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Modern Mythmaking
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy is certainly
a triumph--but of what, exactly? The story itself doesn't
break ground; in fact, one of its most sticking criticisms
is its simplistic view of good and evil. And though the visual
effects ravish, something more must be at stake. To define
the greatness of Jackson's adaptation, let us look to the
greatness of Tolkien's books, which were more of an avocation
for their author, who made his living as a professor, linguist,
and sometimes literary critic. After serving in World War
I, J.R.R. Tolkien won appointment first as an Associate Professor
in English Language at the University of Leeds (where he co-authored
a stirring defense of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight),
later returning to his alma mater Oxford University, where
he authored the influential essay "Beowulf, the Monsters
and the Critics." In truth, his academic output was relatively
small; instead, Tolkien cultivated his vast intellect by creating
this expansive myth--one that facilitated both his love of
language and devotion to the Catholic Church (indeed, LOTR
is often referred to as a "Christian myth").
Legend is that when Tolkien was a student at Oxford, he was
inspired by the Cynewulf's Old English poem Crist,
which contains the following lines:
Eala Earendel engla beorhtast (Hail Earendel, brightest
of angels,)
ofer middangeard monnum sended (Above Middle-earth
sent unto men.)
Tolkien isn't quite an angel, but he's probably Western literature's
most important mythmaker since John Milton. Milton's grandest
triumph (not to discount his poetry's beauty) is his complex
metaphysical development of Christian morality in epic form;
whereas Tolkien's triumph is creating the epic via a distinctly
modern religious/secular study of language--how, as Ruth Noel
writes in her book Language in Tolkien's Middle-earth,
"Language is so integral to culture that a linguist can
reconstruct a culture from its langauage just as a biologist
can reconstruct an animal from a bone." The "unique
dimension of realism" of Tolkien's invented languages
is employed, "in part, (as) a device so that the languages
may tell part of the story by indicating cultural characteristics
and crosscultural relationships." Without diving into
too much detail, an example might be that Elvish (or its relatives
Gray-Elven or High-Elven) and the hobbit's language Westron
have softer, provincial sounds that clue us to their peaceful
nature, whereas the real language of Old Norse is employed
for a warrior edge. Of course, there's much more to Tolkien's
linguistic study, but the major accomplishment is this: No
writer has ever used language so effectively to build such
a persuasive mythical world. In fact, Tolkien's conceit is
precisely that: Middle-earth is a unique living ecosystem,
the English "translations" we read of the various
languages spoken in The Lord of the Rings "reconstruct"
Middle-earth much like archeologists reconstruct civilizations
from artifacts.
Just as the style of Milton's epic poem fit its function
(the complex clause-upon-clause structure of Book 1 building
the weight of Satan's fall, for example), Tolkien's precision
details fit his ambition of creating a myth for a modern age.
As critic Patrick Curry (quoting Virginia Luling) writes in
Defending Middle-Earth--Tolkien: Myth & Modernity,
"All mythologies are necessarily both universal and local:
universal in their scope, because deal with the nature of
things; local in point of view and temper, because they aries
out of particular cultures." And thus is The Lord
of the Rings. The books were, if not the first, certainly
the most ambitious mythmaking to be published after the Industrial
Revolution shrank the modern world. Our notion of "other
worlds" was no longer mythic; we recieved messages via
telegraph, heard them on radio, saw them on television, flew
there by plane, and many even fought on their soil. Thus,
the creation of Middle-earth requires intensive labor (even
the invention of fourteen separate languages) to suspend our
belief and keep aloft the fantasy. Tolkien's triumph is not
in the story itself, but of storytelling voice in which intimate
details of this world transcend its own fantasy--thus achieving
myth.
And this is not simply a breakthrough in style. The persuasiveness
of Middle-earth brings authority to traditional values, especially
for readers of a modern age. Tolkien's stories argue that
society's most immoral act is destroying the environment,
for values arise from one's day-to-day existence. At the publication
of the Tolkien's books, Europe had just witnessed the destruction
of its countryside--the war not just upturning fields, but
in the destruction of farms and the need of labor to build
the machinery of war, the agrarian life was diminished too.
True, this pastoral life had become a mostly romantic vision,
but those values are worth preserving--but how now, other
than myth? Tolkien, though whimsical in his descriptions of
the hobbits, does not over-romanticize the threat of destruction
of paradise (as other Christian mythicists have) into a puffed-up
allegory for the fall from Eden. Rather, his exhaustive detail
of the hobbits' daily life makes this Eden seem real, thus
giving the reader and emotional stake in its preservation.
And the threat of Middle-earth is not an allegory for post-war
Europe either; it stands on its own merits, as Tolkien himself
writes in foreward of The Fellowship of the Ring, "I
think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but
the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other
in the purposed domination of the author." In this same
essay, he scoffs at those who see the ring as a metaphor for
the atomic bomb.
However one may choose to apply it, the moral in the king's
return and preservation of the hobbits' "simple"
life is best said by the Tolkien
Society's review of Curry's book, "The happier and
more moral of the races of Middle-earth are firmly rooted
in their environment--consider the elves of Caras Galadhon
or the Ents of Fangorn Forest. Conversely, evil is shown as
springing from a love of power and a callous disregard of
life for its own sake. The level of destruction of the countryside...is
deeply disturbing." This simple notion defeats accusations
of naivete because Tolkien's world is so real. The tone may
be whimsical, but the Hobbits and their ilk are certainly
not simple, and the books don't argue for us to "go native"
or reject our modern lives. Rather, he persuades us, through
his remarkable attention to detail, that the "simple"
lives most of us live are in fact complex, and that the collection
of our day-to-day existences define us as a people. In this,
the individual life is both unique and representative of the
mythic struggle between good and evil--the fight against evil
is the defense of all Creation. Tolkien's triumph is the powerfully-voiced
argument for these values, mythic in that the detailed, intimate
descriptions are so persuasive that they transcend Middle-earth
and achieve the universal.
The very first scene of The Return of the King is
of a worm wiggling out from the core of an apple. Not a subtle
image, but remarkable in its details: the clearly defined
segments, the shadows cast by its small bend, the moonlight
reflecting off the fruit's skin. The apple is held by Gollum,
the former hobbit whose lust for the precious ring has winnowed
him into an abhorrent creature. But to what degree has evil
worn him down? Well, for one, we can see the individual vertebrae
in his spine, like a snake under his skin. A few thin hairs
blow atop his scalp, like stray weeds on an abandoned piece
of land. Jackson focuses on these details, then suddenly the
camara flies off, swirling around the characters, then drawing
back behind and above the mountains so that we see the expansive
terrain. The camara holds as they walk a few steps, developing
the sense of epic trial, and stealing our breath with the
scenery of New Zealand standing in for Middle-earth. In the
same moment, the film is both intimate and epic.
Jackson's triumph is, approximately, the cinematic equivalent
of Tolkien's: The persuasive development of a mythic world
in meticulous detail, both local in intimacy and universal
in scope. Where Tolkien's virtuosity is linguistic, Jackson's
painterly detail and jaw-dropping camara work has developed
a more convincing mythical world than any other filmmaker.
Where Tolkien invented languages that seem based on romantic
tongues, Jackson augments real countryside with computerized
colorization, and uses real actors to film computerized characters--the
end result is a more detailed, more convincing, more real
fantasy world than anyone other special effects wizard
has yet devised.
This "real fantasy" paradox is essential to the
movies' themes, especially when compared to similarly ambitious
movie mythmakers. Is it possible to look at Lucas' flying
jet speeders and digital waterfalls and wildflowers and think,
"That's why Queen Amidala needs to preserve the Republic"?
Star Wars feels fake; Lucas' landscapes might be individually
beautiful, but there's no mythic sense that all humanity is
at stake. Likewise with The Matrix, whose "underworld"
is not only unconvincing, but it's more of a sweaty, chaotic
hell than representative of all Creation. But when we see
Sauron's evil eye cast over the landscape (which Jackson maps
out for us with sweeping overheads, the camara laying out
the terrain and then swooping down to find a telling facial
expression or oxcart grinding through the mud), there's value
in what's at stake. It's not about some hopelessly bureaucratic
space council, or a bunch of computer blips inside The Matrix,
but it's about the preservation of the Hobbits' noble life
and the defense of Creation. Ultimately, little is emotionally
and psychologically at stake in destroying The Matrix or Anakin
and Amidala's puppy-love affair. But Gandalf's majestic ride
across a grassy plain, staff held toward the heavens? We feel
that.
And thus lies the key difference: The Star Wars universe
is sanitized, even to the non-death of droids by lazer, as
is the computer slickness of The Matrix, which is supposed
to justify Neo's mass killing. The Lord of the Rings,
to contrast, mucks in the dirt--compare the pristine good
looks of Anakin Skywalker, or the self-conscious, hidden-eye
style of Neo and Trinity, to the messy, dirt and tear-stained
faces of Frodo and Sam. In short, Jackson has overcome the
storytelling curse of the big-budget filmmaker: His special
efforts work with the "real" to develop the emotional
intensity of the film, rather distract from it. This is not
just a triumph of style, but one that's integral to his theme
of blending the modern and the ancient.
True, Jackson's work is less about the hobbits and more about
Aragorn and the warriors, but this seems a necessary switch,
given the times. In fact, while watching The Lord of the
Rings , it's easy to forget that the hobbits were the
focus of Tolkien's book. But the mulitplex audience does not
fear the mass destruction of the countryside, but the crumbling
of our cities. Modern wars in our country will be fought on
urban terrain, and so The Lord of the Rings wisely
focuses on city sieges. Jackson envisions Sauron as a flaming
eye--that evil is an omniscient, shadowy force more than an
organized army seems ominously familiar. In fact, fear is
so pervasive that all petty concerns are put aside for the
cause of civilization. Aragorn is asked, "Why should
we ride to the aid of those who did not support us before?"
The answer, quite bluntly, is to defeat evil and preserve
both civilization and Creation--a blending of the modern and
ancient. This is the soul of the modern myth.
Still, with the talk of the astronomical box office of The
Lord of the Rings franchise, the question lingers: Why
film these stories, if not for the money? Of course money
is the primary motivation, but let's not pretend that publication
is some sort of charitable endeavor either. Grand myths have
their origins in oral folklore, when elder storytellers gathered
a village to recount the defining myths of a culture. Ask
why film a novel that's been named "Book of the Century",
and the answer lies in its mythological roots: Film is a social
experience, as these sorts of myths once were. A proper telling
of The Odyssey literally requires the blessing of the
gods, just as great Shakespeare requires the public theater,
because performance arouses passion and ignites the imagination.
Literature has its solitary, introspective joys, but the grand
myths are not bound by the page. The rise of Hollywood marks
a return to this kind of social storytelling, facilitating
a common identity through shared experience. Rarely has Hollywood
achieved such true mythmaking.
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