h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

No, you raised a valid point. It was interpretation, both on your part and Jackson's. I followed this thread with much interest, constantly being trumped when I had a thought about the subject. As to both Tolkein and Jackson, (*Oh the Times, Oh the Morals!*) we're all swayed by the time we live in. They seemed to be remarkably sturdy against the winds of their own times but sway they did.
It's all good!

Who said the good guys were in general blonde

Zube, I dont expect anything from fiction, that's the joy of fiction turning the page to find the unexpected.

Thanks, Zoomer, but I think I'll just shut up about literature. I'll stick to safe subjects like politics, religion, and whether the solution to the gay marriage question . . .










(I probably shouldn't post this, should I?)



(oh, what the hell . . .)







. . . is to have all the gay men marry lesbians.

Hello

Anhaga - regarding the thread you started on this subject (LOTR rather than gay marriage) in 'Ask' I just wanted to say that it was one of the most interesting things I've read on there in a while, that I thought you had a perfectly valid point, that others on there also had some fascinating ideas, that I kept wanting to post to it but kept getting confronted by *vast* postings (*most* of which were extremely interesting) and that I was sorry to see it get, er, 'diverted' would probably be the word and ...

*Pauses for breath*

... well, just, it was very interesting, that's all.

Well, no, that's not quite all. Please don't shut up about literature.

thank you, Trin.

It kind of felt like people thought I was grinding up a sacred cow or something.






Imagine if I said what I really thought about Star Wars?










(where's the smiley?)

(There must be some secret, hidden part of hootoo where you can go and say critical things about Star Wars but I'm not sure I'd want to test it out )

anhaga, I'm sorry if my response sounded as if I was trying to shout you down, I certainly think Tolkien is a valid target for criticism.

My own main criticism of the Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien wrote it front to back, and never went back to square the start with the finish. I'm amazed that it turned out as well as it did, given that Tolkien had no clue whrre it was going when he started (and it shows!).

You did know that the version everyone knows today is the revised version, didn't you? Tolkien did, in fact, go through the original published versions and get rid of the more glaring inconsistencies, both internally and between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. The riddling scene with Gollum in the Hobbit was originally much different.

Maybe you should do a weekly "Cult Classic Critique Column" for the post.

I like both your threads and though I dont always agree with your ideas more often than not I do find your thinking and thoughts refreshing and interesting.

one love

As an Irishman, I find the most disturbing thing about Tokien is not the racist stuff - I can accept that if the good guys happened to be in the northwest, and the bad guys are in the south, then the bad guys are going to be dark skinned. No, the worst thing is the idea of the men of Numenor, that one race are destined from birth to be better than everyone else. Aragorn was a king from birth! What a load of old bollocks!

This has always disturbed me. Not just when Peter Jackson put it into film. Tolkien was basically a fascist, at a time when fascism was popular on both sides of the English channel (that's in England and in mainland Europe, including Germany, for you non-Europeans).

I know your intentions were good, anhaga - it's a pity that it all got out of hand...
<<(oh, what the hell . . .)







. . . is to have all the gay men marry lesbians.>>

Tee hee!

<>

I'm sorry, Gnomon, but that's just cobblers! What makes you think Tolkien was a fascist? That is a totally unwarranted assertion.

Tolkien a facist?
A monarchist? yes. A luddite? possibly. but a facist?
Keep in mind that the Dunedain were not a race of kings - they were a superior breed of men perhaps - but Aragon was the direct heir to the throne, that is monarchy, not facism.

Tolkien did *not* write the Trilogy front to back. I seem to recall him writing in the Foreword taht he wound up starting with a chapter near the end of the whole story. It was all out of order, depending on how he was feeling at the time and it took him years to do it.

And he spent, I do believe, a good deal of time squaring things away with each other. Edit something long enough and you start seeing in it what you expect to see in it.. the perpetual argument for hiring multiple editors at various stages in the game.

>>a superior breed of men

That's fascism. Isn't it?

There's more than one ideology that believes some races of men are superior to others, fascism is only one of them, and that is only a part of fascism.

Fascism originated with Mussolini's fascists in Italy, and for Mussolini, the essence of Fascism was the importance of the State over the individual. The Nazis were also fascists, but Nazism added the element that race was the most important element of the nation.

Tolkien shows a different ideology at work: monarchism and feudalism. The English were on about the Divine Right of Kings long before fascism was invented, and in Middle Earth Tolkien created a world where the Kings literally had divine blood in their veins (along with some Elf genes), since Melian of the Maiar was a blood ancestor of the Numenorean Kings via Luthien, Dior, Elwing, and Elros, aka Tar-Minyatur, first king of Numenor.

Some 60 or 70 generations later, that royal blood is still making Aragorn all tall and long-lived and Kingly and Noble, giving him the prophesied healing powers, and making republicans ill.

Zube

Yes, but as an Irishman, I could never consider God as anything other than an equal, so divine blood doesn't count for that much to me.

Well as an Irishman you probably think that the only good stout is made in Ireland, don'tcha?

We can hardly damn him for being a closet Monarchist, can we? As I've said we should consider the time in which it was written as well as the kind of man Tolkein was. I may be wrong here, but as I remember it the stories were originally written for his children? Would we be disecting Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with such zeal?

Oh, and Anhaga- I love your idea. In an *open marriage* (which is still not openly condemned by the Shrub et al) each member of the marriage could persue their particular tastes while being Old Testament approved! Brilliant!

Have you seen the original version of Willy Wonka?!

'all of the workers in Willy Wonka's factory are African pygmies. They work for a wage of cacao beans, sing songs that are almost war chants, and allow themselves to be experimented on like laboratory animals. Dahl says about them, "I created a group of little fantasy creatures.... I saw them as charming creatures, whereas the white kids in the books were... most unpleasant. It didn't occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa- Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others.... After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I revised the book"'

http://www.roalddahlfans.com/articles/char.php

Wrote it and didn't see the racism; was shown it and realized; revised it.

The same thing happened with the nasty around the world trip in the original version of Mary Poppins.