Saturday, 19 February 2022

Concerning fandom

Concerning fandom – addressing the negative response to Amazon Prime’s Rings of Power TV series

Rough draft, 19 February 2022


Dwarven princess Disa (played by Sophia Nomvete), Amazon Prime’s “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power” – Vanity Fair source (2022)


I have a feeling most in Tolkien fandom now know that the release of details and a teaser trailer from the Amazon Prime’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” have resulted in a wave of vocal unrest in some corners of our fandom. This ranges from legitimate concerns about authenticity towards the source material and all the way to hidden (and sometimes very open) ugly shows of racism, misogyny, anti-LGBT+ comments and serious issues such as harm/death threats to Tolkien scholars and fans.

First point: Racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, threatening mental/physical harm or death – all of these are totally unacceptable in human society full stop. You have disgraced our fandom to the world.

Below I am going to hopefully tackle some of the comments with answers that are even now being written by Tolkien scholars, media experts and others.

This is a living document and will be continually edited and updated. I will try to annotate any edits/updates with red text.


Responses to questions/comments repeated across the internet

Why are Amazon doing this?

Amazon, HarperCollins and the Tolkien Estate (J.R.R. Tolkien’s family and owners of his works) formed a partnership to bring out a TV series based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Because of legal and licensing issues, they have settled on using the Second Age of Middle-earth.

The first press release from Amazon was on 13 November 2017: https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-adapt-jrr-tolkiens-globally-renowned-fantasy-novels-lord

Was Christopher Tolkien, as literary executor for his father, involved in the Amazon series?

This is unknown, but he surely knew about it being set up and potentially advised about it. The first public announcement was 13 November 2017 (as above) but we now know Christopher Tolkien stepped down as director of both the Tolkien Estate and the Tolkien Trust on 31 August 2017. He remained the literary executor. He was 93 years old. He died 16 January 2020.
https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2017/11/christopher-tolkien-resigns-as-tolkien-estate-director/

J.R.R. Tolkien would hate this!

There’s no way of telling, since J.R.R. Tolkien died on 2 September 1973. He was however well-known to have strong opinions on artwork adorning his books and commented on adaptions made during his lifetime.

At the same time, in a letter to his publisher Milton Waldman, he saw that others would eventually be involved with his created world:

"The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.” -- JRR Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 131 to Milton Waldman (~1951)

https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/writing/letters/letter-milton-waldman.html

It is also well-known that his son and literary executor, Christopher Tolkien, disliked the film adaptions by Peter Jackson, stating:

"They eviscerated the book, making it an action movie for 15-25 year olds"   

Le Monde, “Tolkien, Ring of Discord”, Raphaëlle Rérolle

5 July 2012 (Google translate used to read article)
https://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2012/07/05/tolkien-l-anneau-de-la-discorde_1729858_3246.html

Tolkien would never “sell out”
*Added 20 February 2022*

No matter your definition of “selling out”, J.R.R. Tolkien did sell the film rights to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” back in 1969 to United Artists for £10,000 to apparently settle a tax bill. He and his family (the Tolkien Estate) never got those rights back. They were sold on to Saul Zaentz Company in 1976. Eventually the holder was renamed Tolkien Enterprises and later Middle-earth Enterprises. I covered the complex licensing issues with Tolkien’s work in an earlier blog here: https://greenbookofthewhitedowns.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-tolkien-license-exploring-where.html

In recent news it was announced that S-Z/Middle-earth Enterprises are now looking to sell their Tolkien assets – film, gaming and merchandising rights. Source: https://variety.com/2022/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-hobbit-tolkien-zaentz-rights-sale-1235176036/

The question of selling rights had come up earlier than the sale to United Artists in 1969. Tolkien describes this incident to his son, Christopher, in Letter 202:

“The back-wash from the Convention was a visit from an American film-agent (one of the adjudicating panel) who drove out all the way in a taxi from London to see me last week, filling 76 S(andfield) with strange men and stranger women – I thought the taxi would never stop disgorging. But this Mr Ackerman brought some really astonishingly good pictures (Rackman rather than Disney) and some remarkable colour photographs. They have apparently toured America shooting mountain and desert scenes that seem to fit the story. The Story Line or Scenario was, however, on a lower level. In fact bad. But it looks as if business might be done. Stanley U. & I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alterations.”

Letter 202, “From a Letter to Christopher and Faith Tolkien” (11 September 1957)
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 261.

The bold is my own, pointing to the key remark by Tolkien – even in 1957, J.R.R. Tolkien accepted that he would potentially either sell his works for a large sum of money (with no/little control) or get some control over any adaption. This was his "Art or Cash" comment.

Amazon’s acquisition of the TV rights is in line with J.R.R. Tolkien’s own guidelines set whilst he was alive. 

Note: the author of this article does not believe Tolkien, or the Tolkien Estate, "sold out" and welcomes adaptions and other opportunities set in Middle-earth.

Why isn’t this the Silmarillion?

As I understand it, Christopher Tolkien, as literary executor for the Tolkien Estate, was tasked by his father with choosing/publishing any unfinished works his father had created. These works were not to give us the "finished story" but to show us what existed. No rights have ever been given to adapt any work published after J.R.R. Tolkien died, only works published in his own lifetime. The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales fall into the latter category.

Simply put, we will not see the Silmarillion in adapted form outside of an audiobook of the original book.

>>needs links or other citation<<

Peter Jackson didn’t… [insert comment]

Some fans put Peter Jackson, and his work, up on a pedestal. Some fans of the books refuse to watch his films. Personally, I feel the films did a great job at hitting a wider audience and hopefully made more people interested in going to the source material, J.R.R. Tolkien’s books themselves.

But to say there were not changes, some quite substantial, is quite erroneous.   

David Mullich (aka AncalagonTheBlack) has created this extensive list of the changes in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films from their corresponding book:
https://www.theonering.com/complete-list-of-film-changes/
*Looking for another source, the website owners are unfortunately part of the problem from their social media posts*

There were issues with casting in the Peter Jackson films in terms of racism, as highlighted here: https://filmupdates.net/2021/11/04/confronting-the-lord-of-the-rings/

It should be also noted, even the Lord of the Rings films faced a backlash from fans and in one of the uglier incidents, Sir Ian McKellen faced homophobia on the internet. He later wrote about it here: https://mckellen.com/writings/000115.htm

Fans quote spamming social media, YouTube and other places

You may have noticed the same quote repeated over and over again on the internet recently which each time is directly attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien:

“Evil cannot create anything new, they can only corrupt and ruin what good forces have invented or made.”

Firstly, this is not a direct quote of J.R.R. Tolkien, it does not appear in his works or any known interviews.

It appears a mishmash of several things. Firstly a page on TVTropes about “Evil is sterile.”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsSterile

Secondly it resembles something Frodo says in Return of the King: “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”

But it is not a Tolkien quote. Sadly it is being used to push an opinion Tolkien did not make himself, in reality it was a character of his that same something similar. There is an important difference.

Sources:
Luke Shelton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LukeBShelton/status/1493608107905327104
Sara Brown on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/AranelParmadil/status/1493609721739235331

Where is the beard on the Dwarf woman shown in the Rings of Power trailer?

>> needs more content<<

Dwarven beards and women has become a hot topic on the internet after the first images of Princess Disa appeared and then she was shown in the 1 minute teaser trailer.

The Tolkien Professor and President of Signum University, Corey Olsen, tweeted the following response to fans discussing dwarven women and beards:  

“A clarification on dwarf women.  Tolkien says that they look just like dwarf men.  He also clarifies later, concerning beards (Nature of Middle-earth, p 187, footnote), that "All _male_ dwarves had them." Tolkien (late in life) explicitly did NOT imagine dwarf women as bearded.”

8:13 PM · Feb 18, 2022
https://twitter.com/tolkienprof/status/1494767147377168388

*Added: 27 February 2022* Even Carl Hostetter, author of “The Nature of Middle-earth,” has joined the debate, clearly stating that Amazon doesn't actually have to show Dwarf women with beards:  

“Now, I don't give a fig whether Amazon depicts Dwarf women as having beards or not, especially since they've stated that they don't have the rights to the source that explicitly states that they do.”

 @CarlHostetter (20 February 2022)
https://twitter.com/CarlHostetter/status/1495202971642208262

Why do the elves have short hair?

Dr Sara Brown has provided some insight into elven hair in Tolkien lore:

Re short-haired elves. Tolkien never specified ANYWHERE the length of elven hair. He rarely provided much detail on what characters looked like, in fact, leaving much to the imagination. It is the Jackson films that normalised long hair for Elves.

https://twitter.com/AranelParmadil/status/1495141106027225105

>need information<

Why are there BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) appearing as elves, dwarves and hobbits in the Amazon TV series? That is not Tolkien lore!

Two excellent articles about fantasy, Tolkien fandom, the Amazon TV show and racism:

>need information, sources, etc<
>This is a key point needed<

What is woke?
*Added 27 February 2022*

Merriam-Webster defines “woke” as

“aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”

(Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke)

A word that once described the Black Community in 1960s America waking up to racism and persecution around them, the word has been appropriated by conservative (right wing) elements and the meaning has been reversed. It is now a “dog whistle” and a term of abuse towards any person engaged in social justice.

You’ll hear this term used in online debates regarding the Amazon TV series, usually aimed as abuse at Amazon because they have included BIPOC actors in the show.

Further reading:

Wasn’t Tolkien creating a Mythology for England?

The same comments appear over and over that if Tolkien was, as he claimed in his letter to Milton Waldman (Letter 131, ~1951), writing “A Mythology for England” then why would there be BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) as elves, dwarves and hobbits?https://www.tolkienestate.com/en/writing/letters/letter-milton-waldman.html

The best answer for this can be found on Luke Shelton’s blog:
https://luke-shelton.com/2022/02/12/why-calling-tolkiens-work-a-mythology-for-england-is-wrong-and-misleading/

Tolkien’s world is based on Anglo-Saxon England, so shouldn’t everyone be white?

The idea that Middle-earth is directly linked with Anglo-Saxon England has come up quite often. This appears to be an amalgamation of several things:

1] the mythology for England notion
2] that Tolkien was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford
3] that he translated my early medieval texts
4] stories and mythology of Anglo-Saxon England did clearly influence him and his writing
5] A “need” or desire for Britain’s past to be white.

But we need to be clear – Middle-earth is fiction, a creation of the author, and is not a historical location from our own past. Limiting fiction to historical situations is not acceptable.

The subject of race and ethnicity in early medieval Britain and Europe is a key debate happening in Medieval scholarship currently. The subject of race and ethnicity within Middle-earth is also an ongoing discussion.

There are several key books and articles on Tolkien and the subject:

Fimi, D. (2008) Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tolkien-Race-Cultural-History-Dimitra/dp/0230272843

>more articles needed<

The erroneous idea that early medieval England was populated with only Caucasian people is being rigorously challenged in all medieval and Tolkien academia. Below are some articles of interest in this discourse:

Even the term “Anglo-Saxon” is now being challenged, especially now it is being co-opted by White supremacists and far-right groups. Below are some articles looking at how medievalism moves forward with appropriate terms:

Tolkien’s own thoughts on Middle-earth and the Anglo-Saxons
*Added: 27 February 2022*

Below are several quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s own academic writings about the term “Anglo-Saxons” and the connection to his fictional writings.

Thank you to Alan Reynolds, a fellow member of the Tolkien Society, for pointing out these nuggets of Tolkien’s thoughts. The quotes used can be found in the following book:

The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien
Stuart Lee and Elizabeth Solopova (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

The quotes are from one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s own manuscripts kept in the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford. The manuscript is his lecture notes for “Anglo-Saxon History and Literature” (MS Tolkien A30/1).

'You can, if you like, speak of an 'Anglo-Saxon period' in history, before 1066. But it is not a very useful label. You might as well label all the jars on the top-shelf of your store cupboard as PRESERVE, and all the rest JAM. In actual fact, there was no such thing as a single uniform 'Anglo-Saxon' period: just a time when all men wore funny trousers with cross-straps, and ate too much pork and drank too much beer; a time whose chief events were the burning of some cakes by Alfred and the wetting of Canute's feet. That is a legendary time that never happened or existed, and it is not nearly as interesting as the real thing.'

MS Tolkien A30/1, f.70 (Lee and Solopova, p.12)

''No one would learn anything valid about the ''Anglo-Saxons'' from any of my lore, not even that concerning the Rohirrim: I never intended that they should'”

MS Tolkien A30/1, f.121 (Lee and Solopova, p.279)

Rings of Power as a book to Television adaption – what should we expect?

A lot of concern has been expressed over what material Amazon have access to through the Tolkien Estate, how much will the TV series stick to canon, and what this adaption is actually attempting to achieve?

This is an expansive subject.

A group of recent Vanity Fair articles has given insights to what the rights Amazon owns in terms of its adaption.

This is the relevant quote from the third article, “10 Burning Questions About Amazon’s ‘The Rings of Power’”:

So what did Amazon buy? “We have the rights solely to The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, the appendices, and The Hobbit,” Payne says. “And that is it. We do not have the rights to The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth, or any of those other books.”  

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/10-burning-questions-about-amazons-the-rings-of-power

The other two articles are:

The key point to note here is that Amazon is adapting Tolkien’s Second Age where there isn’t a lot of material to use in the first place and only one actual (incomplete) story set in the Age: "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife.” This appears in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Unfinished Tales” if you want to check it out along with "A Description of the Island of Númenor" and "The Line of Elros: Kings of Númenor." The rest is historical background and description.

Information from: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Unfinished_Tales

Amazon have a lot of room to develop their own story and fit in the big moments Tolkien himself wrote down. They have to avoid using details/material from any work that came out after his death, including “The Silmarillion” and “Unfinished Tales”. This is the future of Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

To be fair to Amazon, there isn’t a whole cast of characters to really pull off a five-season show and those Tolkien wrote are spread across the thousands of years in the Second Age.

The main point being this is an adaption, not the original work and it’s a modern look using his writings to create a show suitable for its audience. It’s not canon, since J.R.R. Tolkien isn’t involved, just like the Peter Jackson films aren’t canon either. No adaption does a word for word retelling of their source material. Why would it?

A useful Guardian article on film adaptions of books and how to approach them:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/aug/17/literary-adaptation-film-reviews

>need more links, citations, etc<
>more on adaption<

What is a Tolkien Scholar?

Since quite a lot of people seem to be outside of academia and oblivious to what it is all about, the question that frequently comes up is “What makes you an expert?” or some other form of that. Sometimes, sadly, there is abuse too of said scholars. Tolkien scholarship is wide-ranging covering many disciplines, professions and interests. The essential part is they are involved in research of Tolkien and his works. Many Tolkien Scholars present papers for the various Tolkien-focused societies such as the Tolkien Society and the Mythopoeic Society. They also present at events like the International Medieval Congress (Leeds) and the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo) with dedicated Tolkien sessions.

There is a great blog post on the subject of what makes a Tolkien Scholar here: https://alasnotme.blogspot.com/2022/02/so-whats-tolkien-scholar-anyway.html  

Notable blogs and online articles with related material


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