Blue Tuesday

[altivo]

Well, the sky was blue anyway. The internet POP in Rockford came back online around 9 pm last night, so things were back to normal operation when I got into work this morning. We were short a staff member due to a vacation, and had yesterday's work to do in addition to today's. Needless to say, it was a heavy day.

On the bright side, our farrier friend John came to trim the horses' feet, and said they are all looking good. Tess has improved a great deal from where she was two years ago. She now has big, solid, heavy hooves on all four feet, and they are growing evenly. She's also acquired a much better disposition for the most part, I think, and has decided either that she really does like me or at least that it's a good idea to tolerate me affably.

In the midst of all the hubbub and distractions today, I found myself trying to explain, in twitter snippets, why I am so disapproving of Peter Jackson's version of Tolkien. In the end, I promised to e-mail an essay, since I can't successfully discuss major philosophical issues in chunks of 140 characters or less. That explanation is under the cut for anyone who really wants to read it. Feel free to skip if you aren't interested.

Actually, your mention of "pop culture" puts a finger right on the
shadow of the issue at least. I am not, and never have been, a fan of
pop culture. This means of course that to some people I'm a "snob" and
to others I'm just boring or irrelevant. I do get irritated when
someone like Disney takes a classic masterpiece on the order of Victor
Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and turns it from the tragedy it
is meant to be into a comic song and dance routine that ends with
clouds of hearts and flowers and everyone happy in the end. This ruins
the whole thoughtful and carefully planned message of the original
author, and does so when he's no longer alive to take issue with it,
making it doubly unfair. It probably also ruins any chance that
audience members who weren't familiar with Hugo's original will ever
read or understand it in the light of his original intention.

I don't care when Hollywood writers make up their own stories. They
can do whatever they want with those. But when they take a classic and
famous work and "remanufacture" it to suit what they think is the
public taste of the moment, I think it's shameful and at the same
time, just plain lazy.

Lest you think I just want everything to be tragic, that isn't so
either. I'm just as much offended by films like the 1937 version of
"Captains Courageous" in which Spencer Tracy played the fisherman
Manuel who dies of injuries sustained in a storm at sea (because that
was much more dramatic) rather than living to help and provide a role
model for the orphan boy protagonist (as in the original novel by
Kipling.)

I am also intensely irritated by current travesties, some of them done
apparently with the author's blessing, such as the musical version of
"Wicked." Gregory Maguire's original novel is dark and gloomy but is
also built on a powerful political message that is completely lost in
the happy-go-lucky song-and-dance musical. I think the author sold out
his finest work for fame and money. His right, I guess, but I think
the less of him for it. Because so many people will see the stage play
or film versions, the original poignant message of Maguire's novel is
blunted, and nearly wasted.

I suppose you might say I think that these things are "dumbing down"
the classics, rather than inspiring people to appreciate them in their
original integrity. Whether it's Shakespeare, the bible, Dickens,
Hemingway, or Saul Bellow, it really tears me up to see a masterpiece
gutted and twisted about to pander to popular taste.

If Tolkien had meant the romance of Aragorn and Arwen to be the
central story of his trilogy, he certainly would have written it that
way, instead of tossing the Tale of Arwen into the appendices as an
afterthought. To me the novel is about a devastating loss, a great
tragedy that became inevitable as the consequence of a very long
sequence of events and bad decisions by dozens of characters. The
decline from powers and high magic into Sam's final words of "Well,
I'm back," is not meant to be heroic victory, but rather to build a
wistful and aching yearning in the reader for the things that never
can be again, though once they were so. This is the message repeated
again and again throughout the books, as when Legolas says he hears
the stones of Eregion saying "Deep they delved us, fair they wrought
us, high they builded us; but they are gone," or when Galadriel sings
her farewell to the company as they depart by boat down the Anduin,
"...all paths are drowned deep in shadow; and out of a grey country
darkness lies on the foaming waves between us, and mist covers the
jewels of Calacirya for ever..." The elf queen speaks both of her own
exile from the lands of the west, and of the doom and diminishment
that is about to befall all of Middle Earth, irrevocable and
unavoidable.

Tolkien writes of battles, of course. They are essential building
blocks of any political story. He himself lived through two
devastating world wars and saw the destruction first hand. Though some
of his characters find glory and excitement in battle, he himself does
not. Every battle is a tragedy, a last resort, a symbol of greater
loss on the horizon that is only being delayed and never completely
prevented. That, more than anything, is where Peter Jackson lost me
completely. The first film stayed pretty much true to Tolkien's
intentions for the story as I understand them, but the second and
third wandered so far afield in the director's own peculiar psyche
that they no longer bear anything more than a superficial resemblance
to the original book. If Jackson wanted to tell a story of glorious
battle victories, he should have had one written. Tolkien is not what
he tried to make of it. Now millions of people who never read Tolkien
think that it's a costume epic about flashing swords and the conquest
of good over evil, when in fact the real story is about the ways in
which selfish pride can so pollute the world that no one will ever
again be safe. It's an epic of biblical proportions, yes, and with the
same message as the one in Genesis: once the great sin is committed,
nothing can ever be whole again. Innocence is gone forever, and the
slow decline of civilization into utter barbarism is inevitable.

You may disagree with that philosophy, and you may dislike Tolkien's
writing style. That's your right. I won't argue that point. What I
find particularly objectionable, though, is altering Tolkien's
original story into a thing that it was never meant to be, a harrowing
story with a happy ending. In fact, just as in the biblical tales,
death was let into the world by the hubris of those early characters
(legends of the past by the time the Lord of the Rings plays out) and
can never be banished again. Unlike the New Testament's dubious
promise of eternal life and so forth, Tolkien's conclusion is one of
acceptance. Like Socrates, we must drink the poison because we have no
choice. There is no other road left open.

I suppose I've gone beyond the Cliff's Notes version you asked for,
but I can't really explain this in fewer words. I'm not sure I've
really got it across even here. I'm not a strict "purist." I realize
that telling all of Tolkien in film would have taken ten films that no
one would sit through. But when one undertakes radical abridgement of
a large work, I do believe the result should still retain the flavor
and direction of the original. Jackson's films fail both of those.

And no, I don't think anyone would actually be inspired to read the
original because they liked the film. Even if they did go so far as to
start reading it, the fact that they liked those films almost surely
would guarantee that they'd be disappointed in the original, as it is
so different in both direction and outcome.

Do I think Tolkien is the greatest writer of all times, or even modern
times? Hardly. Do I think his words are sacred? Nothing of the sort.
But I do think it is unfair to the man to put words in his mouth that
he never would have spoken.

Comments

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

...you couldn't get all that under 140 characters? You've certainly given this a lot more thought than I.

I've read these books more than I care to admit, and was confused most by the change in characters' personalities and, well, character. Particularly altered was Faramir, who went from noble to simp in his detention rather than aid of Frodo. The King of Rohan went from heroic to indecisive, too, when considering to fight or not.

Where was Bombadil? Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. I loved the Old Forest scene with Old Man Willow. You could feel the closeness and hum in the sleepy air.

And Sam's oliphants? What's with the multitude of tusks? These were just elephants in the books. Like Alien, I was waiting for each tusk to pop out with some littler tusks.

I hope I'm not detracting from your well thought out and nicely presented argument with this little ramble.

I'll end it by saying that I thought it was wrong to leave out the return to the Shire and its ugly desecration. That would have made the point that you can't just play soldier in foreign lands and hope to come home to all things unchanged.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh, on the topic of character changes I thought Jackson did the most damage to the women. Putting Arwen into Glorfindel's heroic role in the first film and then turning her back into the passive stay-at-home that she was in the book seemed really inconsistent. This became especially true when the meeting between Aragorn and Eowyn was turned into "The Temptation of Aragorn" instead of the wistful one sided attraction that it was in the original. Galadriel herself, who had been in exile for millennia because of her unrepentant rebellion against the will of the Valar, is presented as some strange mystical abbess buried in a convent of trees and rocks.

It's suggested that Jackson gave us The Lord of the Rings as he understood it when he read it as a teenager, but I'd say he gave it to us through the eyes of a ten-year old.

The omission of "The Scouring of the Shire" does contribute to the lost focus of the entire presentation. That's Tolkien's conclusion to the work, and evidently Jackson never understood that. I understand why Bombadil was omitted, on the other hand. Critics have been trying to understand why he's in there for half a century now, and I don't think any of them have succeeded. He seems to be a sort of local color, a tutelary spirit bound to the place where he is found and unable to move or exercise power beyond it.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I enjoyed the film The Lord of the Rings a lot, but haven't read the book (I know, shame!). I'm not really aware of the deviations in the movie, certainly not to the degree you are. But I do believe that the books were much deeper than the trilogy of films were, and the compromises Jackson made created a different story from Tolkien's. I'm with you: if directors want to tell a specific story, have that story written, don't rearrange someone else's.

I get worried about how the trend these days is to treat stories and even non-fiction as "content" to be sliced and diced according to the wishes of someone who did not create it originally. I mostly thought of that in the context of the Internet, but of course Hollywood has been doing it for decades. Original context doesn't matter. Directors and producers all know better than the one who created the story in the first place. That would just bug the crap out of me if I was the writer.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Not that it's a new phenomenon in any way, owing to the vagaries of the film business, general human laziness, and the fact that film is a distinct medium of its own. Just look at the most glaring example: the James Bond franchise. Compared to it, heavy adaptations like The Wizard of Oz and Nosferatu seem like monuments to authorial fidelity.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Turning a book (or even a short story, like "Brokeback Mountain") into a film is every bit as much a translation process as turning an epic poem from one language to another is a translation process. In a very real sense, it's nigh impossible to do it well. That's why I've studied far too many languages in my life, in fact: to read the originals, and probably misunderstand them due to my failings in the language.

A translator who deliberately changes the content of that which he translates, either to "increase sales" or for his own philosophical reasons is dishonest unless he tells the world that his work is a paraphrase or adaptation. Motion pictures are always adaptations when based on original text works. Unfortunately, this is a point that somehow escapes the popular mind most of the time.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I would generally agree with your dislike of adaptation decay, but adaptations can indeed get people to look into the originals. For instance, the LoTR films boosted book sales rather noticeably.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. Sure, the films did increase the book sales, especially of the paperbacks that were specially issued with color plates from the film used as "illustrations." My observation as a librarian though is that most of those shiny paperbacks never get read. I can't tell you how many people borrowed the books from us (we had to get new copies after the original hardbound editions began to fall apart) but brought them back to declare that they were "unreadable" and "heavy." Yep, folks, they aren't comic books, even though Peter Jackson tried to turn them into one.

[dar-han.livejournal.com]

I for once always took Jackson's movies as what he initially wanted them to be: not "J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings," but "J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as it played out in 18-year-old Peter Jackson's mind." That helped me appreciate both versions - the book and the movie - as mostly separate things.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

And I'd be less irritated by the whole pop culture scene if that was really the way things were presented. As an academic, I have a different view of literature, and I do think Tolkien is now enduring literature that stands alongside older classics and will remain there.

After all, when we come right down to it, this is the kind of popular retelling and distortion that, in extreme cases, has created entire religions based on misunderstanding of the life and/or death of some individual who was smarter than the average person. ;p

[schnee.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear.

Well, actually, I probably don't entirely agree with your assessment of the practice of taking books and wrestling them into submission, as it were, twisting their arms behind their back until they agree to allow themselves to be turned into the bland, predictable movies that the general public appears to enjoy for reasons I cannot fathom (or that Hollywood thinks they enjoy, at the very least); not that I like the whole process, not at all (and in fact, when Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" came out, I ranted bitterly (if less eloquently than you) to everyone who'd listen about how horrible it was, how much of a perversion of Tolkien's original story), but these days, I'd probably say it's fine — as long as the result is not marketed as being something it isn't.

This really is the most important point in my opinion. As I always say, all's fair if you predeclare; so if Peter Jackson wants to take a classic literary work and turn it into... well, a Hollywood movie, more power to him, as long as he doesn't claim it is (close to) the original. If he had made those movies without referencing Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings, I probably would've said "OK, it's yet another unimaginative, special effects-ladden 'fantasy' movie — I don't care about it, but I don't mind if others do": but he didn't, of course.

Heck, I probably would've been happy already if he'd called it a spin, a remix, perhaps even a mash-up or something along those lines — anything that'd have made it clear that it's NOT the original story, not intended to be the original story, and that those who'd watch it shouldn't expect to get the original story. But needless to say, he didn't do that, either.

Of course, that may actually be what you're getting at in your last paragraph when you say that you "think it is unfair to [Tolkien] to put words in his mouth that
he never would have spoken". It's a kind of dishonesty, and that really bugs me more than the crappy (and I do think they're crappy) movies themselves as such.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's not only dishonest, but I consider it a disservice to the millions who come away from the film thinking that they now understand Tolkien. Reading Cliff's Notes or Classics Illustrated is never a substitute for reading the original. It's bad enough when we have to read a translation of a major work rather than the original language, but when the translator chooses to alter the actual content to serve his own purpose, that's really bad. Text to film is a translation that, by its very nature, requires redaction as well. The end result is almost sure to be unsatisfactory and inadequate.

For the "record", I don't think much of the remixing and scrambling of recorded music either. This is cheap theft of artistic work by those who lack the creativity to make their own art. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty degenerate.

[schnee.livejournal.com]

It can be, but it doesn't have to be. There are certainly times when I think it's really nothing more than a blatant and transparent attempt to make money – e.g. when someone takes an older "hit", slaps a monotone drum beat on it and then proceeds to sell it as "$FOOBAR 2009" or so, something that always makes me wonder just who's actually stupid enough to shell out money for that – but generally speaking, reception of and building upon previous works of art and/or culture isn't (necessarily) a bad thing, and it certainly needn't be cheap or uncreative, either. As usual, the devil's in the details, and sweeping blanket statements are likely to be painting with too broad a brush.

As for the rest, I certainly agree that translations to a (vastly) different medium are pretty much guaranteed to require significant changes and that therefore, e.g. watching a movie can never be a substitute for reading the book it's based on. And yeah, it does seem that the result of these translations (at least when we are talking about books being made into movies) almost invariably seems to be unable to live up to the original, but it's not a necessary truth. (And it's also still true that as long as the, say, movie adaption of a book doesn't pretend to be the book but acknowledges that it's something entirely different, I won't mind that much, either.)

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I found Tolkien's books read faster than the movies played XD
I don't think I ever really appreciated his books properly to be honest because I was never a real fan of the whole middle earth or times set in a 'medieval' setting. I don't know why, but I do like the anti-hero.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you didn't care for either the book or the films. No problem.

I see Tolkien's writing as a commentary on real history for the most part. His views of that are not popular ones, and his writing is largely influenced by 19th century and earlier authors, so he's likely to be difficult or boring for many readers.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Actually I did enjoy the books and its very rare I do enjoy books with similar themes :) So its a testament to good writing that I read more than one of his books at all.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree with you about Hollywood in general in its approach to classic literature, but as you know, I do not agree with your analysis of Jackson's The Lord of the Rings films.

No doubt that one of the greatest deviations from Tolkien in the movie trilogy is the exaggerated role of Arwen and the romance between her and Aragorn. However, you said it was the central story of the movies and I do not agree. I do not believe it was THAT exaggerated in its significance. I don't know all reasons why Jackson and his team decided to do that, but as I've said before, I do think they were trying to echo the story of Beren and Luthien and thus allude to themes from The Silmarillion. Recall the scene in The Fellowship where Strider is singing softly to himself the lay of Luthien and Frodo inquires "who is she?"

The decline from powers and high magic into Sam's final words of "Well, I'm back," is not meant to be heroic victory, but rather to build a
wistful and aching yearning in the reader for the things that never
can be again, though once they were so.

I thought the ended did just that. That scene, along with Frodo's departure into the Undying Lands created a profound feeling of joy and sadness and a sense of the bittersweet. The evil which had reigned for so long was gone but things would never be the same way again. I don't know how you came to see the ending as a "heroic victory" because I saw it completely differently. Even though the ending was technically happy, I was left with a stirring of sadness and longing. It's fascinating how you perceive the same movie scenes so differently than I do.

The first film stayed pretty much true to Tolkien's intentions for the story as I understand them, but the second and third wandered so far afield in the director's own peculiar psyche that they no longer bear anything more than a superficial resemblance to the original book.

I will definitely agree that the first film was closer to the book than the others but I would not go as far to say that they wandered that far afield.

Now millions of people who never read Tolkien think that it's a costume epic about flashing swords and the conquest of good over evil, when in fact the real story is about the ways in which selfish pride can so pollute the world that no one will ever again be safe

I half agree with you here. The selfishness and pride of man and its impact on the world is indeed a major theme of Tolkien's mythology. However, Tolkien's beliefs including not just the theme of Genesis but also of the Gospels. So where the folly of man's pride is integral to the story, so is man's redemption and salvation. This crucial in understanding Tolkien's analysis of the entire essence of the Faerie Story which he believed to reflect the great Story God has written. So the triumph of good over evil and enduring hope is every bit as important in Middle Earth as tragedy. I have not only read The Lord of the Rings but also other works by Tolkien about what he believed and what his motivations were. You cannot accurate grasp what Middle Earth was about unless you understand what Tolkien himself believed. And yes, I believe the films were right to express it and why I believe that this statement...

Unlike the New Testament's dubious promise of eternal life and so forth, Tolkien's conclusion is one of acceptance.

...is inaccurate. The permeation of hope and longing for everything to be made right again within the character's hearts is there. That does not mean that the impact and consequence of evil is merely brushed aside as insignificant. But for all of Tolkien's metaphors of darkness and shadow, there are metaphors for light and I believe that the real emphasis is on the light. A light stands out more in the darkness. The New Testament or the Gospel was not merely about returning things to what they were. It was about transformation, not just restoration. I do not see the inherent or necessary dichotomy between a sobering acceptance of what has passed and the hope and joy of redemption.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

But when one undertakes radical abridgement of a large work, I do believe the result should still retain the flavor and direction of the original. Jackson's films fail both of those.

Herein lies the quintessential difference between your view of the films and mine. I believe that films, despite their deviations and abridgements (and some of them were indeed significant and disappointing), managed to accurately capture the overall spirit and tone of the books. The films inspired the same feelings that the books did and the basic message was the same. Given the format of film and the length of the books, no one could have captured the scope of these stories in just three installments of close to three hour films. Given the gargantuan nature of the project and near insurmountable goal of bringing Tolkien's trilogy into film, I believe Peter Jackson did a remarkable job.

And no, I don't think anyone would actually be inspired to read the original because they liked the film. Even if they did go so far as to start reading it, the fact that they liked those films almost surely would guarantee that they'd be disappointed in the original, as it is
so different in both direction and outcome.

I actually know for a fact that you are wrong about that :)

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

I was astounded to find one example of an adaptation that I thought far exceeded the original book. (It helped that it was a TV serial rather than a film. I happen to be of the opinion that no book can be adequately expressed as a film; it needs to be series length.)

I'm talking about Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, made for telly as Dexter; it would not be your sort of thing at all. If I'd done what I usually do and read the book first, I might not have bothered watching the series.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I have agreed that some books probably should have been stage or screen plays rather than prose, but that only seemed to incense the person for whom this was written.

There's a generation gap involved in this "discussion" I'm afraid. In general (though with plenty of exceptions like yourself) I find that younger people lack the patience and focus required to read a long and complicated work. They have grown up with instant gratification, lots of television and film, and they expect fast action and quick conclusion most of the time.

The discussion set forth here grew out of my having reiterated my distaste for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, to which the other party responded that the films were "palatable" while the books were "like eating cardboard." I think that pretty well explains the difference of opinion right there. To me the films were almost a grotesque parody while the books are a gourmet feast.