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Dec. 31st, 2002 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tylikJust saw the two towers again.
I like Faramir better this time. I still wince when he sends the ring to his father... but it held together better for me on the whole.
The cheap humor irritated me even more, though. (Sorry, I know there are fans of the dwarf tossing references, but I am not one of them. Poor Gimli. I so found myself wanting to see a dwarf army -- the guy is obviously so tough, to do so well completely outside of his own element, but he gets so much crap.)
Hard to see how Eowyn was supposed to have been so cold, though some might so mistake her desperation, I guess... (Craig says she apparently took acting lessons the same place as Frodo. Um.)
I go back and forth on the Ents.
Been thinking a bit about David Brin's critique of LotR that ran in Salon. It's funny... in general, I tend to be pretty critical of fiction that is run through with this antique notion of kingship and the mandate of heaven. Sheesh. But it doesn't hit me that way in Tolkien... While the whole series is a lament for the passing of the world that was, the "good" characters are actively working to hasten its passing. And the most civilized people in the book don't care much for government, but when they bother with it they elect it democratically. (Yes, I do mean the hobbits, and I'll argue at length why I think they're more civilized than the elves.)
I think Tolkien somehow managed to put himself in the odd spot of writing a story that was bigger than him. When the elves resist change, is when they bring evil into the world. Mortality is the gift given to men -- and yet it seems that no one sees this as a gift. Change and the necessity of change underlies everything that happens, and yet it was as if it broke Tolkien's heart to write about it.
I like Faramir better this time. I still wince when he sends the ring to his father... but it held together better for me on the whole.
The cheap humor irritated me even more, though. (Sorry, I know there are fans of the dwarf tossing references, but I am not one of them. Poor Gimli. I so found myself wanting to see a dwarf army -- the guy is obviously so tough, to do so well completely outside of his own element, but he gets so much crap.)
Hard to see how Eowyn was supposed to have been so cold, though some might so mistake her desperation, I guess... (Craig says she apparently took acting lessons the same place as Frodo. Um.)
I go back and forth on the Ents.
Been thinking a bit about David Brin's critique of LotR that ran in Salon. It's funny... in general, I tend to be pretty critical of fiction that is run through with this antique notion of kingship and the mandate of heaven. Sheesh. But it doesn't hit me that way in Tolkien... While the whole series is a lament for the passing of the world that was, the "good" characters are actively working to hasten its passing. And the most civilized people in the book don't care much for government, but when they bother with it they elect it democratically. (Yes, I do mean the hobbits, and I'll argue at length why I think they're more civilized than the elves.)
I think Tolkien somehow managed to put himself in the odd spot of writing a story that was bigger than him. When the elves resist change, is when they bring evil into the world. Mortality is the gift given to men -- and yet it seems that no one sees this as a gift. Change and the necessity of change underlies everything that happens, and yet it was as if it broke Tolkien's heart to write about it.
