth for the bearer of the Ring of
Power, he would need to look no further than George W.
Bush. That isn't meant as a criticism of Bush. Rather,
Tolkien simply believed that those possessing the most
power are the most vulnerable to corruption --
sometimes through deceptive appeals to their best
intentions. As the powerful wizard Gandalf explains to
Frodo, "The way of the Ring to my heart is by pity,
pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do
good. Do not tempt me!" Tolkien would have been
concerned by such a vast and technologically advanced
superpower as the United States.

When it comes to the current discussion over Iraq,
there's something in Tolkien for the pro-war side and
the anti-war side. There's also a case to be made for
simply rejecting Tolkien's suspicion of power and
fully embracing the United States's unique capacity to
do good on the world stage. But if we're going to use
"The Lord of the Rings" as a heuristic device to
debate the gravest matters of international politics,
we should remember: The enemy across the field from us
is definitely not a monstrous orc. And even orcs are
living creatures -- just not ones possessing rights
under the Geneva Conventions.

Chris Mooney is a freelance writer. He has read "The
Lord of the Rings" more times than he can count. 







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