The Tolkien Society Does 2021
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Here’s the agenda for the Tolkien Society’s Summer Seminar 2021:
Saturday 3rd July
Time Speaker Paper (BST) (CEST) (EDT) 15:00 16:00 10:00 Cordeliah Logsdon Gondor in Transition: A Brief Introduction to Transgender Realities in The Lord of the Rings 15:30 16:30 10:30 Clare Moore The Problem of Pain: Portraying Physical Disability in the Fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien 16:00 17:00 11:00 V. Elizabeth King “The Burnt Hand Teaches Most About Fire”: Applying Traumatic Stress and Ecological Frameworks to Narratives of Displacement and Resettlement Across Cultures in Tolkien’s Middle-earth 16:30 17:30 11:30 Sara Brown The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack’ 17:00 18:00 12:00 BREAK 17:30 18:30 12:30 Sultana Raza Projecting Indian Myths, Culture and History onto Tolkien’s Worlds 18:00 19:00 13:00 Nicholas Birns The Lossoth: Indigeneity, Identity, and Antiracism 18:30 19:30 13:30 Kristine Larsen The Problematic Perimeters of Elrond Half-elven and Ronald English-Catholic 19:00 20:00 14:00 Cami Agan Hearkening to the Other: Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth 19:30 20:30 14:30 CLOSING COMMENTS Sunday 4th July
Time Speaker Paper (BST) (CEST) (EDT) 15:00 16:00 10:00 Christopher Vaccaro Pardoning Saruman?: The Queer in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 15:30 16:30 10:30 Sonali Chunodkar Desire of the Ring: An Indian Academic’s Adventures in her Quest for the Perilous Realm 16:00 17:00 11:00 Robin Reid Queer Atheists, Agnostics, and Animists, Oh, My! 16:30 17:30 11:30 Joel Merriner Hidden Visions: Iconographies of Alterity in Soviet Bloc Illustrations for The Lord of the Rings 17:00 18:00 12:00 BREAK 17:30 18:30 12:30 Eric Reinders Questions of Caste in The Lord of the Rings and its Multiple Chinese Translations 18:00 19:00 13:00 Dawn Walls-Thumma Stars Less Strange: An Analysis of Fanfiction and Representation within the Tolkien Fan Community 18:30 19:30 13:30 Danna Petersen-Deeprose “Something Mighty Queer”: Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien 19:00 20:00 14:00 Martha Celis-Menzoda Translation as a means of representation and diversity in Tolkien’s scholarship and fandom 19:30 20:30 14:30 CLOSING COMMENTS
I disavow the alt rohirrim and Elvish supremacism pic.twitter.com/nL0K1HjRd8
— Officer Frenly 20cm IQ 88 (@frenlybar) June 16, 2021
Seriously, Tolkien fought for four months in the Battle of the Somme against the nation that created the almighty work of art that is The Ring Cycle. Lord of the Rings is a Northern European tragic epic inspired by the self-destructiveness of Northern Europeans in the Great War.
Follow @steve_sailer
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Razib Khan was kinda getting all woke about Tokien three or four years ago:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/10/11/can-we-make-tolkien-woke/
I see womyn & queers, but not BIPOC.
This outrage must not stand.
This will be a particularly joyless affair. But as its being broadcast on YouTube, we’ll be able to see how popular it is.
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/10/11/can-we-make-tolkien-woke/Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Twinkie
Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme against the nation responsible for The Ring Cycle. “Lord of the Rings” is a Northern European tragic epic inspired by the self-destructiveness of Northern Europeans in the Great War.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/lord-of-the-rings-catholic-workReplies: @Dnought
There are clear echoes of the Cold War in his writing too. Dark forces out of the East, the need for a motley band of different peoples to band together against evil.
Tolkien hated straight up and heavy handed allegories—he complained about C. S. Lewis more than once on this matter—but certainly he was a master at painting a scene that invoked many historical themes for his readers.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @TWS
If you want to know what Tolkien thought about the Great War, just look at the Dead Marshes, filled with corpses from an ancient LOTR battle. The Great War directly inspired that part of LOTR history.
It's worth noting that LOTR started out as another child's book like the Hobbit. But LOTR radically changed as it progressed. The start of World War 2 is what created this change in LOTR's narrative. Tolkien needed the example and reality of the World War 2 to give him the idea of Mordor and the orcs. The Shire is pre-World War 1 England, and the takeover of it by Saruman at the end of LOTR is directly influenced by Tolkien's fear of Oswald Moseley's Blackshirt movement in England.
If England had stayed frozen in pre-WW 1 time, LOTR would have been a work in which the battles would have paralleled England's multiple little 1800s wars, such as the Boer War, or the fights in Africa or India. Gondor would still have been a strong empire, aka the British Empire at its height, fighting laughable little insurgencies at its borders, not a fallen ruin of itself like the 20th-century British Empire, which was Tolkien's inspiration for Gondor. All you have to do is dig a bit, and you'll see parallel after parallel.Replies: @MajorSeventh
The zeitgeist is an omnivore. When in doubt, go ask Gandalf.
I presume “Cami Agan?” represents the deaf community.
“Dawn Walls-Thumma” – any relation to the Walls of Gondor?
I would have though that Tolkien was a white male happy to be a white male. While I bought the boxed set of paperbacks of the Lord of the Rings in my youth, I never read them.
Unless I am wrong, it looks like while he was not interested in Diversity, Diversity is interested in him.
I was quite surprised to see these Zoom sessions are all free. So at least no one will be out any money over this.
Otherwise, Tolkien's work had a diverse cast of characters and peoples that offered up many cautionary tales about such coexisting.
2. Death is no defense.
My favorite Tolkien work is The Silmarillion; apart from its literary qualities it is also a how to guide on world-building. Found within is a cornucopia of races and gods. And who do the orcs most resemble?
No thanks; I’d rather re-read The Gulag Archipelago and prepare myself for The Great Reset.
Just in time for the black-packed Amazon series
https://youtu.be/-r4A9dVwIj
Attention non-Northern Europeans- This isn’t your story. Try to write epic fantasy in your own styles that doesn’t suck.
If you can’t, don’t complain about White Supremacy.
If Tolkien could see this now do you think he might have regretted the Germans losing WWI and II?
Dear God, please let this be a parody!
Cancel the conference!
This outrage must not stand.
My favorite: “The Invisible Other: Tolkien’s Dwarf-Women and the ‘Feminine Lack’”
I’d like to read the excerpt of this one, at least. Beats all the queer talk.
JRRT was probably being gentlemanly - how do you describe a female dwarf, or indeed a female hobbit? He lavished descriptives on Goldberry, Galadriel, Eowyn, Arwen, but few on Rosie Cotton.
The ones that sounded like they could be interesting to me, which Steve didn't cite, were looking at things like how the Soviets and Red Chinese chose to translate and illustrate these novels. Those ones were, of course, among the very few to be presented by white males, and among the few that seem like they involved actual research and not just emoting over their own personal intersectional experiences.Replies: @photondancer
you can find the abstract. So here you go ; )Replies: @James Forrestal
OT: Someone wrote something for the sole purpose of baiting iSteve
https://www.jweekly.com/2021/06/15/stanford-therapists-allege-hostile-climate-for-jews-in-the-workplace/
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/10/11/can-we-make-tolkien-woke/Replies: @Steve Sailer, @Twinkie
Nothing in Khan’s analysis is woke. His point wasn’t so much to criticize Tolkien as to point out how silly it is to attack him today for holding a view that was common in his day.
Who knew Indians were into Lord of the Rings? Not I, for one. Maybe it’s the oliphaunts.
The dispiriting agenda reminds me so much of the crap I saw at university that they surely must all be academics. My guess is that a fair few people will initially dial in just to see if it’s a joke, then drop out if it’s for real.
Why not try the moral approach? Meaning racial loyalty and compassion for your own people? Which would allow us to visit the stars by the way.
It’s cliche to say about the woke now, but I really can’t tell if this is real or a massive troll.
These small-minded, one-note ninnies really do hate greatness. Ellsworth Toohey, call your office!
OT
The most likely cause of violence targeting Jews in the near future is BlackRock eliminating home ownership so that they can raise rent every year and eventually every quarter. A BlackRock executive has said in his own unforced in context words that this is their plan. Annual rent increases. In fact, even if no one sees the stereotypical resemblance in BlackRock’s plan to be a monopolist national slumlord, violence against Jews is still a sure thing, because some of BlackRock’s renters will be Jewish and some of them will be evicted when they cannot pay 35% rent increases.
Our government is still looking for the Phantom Nazis and betting everything on censorship in the internet age. Good luck, we’re all counting on living in a Zucker comedy.
http://dissident-mag.com/2021/06/14/blackrock-is-waging-war-on-american-home-buyers/
I don’t know much about the biographical Tolkien, but he must have been an interesting man.
There are 2 realms in Middle Earth, the “seen” and the “unseen”. “The ring” places you in the “unseen”; which is deeply corrupting for most people. I don’t really understand the extremity of it, but this is what happens.
Elves, who come across as angelic, exist in both the “seen” and “unseen”, due to having looked at the light of “the two trees of Valinor”. These are conceptually the same as “the eye of Horus” and “the eye of Ra”.
The concepts involved, are universal across mythological systems, even though the language was best designed to communicate with a Northern European audience. Odin also sees differently with each eye, outwardly and inwardly, seen and unseen, naturally and supernaturally.
I don’t think you can write like Tolkien did, without having some direct experience of these phenomena. There’s too much detail and viscerality.
I am happy that these people are engaging with a literature that contends with things this deep. It may help them to understand themselves. I am less happy that many of them, seem to see it, as just yet another medium, through which to push their little egotisms.
The reason we need to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. is because…
The people who wrote this need to be working on the line, with their hands, and never get the opportunity to speak…because when they do…it’s just crap
This is why farm work/manual labor/craftsmanship is so important…it grounds the idiots.
[The hobbits were craftsman, the elves builders of beautiful cities…these conference people are so work-shy with their hands they miss the entire point…it’s all mental masturbation]
4chan has had a lot of problematic fun with the Lord of the Rings. A google image search for ‘orcposting’ wastes much of my time in rueful pleasure.
Fucking hell ! I thought it was a joke .
If Tolkien is now a white supremacist and J.K. Rowling a transphobe, I guess the woke kids are stuck with re-reading “When daddy became mommy: the curious case of the vanishing penis”.
The Woke globalists are taking over the Tolkien Society, taking over the Southern Baptist Convention, and taking over the Mormon Church – which just donated millions to refugee resettlement, the NAACP and the United Negro College Fund.
I tried posting comments on the latter issues at the Mormon Church-owned newspaper website, but my entirely inoffensive comments were blocked. The Mormon Church stifles as much criticism of its policies as it can get away with. The few critical comments that the website did let slip through have by far the most “likes” of all the posts they have allowed, suggesting that the censors blocked a boatload of critical comments.
I have never advocated defeatism, but the War for Western Civilization seems pretty dire at this point. Perhaps that’s something a veteran of the Great War, like Tolkien, would have understood.
However that doesn’t mean Western Civilization is extinct. There are still millions of us who refuse to abandon it. In Roman mythology the Trojans led by Aeneas fled the fallen city and eventually founded Rome. The purpose of this movement is to preserve a core of our people and culture, build the consciousness of who we are and look for the opportunity to save it and rebuild. It is impossible to look into the future and predict how that will work out, but I have faith it will because of the qualities of our people and what we collectively accomplished in the past. A civilization that is so successful that even the people who hate it the most clamor to live in it is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @Old Prude, @tyrone
Societal maintenance is a difficult thing.
Most northerners and westerners have always assumed SBCs are a black branch of the Baptists. In fact many non Baptists assume the Baptist denomination is a black church. Led by lecherous charlatan rubble rousing black activists.
Odd how they make it extremely difficult to find the names of those on the board of the Society. No link. I had to go to Wikipedia to find the name of the chairman, which is Shaun Gunner. Searching for the name in Google, I found his page on the Society website. His page is only listed as a “contributor,” not chairman.
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/contributor/shaun-gunner/
“In his spare time he can be found playing video games and Lego, or on Twitter.” Go to his Twitter for the latest on Nintendo or Lego.
His Twitter name is @ShaunGunner. He is a cuckservative Tory, who wrote that Corbyn “has permitted racism in his party” during the election, and writes about “racism” against Pakistanis, etc. “Would anarchism fight racism and fascism?” Way to own them! By making their political axioms yours.
And he was anti-Trump, of course.
Shaun Gunner is also the chairman of “Mankind Charity”. The Twitter description says: “Therapeutic support for men affected by unwanted sexual experiences.”
‘. . . against the nation responsible for The Ring Cycle.’
Tolkien hated Wagner’s shallow and nihilistic misunderstanding of northern myth (including Germany’s own Nibelungenlied).
‘“Lord of the Rings” is . . . inspired by the self-destructiveness of Northern Europeans in the Great War.’
It has almost nothing to do with it. It’s much deeper than that.
As for the Tolkien Society, it should be called the Morgoth Society. ‘The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make . . .’
Of course it’s far deeper than that. But Steve’s not wrong. The deep includes the shallow and the mind itself has its own depths where buried balrogs lie.Replies: @Deogolwulf
Also, on what basis do you say that Wagner's understanding of myth was "shallow and nihilistic"?
Wagner had his own cultural message he wanted to transmit and he merely used the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga Saga as raw material to get his point across.Replies: @Deogolwulf
Just look at the breakdown of the presenters: 12 women, 4 men. At least one of the men (Christopher Vaccaro) is gay.
The conquest of academia by women and LGBTQs – at least the non-STEM parts of academia where a right answer isn’t necessary – is practically complete.
This.
Looks like they take themselves a little too seriously; ripe for some trolling: mandatory pre-seminar class: the need for lobotomy and aggressive psycho-pharmacological intervention for status posturing participants in the 2021 Tolkien Society summer seminar.
But it's worth stressing that this seminar isn't representative of the society's usual fare, which involves a lot of middle-class silliness and LARPing.
I had a nasty exchange with him at https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2021/04/13/verwoerds-revenge
I still support him on Patreon bc I know he’s funny sometimes, but still I don’t like this a bit:
He called me Nazi, blocked and deleted me for no good reason because of this:
Also note how casually this atheist throws around terms like "evil" and "sin". He doesn't believe in either of those things, but he finds them useful concepts for the manipulation of Christian Whites. What a typical subcontinental: a totally self-interested, full of shit liar.
It has long seemed to me that there are two Razibs: the intelligent and considerate blog post writer and the rude middle-brow troglodyte who writes the blog comments.
You two aren’t disagreeing on the facts.
Unless I am wrong, it looks like while he was not interested in Diversity, Diversity is interested in him.
I was quite surprised to see these Zoom sessions are all free. So at least no one will be out any money over this.Replies: @bomag, @Hangnail Hans, @SunBakedSuburb
Diversity today means YT giving stuff to other groups, so good for Tolkien.
Otherwise, Tolkien’s work had a diverse cast of characters and peoples that offered up many cautionary tales about such coexisting.
That sound you hear is Tolkien rolling over in his grave.
Tolkien always denied his work was an allegory. I don’t think we can simply conclude it was inspired by the Great War rather than the myths he has explicitly cited and were his normal object of study.
I also think the Hobbit was partially inspired by the Zionist resettlement (i.e., conquest) of Palestine between the wars. Tolkien was fairly explicit that Dwarfs stood in for Jews in his work, and the return to the land theme is unmistakable.
Silly but routine and efficient.
What minorities are so pissed about is not that we did bad things but that we did good things and they cannot claim to have had any real part. Complaining about the bad is just sour grapes.Replies: @Twinkie
Thanks for that. Very good.
Razib is strikingly tone deaf in wanting Whites to extinguish their ethnocentrism while allowing everyone else to put the petal to the metal in advocating a group identity. Lots of assumptions in there about Whites being a more capable people so they need to be shackled, while others can hint at genocide but we can let it slide because they don’t have the chops to immanentize that eschaton.
Tumblr won’t stop until all else is also Tumblr.
I look forward to seeing Raytheon having conferences with presentations about fanfiction involving sidewinder missiles.
Par for the course at academic conferences, but those who tout the wonders of our Top. Schools. and their rigorous teaching can’t be bothered to notice.
But they got fives on their APs!
It’s obviously and undeniably both.
Continuing to support him on Patreon is a very white thing to do.
I'm afraid he gave some dog whistles to the ptb (see, I'm bad, but not so bad). He thought his smarts and expertise would insulate him, he wrote about that, but, as he had mentioned earlier, when they came for his children in kindergarten with woke racist nonsense, that came as a major shock, so he lost his cool. When the crazies are after you, it's hard to resist, particularly, when you have a career to lose.
Not a total loss–I learned a new word: alterity.
I’ve always thought of Tolkien as a guy’s author. Grad students must need new fields to conquer, but they’ve apparently run out of fresh ideas.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/165081.The_Anxiety_of_Influence
Of course it’s far deeper than that. But Steve’s not wrong. The deep includes the shallow and the mind itself has its own depths where buried balrogs lie.
OT:
What languages do you speak, Sailer?
John Cena does press conference in Mandarin Chinese:
Brad Cooper does interview in France in French:
This is the one I’d rather attend:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6d/ef/df/6defdf25d962b27ae59d52750cbfecb7.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8e/96/f8/8e96f8255598a46b040ca2865b8a7bf2.jpghttps://www.theclassroombookshelf.com/files/2017/03/John-Ronalds-Dragons.jpg
But his work were an allegory!
This is the one I’d rather attend:
Yeah, sure, I believe that’s the real agenda. Suckers! That’s what they want you orcs to believe is the agenda, while the real Tolkien conference is being held in Middle Earth or somewhere in the darkest depths of Mordor … or some such thing… really, I read The Hobbit as assigned in High School, and that was enough of all that …
Were I an invited guest to this purported conference, I think I would just Ramble On…
the nation that created the almighty work of art that is The Ring Cycle
Nope: the operas weren’t written by a nation but by one individual. The Lord of the Rings wasn’t written by a nation either.
Similarly the US (largely) does not trade with China: rather, American companies trade with Chinese companies. The middle class does not oppress the working class: individuals may oppress other individuals, but a “class” is incapable of such action.
Such logical errors are best avoided.
In a “democracy” every race must compete with the others. Majority-White nations found poor but workable stop-gap solutions.
With White populations dwindling in their own lands, when the woke horseshit ends all will be crystal clear: Your skin is your uniform.
Unless I am wrong, it looks like while he was not interested in Diversity, Diversity is interested in him.
I was quite surprised to see these Zoom sessions are all free. So at least no one will be out any money over this.Replies: @bomag, @Hangnail Hans, @SunBakedSuburb
1. You can run but you can’t hide.
2. Death is no defense.
There seems to be a lot of overlap between people who live in these fantasy realms and sexual perverts. A pedophile ring consisted of mostly “hardcore Trekkies.” https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=395188
Game of Thrones author George RR Martin has also been attacked on these grounds, but he’s alive to defend himself.
Just for fun, you might enjoy this Epic Rap Battle between Martin and JRR Tolkien:
Yup. I still read Razib, but there is no doubt he is part of the global elite that are looking forward to a “post-racial” meritocratic future. Unsurprisingly, this came to be more prominent in h is personality since he had miscegenated children.
I agree. Tolkien explicitly stated his works were not about the great war. Unless we are scholars more serious than those at this conference, we shouldn’t ignore him.
This appears to be the best part of the day.
John O’Sullivan said in 1989, it states: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”
Reasonably safe posture assuming his experience in the Great War informed his writing.
I’d like to read the excerpt of this one, at least. Beats all the queer talk.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Wency, @res
Tolkein, at least in LOTR, only features female elves, humans and hobbits, though the Entwives are a ‘present absence’ and indeed a ‘feminine lack’. No female dwarves, but no female Orcs, Southrons or Easterlings either – to be fair, the last two are fighting troops.
JRRT was probably being gentlemanly – how do you describe a female dwarf, or indeed a female hobbit? He lavished descriptives on Goldberry, Galadriel, Eowyn, Arwen, but few on Rosie Cotton.
O/T but if I search “Steve sailer” using Google.ca I get your isteve site on unz way down on page three of results. Using the Brave browser your site on unz is number one.
It’s about what’s good for him, nothing more.
I tried posting comments on the latter issues at the Mormon Church-owned newspaper website, but my entirely inoffensive comments were blocked. The Mormon Church stifles as much criticism of its policies as it can get away with. The few critical comments that the website did let slip through have by far the most "likes" of all the posts they have allowed, suggesting that the censors blocked a boatload of critical comments.
I have never advocated defeatism, but the War for Western Civilization seems pretty dire at this point. Perhaps that's something a veteran of the Great War, like Tolkien, would have understood.Replies: @Alfa158, @bomag, @Alden, @Morris Applebaum IV
There might appear to be a War for Western Civilization being fought, but that is only because we hear shooting. In reality the war is already over and the gunshots we hear are not from battle, but from the victors walking around the battlefield shooting the wounded, as in this example.
However that doesn’t mean Western Civilization is extinct. There are still millions of us who refuse to abandon it. In Roman mythology the Trojans led by Aeneas fled the fallen city and eventually founded Rome. The purpose of this movement is to preserve a core of our people and culture, build the consciousness of who we are and look for the opportunity to save it and rebuild. It is impossible to look into the future and predict how that will work out, but I have faith it will because of the qualities of our people and what we collectively accomplished in the past. A civilization that is so successful that even the people who hate it the most clamor to live in it is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.
Those who have been paying attention know the West is captive to a great evil; its systems and culture corrupt and putrid. Now is the time for myth-making -- tales and legends of the fallen civilization to enthrall and serve as messenger.
Laws? Where is the law that said homosexuals can marry? Where is the law that said Derek Chauvin should spend 40 years in jail for a crime he did not commit? Who killed Ashli Babbitt?
Elections? Ha. Is that what they call that farce from last November. Compromise? Let's not get really stupid. The only proper action at this point is to convince those who can be convinced, that our government, the media, academia - all of it - is corrupt and degenerate. White folks better start looking out for themselves, and quit looking for an election or a law to save their people.
Contribute to Vdare.
(this is not a paid advertisement)Replies: @Mike Tre
Once more Dutton has been validated.
Tolkien’s good deeds cannot atone for the unpardonable sin i.e., Middle Earth’s racial undertones.
From the UK Guardian in 2002.
Certain people are also paranoid about Nordic myths notably Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
I have read LoTR several times. For me, it's all about the importance of the individual. Even when enormous forces are in play, one person can make all the difference. That's presumably why the woke are gunning for it given that their theories are resolutely anti-individual.Replies: @Desiderius
Well, at least now you know where he really stands. His only real issue with “woke” politics is that they’re turning up the heat on the boiling frog. Careful, it might jump out!
Also note how casually this atheist throws around terms like “evil” and “sin”. He doesn’t believe in either of those things, but he finds them useful concepts for the manipulation of Christian Whites. What a typical subcontinental: a totally self-interested, full of shit liar.
Were I an invited guest to this purported conference, I think I would just Ramble On...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmIuTI4wRgReplies: @Pat Hannagan, @The Alarmist
I bet Cordeliah Logsdon’s the low hanging fruit desperate and praying to squeeze some workshop lemon.
Sultana Raza is no competition, just a dried up old roastie doing the literary seminar circuit hanging off the dreggs that hotties like the hyphenated Dawn Walls-Thumma and Danna Petersen-Deeprose leave in their wake, strung out waiting and hoping for her Moby Dick.
Meanwhile, Sonali Chunodkar is standing lonesome by the door, waiting for some ancient Aryan overlord to Bring it on Home.
.
.
No, not me, just sayin' ;-}
New America is a place where every organization is targeted for leftist institution-capture. This is happening to everything from schools to bird-watching organizations. Even the Southern Baptists are being infiltrated by wokeness. So to save institutions, we need to abandon them and let them die, and maybe a sane future generation can try it again. Unless someone absolutely has to be part of an organization for his livelihood, better to simply operate as independent individuals. If people try to make a go of their institution, change the bylaws so as to be explicitly anti-leftist and anti-woke. Make the advocacy of leftism and wokism grounds for immediate excommunication/dismissal.
I wonder if there is a similar treatment for Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck?
Trans-species identity crises in endangered anthropomorphic Leporidae.
Unless I am wrong, it looks like while he was not interested in Diversity, Diversity is interested in him.
I was quite surprised to see these Zoom sessions are all free. So at least no one will be out any money over this.Replies: @bomag, @Hangnail Hans, @SunBakedSuburb
“Diversity”
My favorite Tolkien work is The Silmarillion; apart from its literary qualities it is also a how to guide on world-building. Found within is a cornucopia of races and gods. And who do the orcs most resemble?
Just to be clear, that Tolkien stuff is a parody, right? Right? It must be a parody. Though, come to think about, Frodo never thinks about, or with, his you know what over the course of trilogy. You think about, or with, yours more often than that. Only reasonable conclusion is Frodo used to be Frodina. He was also mighty obsessed with a piece of jewelry…
Though I would love to give a very short lecture at that conference Transsexual Voices and Heterocispatriarchal Silencing in Middle Earth
“There are no transsexual themes in Tolkien. That’s what being erased by the culture and ailenced in the discourse mean.You can skip the rest of the talks, and start thinking about something else. Or maybe not think about Tolkien for a while? You must be thinking awfully hard about Tolkien to come up with this. Go outside or talk to some girls, maybe? No need to thank me, happy to help.”
The topics just the take the usual stupid leftist faddist angles that academics like to indulge in, only they’re applied Tolkien.
Most academic papers are garbage, because most academics today are emotionally stunted people who are silly in the way emotionally stunted people always are.
Being able to recognize the most important things in life is a white male trait, because white males are relentless rankers of important ideas. White males have an obsessive ranking habit when it comes to everything. Modern academia suffers from a serious lack of white male perspective.
Women and minorities keep focusing on stupid stuff. Back when higher-level academics were mostly white males, they did a better job of guiding PhD candidates towards more worthy topics. If you chose a subject that was really stupid, they were likely to let you know it.
They would deny junior professors tenure for being a intellectual lightweight and a jackass if they focused on topics that made the college look stupid to prospective students, because they understood that only top-tier professors make a college top-tier.
I’d like to read the excerpt of this one, at least. Beats all the queer talk.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Wency, @res
I imagine it’s just saying, “I, as a woman, feel unrepresented in these novels. Where are my female heroes? Don’t try to mansplain to me that Eowyn is enough.”
The ones that sounded like they could be interesting to me, which Steve didn’t cite, were looking at things like how the Soviets and Red Chinese chose to translate and illustrate these novels. Those ones were, of course, among the very few to be presented by white males, and among the few that seem like they involved actual research and not just emoting over their own personal intersectional experiences.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/10/illustrations-of-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-hobbit-from-the-soviet-union-1976.html
I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book. This art style is not particularly soviet though, I've seen similar in other European books from the 1970s. So that might actually be an interesting talk.Replies: @photondancer, @Desiderius
However that doesn’t mean Western Civilization is extinct. There are still millions of us who refuse to abandon it. In Roman mythology the Trojans led by Aeneas fled the fallen city and eventually founded Rome. The purpose of this movement is to preserve a core of our people and culture, build the consciousness of who we are and look for the opportunity to save it and rebuild. It is impossible to look into the future and predict how that will work out, but I have faith it will because of the qualities of our people and what we collectively accomplished in the past. A civilization that is so successful that even the people who hate it the most clamor to live in it is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @Old Prude, @tyrone
“A civilization … is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.”
Those who have been paying attention know the West is captive to a great evil; its systems and culture corrupt and putrid. Now is the time for myth-making — tales and legends of the fallen civilization to enthrall and serve as messenger.
Would this have happened if Christopher was still alive?
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/hobbit-takes-on-terezin/
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Jewish Great-Grandson Has A Play On Terezin
It's shoahtime!
Are there any negroes in the Tolkein Society? Have there ever been any negroes in the Tolkein Society?
This is like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir director telling them they have to do diversity training instead of practice this week. (I bet that probably also has happened. Which does not mean it is not max max dumb.)
By the way Tolkein was racist as f___. The Orcs were negroes. And they were cannibals. Most people know this when they are fifteen years old who know how to read. Also Tolkein’s books are not that great and the three gay hobbits in bed at the end of the Return of the King is the most hilarious Tolkein thing I ever saw though I recall I was the only guy in the theater laughing my ass off.
Way off topic. But perhaps Steve could incorporate this into his “World War Hair Series”.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/lifestylegeneral/how-i-finally-learned-to-love-my-bigger-lips-as-a-black-woman/ar-AAL4Gbe?li=AAggFp5
Nothing will be left to us. All that we have, they intend to take away.
That’s pathetic. What a thin skinned loser he is
Of course it’s far deeper than that. But Steve’s not wrong. The deep includes the shallow and the mind itself has its own depths where buried balrogs lie.Replies: @Deogolwulf
But why mention the Great War? Other than Tolkien’s experience of it, and thereby his personal experience of the mechanised masses, it is no more relevant to the LOTR than any other modern war. He wasn’t doing allegory or drawing any parallels with the modern world.
Possibly true but more than a few have suspected that Tolkien’s Orcs were an allegorical take on Turks, the mortal threat to Christian Europe throughout the late Middle Ages up to their defeat at Vienna in 1683. In an age where warring parties were barbaric in the extreme, the Turks reputation for barbarism exceeded all others.
That reply of yours was remarkably cogent and measured.
It has long seemed to me that there are two Razibs: the intelligent and considerate blog post writer and the rude middle-brow troglodyte who writes the blog comments.
I’d like to read the excerpt of this one, at least. Beats all the queer talk.Replies: @YetAnotherAnon, @Wency, @res
It was apparently also presented in 2017. I have been unable to find the paper, but if you follow the “IMC 2017 Session Link” at the bottom of http://dimitrafimi.com/2016/11/30/tolkien-sessions-at-imc-leeds-july-2017/
you can find the abstract. So here you go ; )
So will they be going on EWTN to debate the author who says Tolkien’s work is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work?
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/lord-of-the-rings-catholic-work
In my experience Razib does not deal well with reasoned disagreement which he is unable to answer (perhaps only for topics which are hot buttons for him though?). He spiked a comment of mine once which was mostly a link to WHO statistics during a vaccination conversation.
I tried posting comments on the latter issues at the Mormon Church-owned newspaper website, but my entirely inoffensive comments were blocked. The Mormon Church stifles as much criticism of its policies as it can get away with. The few critical comments that the website did let slip through have by far the most "likes" of all the posts they have allowed, suggesting that the censors blocked a boatload of critical comments.
I have never advocated defeatism, but the War for Western Civilization seems pretty dire at this point. Perhaps that's something a veteran of the Great War, like Tolkien, would have understood.Replies: @Alfa158, @bomag, @Alden, @Morris Applebaum IV
This is not so much a war as the societal rats, cockroaches, and mold spores are spreading at an uncomfortable rate.
Societal maintenance is a difficult thing.
Right, and Tolkien is famously against allegory:
Yet at other times he he wrote:
and
The First World War was the first modern war with soulless monsters of giant shells, rains of fire, waves of screeching roaring storms of steel -which the Germans called ‘Feuerwalze-, ‘steamroller of fire’, poisonous miasma and masses of death. Tolkien experienced it, went through the dark abyss of battle as has never been seen before. I don’t see your point by separating Tolkien’s writing from his experience and the imagery of conflict in The Lord of the Ring does indeed bring to mind ragnarok.
That’s a good insight. I would imagine anyone who fought in the Great War would be shaped by it the rest of their lives.
There are clear echoes of the Cold War in his writing too. Dark forces out of the East, the need for a motley band of different peoples to band together against evil.
Tolkien hated straight up and heavy handed allegories—he complained about C. S. Lewis more than once on this matter—but certainly he was a master at painting a scene that invoked many historical themes for his readers.
However that doesn’t mean Western Civilization is extinct. There are still millions of us who refuse to abandon it. In Roman mythology the Trojans led by Aeneas fled the fallen city and eventually founded Rome. The purpose of this movement is to preserve a core of our people and culture, build the consciousness of who we are and look for the opportunity to save it and rebuild. It is impossible to look into the future and predict how that will work out, but I have faith it will because of the qualities of our people and what we collectively accomplished in the past. A civilization that is so successful that even the people who hate it the most clamor to live in it is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @Old Prude, @tyrone
It is hard to let go of the system which built and sustained our civilization: Elections, laws, compromise. But its already gone. What remains is just as sham to keep us from looking to what comes next.
Laws? Where is the law that said homosexuals can marry? Where is the law that said Derek Chauvin should spend 40 years in jail for a crime he did not commit? Who killed Ashli Babbitt?
Elections? Ha. Is that what they call that farce from last November. Compromise? Let’s not get really stupid. The only proper action at this point is to convince those who can be convinced, that our government, the media, academia – all of it – is corrupt and degenerate. White folks better start looking out for themselves, and quit looking for an election or a law to save their people.
Contribute to Vdare.
(this is not a paid advertisement)
The least compromising person in the world is an adult female with the illusion of power. Customer service positions in retail and food service is dominated by females. It’s never been worse.
I wouldn’t read too much into this. It is what academics always do.
There is little market for serious, long-form criticism done in a spirit of simple objectivity, so scholars jazz things up a bit by using the prestige of a great name or a great work of art as a pretext to talk about their own hobbyhorses, even though there is no real connection between the two. If they remain fashionable and au courant, it increases their chances of getting invited to the next seminar or the next talk show. Publish or perish.
This is certainly disappointing, but then again it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise.
Check out this guy.
This is the type of immigrant that we need.
It is just a long winded fairy-tale for cripes-sake—most people read it when they are in Jr High School–I know I did
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362112.Tolkien_On_Fairy_stories
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/58418323-tolkien-on-fairy-stories
Granted, Tolkien created a problem for himself by starting out with a children's book (albeit a sophisticated one) in the Hobbit and then using that as the point of departure for LoTR and Silmarillion which obscures the Christian and Spenglerian dimensions of the latter.
The conquest of academia by women and LGBTQs - at least the non-STEM parts of academia where a right answer isn't necessary - is practically complete.Replies: @Desiderius, @James Forrestal
My STEM alumni magazine is close to 100% LGBTQ/women with the occasional Biden leering over the harem he’s constructed.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/lord-of-the-rings-catholic-workReplies: @Dnought
Impossible to believe a Trad Catholic like Tolkien would have approved of all this, but I guess it’s belaboring the obvious to note that Woke makes its own rules.
The man was ahead of you by nearly a century. You look down, blindly, upon the very roots which sustain you.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1362112.Tolkien_On_Fairy_stories
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/58418323-tolkien-on-fairy-stories
There are 2 realms in Middle Earth, the "seen" and the "unseen". "The ring" places you in the "unseen"; which is deeply corrupting for most people. I don't really understand the extremity of it, but this is what happens.
Elves, who come across as angelic, exist in both the "seen" and "unseen", due to having looked at the light of "the two trees of Valinor". These are conceptually the same as "the eye of Horus" and "the eye of Ra".
The concepts involved, are universal across mythological systems, even though the language was best designed to communicate with a Northern European audience. Odin also sees differently with each eye, outwardly and inwardly, seen and unseen, naturally and supernaturally.
I don't think you can write like Tolkien did, without having some direct experience of these phenomena. There's too much detail and viscerality.
I am happy that these people are engaging with a literature that contends with things this deep. It may help them to understand themselves. I am less happy that many of them, seem to see it, as just yet another medium, through which to push their little egotisms.Replies: @Triteleia Laxa
Why is this comment moderated out?
I tried posting comments on the latter issues at the Mormon Church-owned newspaper website, but my entirely inoffensive comments were blocked. The Mormon Church stifles as much criticism of its policies as it can get away with. The few critical comments that the website did let slip through have by far the most "likes" of all the posts they have allowed, suggesting that the censors blocked a boatload of critical comments.
I have never advocated defeatism, but the War for Western Civilization seems pretty dire at this point. Perhaps that's something a veteran of the Great War, like Tolkien, would have understood.Replies: @Alfa158, @bomag, @Alden, @Morris Applebaum IV
Local newspaper has a 1/3 of the front page story about this year’s SB’s convention. Big picture of a black preacher. Story seems to be about how he is leading the SBC to racial harmony and woke ness.
Most northerners and westerners have always assumed SBCs are a black branch of the Baptists. In fact many non Baptists assume the Baptist denomination is a black church. Led by lecherous charlatan rubble rousing black activists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=911NWb4R3Hc
This is the type of immigrant that we need.Replies: @Desiderius
Well yes. Any Star Wars fan could have told you that “Trekkies” are a bunch of perverted deviants. It’s hardly news. (And don’t get me started on those Dr. Who weirdos…)
So…
It’s all been very expensive, but at least the entertainment value is increasing.
OT: Flight from white, Jewish edition.
Jewish health staffers at Stanford University are suing over this DEI racket that has descended upon their town. Seems that they don’t have a problem with DEI itself but are peeved that there is no specific Jewish affinity group in the DEI sorting for 30 second hates. They can’t fully express their “lived experience”/feelings/fears/anxieties/resentments being lumped together with whites.
Watch out what you wish for. On the Serengeti it is the gazelle or warthog that is separated from the pack that is first slaughtered and devoured.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/06/16/eeoc-complaint-against-stanford-alleges-dei-program-created-hostile-environment
It is amazing how the left spent so many years training white people to think non-racially, only to jump on this “identity” stuff which could have been tailor-made by Nazis to raise white racial consciousness. Is anyone in charge over there?
However that doesn’t mean Western Civilization is extinct. There are still millions of us who refuse to abandon it. In Roman mythology the Trojans led by Aeneas fled the fallen city and eventually founded Rome. The purpose of this movement is to preserve a core of our people and culture, build the consciousness of who we are and look for the opportunity to save it and rebuild. It is impossible to look into the future and predict how that will work out, but I have faith it will because of the qualities of our people and what we collectively accomplished in the past. A civilization that is so successful that even the people who hate it the most clamor to live in it is going to make a comeback somewhere and sometime.Replies: @SunBakedSuburb, @Old Prude, @tyrone
Right,….and don’t underestimate the ability of these ass-clowns to drive the country over a cliff ….in fact it’s pretty much guaranteed…….boning up on survival skills might be in order.
Seriously, Tolkien fought for four months in the Battle of the Somme against the nation that created the almighty work of art that is The Ring Cycle. Lord of the Rings is a Northern European tragic epic inspired by the self-destructiveness of Northern Europeans in the Great War.
The ideas and story seem lifted from Germanic mythology.
By ‘self-destructiveness’, was Tolkien laying the blame on the British and the Germans or only on the Germans? At any rate, was the Great War primarily a Northern European war, or did it become that way with entry of UK and finally US?
It began with Germans allied with the Turks against France(Latin nation) and Russia(Slavic nation). Germany is ‘racially’ Northern European but its some of it is geographically Central European(abutting Eastern Europe), and Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed much of southeastern Europe. Prior to UK’s entry into the war, Germany was the only Northern European nation in the fight. UK could have stayed out of the war but entered and prolonged it. It wasn’t the Germans but the British who turned the Great War into a Northern European war as well. And the UK later lured in US led by people of Northern European stock, though English-Americans and German-Americans got along pretty well(despite some persecution of German-Americans, or was it because of it?).
Even if the Great War is seen as a war between Northern Europeans, England vs Germany, the British propaganda didn’t play on that angle: Brothers’ War. Rather, it featured Germans as alien and foreign. They were called the ‘Huns’, conjuring up nightmares of the tribal nomads who burst out of Central Asia. The fact that Germany was allied with the Turks was also played up. Even in the war among whites, the enemy whites were depicted as less-than-white or racially traitorous.
When Germany conquered France, Nazi propaganda featured French military as compromised with blacks and other non-French. It was common for all Europeans east of Russia to see Russians as more Asiatic than European. Germans in World War II played on UK and US being influenced by International Jews. UK and US fought back in kind by emphasizing Germany’s alliance with ‘Japs’.
Of course, nowadays Western nations emphatically point out how more wonderfully diverse their militaries are.
Nope: the operas weren't written by a nation but by one individual. The Lord of the Rings wasn't written by a nation either.
Similarly the US (largely) does not trade with China: rather, American companies trade with Chinese companies. The middle class does not oppress the working class: individuals may oppress other individuals, but a "class" is incapable of such action.
Such logical errors are best avoided.Replies: @tyrone, @The Alarmist
Such clear-headed thinking is going to get you in BIG trouble fellow.
Non-whites do not have a good creation myth as Americans. The story of Scots Irish clearing the land of Red Coats and Indians so they could settle here peacefully is a non-starter. Having white racists fighting and defeating other white racists to liberate the negros is no good either. Hispanics have some claim to the southwest but culturally they contributed nothing that really shaped the nation. Asians contributed nothing. The Jews got here after it was safe too. For these people history can only start after the 1960s.
What minorities are so pissed about is not that we did bad things but that we did good things and they cannot claim to have had any real part. Complaining about the bad is just sour grapes.
Though I would love to give a very short lecture at that conference Transsexual Voices and Heterocispatriarchal Silencing in Middle Earth
“There are no transsexual themes in Tolkien. That’s what being erased by the culture and ailenced in the discourse mean.You can skip the rest of the talks, and start thinking about something else. Or maybe not think about Tolkien for a while? You must be thinking awfully hard about Tolkien to come up with this. Go outside or talk to some girls, maybe? No need to thank me, happy to help.”Replies: @James Speaks
It’s the wokester version of the old western trope “Dance, pardner,” but now that I think about it, was that gay vague?
Wait til they get around to Star Wars.
1. Gay andro-orga love between Chewbacca and C-3PO.
2. Decoding the homoerotic messages of R2D2’s beeps.
3. Was Annakin Skywalker’s father black? Why else would he end up sounding like James Earl Jones?
4. How the Force can be used to transition Jabba the Hutt into Jabba the Slut.
5. Han Solo’s exaggerated masculinity to hide his 50 genders.
Yes, just like the historical series depicting Henry VIII’s jungle fever…
Nope: the operas weren't written by a nation but by one individual. The Lord of the Rings wasn't written by a nation either.
Similarly the US (largely) does not trade with China: rather, American companies trade with Chinese companies. The middle class does not oppress the working class: individuals may oppress other individuals, but a "class" is incapable of such action.
Such logical errors are best avoided.Replies: @tyrone, @The Alarmist
What if these are not logical errors; what if they are deeply held beliefs.
Were I an invited guest to this purported conference, I think I would just Ramble On...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmIuTI4wRgReplies: @Pat Hannagan, @The Alarmist
Funny how your comment falls immediately below one with an agenda where you are a featured speaker 😉
Yup.
There are clear echoes of the Cold War in his writing too. Dark forces out of the East, the need for a motley band of different peoples to band together against evil.
Tolkien hated straight up and heavy handed allegories—he complained about C. S. Lewis more than once on this matter—but certainly he was a master at painting a scene that invoked many historical themes for his readers.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @TWS
Tolkien was born in South Africa is the 1890s. He was not far removed from the Zulus with primitive iron weapons charging British Vickers machine guns and piling up like orcs at the dike at Helm’s Deep. To the natives, the English would have seemed to have had magic weapons like the elves. Or the Spanish Conquistadors who had steel swords and armor fighting Aztecs with wood clubs fortified with obsidian edges. It just was not a fair fight.
One of the differences between the movie LOTR and the book is that the book had a much greater emphasis on the superiority of the good over the bad. Every human could take on 10 orcs and an elf 50. In the movie, the orcs where not afraid of sunlight and they looked like football players rather than degenerates. Maybe that had something to do with political correctness or being filmed in a more diverse West. In the book, when orcs saw Aragon’s sword it hurt their eyes and the first thing they did was panic and run. If the blades made contact, the orc blade typically shattered.
Laws? Where is the law that said homosexuals can marry? Where is the law that said Derek Chauvin should spend 40 years in jail for a crime he did not commit? Who killed Ashli Babbitt?
Elections? Ha. Is that what they call that farce from last November. Compromise? Let's not get really stupid. The only proper action at this point is to convince those who can be convinced, that our government, the media, academia - all of it - is corrupt and degenerate. White folks better start looking out for themselves, and quit looking for an election or a law to save their people.
Contribute to Vdare.
(this is not a paid advertisement)Replies: @Mike Tre
People forget that western civilization was in part built by powerful high t alpha males who knew how to compromise.
The least compromising person in the world is an adult female with the illusion of power. Customer service positions in retail and food service is dominated by females. It’s never been worse.
Because that’s how writing works. Unavoidable.
Leave the Death of the Author to the orcs.
Evidently that's how modern reading works. It's a bad habit, to be avoided.Replies: @Desiderius
If it’s deeper than that, elaborate on what you mean…
The Catholic themes? Creating a mythos for Great Britain? Or something else?
As for Great Britain: Tolkien disliked it. His love was for England.
I understand the word “unwanted” and the words “sexual experience.” But put them together and it makes no sense 😉
‘Because that’s how writing works. Unavoidable.’
Evidently that’s how modern reading works. It’s a bad habit, to be avoided.
Pity the poor chairperson. He/she/they will have to sit/stay awake/appear interested through 8 hours of this mush. The speakers need only endure for half-an-hour.
But it’s worth stressing that this seminar isn’t representative of the society’s usual fare, which involves a lot of middle-class silliness and LARPing.
They didn’t want to be accused of tokenism.
Trans-species identity crises in endangered anthropomorphic Leporidae.Replies: @Radicalcenter
I really don’t want to see the new episode where the Coyote buys an Acme Sex-Change Kit.
Tom and Jerry - obviously gay
Huckleberry Hound - Has an epiphany, but unfortunately there is no 12 step group for unfunny cartoon dogs.
The Flintstones - Fred beats Wilma, there's an intervention, Wilma joins Barney and Betty Rubble in group sex.
Yogi Bear - Has an epiphany, realizes he's been running around naked from the necktie down since forever, also realizes he likes it.
Boo Boo says "I've known all along. Because, you know, I'm shorter than the average bear."Looney Tunes
Bugs Bunny - Obvious identity crises
Elmer Fudd - Reveals he doesn't like guns or hunting, confronts his feelings of inferiority, becomes spokes Fuddy-Duddy for Cartoon Characters Against Guns.
Daffy Duck - Borderline personality disorder
Porky Pig - Finally confronts his fetish to be eaten alive by adoring fans. Chaos ensues. Afterwards, the maître d' announces dessert and cordials in parlor by jumping through a circle and proclaiming, ""That's All Folks."
Sylvester - (Editor: I do not make jokes about Tuxedos)
Tweety - Flies too close to a praying mantis.
Wile E. Coyote - Buys an Acme Sex-Change Kit.
Road Runner - Comes out about his cocaine habit.
Foghorn Leghorn - Changes his name to Merrick Garland.(scroll down)
(scroll down)On second thought - Sylvester - "I though I saw Emmett Till."
I guess… Yet, 99% of his stuff is interesting, often helpful, so I give him his due. He means well but there are some serious personality flaws, he particularly can’t give in when he was wrong, though that’s something that happens to everyone who writes a lot, eventually. Also, I entered the fray with a somewhat less measured tone, bc I was pretty mad at him. As he deleted almost all of the thread, I can’t tell any more what I wrote. He knows my name, though, and it was clear he could reason with me. As I’m likely not all that smart as he is, that was probably beneath him.
I’m afraid he gave some dog whistles to the ptb (see, I’m bad, but not so bad). He thought his smarts and expertise would insulate him, he wrote about that, but, as he had mentioned earlier, when they came for his children in kindergarten with woke racist nonsense, that came as a major shock, so he lost his cool. When the crazies are after you, it’s hard to resist, particularly, when you have a career to lose.
Haha, very good!
Yes, this too
The fact that he leaps straight to mortal panic should impugn his judgment.
Why can’t you enjoy the meaningful overlap of imagination and reality (which proves similar dynamics in each), why should everything be a Red Ryder Weekly Secret Code Ovaltine ad with one meaning and one quick sketch in front of the meaning?
Translation: I can think of nothing interesting to say about Tolkien’s work or life, so I will speak about my favorite subject, myself. Don’t worry, mine will be a tale of auto-adversity largely overcome by fanatical self-promotion, so you can empathize with it, then both envy and admire me for creating it.
To anchor my talk in Tolkieniana I will tell you about my experiences as the Ringbearer, that is, about those times when my intersectionality (dark complexion, non-European religion, and reluctantly-deviant sexuality) makes me “invisible” to the
goblinspredatory cisheteronormative racist white people whose academic meetings I attend to spy on their evil plans. Just as the One Ring helped Bilbo and Frodo sneak past their enemies in Middle Earth but drove them into greed and paranoia, my self-proclaimed “erasure” by white supremacy helps me sneak around the halls of academia, but at the cost of my moral dignity.Even now, with the Arkenstone of an unmerited conference speaking invitation in my hand, I am beset by furies of shame and self-doubt. I must find the magic to transmute them into a mighty resentment, to give me strength for my struggles, whether against Lit profs who keep asking for analyses grounded in the texts, or against memories of my mother scouring my face with lemon juice or powdering it with chickpea flour.
you can find the abstract. So here you go ; )Replies: @James Forrestal
And how tall is Sara Brown?
https://signumuniversity.org/directory/sara-brown/
For those who can't get enough of this sort of thing, she has taught multiple 12 week classes on Tolkien. Perhaps you can find recordings ; )
They offer an MA in Tolkien Studies and she is one of the six lecturers.
https://signumuniversity.com/departments/language-literature/tolkien-studies/index.html
Tolkien was just one of those guys who are not inclined to dig deep into his own psyche and face what’s there. Of course LOTR was influenced by events in the outside world. No writer can fight his environment and influences. The Great War was traumatic for him. If the Great War and World War 2 had never happened, Tolkien would never have written the Lord of the Rings. It would not have occurred to him to portray a world like that.
If you want to know what Tolkien thought about the Great War, just look at the Dead Marshes, filled with corpses from an ancient LOTR battle. The Great War directly inspired that part of LOTR history.
It’s worth noting that LOTR started out as another child’s book like the Hobbit. But LOTR radically changed as it progressed. The start of World War 2 is what created this change in LOTR’s narrative. Tolkien needed the example and reality of the World War 2 to give him the idea of Mordor and the orcs. The Shire is pre-World War 1 England, and the takeover of it by Saruman at the end of LOTR is directly influenced by Tolkien’s fear of Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirt movement in England.
If England had stayed frozen in pre-WW 1 time, LOTR would have been a work in which the battles would have paralleled England’s multiple little 1800s wars, such as the Boer War, or the fights in Africa or India. Gondor would still have been a strong empire, aka the British Empire at its height, fighting laughable little insurgencies at its borders, not a fallen ruin of itself like the 20th-century British Empire, which was Tolkien’s inspiration for Gondor. All you have to do is dig a bit, and you’ll see parallel after parallel.
Well, let’s see: Christopher had a son named Simon, who married a woman named Tracy Steinberg, and, uh…
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/hobbit-takes-on-terezin/
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Jewish Great-Grandson Has A Play On Terezin
It’s shoahtime!
My bitter romance with craft beers is over.
The conquest of academia by women and LGBTQs - at least the non-STEM parts of academia where a right answer isn't necessary - is practically complete.Replies: @Desiderius, @James Forrestal
Though the February seminar had mostly female presenters as well, and it doesn’t look nearly as fake and ghey:
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/events/tolkien-society-seminar-2021-no-1/
The only one on that list that looks obviously bad from the title is “Talking Trauma with Tolkien in the 21st Century.” Seems like a major decline between then and now. Let’s see:
Summer Seminar: Tolkien and Diversity Call for Papers
While interest in the topic of diversity has steadily grown within Tolkien research, it is now receiving more critical attention than ever before. Spurred by recent interpretations of Tolkien’s creations and the cast list of the upcoming Amazon show The Lord of the Rings, it is crucial we discuss the theme of diversity in relation to Tolkien
It would appear that the summer seminar, unlike the previous one, is specifically focused on the perceived “need” to inject Tolkien with the poz.
Not bad.
Via Pinterest:
Note that if Tolkien had not been badly wounded at the Somme, and unable to return to combat, we likely would not have The Lord of the Rings…..Of Tolkien’s friends and members of his rugby team at Cambridge, only one survived the war…
The world wars–both of them–may well have had some inspirational role in LoTR. That is not the same thing as claiming it was an allegorical treatment of those wars.
I also think the Hobbit was partially inspired by the Zionist resettlement (i.e., conquest) of Palestine between the wars. Tolkien was fairly explicit that Dwarfs stood in for Jews in his work, and the return to the land theme is unmistakable.
I’ve never seen what Tolkien said about Wagner. Where can I find it? I always thought his statement that “The two rings are both round and that’s where the similarity ends” was all he had to say about that subject.
Also, on what basis do you say that Wagner’s understanding of myth was “shallow and nihilistic”?
Wagner had his own cultural message he wanted to transmit and he merely used the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga Saga as raw material to get his point across.
Well, I’m sure that’s all that some people can get out of it. Do you feel the same way about Beowulf? Morte D’Arthur? Etc, etc.
Granted, Tolkien created a problem for himself by starting out with a children’s book (albeit a sophisticated one) in the Hobbit and then using that as the point of departure for LoTR and Silmarillion which obscures the Christian and Spenglerian dimensions of the latter.
Lol, I think the Existential Comics guy is actually in earnest here rather than mocking Foucault et. al. Still useful for that purpose if you get Tolkien.
The false premise is the usual one of mistaking orcs for a race (they’re fallen Elves).
Tolkien replied with the argument you allude to here--Sauron somehow deformed captured elves.
But the fact is that this orc race reproduces uniformly evil creatures generation after generation so they are, in effect, an evil race. Manichaeism has always been a more psychologically appealing framing of evil than the sin-is-inside-us, evil-is-absence-of-good church teaching.
Whether orcs are used analogously to some group of human beings in our world, I don't know. Tolkien does do this. Dwarves are Jews. Southrons appear to be Arabs/Turks/Muslims. Easterlings are probably Asiatics. Perhaps Orcs are Mongols.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Desiderius
I tried posting comments on the latter issues at the Mormon Church-owned newspaper website, but my entirely inoffensive comments were blocked. The Mormon Church stifles as much criticism of its policies as it can get away with. The few critical comments that the website did let slip through have by far the most "likes" of all the posts they have allowed, suggesting that the censors blocked a boatload of critical comments.
I have never advocated defeatism, but the War for Western Civilization seems pretty dire at this point. Perhaps that's something a veteran of the Great War, like Tolkien, would have understood.Replies: @Alfa158, @bomag, @Alden, @Morris Applebaum IV
It’s hard to believe how much the Momorms have moved to the left in just 10-15 years. I used to think that they were a model for Western Civilization and that they would continue to grow and prosper. but now they’re well on the path to irrelevance. They’ll have some wealth and a Third World following of sorts, but they’re going the way of mainline religions.
Mormons are Puritans’ puritans. The New England variety just got kicked out of England. The Mormons got kicked all the way across the Continental US too.
Lol, I think the Existential Comics guy is actually in earnest here rather than mocking Foucault et. al. Still useful for that purpose if you get Tolkien.
The false premise is the usual one of mistaking orcs for a race (they’re fallen Elves).Replies: @Oscar Peterson
I know that W.H. Auden confronted Tolkien on the orc-race issues asking Tolkien whether it was not against church teaching to create a fictional race to whom salvation is seemingly denied.
Tolkien replied with the argument you allude to here–Sauron somehow deformed captured elves.
But the fact is that this orc race reproduces uniformly evil creatures generation after generation so they are, in effect, an evil race. Manichaeism has always been a more psychologically appealing framing of evil than the sin-is-inside-us, evil-is-absence-of-good church teaching.
Whether orcs are used analogously to some group of human beings in our world, I don’t know. Tolkien does do this. Dwarves are Jews. Southrons appear to be Arabs/Turks/Muslims. Easterlings are probably Asiatics. Perhaps Orcs are Mongols.
Evidently that's how modern reading works. It's a bad habit, to be avoided.Replies: @Desiderius
No in reading it’s one’s own experiences that are the unavoidable materials one uses to make meaning of the text. The purpose of literature is to connect the one with the other to knit the tapestry of our common culture.
I can see you fancy yourself a big Zeppelin fan, Mr. Hannagan, but get back to me after you’ve hung out with the band on their 707 and helped them throw TV sets out of hotel room windows.
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No, not me, just sayin’ ;-}
Haha! Hell of a coincidence. I hadn’t read through the thread. I’m supposed to be writing a Peak Stupidity (link HERE!) blog post this evening, dammit.
To anchor my talk in Tolkieniana I will tell you about my experiences as the Ringbearer, that is, about those times when my intersectionality (dark complexion, non-European religion, and reluctantly-deviant sexuality) makes me "invisible" to the
goblinspredatory cisheteronormative racist white people whose academic meetings I attend to spy on their evil plans. Just as the One Ring helped Bilbo and Frodo sneak past their enemies in Middle Earth but drove them into greed and paranoia, my self-proclaimed "erasure" by white supremacy helps me sneak around the halls of academia, but at the cost of my moral dignity.Even now, with the Arkenstone of an unmerited conference speaking invitation in my hand, I am beset by furies of shame and self-doubt. I must find the magic to transmute them into a mighty resentment, to give me strength for my struggles, whether against Lit profs who keep asking for analyses grounded in the texts, or against memories of my mother scouring my face with lemon juice or powdering it with chickpea flour.Replies: @Mitchell Porter
If you look her up, you’ll see that she’s actually from the Department of English at an Indian university. (The “Seminar” that all these people are attending is an online event.)
One effect of modern communications (and the large Indian upper-class diaspora) is that Indian academics eagerly imitate Western academics and participate promptly in their fads.
I really hadn’t read this till I read Alarmist’s reply to me, re: sick of Hobbit crap, but do like Led Zeppelin.
I am flattered, frankly, to have the evening slots, and readers should please note that mine will be the only presentation that will feature both Krispy Kreme doughnuts AND a chance to sign up for Peak Stupidity alerts.
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That was a nice job, Jon. Seriously, LOL!
There are clear echoes of the Cold War in his writing too. Dark forces out of the East, the need for a motley band of different peoples to band together against evil.
Tolkien hated straight up and heavy handed allegories—he complained about C. S. Lewis more than once on this matter—but certainly he was a master at painting a scene that invoked many historical themes for his readers.Replies: @Prof. Woland, @TWS
Dark forces out of the east are a clear harkening to lost Constantinople and Rome. Variags of Khand, Black Numenoreons, corsairs of Umbar, and the waves of hostile horse mounted heathen hordes from the east. All call back to the edges of the Western world.
This happens after the death of Christopher. Amazon dropped the real Tolkien consultant and art guys. They also have so many brown people, I’m wondering if they’re setting it in Harad..
Welcome to the post-Onion singularity world ; )
There’s opportunity in rewriting the awokening of Hannah-Barbera and Looney Toones.
Hannah-Barbera
Tom and Jerry – obviously gay
Huckleberry Hound – Has an epiphany, but unfortunately there is no 12 step group for unfunny cartoon dogs.
The Flintstones – Fred beats Wilma, there’s an intervention, Wilma joins Barney and Betty Rubble in group sex.
Yogi Bear – Has an epiphany, realizes he’s been running around naked from the necktie down since forever, also realizes he likes it.
Boo Boo says “I’ve known all along. Because, you know, I’m shorter than the average bear.”
Looney Tunes
Bugs Bunny – Obvious identity crises
Elmer Fudd – Reveals he doesn’t like guns or hunting, confronts his feelings of inferiority, becomes spokes Fuddy-Duddy for Cartoon Characters Against Guns.
Daffy Duck – Borderline personality disorder
Porky Pig – Finally confronts his fetish to be eaten alive by adoring fans. Chaos ensues. Afterwards, the maître d’ announces dessert and cordials in parlor by jumping through a circle and proclaiming, “”That’s All Folks.”
Sylvester – (Editor: I do not make jokes about Tuxedos)
Tweety – Flies too close to a praying mantis.
Wile E. Coyote – Buys an Acme Sex-Change Kit.
Road Runner – Comes out about his cocaine habit.
Foghorn Leghorn – Changes his name to Merrick Garland.
(scroll down)
(scroll down)
On second thought – Sylvester – “I though I saw Emmett Till.”
Don’t know. But seems like a reasonable inference. This link has a photo.
https://signumuniversity.org/directory/sara-brown/
For those who can’t get enough of this sort of thing, she has taught multiple 12 week classes on Tolkien. Perhaps you can find recordings ; )
They offer an MA in Tolkien Studies and she is one of the six lecturers.
https://signumuniversity.com/departments/language-literature/tolkien-studies/index.html
Tolkien– the Thinking Man’s J K Rowling.
L Rond Hobbit?
Stand by for Dwarvanetics and Sindarinology.
Tolkien wasn’t badly wounded; he caught trench fever that kept recurring. He was sent back to England to recover, but never got redeployed back to France. This was indeed fortunate, as it’s very likely he would have been killed or seriously wounded, like most members of his unit, if he’d been there.
Tolkien replied with the argument you allude to here--Sauron somehow deformed captured elves.
But the fact is that this orc race reproduces uniformly evil creatures generation after generation so they are, in effect, an evil race. Manichaeism has always been a more psychologically appealing framing of evil than the sin-is-inside-us, evil-is-absence-of-good church teaching.
Whether orcs are used analogously to some group of human beings in our world, I don't know. Tolkien does do this. Dwarves are Jews. Southrons appear to be Arabs/Turks/Muslims. Easterlings are probably Asiatics. Perhaps Orcs are Mongols.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Desiderius
So far as I have read, Tolkien never solved this problem. He offered various post facto theories about the origins and ultimate fate of the orcs, but didn’t ultimately settle definitively on any of them. It’s still a popular topic of debate for Tolkien fans.
Tolkien replied with the argument you allude to here--Sauron somehow deformed captured elves.
But the fact is that this orc race reproduces uniformly evil creatures generation after generation so they are, in effect, an evil race. Manichaeism has always been a more psychologically appealing framing of evil than the sin-is-inside-us, evil-is-absence-of-good church teaching.
Whether orcs are used analogously to some group of human beings in our world, I don't know. Tolkien does do this. Dwarves are Jews. Southrons appear to be Arabs/Turks/Muslims. Easterlings are probably Asiatics. Perhaps Orcs are Mongols.Replies: @The Last Real Calvinist, @Desiderius
It doesn’t reproduce, that’s the point.
Good creates. Evil can’t.
Dwarves aren’t Jews they’re not even created by Eru. You’re shoehorning Tolkien’s myth is into your own preconceived categories.
Don’t.
Given the work he put into creating this Semitic-like language, Tolkien’s comparison of Dwarves and Jews was obviously not made on the spur of the moment. In fact, he had made it years before, the first time in an unpublished letter of September 1947, quoted in The History of The Hobbit: "Now Dwarves have their secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country" (Rateliff 757). Eight years later, on December 8, 1955, he wrote to Naomi Mitchison: "I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their native tongue" (Letters 229).Replies: @Desiderius, @Deogolwulf
Movie handled it pretty well with Saruman making them out of mud. It’s not like we’re unfamiliar with gangs or movements or lifestyles perpetuating themselves through recruitment or means more nefarious rather than traditional organic reproduction.
Criminal and terrorist organizations may sustain themselves, but these are not useful analogies for orcs who are a far-flung, demographically robust racial grouping with a common physiology and culture. It's clear that orcs do reproduce, as Gollum, in The Hobbit, is described as catching, killing and eating young orcs/goblins ("imps").
The orc-race issue cannot be resolved with the kind of sophistic arguments you are trying to advance.
The Mormon-owned Salt Lake media properties – the Deseret News & KSL Radio – have had blatantly pro-illegal immigration editorial stances for as long as I can remember, going back at least to the beginning of the George W Bush Administration, when amnesty became a hot topic.
The Mormons used to be the largest sponsor of Boy Scout troops in the country, but that changed just a few years ago, when the Church abandoned the Scouts. A common ward service project of late is assisting refugee families, and the next edition of the hymnal is supposedly going to drop all of the patriotic tunes (as if they don’t or can’t produce different versions of the hymnal for every nation in where the Church operates). The Church seems to be in a furious effort to scrub any form of overt patriotism from its practices.
The Church’s top leadership consists of the prophet and 14 apostles. The most senior apostle becomes prophet when the existing one dies. The last two apostles named by the Church were both “diverse” – one Chinese, the other Brazilian.
One of the apostles, German immigrant Dieter Uchtdorf, was recently outed for making campaign contributions to Joe Biden and to the two Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia, violating a long held policy of the Church. He responded to the discovery by lying and claiming that a family member had made the donations in his name.
One possible upside is that the next prophet of the Church will probably be Dallin Oaks, who has long been thought of as a hardcore conservative. Before becoming an apostle he was once even on the short list for the US Supreme Court. But his tenure won’t be long. Oaks is almost 90.
It was recently revealed that the Church has financial assets in excess of $100 billion.
One thing that hasn’t changed: they still demand 10% of every member’s pretax income – no questions asked (or answered). It’s depressing to think that so many patriotic, diehard conservatives still give so much of their money to the Church – but they do.
The most likely cause of violence targeting Jews in the near future is BlackRock eliminating home ownership so that they can raise rent every year and eventually every quarter. A BlackRock executive has said in his own unforced in context words that this is their plan. Annual rent increases. In fact, even if no one sees the stereotypical resemblance in BlackRock's plan to be a monopolist national slumlord, violence against Jews is still a sure thing, because some of BlackRock's renters will be Jewish and some of them will be evicted when they cannot pay 35% rent increases.
Our government is still looking for the Phantom Nazis and betting everything on censorship in the internet age. Good luck, we're all counting on living in a Zucker comedy.
http://dissident-mag.com/2021/06/14/blackrock-is-waging-war-on-american-home-buyers/Replies: @photondancer
Are annual rent increases unusual in the USA? This is the norm in Sydney.
Yep, she’s at Pune. And she is totally plugged-in to the G7-academia craziness.
One effect of modern communications (and the large Indian upper-class diaspora) is that Indian academics eagerly imitate Western academics and participate promptly in their fads.
I’m inclined to agree. It’s normal for academics to choose provocative titles for their talks since they’re competing for attendees. Nonetheless, I’m betting the presenters belong to that group that I saw a lot of at university; those who are out of their depth when confronted with theory and complex ideas and seek to hide that fact by using loads of jargon and obfuscating, confusing grammar. If they had to do honest work with their hands they would likely be happier and might even be useful.
Tolkien's good deeds cannot atone for the unpardonable sin i.e., Middle Earth's racial undertones.
From the UK Guardian in 2002.Certain people are also paranoid about Nordic myths notably Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.Replies: @photondancer
There’s something tragically wrong with a person who reads books solely in order to keep score of how many X and Y the book has (or watches films/tv shows likewise). Demonstrating yet again how very adolescent the woke are. Growing out of the keeping score stage is part of the maturing process.
I have read LoTR several times. For me, it’s all about the importance of the individual. Even when enormous forces are in play, one person can make all the difference. That’s presumably why the woke are gunning for it given that their theories are resolutely anti-individual.
Yes, that scene with the Uruk-Hai emerging from their mud-bubble ‘wombs’ was good. It evoked Aule’s creation of the Dwarves, as well as a perverted Genesis 2-3.
From one perspective, it’s odd that Tolkien would never simply just say that Morgoth made the Orcs, as Aule did the Dwarves. But then he was committed to the principle you’ve mentioned, i.e. that evil is not and cannot be creative, not even in the creation of evil beings.
They’re not irrelevant lol, they’re the ones who’ve been on a jihad against Trump and his supporters from inside the government and now you have Mike Lee trying to torpedo the long overdue Antitrust bill.
Mormons are Puritans’ puritans. The New England variety just got kicked out of England. The Mormons got kicked all the way across the Continental US too.
What minorities are so pissed about is not that we did bad things but that we did good things and they cannot claim to have had any real part. Complaining about the bad is just sour grapes.Replies: @Twinkie
This is not what I would claim, but I know what “Asian activists” would bring up first:
Characterization by ethnicity has always been the only way to go about it in Medieval films (I mean films set in the Middle Ages), and Medievalistic films (films that take cues from the Middle Ages, but are set somewhere and sometime else, like Conan, Rings, Star Wars, etc.).
My favorite anomaly is when, in films about English antiquity, in some movies the Saxons are the good guys and in some movies the Saxons are the bad guys.
Don’t tell me why. I know there is a reason why.
But still, it kind of sticks a pointy little poniard into the whole bagpipes-bag of characterization-by-ethnicity thingie.
Btw, writing ironic defenses of orcs is a jape with a long history. It didn’t just jump off the longboat.
The ones that sounded like they could be interesting to me, which Steve didn't cite, were looking at things like how the Soviets and Red Chinese chose to translate and illustrate these novels. Those ones were, of course, among the very few to be presented by white males, and among the few that seem like they involved actual research and not just emoting over their own personal intersectional experiences.Replies: @photondancer
The illustrations talk caught my eye also. A quick search found one such edition:
https://www.openculture.com/2017/10/illustrations-of-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-hobbit-from-the-soviet-union-1976.html
I wouldn’t mind having a copy of this book. This art style is not particularly soviet though, I’ve seen similar in other European books from the 1970s. So that might actually be an interesting talk.
If it fails at that task or fails to even attempt it it will fail as an institution.
This happens when the desperately talentless must use someone else’s work to parasite off and resort to this pathetic shoehorning of wokeness into work which plainly has nothing to do with it. As Freud said, “sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar”.
On that note, I wonder if any of the critics at this conference has written any fiction at all that anyone outside of their tiny academic cloisture would have any interest in reading. Somehow I doubt it.
“the mortal threat to Christian Europe throughout the late Middle Ages up to their defeat at Vienna in 1683. In an age where warring parties were barbaric in the extreme, the Turks reputation for barbarism exceeded all others.”
Way, way later than 1683. How about 1876, or the Armenian genocide?
https://attackingthedevil.co.uk/related/macgahan.php
Experience is not allegory.
As for themes: decay and the inevitability of death; power and corruption; hope and despair; friendship and loyalty; and so on.
As for Great Britain: Tolkien disliked it. His love was for England.
Also, on what basis do you say that Wagner's understanding of myth was "shallow and nihilistic"?
Wagner had his own cultural message he wanted to transmit and he merely used the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga Saga as raw material to get his point across.Replies: @Deogolwulf
‘Where can I find it?’
Various biographical sources. It’s hard to find two people with worldviews more at odds than those of Tolkien and Wagner; the one a reactionary, the other a progressive revolutionary.
‘Also, on what basis do you say that Wagner’s understanding of myth was “shallow and nihilistic”?’
On the basis of judgment of his shallow and nihilistic misunderstanding! Tolkien knew the sources inside-out; Wagner had them at secondhand and was little interested in them for their own merit and message. As you yourself say: ‘Wagner had his own cultural message he wanted to transmit and he merely used the Nibelungenlied and Volsunga Saga as raw material to get his point across.’ Merely used indeed! Tolkien loved and understood the spirit of myth; Wagner was anti-myth. Tolkien mourns the passing of the old world, slowly fading, slipping or hiding away, overtaken by a lesser new world; Wagner has the old world go up in flames or crash down in wreck, overtaken by a new world in which, free of gods and hidebound myths, society is to be built anew beyond good and evil, without authority, hierarchy, law, or property of any kind.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/10/illustrations-of-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-hobbit-from-the-soviet-union-1976.html
I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book. This art style is not particularly soviet though, I've seen similar in other European books from the 1970s. So that might actually be an interesting talk.Replies: @photondancer, @Desiderius
Oops, posted a link to The Hobbit. This is one of the LoTR editions:
https://www.openculture.com/2014/06/russian-illustrations-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-in-a-medieval-iconographic-style-1993.html
Very well done! One minor correction: I don’t believe “Rohanian” exists in Tolkien’s world. I wish it did as my Mother’s family name is Rohan. The correct word is “Rohirrim”.
“Lord of the rings” is a rip-off of “With fire and sword”.
I have read LoTR several times. For me, it's all about the importance of the individual. Even when enormous forces are in play, one person can make all the difference. That's presumably why the woke are gunning for it given that their theories are resolutely anti-individual.Replies: @Desiderius
Aragorn isn’t a mere individual. Consider the importance of the reforging of Narsil. It was his reconnection with his genetic line that was the source of his power. It was Saruman’s disconnection that was his downfall (caused by his television!).
I would suppose that LOTR argues both for the role of the everyman and the elite. The salvation of the world is a joint effort between some undistinguished representatives of the most lowly of the free peoples and the True King of the greatest Kingdom of Men, appointed since birth for the task, bearing the blood of Numenor. You could even say this sort of fits into a medieval conception of hierarchy, with every class having its indispensable role to fulfill (in this conception, I guess you could say Gandalf is filling the role of the clergy, or perhaps some figures like Elrond are).
Exactly
On the other matter: some chap once said that Wagner is Tolkien for grown-ups. This is typical of adolescents who are keen on claiming to be grown-ups. They also tend to prefer the shallow over the deep, whilst mistaking for authentic depths their own pretensions and whatever provokes their desires. That Tolkien is far deeper and more intellectually and morally serious than Wagner is lost on them.Replies: @Oscar Peterson
Tolkien himself made the link between his dwarves and Jews. In his idiosyncratically Catholic view of the world, they stand outside the main stream of creation. I’m not endorsing his way of approaching the issue, and I’m not “shoehorning” anything, but quite clearly that’s what he had in mind.
Tolkien may have been responding specifically to Wagner’s negative (alleged) portrayal of dwarves as Jews in The Ring, though Wagner, unlike Tolkien, never made any linkage–explicit or implicit between the two.
As for the orcs, I don’t understand your point. What do you mean by “It doesn’t reproduce.” What is “it”? Evil?
The orcs quite clearly do reproduce and with the same malevolent characteristics reproduced free of all exception in Tolkien’s telling. (Interestingly, the storm troopers in Star Wars were rendered in a similar way until in one of the more recent films, we were treated to a humanized storm trooper–black of course. Give Hollywood long enough and Tolkien will get the same treatment.)
But in any case the orcs, as depicted by Tolkien, are essentially an evil race–like it or not and regardless of the rationalizations devised by the author.
https://www.openculture.com/2017/10/illustrations-of-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-hobbit-from-the-soviet-union-1976.html
I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book. This art style is not particularly soviet though, I've seen similar in other European books from the 1970s. So that might actually be an interesting talk.Replies: @photondancer, @Desiderius
There always are, which is why the best academics still attend such conferences and look forward to doing so. And there’s always nonsense and always will be. Replacing the latter with the former is what academia is for, and not just on the campus.
If it fails at that task or fails to even attempt it it will fail as an institution.
Uh, that’s called circular reasoning. He’s shallow and nihilistic because he’s shallow and nihilistic.
The fact that Wagner used Germanic myth for his own purposes does not imply a shallow understanding of them. Sure, he was not a master of Germanic languages and literature as Tolkien was, but how is that significant? Expertise is not a requirement for understanding myth and literature.
And he was certainly not nihilistic, no matter what definition of nihilism you use. He held out a vision of a new culture fusing the traditional and the modern under heroic leadership. That may or may not be appealing or realistic, but how is it nihilistic?
I get it that you don’t like Wagner, but it sounds to me that you know very little about him and see him only as the bad man whose nihilistic Ring work stands–for you–in juxtaposition to the good man–Tolkien–and his morally compelling Ring work.
Now that is a shallow understanding!
Try not to be an idiot and don't embarrass yourself by citing a fallacy where there is none. It shows that you don't know it. To find or judge that something is x because it is in fact x is called finding the truth or having good judgment, etc. I wouldn't like your 'fallacy' to become widely accepted as such! You may of course disagree that I have found the facts of the matter, but that is something else.
'The fact that Wagner used Germanic myth for his own purposes does not imply a shallow understanding of them.'
Who said or implied that it implies it? I know he has a shallow understanding of the sources (whatever his purposes). It is of course possible that he could have had a deep understanding of them and still used them for these purposes. But that's counterfactual. And it's by-the-bye. I know already that he had a shallow understanding of them.
'And he was certainly not nihilistic'
A complicated matter.
'I get it that you don’t like Wagner'
You get it wrong if you mean his music. As I said above (I think; not sure if the comment got lost): I find (yes, find, no fallacy involved!) some of his music sublime and some bloody awful.
'but it sounds to me that you know very little about him'
I suspect I know a lot more about him --- and his cultural milieu --- than you do. But who knows?
My complaint is against this bad habit of reading allegory into everything.
On the other matter: some chap once said that Wagner is Tolkien for grown-ups. This is typical of adolescents who are keen on claiming to be grown-ups. They also tend to prefer the shallow over the deep, whilst mistaking for authentic depths their own pretensions and whatever provokes their desires. That Tolkien is far deeper and more intellectually and morally serious than Wagner is lost on them.
Saruman? (I haven’t seen the movies.) It is suggested in LoTR that Saruman has been cross-breeding orcs with men or some other race in order to produce orcs that can operate effectively during daylight. But of course that is not the origin of orcs.
Criminal and terrorist organizations may sustain themselves, but these are not useful analogies for orcs who are a far-flung, demographically robust racial grouping with a common physiology and culture. It’s clear that orcs do reproduce, as Gollum, in The Hobbit, is described as catching, killing and eating young orcs/goblins (“imps”).
The orc-race issue cannot be resolved with the kind of sophistic arguments you are trying to advance.
True, but I wasn’t thinking of Aragorn so much as the hobbits, who are nobodies.
You might have heard that Jesus guy was a nobody too. Born in a manger.Replies: @photondancer
If you want to know what Tolkien thought about the Great War, just look at the Dead Marshes, filled with corpses from an ancient LOTR battle. The Great War directly inspired that part of LOTR history.
It's worth noting that LOTR started out as another child's book like the Hobbit. But LOTR radically changed as it progressed. The start of World War 2 is what created this change in LOTR's narrative. Tolkien needed the example and reality of the World War 2 to give him the idea of Mordor and the orcs. The Shire is pre-World War 1 England, and the takeover of it by Saruman at the end of LOTR is directly influenced by Tolkien's fear of Oswald Moseley's Blackshirt movement in England.
If England had stayed frozen in pre-WW 1 time, LOTR would have been a work in which the battles would have paralleled England's multiple little 1800s wars, such as the Boer War, or the fights in Africa or India. Gondor would still have been a strong empire, aka the British Empire at its height, fighting laughable little insurgencies at its borders, not a fallen ruin of itself like the 20th-century British Empire, which was Tolkien's inspiration for Gondor. All you have to do is dig a bit, and you'll see parallel after parallel.Replies: @MajorSeventh
While he was no fan of fascism, the Shire as portrayed in “The Scouring of the Shire” is much closer to the socialist England of the post-WWII era.
But Tolkien himself always claimed that the general outline of the Scouring of the Shire was planned as part of the narrative arc from the beginning [i.e. before WW2], and that it was based more on his childhood memories of seeing his home at Sarehole, then in rural Warwickshire, being taken over by the growing city of Birmingham in the early 1900s than on any later events.
And if you look at Saruman and his minions more generally -- in the Shire and in Isengard -- they do seem to represent the forces of modernity/ industrialization more than any particular ideology.
Treebeard actually describes Saruman as having "a mind of metal and wheels." And in both Isengard and the Shire, there's a lot of chopping down trees and building machinery going on under their respective Saruman/ Sharkey regimes. Sandyman's mill is replaced by a big, noisy one full of machinery that pollutes the water and the air, etc.
Tolkien is portraying the ravages of modernity/ industrialization vs. the pre-industrial countryside. The underlying message is somewhat similar to that of "Industrial Society and Its Future," though more wistful and with fewer bombs involved.Replies: @MajorSeventh
Yes, I think that’s right.
Unsurprisingly, he didn’t thoroughly coordinate his story telling and his moral beliefs (derived from orthodox Catholicism) from the beginning of his writing career. He devised what was in effect an evil race he called goblins in The Hobbit. He then carried forward that concept into LoTR and backward (in terms of narrative chronology) into The Silmarillion, as he developed those works both possessed of a more elaborated moral framework than the child’s tale of The Hobbit.
If he was inclined to modify his goblin/orc concept, it was too late, and then when called out by Auden in the 1950s after the publication of LoTR, he had to try to reverse-engineer a response post facto as you say.
Tolkien clearly had little regard for the world outside Europe–perhaps outside Northern Europe–as his depiction of Southrons and Easterlings suggests.
For me, it’s no real problem. The relationship between the individual, the universal, and all the human groupings of various sorts that exist in between is unavoidably fraught. I like Northern Europe best too, though of course there are connections between humanity in general nonetheless.
The problem is that dogmatists like Desiderius and Deogelwulf become so psychologically vested in Tolkien and the moral lessons they draw from his books that they are unable to consider its contradictions with equanimity.
In a BBC radio interview with Dennis Gueroult, recorded in 1964 and broadcast the next year, Tolkien connected his Dwarves with the Jewish people, stating: “The Dwarves of course are quite obviously—wouldn’t you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic.” Also in 1964, Tolkien wrote to W.R. Matthews: “The language of the Dwarves…is Semitic in cast, leaning phonetically to Hebrew (as suits the Dwarvish character).” In the original BBC interview, the text of which is given by Zak Cramer in Mallorn 44 (2006), Tolkien’s statement is longer. It turns out that Tolkien had added a remark about “a tremendous love of the artefact, and of course the immense warlike capacity of the Jews, which we tend to forget nowadays.” This was cut from the interview.
Given the work he put into creating this Semitic-like language, Tolkien’s comparison of Dwarves and Jews was obviously not made on the spur of the moment. In fact, he had made it years before, the first time in an unpublished letter of September 1947, quoted in The History of The Hobbit: “Now Dwarves have their secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country” (Rateliff 757). Eight years later, on December 8, 1955, he wrote to Naomi Mitchison: “I do think of the ‘Dwarves’ like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their native tongue” (Letters 229).
On the other matter: some chap once said that Wagner is Tolkien for grown-ups. This is typical of adolescents who are keen on claiming to be grown-ups. They also tend to prefer the shallow over the deep, whilst mistaking for authentic depths their own pretensions and whatever provokes their desires. That Tolkien is far deeper and more intellectually and morally serious than Wagner is lost on them.Replies: @Oscar Peterson
What’s amusing is the mirror-image arguments we see from the Tolkien and Wagner partisans. For the former, Wagner is merely some sort of obscurantist proto-Nazi whose works few of them have actually seen, much less understood. For the latter (much fewer in number at this point) Tolkien is little more than a spinner of child’s tales with nothing meaningful to say to the adult world.
The two views are equally absurd.
All sorts of present-day progressives see him so. I see him first and foremost as a composer whose music ranges from the sublime to the bloody awful. Culturally and politically I see him as a Romantic (hence the lack of restraint) and thereby a revolutionary.
To(l)k(i)enism …
My favorite anomaly is when, in films about English antiquity, in some movies the Saxons are the good guys and in some movies the Saxons are the bad guys.
Don't tell me why. I know there is a reason why.
But still, it kind of sticks a pointy little poniard into the whole bagpipes-bag of characterization-by-ethnicity thingie.
Btw, writing ironic defenses of orcs is a jape with a long history. It didn't just jump off the longboat.Replies: @Oscar Peterson
The Saxons invaded and conquered the Britons and were in turn invaded and conquered by the Normans. If one identifies with a notionally idyllic Celtic world of King Arthur, the Saxons are bad guys. If one identifies with Robin Hood fighting against rapacious Norman overlords then the Saxons are good guys.
Of course it may well depend on what message some conniving Hollywood Jew wants to transmit to the movie-going masses.
Oh sorry, you said you didn’t want to be told the reason.
Gah.
Ha, that’s good! Though I’m curious what you mean regarding Saruman’s genetic line (I thought he and Gandalf were created, not born), or maybe you just mean his disconnection from his mission and purpose.
I would suppose that LOTR argues both for the role of the everyman and the elite. The salvation of the world is a joint effort between some undistinguished representatives of the most lowly of the free peoples and the True King of the greatest Kingdom of Men, appointed since birth for the task, bearing the blood of Numenor. You could even say this sort of fits into a medieval conception of hierarchy, with every class having its indispensable role to fulfill (in this conception, I guess you could say Gandalf is filling the role of the clergy, or perhaps some figures like Elrond are).
Enjoy this book (if legal where you are)
https://anonfiles.com/Z8B7I415u1/Godsdoom_-_Nick_Perumov_-_Copy_epub
One day, the natural human order will rise again, and my grandchildren will not for one second believe these insane tales of degeneracy had ever really happened. I must have simply mixed up my medications. Silly grandpa.
So, “it’s all mental masturbation”, because they are “work-shy with their hands”. What will it be when they become less shy with their hands?
‘For the former, Wagner is merely some sort of obscurantist proto-Nazi …’
All sorts of present-day progressives see him so. I see him first and foremost as a composer whose music ranges from the sublime to the bloody awful. Culturally and politically I see him as a Romantic (hence the lack of restraint) and thereby a revolutionary.
There’s a reason why Tolkien includes genealogies for the hobbits too, just like the Old and New Testaments. The New opens with one.
You might have heard that Jesus guy was a nobody too. Born in a manger.
Given the work he put into creating this Semitic-like language, Tolkien’s comparison of Dwarves and Jews was obviously not made on the spur of the moment. In fact, he had made it years before, the first time in an unpublished letter of September 1947, quoted in The History of The Hobbit: "Now Dwarves have their secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country" (Rateliff 757). Eight years later, on December 8, 1955, he wrote to Naomi Mitchison: "I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their native tongue" (Letters 229).Replies: @Desiderius, @Deogolwulf
The author is not always the most trustworthy interpreter of his own work, especially removed by many years from the labor. I don’t want to kill the poor bastard but neither do I want to crown his ass.
His willingness to discuss it in such terms gives credence to Steve doing likewise.
My own view on the question of allegory, or even the "applicability of feigned history" as Tolkien may have put it, is that it offers little to my enjoyment of his work. I just offered some info from primary (or near-primary) sources on a minor point of discussion. (If that sounds like the post of someone who is weary of 30 years of internet discussions, then my work here is done. lol)
‘that’s called circular reasoning’
Try not to be an idiot and don’t embarrass yourself by citing a fallacy where there is none. It shows that you don’t know it. To find or judge that something is x because it is in fact x is called finding the truth or having good judgment, etc. I wouldn’t like your ‘fallacy’ to become widely accepted as such! You may of course disagree that I have found the facts of the matter, but that is something else.
‘The fact that Wagner used Germanic myth for his own purposes does not imply a shallow understanding of them.’
Who said or implied that it implies it? I know he has a shallow understanding of the sources (whatever his purposes). It is of course possible that he could have had a deep understanding of them and still used them for these purposes. But that’s counterfactual. And it’s by-the-bye. I know already that he had a shallow understanding of them.
‘And he was certainly not nihilistic’
A complicated matter.
‘I get it that you don’t like Wagner’
You get it wrong if you mean his music. As I said above (I think; not sure if the comment got lost): I find (yes, find, no fallacy involved!) some of his music sublime and some bloody awful.
‘but it sounds to me that you know very little about him’
I suspect I know a lot more about him — and his cultural milieu — than you do. But who knows?
Can anybody think of a better way to spend a summer weekend?
Given the work he put into creating this Semitic-like language, Tolkien’s comparison of Dwarves and Jews was obviously not made on the spur of the moment. In fact, he had made it years before, the first time in an unpublished letter of September 1947, quoted in The History of The Hobbit: "Now Dwarves have their secret language, but like Jews and Gypsies use the language of the country" (Rateliff 757). Eight years later, on December 8, 1955, he wrote to Naomi Mitchison: "I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their native tongue" (Letters 229).Replies: @Desiderius, @Deogolwulf
The original claim to which Desiderius was objecting is that Dwarves are Jews. Which of course is wrong. Dwarves are Dwarves, Elves are Elves, and so on, as Tolkien was at pains in general to make clear, presumably in bafflement at this weird modern habit of seeing allegory in every story. Like and remind (or indeed in some part inspired by the observation of) do not mean ‘is/are’.
Well Oscar so kind of you to have condescended to grace us dogmatists with your presence for these brief precious moments that we can bask in your uniquely luminescent company.
It is exactly dogma (i.e. doctrine, teaching, instruction) that the people lack and it is exactly the above-it-all disinterestedness bleeding into nihilism you exhibit here that is how they’ve come to find themselves so lacking. How else do you imagine a culture, traditions, mores, histories, and the like are passed down through the ages but by one generation teaching the next?
As to your point I once did some research that started as a lark regarding the scriptural themes in his work (such as the Red Arrow of Gondor/David’s covenant with Jonathan*) and ended up finding more than fifty such examples skillfully woven throughout. Orthodox Catholicism isn’t about moral belief its about moral/spiritual practice which is the emBodiment of the belief/trust/faith in Christ.
One sees that working itself out in Tolkien’s writings.
* – 1 Sam 20, https://www.glyphweb.com/arda/r/redarrow.html
There’s probably an element of truth to that. Cotton tells them that Saruman/ Sharkey’s men confiscated wagonloads of goods “for fair distribution,” that were sent away, never to be seen again. Sounds a lot more like either postwar socialism or full-on Bolshevism than “fascism.”
But Tolkien himself always claimed that the general outline of the Scouring of the Shire was planned as part of the narrative arc from the beginning [i.e. before WW2], and that it was based more on his childhood memories of seeing his home at Sarehole, then in rural Warwickshire, being taken over by the growing city of Birmingham in the early 1900s than on any later events.
And if you look at Saruman and his minions more generally — in the Shire and in Isengard — they do seem to represent the forces of modernity/ industrialization more than any particular ideology.
Treebeard actually describes Saruman as having “a mind of metal and wheels.” And in both Isengard and the Shire, there’s a lot of chopping down trees and building machinery going on under their respective Saruman/ Sharkey regimes. Sandyman’s mill is replaced by a big, noisy one full of machinery that pollutes the water and the air, etc.
Tolkien is portraying the ravages of modernity/ industrialization vs. the pre-industrial countryside. The underlying message is somewhat similar to that of “Industrial Society and Its Future,” though more wistful and with fewer bombs involved.
https://anonfiles.com/Z8B7I415u1/Godsdoom_-_Nick_Perumov_-_Copy_epub
https://media.s-bol.com/BBB9PREWjRBk/550x826.jpgReplies: @Tom Marvolo Riddle
If had come of age in literally any other time is human history, I would dismiss this whole thing as a farce. Tolkien classed Africans as half orcs btw. Dude was racist af, as was nearly everyone in the sane 99.99% period of human history. They aren’t going to enjoy the Silmarillion.. they won’t read it though. Probably just watch the Jackson films, maybe skim the hobbit. Wtf do trannies have to do with LoTR?
One day, the natural human order will rise again, and my grandchildren will not for one second believe these insane tales of degeneracy had ever really happened. I must have simply mixed up my medications. Silly grandpa.
I doubt many of the Asian “activists” are descended from the railroad workers. My impression is that the descendants of the Chinese workers from the late 1800s who stayed ended up wholly Americanized, like the Japanese did. Especially the ones that ended up in out-of-sight places like the Mississippi Delta region, whose progeny-horror of horrors to CR theorists-today usually come complete with the accent, religion, and political views of their white neighbors. (And, on some social issues, their black ones, too.)
Even taking the Chinese alone, without considering any other group: I suspect that the majority of the railroad laborers came from the same regions-probably the same towns in some cases-that the diaspora that ended up in Malaysia and Singapore in the 1800s did. They would have had to have had easy access to approved ports of exit, and they had to have a compelling incentive to take a chance like that. It was a lot of money, but it was also a long way away with who knows what on the other side. The Thirty Year’s War-esque fallout from the Taiping in that region of China would have been as compelling as anything.
That means someone whose parents immigrated from China in modern times is more likely than not descended from people who didn’t even speak the same original language as the people who came in the 1800s. That’s just an extra level of dumb laziness, there. If you can’t even get the language right…
You might have heard that Jesus guy was a nobody too. Born in a manger.Replies: @photondancer
You sound like you’re arguing Tolkien was a genetic determinist, that someone with the right lineage could not help but behave nobly. I disagree. He has plenty of characters, even at the very highest levels, who behave badly despite their heritage showing that he believes it’s the individual who is most important.
I told you I didn’t want to hear dumbass reasons everybody knows already.
Gah.
Indeed, as Hammond & Scull have noted many times. On top of that, he said some things about his work that even evinced a certain guile or willingness to mislead.
My own view on the question of allegory, or even the “applicability of feigned history” as Tolkien may have put it, is that it offers little to my enjoyment of his work. I just offered some info from primary (or near-primary) sources on a minor point of discussion. (If that sounds like the post of someone who is weary of 30 years of internet discussions, then my work here is done. lol)
But Tolkien himself always claimed that the general outline of the Scouring of the Shire was planned as part of the narrative arc from the beginning [i.e. before WW2], and that it was based more on his childhood memories of seeing his home at Sarehole, then in rural Warwickshire, being taken over by the growing city of Birmingham in the early 1900s than on any later events.
And if you look at Saruman and his minions more generally -- in the Shire and in Isengard -- they do seem to represent the forces of modernity/ industrialization more than any particular ideology.
Treebeard actually describes Saruman as having "a mind of metal and wheels." And in both Isengard and the Shire, there's a lot of chopping down trees and building machinery going on under their respective Saruman/ Sharkey regimes. Sandyman's mill is replaced by a big, noisy one full of machinery that pollutes the water and the air, etc.
Tolkien is portraying the ravages of modernity/ industrialization vs. the pre-industrial countryside. The underlying message is somewhat similar to that of "Industrial Society and Its Future," though more wistful and with fewer bombs involved.Replies: @MajorSeventh
Agreed on all points.
Thanks for spelling it out.