fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3993 ]

[ SECRET POST #3993 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3993 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 57 secrets from Secret Submission Post #572.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

06. https://i.imgur.com/2wDWRRz.jpg

It is interesting. I feel pretty similarly.

I think it mostly comes down to a few things. First, obviously, there's a difference between the kind of weltanschauung we're talking about when we talk about the intellectual core underlying Lord of the Rings, and the actual quotidian details of everyday partisan politics. Second, any work of art is more than the worldview that animates it. So that's an important general point to keep in mind.

Third, I think there's a difference between the aesthetic and the political that's particularly important with Lord of the Rings. Obviously those two categories are closely linked, but the actual relationship between aesthetic sensibility and political worldview is a complex one. And so I think one thing with Lord of the Rings is that, even though there's clearly a conservative worldview at the base of it, the aesthetic sense of the work, and the way that it uses the sublime and beauty and mortality and death and evil and banality, those are all things that can be repurposed for other worldviews. A liberal worldview might use those themes in a different way but they're still powerful themes. And so much of what's powerful in LotR is the aesthetic and narrative sensibility of it, rather than the political worldview.

Good post.

It could be that Tolkien was working with themes and character-types and settings that are pretty old and universal. I think, also, Tolkien has a lot of empathy in his work. Even when he gets it wrong, I don't feel it's from a place of maliciousness, just ignorance, and that's easier to accept. The underpinning of his mythology is mercy, pity, and kindness.

Also, some of the stuff isn't really that in-your-face. Like, for instance, in his universe there are only het couples and marriage out of wedlock is clearly bad. However, same sex friendship is so lovingly portrayed that it's easy to read same-sex romance into it. The het relationships aren't given nearly as much development as Frodo and Sam or Gimli and Legolas for instance. Romance isn't really a focus; it's more of an afterthought.

"Marriage out of wedlock"?

I don't think it's strange at all, seeing as the primary purpose of LOTR as a fictional work is to evoke and entertain. Which it has across the political spectrum for decades.

That's a really limited and limiting way to approach art, and I don't think it's correct.

There is no "correct" way to approach art, and it's condescending as hell to tell people off for the way they do it.

It's not wrong to approach art primarily as entertainment.

It is wrong to act like "evoking and entertaining" is the primary or only purpose of art. That's what I'm disagreeing with.

Original anon here.

1. I use 'evoke' in the widest possible sense.
2. I didn't say the primary purpose of art as a whole was to evoke and entertain. I said that of LOTR. I'm not arguing that there may be ancillary intents on the part of Tolkien or other effects on the reader. I am just saying that 'evoke and entertain an audience' can be described as in general the primary purpose of the creatio n of LOTR (excluding the personal satisfaction of the author). I argue that based on its format, structure and publication history i.e. that of a fictional novel intended for mass consumption.

If you want to argue that point with me, very happy to have the discussion.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 03:21 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 03:44 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 05:53 (UTC) - Expand

This is the first time I've seen LOTR described as "conservative." Where's that coming from?

I mean, it says war is bad (but women should be able to serve in the military), protecting the environment is good, people struggling with trauma and addiction deserve sympathy, hoarding wealth is bad (even, ultimately, for the hoarder), and part of the role of a leader is to provide your people with healthcare. Conservatives, at least where I live, are people who disagree with all of that.

It's very conservative but in a sense that is largely different from what that means in 2017 (especially in the US but also elsewhere). It's fundamentally written from an agrarian, Anglo-Catholic, mythologizing, backwards-looking, Merrie Old England point of view. It reproduces a whole bunch of ideas about the proper social order and legitimacy and class relationships and kingship and all of those things that are basically conservative. Again, none of that actually lines up with issues-based politics right now, but it's still part of an extremely coherent and specific social conservative tradition.

The locus classicus for this argument is probably Michael Moorcock's Epic Pooh, so that might be worth reading if you want to see a more developed version of the argument. I definitely don't agree with everything he says but it's an interesting position and there's a lot of validity to it.

Roman, not Anglo-Catholic. I am an Anglo-Catholic, so I'd love to claim Tolkien, but his mother's conversion to Roman Catholicism and his very very Roman Catholic upbringing and practice as an adult were extremely important to his identity and to the way he lived his life and understood his art.

I'd say it's conservative, as opposed to progressive, which is slightly different in several important ways to conservative v. liberal.

LotR is big on maintaining the status quo. Progress, which at the time the books were written were symbolised by industrialism and new technology to the average person, is either inherently evil, like Saruman's forge, or easily turned to evil, like the palantirs, or attract evil to them, like the dwarves' mines. Going back to the old ways, following the paths of kings and heroes that can trace their lineage back to allegorical God, upholding the traditions passed down through generations -- this is how things are set back to rights.

That's old school Conservatism. There's still some of that hiding in the bones of the more moderate branches of modern conservatism, but in the US and much of Europe (and probably elsewhere, but I've got no experience there), the conservative movement has ironically left its roots far behind and been hijacked by extremists.

Okay, so these two comments make sense of why the word "conservative" is used, but less sense of why OP is embarrassed about it. Even if you don't side with the underlying philosophy, a lot of the results end up being solid. (There's literal tree-hugging! Hard to argue with.)

And it's not like the books have a neat divide between evil progress and good tradition. The One Ring is incredibly old, and that doesn't stop it from being the most evil object in the series. One of the major critical heroic moments only happens because Eowyn defied her traditionally-mandated gender role. Our heroes are trying to restore power and authority to Aragorn, and, at the same time, to obliterate the traditional power and authority of Sauron.

I mean, it would be pretty cool if the worldbuilding took the next leap forward and had a democratic revolution and Aragorn got elected instead of installed, but at least there's a sense that you can't just follow any traditional authority. Some of them are worthy, some aren't.

(I'm willing to take some of this as trappings of the genre, too. It doesn't need to mean real life has semi-divine kings walking around, any more than we have actual dragons.)

quick things

1) You're right to point out that it's not as simple as "tradition good, progress bad". Absolutely. It's quite a bit more complicated than that. But when you get into the details, a lot of it is still pretty aligned with a conservative worldview. For instance, yes, there's all kinds of things about virtuous kingship and legitimate authority and ordination with Aragorn, but that's still coming from a fundamentally conservative point of view with regards to authority and politics. It's a fairly comfortable fit. Just being able to distinguish between good and evil is not the same as having a critical point of view towards tradition generally.

2) Tolkien wrote the things he did on purpose. The reason that Aragorn doesn't get elected is because Tolkien didn't want to write that, and wouldn't have written that. It's absolutely not the case that this was an inevitable step forward that Tolkien was just unable to see because of the times, or something like that. He wrote the thing he wanted to write based on how he saw the world. (and just to clarify one thing that I don't mean - I wouldn't go so far as to say that Lord of the Rings is a direct guide to Tolkien's political views by any means. it's certainly not the case that he's literally calling for some kind of Jacobite revolution. rather, it's more that Tolkien's worldview is more comfortable thinking in terms of kingship than in terms of democracy)

3) presumably, the reason that OP finds it embarrassing is that they fundamentally disagree with the worldview in question. And it's one that's really deeply infused into Tolkien's work. I can see what they mean.

(no subject)

erinptah - 2017-12-10 04:22 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2017-12-10 04:51 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

erinptah - 2017-12-10 06:15 (UTC) - Expand

But Aragorn was elected, in a way.

'Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?'

And all the host and all the people cried yea with one voice.

Which is election - in the Anglo-Saxon, and the Hamlet sense. Not a step forward, but a step back to an older way of doing things.

I felt like some of the things I took away from it the first time I read the books (late 90s) were anything but what my understanding of conservative was.

I don't know. I guess I picked up on the things that I wanted to see. The Elves were all about conserving the forests and living in balance with the world. The fortresses and the armies of orcs and forging of weapons was anti-war and all about the impacts of industrialisation. Sauron polluted a natural wetland so nothing nice grew there and no animals could survive.

It's certainly agrarian and anti-industralist, but those aren't intrinsically liberal positions.

At least in American politics, the conservationist movement had good support from conservative politicians until Reagan. The National Park Service was created by Teddy Roosevelt to preserve the greatness of American Heritage. Nixon was responsible for the EPA, and Ford was a strong advocate of fuel efficiency (although that was largely driven by foreign policy concerns.) I think Ford may have been the one to implement the Endangered Species Act as well.

I have the reverse problem with my grandmother...she is a huge Trekkie- since the beginning- yet is as about as far right as one can get. I don't understand it.

My dad too. It is weird to me because Trek is completely liberal and socialist.

This reminds me of all those Star Trek fans who flipped out on Discovery for "ruining the franchise" because it's "pandering to POC and gay people". I mean, it's got to take ridiculous amounts of ignorance to consider that a valid complaint for Star Trek, of all things.

Seriously. Star Trek has not always been perfect on things like race. But it has always actively tried to be progressive on such things. It always tried to be ahead of the times.

I think it's important to note that 21st century conservatives are quite a bit different from mid-20th-century conservatives. Given Tokien's well-known contempt for German racism and Hitler in specific, ("ruddy little ignoramus") I suspect he'd stay well away from the current wave of xenophobia-inspired reactionaries.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only