Article on study of Tolkien fans

[Teresa Edgerton]

An interesting (well, interesting to me) article on how and why Tolkien fans respond to the books and/or movies:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/stor...ticle_continue

If you have a long-term attachment to the books, do you agree with these conclusions? Does any of this reflect your own experience of Tolkien?

It's not that close to mine -- I only became aware of the deeper levels after reading the books many, many times -- but I recognize that my own experience may not be typical.

[Brys]

Completely different to what I felt when watching the films/reading the books, but then, I'm no longer a Tolkien fan. I think that you have to be seriously fanatical for it to be a moral teacher or whatever, and the deeper levels aren't particularly nice - some of them anyway, particularly the white supremacist deeper level.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Kelpie

An interesting...

...it's interesting—liked it.

How does a story which is very English in origins appeal to people in countries as different as Italy, Slovenia, China and Columbia?

The fantasy genre—as it is today—started in England, didn't it? Long before that rascal "science fiction" arrived on the scene. The appeal was always there.

...many women have thought of this as a male genre...

Is that true?

...our findings that audiences make such conscious efforts to reread the books and watch the film again as if they had not done so before...

This sounds interesting. In another sense, Rings is so thick with detail—readers should discover something new with each reread. And how much of the Fellowship has the reader forgotten by the time they finish Return?

[Brys]

Fantasy started in England, I think. If you go back to the earliest origins of modern fantasy, you have to go back to Shakespeare in the 17th century and Jonathan Swift in the 18th century, but there were quite a few late 19th/early 20th century authors which really got fantasy started, including ER Eddison and Lord Dunsany. I also don't really understand why fiction has to be culture specific. The surprising thing is that it is Tolkien's, probably the most Western nationalist style novel of the early fantasy, which attracted this wide appeal.

It's only thought of as a male genre because of the stereotype - that all fantasy is just for male adolescents and is a copy of Tolkien.

One thing that's quite funny is how people try and re-read these a lot, as if for the first time, so they can grasp new things when reading it, yet Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is actually very simple compared to lots of other fantasy.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Since the whole "white supremacist deeper level" has been repeatedly advanced and just as repeatedly refuted right here on this board it would be boring to go into all of that again.

But as for using the books as a moral compass, gosh yes, that whole take personal responsibility for your own actions, live your life with integrity, honor, courage, and compassion thing, what kind of a guideline is that?

Why attempt to pattern ourselves on characters who rise above their weaknesses and manage to do a little temporary good in the world, when we could be stroking our own self esteem by reading books steeped in cheap cynicism?

* * * *

cyborg__cinema, I can remember a time when SF and Fantasy were both regarded as pretty much a male domain, so much so that female authors often wrote under masculine pseudonyms in order to get published. But that's all so far in the past now, I do wonder why journalists keep bringing in up.

I think you are right about much of the appeal coming from the fact that rereadings do turn up new discoveries. But of course it's an appeal lost on people who don't have a habit of rereading favorite books. A friend of mine once said to me, "There are so many books that I haven't read yet, why would I waste my time on anything I've read already?" It was impossible to convince her that with some books reading them only once is like reading only half, and than rushing on to read half of another book.

But I also think that being "surprised" is over-rated. If all books relied on surprising people in order to entertain or enlighten them, no book would ever be worth rereading. Anyway, anticipation can provide as much drama and suspense as not knowing the outcome.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Brys

Fantasy started in England...

going back further than modern times in the fantasy time machine...

Does the fantasy genre reach back as far as the poem Sir Orfeo from the 13th or 14th century? (sounds like Orpheus)

Sir Orfeo takes on the face of a minstrel in order to infiltrate the Fairy King's castle in the Otherworld...

The Englishing of Romance: Familiarising Sir Orfeo

[dwndrgn]

I'm not sure I understood their goals in the research and actually what they found out. Mostly the article told me things that as a fantasy fan, I already know. And why did they use the third film? That seems rather odd. I would think you'd have to use all three for any real conclusions to be made.

Sure, I re-read many books. I re-read series before reading the latest. I re-read books before the movie comes out. There isn't anything terribly special in that. I want to be reminded of the story's details. Sure I know all the big 'notes' of the story, plot and characters. Re-reading just gives you a chance to revisit the 'melodies' underlying the big 'notes' before moving on. Much like studying your own notes the night before a test. As well as finding little tidbits you may not have noticed the first time around.

Why should the film find fans in countries such as Columbia and others not similar in makeup to the Western European slanted story? Because it is different. Unlike their own. And, like most fantasy, has underlying basic truths and moral judgements any human can relate to. Friends helping friends in need. Making personal sacrifices for a greater good. These types of things are universal and any human can relate, to some extent.

I'm sorry but I find this type of research to be not only lazy and superficial, but self-serving as well. If they truly wanted to research the effect of fantasy as a whole, they should have included more films, books and series. Get a broader scope to fully understand what their conclusions mean. The fact that they used probably one of the most widely recognized fantasy stories and then used only a portion of the hugely anticipated subsequent film tells me they started with a conclusion and worked to fill it.

Now I'm annoyed and want someone to underwrite a study of my own. Show these people what real research is about. Hmph!

[Teresa Edgerton]

Brys, just for curiosity, may I ask how many times you've read LOTR, and at what ages?

Modern fantasy has no more in common with the fantasy of Shakespeare or Swift than it has with the fantasy of the Middle Ages or the classical era. Generally speaking, I would say it has less in common. And it certainly draws its inspirations as much from continental sources as it does from British sources, and far, far more from Irish and Welsh sources than from English.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Kelpie

But as for using the books as a moral compass, gosh yes, that whole take personal responsibility for your own actions, live your life with integrity, honor, courage, and compassion thing, what kind of a guideline is that?

Important virtues, a great guideline, yes. The Hobbit Finds the Ring—in Aesop's fable style—would be a simple moral message. What I meant was...Rings is so much more than that, so much so that I do not regard the story as an epic fable. It is an epic battle between good and evil loaded with suspense, struggle, mystery, etc. That is what moves readers and brings them back—more than moral lessons could.

Tolkein originally wrote Hobbit for his kids before he ever thought of publishing it. But he busted that mould wide open.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh, I totally agree that there is far more to the books than a simple morality tale, cyborg. I was responding to Brys's remark that one would have to be seriously fantatical to find any moral lessons (I'm assuming he means acceptable moral lessons) in LOTR.

[Brys]

Sorry, Kelpie, for not being clear. I didn't mean that you can't find any moral lessons in it unless you're extremely fantatical, I meant you wouldn't try and live your life on the basis of morals shown in LotR alone, or to say that reading it had changed your life - which I have seen said many times by fans for a lot of novels with a more overt philosophical/moral/political novel.

I've only read LotR once, but that's hardly unique for me. The only two books I have ever re-read in my life are Gardens of the Moon and Deadhouse Gates. Gardens of the Moon I re-read so that I could understand it fully, and Deadhouse Gates because it is one of the best books I've ever read. LotR didn't require a re-read for understanding, and, as I wait at least a year before even thinking about re-reading a book, and I had read a lot more fantasy by that time, much of which I considered superior, then I decided it would be better to read other novels. I don't judge whether I'm a fan or not of an author by how many times I read them, because I don't read most novels more than once, even those of very high quality. I read the Fellowship of the Ring when I was about 10, which was extremely slow and took me months to read and I couldn't be bothered with the other two at the time, then I read The Two Towers and the Return of the King when I was 13 in a couple of weeks, and found them fast paced and very enjoyable.

Cyborg, you're absolutely right on why most people come back to LotR.

When we talk about the modern fantasy genre, I think we have to limit that to the past 200 years or even less, when it started to emerge as a new style of fiction with a more significant number of authors (rather than 1 or 2 every century). Fantasy, however, can be traced back thousands of years, which is why it's usually easier to talk about the modern fantasy genre. We also have to consider that some movements in fantasy were emerging for the first time, with no or very few notable influences previously, eg New Weird, with authors such as William Hope Hodgson, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, HP Lovecraft.

[cyborg_cinema]

Moral dilemmas in LOTR reflect modern dilemmas. Today people still struggle for power, and the knowledge that helps attain it.

[cyborg_cinema]

Originally Posted by Brys

Fantasy, however, can be traced back thousands of years...

That sounds really interesting. was trying to trace the roots back and only got as far back as the 1300s. I could imagine Cleopatra reading hieroglyphic fantasy.

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well then, I'm very sorry for you, Brys, because I know that if I had stood by judgements I made of certain books at 13, or 21, or even much older, I would have missed out on some of the greatest reading experiences of my life.

[Brys]

I'm not ruling out the possibility of re-reading in future, but I don't want to re-read books generally only a couple of years since the first read, as then I wouldn't be able to see it from any new perspective. As well as that, I've got a pretty good memory, and I read books slowly, so I can still remember books I read 6 or 7 years ago in general not too badly, and with better books I can usually remember them pretty well, so I can think back to them, remember their general writing style, the plots, the characters etc, and fit it in. However, I would like to have read a significant amount more in the genre before going back to re-reading novels, because there are literally hundreds that are worth reading which I haven't read yet. It's not that I wouldn't like to re-read a lot of books, it's just that I don't have the time, and for me, so long as the book is good, a new novel will always be more entertaining than one I've already read, and I know that I won't ever be able to forget what happens next while re-reading - at least not if it was worth reading in the first place, and if it wasn't, it was probably very predictable anyway.