NP Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 11:49 PM
Subject: Re: NP Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage


>
> ... I wish Rushdie, a noted controversialist, had been more precise about
> what those "echoes" he perceives actually are. Even with the coincidence
of
> the title, most critics and reviewers, and the vast majority of people
> seeing the movie, aren't making the connection between it and the
projected
> war on Iraq, or the book and World War Two. Which, respectively,
> respectfully, and in my opinion, is a good thing, and quite reasonable
too.
>


"a noted controversialist" - is this meant positive or negative (in
Rushdie's case)? As a postmodernist he's bound to deconstruct systems
relying on binary oppositions.

I must admit that when it comes to cultural artefacts I'm not so much
interested in "vast majority"-opinions but in the voices of people who, I
think, are worth listening too (like Rushdie). And I still prefer the
original text to any movie. When I read _TLOTR_ first I did not think for a
second that it could be a parable on WW-II, while I clearly noticed the
racist layer when I read it the last time. But I do not buy Shapiro's main
thesis that this has made its success.

If there's any such thing I think the major echo is that the (fictional)
Ring-War and the (real) Second World War were both just wars, the latter
even "the last just war" in Rushdie's opinion, which says a lot about his
opinion on all those wars that have happened since 1945  - including Korea,
Vietnam, the "Six-Days"-war, the Indian-Pakistan-wars, the Falkland-war, the
first Afghanistan war, the last Gulf-war, the Chechnya-war and the attack on
Afghanistan.

But the question of the morality of any possible war is an important topic.
If George Bush draws a line in the sand or puts some countries on an "axis
of evil" I am reminded on that "universe of moral absolutes" that Tolkien
had used.

"The Bush camp's interest in "evil" and "evildoers" (...)" finds "support in
some strange quarters (...) what one might call the New Evilism that is
busily painting the world in black and white. Oddly, opponents of the
proposed American attack on Iraq often look like mirror images of what they
hate. According to these opponents, western as well as Islamic, the United
States is the tyrant, the Dark Lord, and all its purposes are vile."

Like Rushdie I am critical about this kind of "good vs evil" reasoning
because it makes it so easy for people like Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein
simply to turn it upside down and convince millions of impoverished muslims
who's the hero and who's the evildoer while in reality things are far more
complicated. None of these people (I'd like to include Robert Mugabe and
some others too) has got Sauron's supernatural powers so they need this kind
of easy propaganda to keep their influence.

US troops violated Geneva convention
British officer shocked by treatment of prisoners as 'oriental cattle'
US troops guarding communist captives in the Korean War violated the Geneva
convention on treating prisoners of war and regarded them as "oriental
cattle", a confidential British report concluded.
Owen Bowcott, Friday January 3, 2003, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,867868,00.html

CIA accused of torture at Bagram base
Some captives handed to brutal foreign agencies
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Friday December 27, 2002, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,865302,00.html

- 'oriental cattle' is in my ears not very far from "orcish hordes", in any
case dehumanizing. Tolerance has always been Rushdie's topic and I think
what Rushdie mainly is talking about in his article is expressed in his
first sentence: "As the world prepares for war (...)" - when I look upon the
latest opinion polls I am shocked that 80% of the educated Germans believe
(and seem to accept it as kismet) that the war will come whereas this
decision should depend upon on an weapons inspectors report. Will it be
accepted because it's mostly 'oriental cattle' or "multiplied protozoa" that
will have to die?

I think Rushdie's conclusion is worth reading:

"Scorsese's film offers no such extreme moral contrasts. As knife goes up
against cleaver, club against skull, nativist against immigrant American,
Protestant against Catholic, "good" and "evil" seem almost irrelevant. This
is the amoral world of bare-knuckle power, a Darwinian cityscape in which
only the fittest will survive. And out of that world, Scorsese reminds us,
comes ours. (...) The truth looks more confused, more amorally Scorsesean.
(...) In short, we may be in for a gang war on a gigantic scale, and yet, as
in Scorsese's movie, that gang war, brutal, cynical, atavistic - a war in
which one man's hero is another's villain -may paradoxically succeed in
bringing a more modern world into being."

Otto

>
> on 5/1/03 5:07 AM, Otto at ottosell at yahoo.de wrote:
>
> >
> > Arms and the men and hobbits
> > From Middle Earth to New York and Washington, the morality of war is at
> > issue, says Salman Rushdie
> >
> > "The Two Towers - how fortunate for all concerned that this title was
not
> > ready for release 12 months ago, in the immediate aftermath of the fall
of
> > the World Trade Centre - follows Tolkien in creating a universe of moral
> > absolutes. Tolkien didn't like people calling his great work an allegory
of
> > the battle against Adolf Hitler, but the echoes of the second world war,
the
> > last just war, are everywhere."
> > http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,868100,00.html
>
>
> ... of course, on the other hand, I'm not sure who or what's attempting to
> twist the public imagination most (let alone why) ... Government,
Publisher,
> social and cultural context/s of production and reception, The film, "The
> Situation", Tolkien's Text, "the Media" (and the 'Star Wars'-"Ronnie
Raygun"
> comparison here is indeed an interesting one ... ), "democracy", the
> critical sensibility (notwithstanding Critical sensibility) itself? Or is
it
> "the public imagination" which moves political ideas and cultural
attitudes
> along in a line? Whichever, once someone puts some shit out there who
knows
> how quickly & into what shapes it may grow ....
>
> best
>
>
> >> ... and, like the journalist, I'd certainly be surprised and concerned
if
> >> anyone with any real influence or credibility started taking up _TLOTR_
as
> > a
> >> valid or reliable source for discussion (let alone action) re. (i.e.
> >> "'about'") the mooted war against Iraq.
> >>
> >> best
> >>
> >>
> >>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46263-2002Dec27.html
> >>>
> >>> Tolkien Picks Up A Few More Bits Of Cultural Baggage
> >>> By Chris Mooney
> >>> Washington Post
> >>> Sunday, December 29, 2002; Page B03
> >>
> >>> [...]
> >>> 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.
> >
> >


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