LOTR

[Peg Kerr]

I've seen Peter Jackson's LOTR: FOTR twice now.  I'm a big HP fan, as
you know, but before that, I was a big LOTR fan. In fact, I'm obsessive
about both, and that tendency of mine to become extremely obsessiveness
about stories of wonder is a big part of the reason I became a fantasy
writer.

One of the things which struck me very much was a throw away remark in
one of the reviews I read about the movie. This critic commented that
Tolkien's influence on the field of fantasy fiction is so enormous that
Tolkien is to fantasy literature as the image of Mount Fuji is to
Japanese art.  He's always THERE--just as in Japanese landscape art, you
will always see Mount Fuji--maybe close up, maybe distant, or maybe you
won't see it at all--and then you realize that's because the artist has
painted the picture as if he's standing on Mount Fuji, and so the
landscape is painted from that perspective.

Upon seeing the movie, I turned to one of my favorite essays, by Emma
Bull, entitled "Why I Write Fantasy."  It's very hard to find
(originally published in Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, Winter 1990
Issue Six, although it has been reprinted in a couple other places, very
small press).  Here are some selected bits:

>>>
"To some people, fantasy is entry-level literature. It's written for
children, to excite and entertain them, and to get them hooked on the
thrill and power of reading.  Or it's written more or less for adults,
but best used to lure jaded teenagers into a book habit, accompanied by
a speech like, "if you're into Dungeons and Dragons, you might like . .
."

. . .

Now this is perfectly respectable work for fantasy to do, this business
of introducing kids to the delicious addiction of reading.  But some
people think that's its only work. . . . I know why I write fantasy--I
know it somewhere down below and behind my lungs.  But I can explain it
less well than I can explain why breathing puts oxygen in my blood.  I
know I _don't_ write fantasy so that someday teenagers will grow up and
stop liking my books.  No, there's something I want to get across to
both kids and adults that just won't take root and grow in the otherwise
fertile ground of realism.

I know that other writers have felt this way.  The tradition of fantasy
is as old as literature; Western literature begins with fantasy [gives
examples, i.e., Illiad, Beowulf, etc.] . . and if you respond that this
is literature from the "childhood" of civilization, I'll warn you that
you're badly underestimating your ancestors.

Fantasy has an unbroken lineage from then until the present, as a
vehicle to amuse kings and queens, to uplift the spirits of men and
women, and to make harsh political statements in such a way as to keep
the writer out of prison . . .We value imagination in children.  We
encourage it.  Why don't we nurture imagination in adults?  Why don't we
urge them to dream fantastical things, conceive of strange futures,
emphasize the wonder of the world around them? We're in a bad way here:
choking on our own emissions, wading in our own trash, cringing in a
brass-knuckled, hit-him-before-he-hits-you world. . . . In self defense,
a rational society that values control, order, logic, and citizens who
know their place _has_ to devalue fantasy. The moral world of the
corporate raider and the Harvard MBA dictates that it's a hard world,
where you have to do hard things to survive.  Accountability is for
suckers and doing the right thing regardless of the profit is for
wimps.  These people can't afford to encourage respect for literature
that tells stories like this:

One small, ordinary person makes a long, terrible journey to destroy a
ring, a source of great evil.  He knows that, instead of destroying the
thing, he could take its power and wield it for good, to help his
friends, destroy an even greater evil.  The great and good wise people
around him say that would corrupt him, that he couldn't use that power
without becoming evil himself-but what if he could?  In the course of
his journey, he is warped and twisted and hurt beyond recovery, and he
thinks he may die--though all he has to do is use the ring and he will
never die at all.  He knows all of this, but he keeps on because _it's
the right thing to do._

No, the people who believe that whoever dies with the most money wins
can't afford to have us read and love Tolkien's LOTR.  It's subversive
literature, and the only way they can be safe is to convince us all that
it's only fit for children.  Because who'll take notice if a child
stands up, and points to them, and says, "Mommy, those people are
lying?"

I remember the first time I read LOTR, in high school sometime.  I read
the last few pages, in which the hobbit Frodo sails in his old age for
the lands of the West where heroes go, the awful price of carrying the
ring and breaking the back of darkness at last.  I went out onto the
patio of my parents' house, and I stood for a long time, looking at the
sunset.  No story, no history, no instructive biography or sermon had
ever made me feel the way I felt then: that humanity has an infinite
capacity for nobility, for goodness, for strength used with wisdom and
informed by mercy, and I was part of that.


>>>>

This is Peg again.  That quality that Emma described in her essay, that
she found in Tolkien, I found in Tolkien, too, when I read LOTR in
college.  And I responded to it in the same way.  I found it again in
the Harry Potter books, which is why I responded to them so strongly,
too.  I think Emma really has put her finger on something important here
(not the least being the reason The New York Times insisted on moving
the Harry Potter books to a newly created "childrens" book list).

I found those same feelings when I watched the movie.  And yes, I see
that it's not perfect, and it doesn't match the book exactly, but what
it does do (for me) is to tap into those same feelings that Emma
described: feelings of wonder, of awe, of great events, of power of
human striving even in the face of the fear of certain doom.  This movie
has all of that for me (like Star Wars did for me over twenty years ago,
which was another story I became obsessed with.  Like Star Wars, it blew
open the audience's expectations of what a movie can do).

After careful thought all weekend, I've made my decision: it may not be
perfect, this movie may not be exactly true to the details of the book
Tolkien wrote, but for me it is true to the spirit, because it taps that
core of wonder I've been searching for all of my life.

For that reason, I believe LOTR: FOTR is the best movie I've ever seen
in my entire life.  I can't wait to see the next ones.

Cheers,
Peg