star wars question

[FlameFlash]

Couldn't Lucas have just said, "IT'S JUST A MOVIE FOLKS".

Yep. It's what he should have said.

[Lorizael]

Couldn't Lucas have just said, "IT'S JUST A MOVIE FOLKS".

Yeah, 'cuz that's a great way to build a media empire.

[rah]

Imagine if Tolkien had just said "IT"S JUST A BOOK".

But yeah it is taken a bit too seriously and some really need to get a life.

[pchang]

In Tolkien's case he created multiple fake languages as background for his stories. He needed to get a life himself.

[DaShi]

Exactly. Someone should have told Tolkien that it's just a book.

[rah]

He was an English professor, so it was kind of his job in a way too.

[Alexander's Horse]

I'm told LoR is really about WW1, a personal reaction to the tragedy, though I find it hard to see - the orcs must be the Germans, the elves are a bit gay, the French? The Shire must be Britain...

[Lorizael]

Tolkien himself specifically denied that allegorical connection. There are certainly a lot of influences on LOTR, but I don't think you can look at it and say it's a fantasy version of X.

[Dr Strangelove]

Actually it was a condemnation of "modernism". In the forward of the third book JR admits that one part of the book is just a tiny bit of an analogy. In the chapter on the scouring of the shire he describes how the Orcs and certain Hobbit quislings ruined a pond in the shire by building workshops which spilled waste products into the pond and into the air. Tolkien admits that that section was inspired by something that happened in his youth. He spent some years of his childhood living in the country near a little pond. He moved away, then returned many years later only to discover that his beloved pond had been turned into a waste dump for some adjacent factories. The language he uses to describe the ruination of the shire by Sauron's minions in that chapter though is found throughout all three books: "foul" this, "dark" that, etc., etc. etc. It seems to me that the whole series of books represents Tolkien's disdain for "modernism", a disdain that was a major theme of the literary society he founded with C. S. Lewis.

[Alexander's Horse]

I look at it as a celebration and homage to celtic ways, spirituality and lost worlds. I connect with Tolkien in that way. Tolkien sad he borrowed heavily from the runic past, his area of study, which was disappearing because of the modern world. So that interpretation makes sense.

It was my know-it-all sons that rubbished that and claimed it's about WW1.

[Lorizael]

Actually it was a condemnation of "modernism". In the forward of the third book JR admits that one part of the book is just a tiny bit of an analogy. In the chapter on the scouring of the shire he describes how the Orcs and certain Hobbit quislings ruined a pond in the shire by building workshops which spilled waste products into the pond and into the air. Tolkien admits that that section was inspired by something that happened in his youth. He spent some years of his childhood living in the country near a little pond. He moved away, then returned many years later only to discover that his beloved pond had been turned into a waste dump for some adjacent factories. The language he uses to describe the ruination of the shire by Sauron's minions in that chapter though is found throughout all three books: "foul" this, "dark" that, etc., etc. etc. It seems to me that the whole series of books represents Tolkien's disdain for "modernism", a disdain that was a major theme of the literary society he founded with C. S. Lewis.

And thanks to the technology that modernism grants us, many millions of people completely fail to see that message in his work.

[Aeson]

Whatever his intent, the result is clear ... LotR is a Christian gateway to homoerotic fanfic.

[Sava]

[rah]

Please don't encourage him.

[Alexander's Horse]

that's just wrong...