Will fantasy fans grab the Ring?
The Lord of
the Rings
is going head to head with Harry Potter for the hearts, minds and wallets of
a new generation of fantasy fans. Is the Tolkien classic harmless fantasy, evil
sorcery or veiled gospel?
By Craig Bird
Did
you hear the one about the wizard? No, not Harry Potter. This one has elves and
dwarves and a magic ring and hairy-toed creatures called hobbits?
If you haven't, you will. It's coming
to a theater near you Dec. 19 -- the first installment of an ambitious and
stunning effort to translate J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy, The
Lord of the Rings, to the big screen.
The
second and third segments of the trilogy will follow at one-year intervals. But
all three were filmed during a marathon 438-day shoot in director Peter
Jackson's native New Zealand at an estimated cost of $266 million.
Like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings promises to reignite the on-going debate among
Christians about the worth -- or danger -- of stories based in "imaginal"
worlds, such as Tolkien's Middle Earth.
It also will likely increase interest
in other writings of the Inklings, a loosely structured group of Christian
writers anchored by the three late Oxford professors Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and
Charles Williams and including, in one way or the other, T.S. Eliot, G.K.
Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers.
No doubt the legions of evangelical
Christians who are Tolkien fans look forward to the discussion. But what of
believers who aren't enthusiasts?
"Tolkien, like Lewis, wrote a type
of fantasy that is rarely seen today," answers Tolkien fan Elmer Perry of
Asheville, N.C. "He presents Christian themes in a way that is magical.
People can relate to the characters and situations those characters find
themselves in. We need more of it."
Hollywood is doing its part to provide
more of it. But the Christian interpretations will likely need to be provided by
Christians.
New Line Pictures reportedly budgeted $50 million to promote the first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring. The Two Towers premiers in 2002 and The Return of the King wraps up the story in 2003. The Fellowship which promises some groundbreaking special effects, was all the rage at this year's Cannes Film Festival, even though only 23 minutes of footage were screened.
Fans
of the Ring
Tolkien starts with a sizeable fan
base. Since the first volume's publication in 1954, The
Lord of the Rings has sold more than 50 million copies and is now available
in 26 languages (Hebrew is next). A special edition of the 500,000-word trilogy,
released by Houghton Mifflin this year, has already sold 250,000 copies.
The official Web site reports 250
million viewings of the movie trailers, including 41 million in the first three
days it was available last January (www.theonering.net). Many of those fans are
baby boomers who discovered Tolkien in the ’60s and ’70s.
The
Lord of the Rings is going head to
head with Harry Potter for the hearts,
minds and wallets of a new generation of fantasy fans, perhaps trying to capture
the Millennials the way Star Wars
enraptured Gen-Xers.
Ironically, recent fantastical epics owe
much to Tolkien, who popularized the genre. "It would not be a stretch to
say that Tolkien sired that chunk of our culture devoted to fantasy,"
writes Gary Hoenig in Modern Maturity.
"Without him there might be no Darth Vader, no Slaughterhouse Five and certainly no Harry Potter."
But LotR
-- that's Web-speak for Lord of the Rings
-- is not a Star Wars wannabe, says
veteran movie bad guy Christopher Lee. Lee, who plays the evil Dark Lord, Sauron,
in Lord of the Rings, also will appear
in the next episode of Star Wars.
"They're not remotely alike except that they are major productions,"
he explains. "Star Wars is more
clinical, in a way, whereas Tolkien's story is full of so much love."
To be sure, the fans who already
attach themselves firmly to Tolkien's creation are as strange and eclectic as
the author’s characters themselves:
-- Chart the connection between Lord
of the Rings and the lyrics of many of Led Zeppelin's songs (but not Stairway
to Heaven).
-- Ask any aging hippie how the Flower
Children of the '60s found a call to drug use and free love in Tolkien’s
story.
--Listen to Stan McDaniel's orchestral
composition In Memoriam Tolkien as you
read his scholarly linguistic arguments that Tolkien consciously paid homage to
the Earth Mother.
-- Learn how, according to Stephan
Hoeller of the Los Angeles Gnostic Society, immersing yourself in Tolkien can
bring you spiritual salvation, just like the Bible or the Quran or Alice
in Wonderland.
-- Look for the seminal ideas of
psychologist Carl Jung played out in the storyline. Or indulge in the Freudian
interpretations that some readers see in all those swords and rings.
-- Sign up for the monthly Tolkien
newsletter from American Mensa, the high-IQ society, or enroll in the Tolkien
courses at Rice, Rutgers or several other universities.
-- Of course, the Web is rife with LotR gossip -- reports of Russians camping in the mountains to role-play The Lord of the Rings, of Norwegians reading the book on the radio, and of Dutch fans staging dragon fights. Other Web sites will teach you to speak Elfish, one of several languages Tolkien invented.
Flexible
meaning
Perhaps Tolkien would be amused by
all the attention. But would he object to the diverse and even bizarre
interpretations his work has inspired?
Scholars agree Tolkien's Christian
faith underlies The Lord of the Rings
despite no mention of God or worship or prayer or any visible signs of
Christianity.
Tolkien staunchly rejected any
definition of his work as an allegory but instead insisted The
Lord of the Rings had "applicability." Allegory, which he
detested, is built on the author's control over the meaning of the story, he
said. "Applicability" gives the reader freedom to find his or her own
meaning in the story.
Yet at its heart, The Lord of the Rings -- according to Tolkien himself and his
closest associates -- is grounded in an unstinting Christian conviction that, at
the end of time, God will finally and forever defeat evil. The soul of
Tolkien’s story is anchored in the truth of the incarnation and the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So when British priest Euan Marley
recently addressed the Oxford Tolkien Society and (speaking of the adversary’s
nasty foot soldiers in The Lord of the
Rings) asked "Can Orcs be saved?" it was not idle speculation but
meaningful theological exploration.
As Tolkien himself explained, every
writer making an imaginary world “wishes in some measure to be a real
maker" and to address the ultimate questions of “the Christian story,”
such as redemption.
“It has long been my feeling (a
joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt-making creatures” -- that is,
the Orcs.
Veiled
gospel or just good literature?
It is inconceivable to most fans
that J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic who was almost medieval in his practice
of frequent confession, could postulate a world without the God he worshiped.
Of course, a lot of folks -- a whole
lot -- dispute the Christian underpinnings of The
Lord of the Rings. They criticize Tolkien's ironclad refusal to use explicit
Christian symbols and, echoing criticism of Harry Potter, the author's preoccupation with magic.
Greg Wright, hosting the Tolkien
discussion on the Hollywood Jesus Web site, argues that LotR
is "neither for or against (evangelical) Christianity." Instead, he
insists, it promotes "a modernist Christianity dominated by rationality,
empiricism and pragmatism."
Then there are the legions who simply
argue for a literal reading of LotR.
"At its core, The Lord of the Rings is just an adventure tale about a handful of
hobbits who try to find a way to save the world," says Michael Martinez,
author of Visualizing Middle Earth.
"It's not a Christian apology or proselytizing tract. It's not even an
homage to the long-lost Anglo-Saxon literature Tolkien so wanted to bring back.
It's just a story."
But what a story.
Four hobbits, small, mild and
comfort-loving creatures, wind up in the vortex of a cosmic battle between the
armies of the Dark Lord and the few remaining strongholds of light. Other races
aid and abet the hobbits. They include humans, elves (not the Santa Claus
variety but "tall, powerful luminous beings"), dwarves (far more
complex than Snow White's friends), and a wizard named Gandalf.
By happenstance and luck (Tolkien's
version of grace) a hobbit named Frodo has come into possession of a ring but
has no idea of its power. Indeed it is the
Ring, as in:
One
Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the
darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
The One Ring is innately evil, with a
power that can turn even the best of intentions into greed and destruction. To
try to use the ring's power against the Dark Lord would be counterproductive
because it would eventually turn whoever uses it into another dark lord.
The only real hope for victory is to
destroy the ring. The only way to do that is to complete a torturous and
terrifying journey into the very heart of Mordor to cast the ring into the fires
of the Cracks of Doom.
How
good is it?
At its publication in 1954, critics compared The
Lord of the Rings favorably to Milton's Paradise
Lost and the Russian novels of Tolstoy. Others demurred.
Yale Professor Harold Bloom debunked
it as "over-written, tendentious and moralistic in the extreme."
When Philip Toynbee wishfully declared
in 1961, "These books have passed into merciful oblivion," his
prediction proved premature. As recently as 1997, The Lord of the Rings finished atop three different reader polls in
Britain as the greatest book of the century.
Tolkien's reputation as a scholarly
writer continues to make steady progress in academia. Rice University professor
Jane Rice says, "I've taught Shakespeare and I've taught Tolkien, and I
don't find any difference."
Rutgers professor W.C. Dowling says
Tolkien holds his own against the likes of Nietzsche and T.S. Eliot.
But the enduring popularity of
Tolkien's stories owes not to their literary excellence but to their ring of
truthfulness.
Tolkien insisted Middle Earth is real -- not in any factual sense but because it reflects the
truth of the God who created us all. He was not "making up" Middle
Earth, he said. He was uncovering a world he believed once really existed in
humankind's collective imagination -- a process Tolkien called
"reconstruction."
Others who embrace his
"sub-creation" attest to the reality underlying the fantasy.
English professor Jay Curlin, who
teaches a Tolkien course at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark.,
says "the notion of the weakest being used to vanquish the mightiest,"
which is at the core of LotR, is a
dominant theme in the Bible. "Tolkien's having placed such a burden as the
quest of the Ring in the tiny hands of a single hobbit is surely a dramatic
reminder of that theme."
When Larry Fink teaches Tolkien at
Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, he tries to impart to his students
"that sense of holy -- the other -- and that our little actions here and
now have real consequences for future generations, and that individuals are not
so insignificant after all."
Pat Kilpatrick Merion certainly got
that message.
"I first read the trilogy in the
6th grade when my oldest brother practically ordered me to," explains
Merion of Trent, Texas, a social worker, wife and mother of two young sons.
"As a preteen I wasn't 'churched' or particularly privy to the mysteries of
an understanding of Jesus or God.
"The books were a great fantasy
and escape from a depressed life, and I valued them and even loved them for
that. They were, pardon the expression, a salvation for me, lifting me up from
darkness and hopelessness to a belief that there was something of higher value.
I just didn't quite know what that was until my sophomore year in college when I
had a boss who showed me and told me that 'higher value' was Christ."
Tolkien, we might assume, would be
pleased.
-
Craig Bird, a free-lance writer in Asheville, N.C., has read LotR seven times and still has the paperback copy of The
Hobbit he acquired as a college freshman. (ccraigabird@cs.com)
Tolkien's
other quest
A
late-night discussion brought C.S. Lewis into the fellowship of the Christian
ring
Before
there were Hobbits there was a friendship.
In fact, a quarter of a century before
readers first encountered Middle Earth and the desperate Hobbit-led struggle of
light against darkness, J.R.R. Tolkien was deeply concerned about the battle
between good and evil for the soul C.S. Lewis.
Interestingly, the same spiritual and
intellectual understanding that feuled Tolkien's creation of The Lord of the Rings also demolished the last doubts Lewis held
about the truth of the Christian gospel.
Lewis arrived at Oxford a staunch
atheist, having abandoned the Anglican faith of his youth. But, over time, his
close friendships with Christian members of The Inklings moved him to an
agnostic position. Then on Sept. 19, 1931, a Saturday, Lewis invited two of
those Christians to his home for dinner: Tolkien and Hugh Dyson.
Their conversation stretched until 3
a.m. as they explored the role of Jesus Christ. Lewis would not become a
Christian until he understood "how the life and death of Someone Else
(whoever he was) two thousand years ago could help us here and now--except in so
far as his example could help us."
Tolkien and Dyson insisted that Lewis
was demanding more from the Gospel "myth" than he did of other myths,
such as the Norse legends in which he was moved by the theme of sacrifice.
"But," Lewis protested in a famous retort, "myths are lies, even
though lies breathed of silver."
Not so, Tolkien replied, launching a
new line of argument. He pointed out that when Lewis saw an object and referred
to it as a "tree" or another object as a "star," he was only
inventing names for things as he perceived them. Just as speech is invention
about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth, Tolkien continued.
"We have come from God and
inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a
splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. . .
.Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily toward the true
harbor."
In the middle of the night, the light
dawned on Lewis: "You mean the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a
myth that works on us in the same way as others, but a myth that really
happened? In that case I begin to understand."
At 3 a.m. Tolkien went home but Dyson
stayed until dawn. Twelve days later Lewis wrote to a friend that he had
"just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ --
in Christianity."
In his diary Tolkien rejoiced over his friendship with Lewis, "a man once honest, brave, intellectual -- a scholar, a poet and a philosopher -- and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage, of our Lord."
Added
to FaithandValues.com December 2001.