Hippy Alert

[Dingo]

.......can't help but think that whilst CIM and Neutron make many valid analytical points about JRR's classic masterpiece they almost fail to look for the real inspiration.

Whilst invilvement in a World War may ahve altered the thoughts and feelings of the man the piece itself is far greater than the sum of it's parts and bit part players alike.

The battle between good and evil did not start with Tolkien books but was first written about thousands of year's ago in something called the Bible (okay, don't panic and go rushing to the pub all at once!!  :lol: ).....comparisons of which have not been brought to the fore at all in this forum, yet like Harry Potter books and argueably some of the characters contained within, bear a distinct resemblance to Tolkiens work?!!.

Try reading the Bible sometime (I know it's a dull read) but all the elements of Tolkiens work are contained therein (substitute Trolls, Orcs and Hobbits for historical civilisation of your choice) and I guess a good remake with Spielberg as the Director and the use of modern day special effects would make it a classic movie.....can you imagine JC feeding the 5,000?......MacDonalds Fishburgers all round then washed down with a Milkshake from the water (bit near the truth there then!!).

The ring being perhaps just a symbol of power which all men crave (sorry girls) yet which ultimately has the power in itself to corrupt (let's see now...Religion..... and modern day equivalent of Money??)......either of which can cause your average bloke (or Elf) in the street to do some weird and wonderful things...good and bad.....so more's the pity the Bible was a collaboration instead of a single author (allegedly?).

Let's all celebrate the Prophet Tolkien (and in no way trivialising the ingenuity of his work for those purists out there) for to my mind he has managed to recreate what was perhaps a masterpiece 2,000 years on from the original and re-ignited the age old dilemma of what is good and bad in all of us.......

.........and even to this day (for those of you who read the Daily Mail) there are people who are analysing the Bible and saying they have found codes within it alluding to all of the history of mankind including our future demise in 2006!!......

A good read (and Tolkien is a bloody good read) is a good read but........do you think in 2,000 years time when mankind has no further use of arms and legs and perhaps even bodies, do you think his work will be analysed in much the same way as today?....or could it be used as a reference manual to the way in which the battle between good and evil is an eternal dilemma to which there may be no resolution...............

...........but probably at least the material for several more good books??!!   :roll:  :roll:


ps For anyone of a religious persuasion I wholeheartedly apologise for any inflammatory or Defammatory remarks........or at least let me write a book first (oops, almost have) and get paid millions before you issue the Fatwa!!   :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:

pps I think I'm going to go for that beer now!!

[OldBloke]

My mind's made up ...

I'm entering a PCS team for next season's 'University Challenge'.  :lol:

[Dr Sadako]

.......can't help but think that whilst CIM and Neutron make many valid analytical points about JRR's classic masterpiece they almost fail to look for the real inspiration.

Whilst invilvement in a World War may ahve altered the thoughts and feelings of the man the piece itself is far greater than the sum of it's parts and bit part players alike.

The battle between good and evil did not start with Tolkien books but was first written about thousands of year's ago in something called the Bible (okay, don't panic and go rushing to the pub all at once!! :lol: ).....comparisons of which have not been brought to the fore at all in this forum, yet like Harry Potter books and argueably some of the characters contained within, bear a distinct resemblance to Tolkiens work?!!.

Try reading the Bible sometime (I know it's a dull read) but all the elements of Tolkiens work are contained therein (substitute Trolls, Orcs and Hobbits for historical civilisation of your choice) and I guess a good remake with Spielberg as the Director and the use of modern day special effects would make it a classic movie.....can you imagine JC feeding the 5,000?......MacDonalds Fishburgers all round then washed down with a Milkshake from the water (bit near the truth there then!!).

The ring being perhaps just a symbol of power which all men crave (sorry girls) yet which ultimately has the power in itself to corrupt (let's see now...Religion..... and modern day equivalent of Money??)......either of which can cause your average bloke (or Elf) in the street to do some weird and wonderful things...good and bad.....so more's the pity the Bible was a collaboration instead of a single author (allegedly?).

Let's all celebrate the Prophet Tolkien (and in no way trivialising the ingenuity of his work for those purists out there) for to my mind he has managed to recreate what was perhaps a masterpiece 2,000 years on from the original and re-ignited the age old dilemma of what is good and bad in all of us.......

.........and even to this day (for those of you who read the Daily Mail) there are people who are analysing the Bible and saying they have found codes within it alluding to all of the history of mankind including our future demise in 2006!!......

A good read (and Tolkien is a bloody good read) is a good read but........do you think in 2,000 years time when mankind has no further use of arms and legs and perhaps even bodies, do you think his work will be analysed in much the same way as today?....or could it be used as a reference manual to the way in which the battle between good and evil is an eternal dilemma to which there may be no resolution...............

...........but probably at least the material for several more good books??!!  :roll: :roll:


ps For anyone of a religious persuasion I wholeheartedly apologise for any inflammatory or Defammatory remarks........or at least let me write a book first (oops, almost have) and get paid millions before you issue the Fatwa!!  :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:

pps I think I'm going to go for that beer now!!

As Tolkien himself wrote in the preface

"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical."

So just enjoy it people.

[Dingo]

Hoorah for the voice of sanity!!   :lol:  :lol:


.......wonder if there was ever a preface to the Bible saying exactly the same thing??  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:  :twisted:


.........now where did I put that book of Badness again??  :lol:

[CiM]

.......can't help but think that whilst CIM and Neutron make many valid analytical points about JRR's classic masterpiece they almost fail to look for the real inspiration.

We weren't trying to collectively write a disertation on the thing, we were discussing one or two things which somehow came up and interested or irked us.  Or something...

Whilst invilvement in a World War may ahve altered the thoughts and feelings of the man the piece itself is far greater than the sum of it's parts and bit part players alike.

Such regal tones thou dost useth!

The battle between good and evil did not start with Tolkien books but was first written about thousands of year's ago in something called the Bible (okay, don't panic and go rushing to the pub all at once!! :lol: ).....comparisons of which have not been brought to the fore at all in this forum, yet like Harry Potter books and argueably some of the characters contained within, bear a distinct resemblance to Tolkiens work?!!. etc etc, warble etc, blah blah yada yada l33t skillz w00t.

The Bible is a mixture of history, poetry, prose, allegory and personal letters.  As Sadako said, LOTR/HP are pure fiction stories, designed neither to have some kind of deeper meaning nor to make any kind of statement.  The deeper meanings that do exist in LOTR, and the statements it does make, are simply symptomatic of the portrayal of believable characters.

I don't think the Bible would make a classic movie because, for a start, it's comprised of a whole bunch of separate books, many of which overlap and many of which are mostly poetry.  Others cover long periods of history, bringing the reader's focus onto specific significant aspects of said history.  Yet others are simple first- or third-hand accounts of historical events over short(ish) periods.  And still more are letters.

So if you ignore all those bits and focus on individual Bible stories for movie-making, even those stories often don't suit well to filmification (new word for the day).  Those few that do would often slightly spoiled for our modern audience by the now obscure bits of what was popular culture three thousand years ago.  And even if you transpose those into modern icons, you have the basic problem that most (indeed, probably all) Bible stories have a point or several points to them - and most people don't like being preached at by their movies.

As for attempting to take Bible stories and move them into the modern world, well... rather a lot of folk have already done so  Same follows for many of the bigger concepts dealt with in the Bible.  Babette's Feast - a film which is on this week, I think - is a great example of that.

Being quite familiar with large chunks of the Bible, and being quite familiar with LOTR, I can safely say that nothing in LOTR is simply a re-hash of some Bible story somewhere.  In no way is LOTR a re-working of the Bible.  Although, because the Bible was part of Tolkien's life experience, no doubt it has influenced his works in the same subtle ways that the world wars and his neighbour's cat influenced his works.

Let's all celebrate the Prophet Tolkien (and in no way trivialising the ingenuity of his work for those purists out there) for to my mind he has managed to recreate what was perhaps a masterpiece 2,000 years on from the original and re-ignited the age old dilemma of what is good and bad in all of us.......

*points to his above paragraph*

Tolkien was a Christian (a Catholic, I think), and a good friend of C S Lewis.  It's not difficult to figure out where his concepts of good and evil came from.  LOTR would have been impossible to write in post-modernism - or at least to write convincingly and coherently - because, quite simply, you can't portray a battle between good and evil if you don't know exactly what defines good and evil.

And post-modern pop culture suffers in a big way on that point because, without whole-hearted belief in an absolute, all-creating uncreated power, there can be no meaningful definition of good or evil.  All that's left is just vague relativism with no hard absolutes to give it substance.

- CiM

[smilodon]

(for those of you who read the Daily Mail)

Who by definition have no idea what were are talking about......

and anyway according to the wonderful Daily Mail, everyone in this forum is a  Computer Games playing psychopath, who celebrate death and destruction with our  wicked Terrorist led bomb planting games. We all probably cheered on 11th September and stuff!

And anyone who knows about computers probably doesn't use sensible AOL (with that sweet wholesome Connie girl) and are hackers and virus writers or look at foul pornography.  And a few use loonix and not safe sensible Windows 97, and therefore are clearly satans little helpers. I'd have the lot of you flogged in public you bloody long haired hippies....foam.....rant.....rant. 8O    :evil:

[Anonymous]

(for those of you who read the Daily Mail)

Who by definition have no idea what were are talking about......

and anyway according to the wonderful Daily Mail, everyone in this forum is a  Computer Games playing psychopath, who celebrate death and destruction with our  wicked Terrorist led bomb planting games. We all probably cheered on 11th September and stuff!

And anyone who knows about computers probably doesn't use sensible AOL (with that sweet wholesome Connie girl) and are hackers and virus writers or look at foul pornography.  And a few use loonix and not safe sensible Windows 97, and therefore are clearly satans little helpers. I'd have the lot of you flogged in public you bloody long haired hippies....foam.....rant.....rant. 8O    :evil:[/b]

Well I've looked and looked but I still cannot find anything to disagree with in that post  :?

[Dingo]

CiM wrote
The Bible is a mixture of history, poetry, prose, allegory and personal letters. As Sadako said, LOTR/HP are pure fiction stories, designed neither to have some kind of deeper meaning nor to make any kind of statement.

.........in which I rest my case that the two are not dissimilar??!!  :roll:


Neutron wrote
Who by definition have no idea what were are talking about......
and anyway according to the wonderful Daily Mail, everyone in this forum is a Computer Games playing psychopath, who celebrate death and destruction with our wicked Terrorist led bomb planting games. We all probably cheered on 11th September and stuff!

And anyone who knows about computers probably doesn't use sensible AOL (with that sweet wholesome Connie girl) and are hackers and virus writers or look at foul pornography. And a few use loonix and not safe sensible Windows 97, and therefore are clearly satans little helpers.

...........In which I rest my case?!!


ps Neutron failing miserably to ascertain that by using a point of reference in the Daily Mail it does not automatically make me a Mail reader thus invalidating his erroneous and misguided rant!!   :lol:  :lol:


pps Really must drink more beer.....it evokes so many happy memories!!  8O  8O  8O

[smilodon]

ps Neutron failing miserably to ascertain that by using a point of reference in the Daily Mail it does not automatically make me a Mail reader thus invalidating his erroneous and misguided rant!!  :lol: :lol:

At no point did I allude to the possibility of you being a Daily Mail reader.

Also I would hate to think that anyone thought I had a personal grudge against readers of the Daily Mail....or Daily Express and Daily Mirror for that matter.

I'm sure there are many reasons why someone would want something other than reasoned intelligent informed editorial in their daily newspaper  :wink:

[Dr Sadako]

Tolkien was a Christian (a Catholic, I think), and a good friend of C S Lewis. It's not difficult to figure out where his concepts of good and evil came from. LOTR would have been impossible to write in post-modernism - or at least to write convincingly and coherently - because, quite simply, you can't portray a battle between good and evil if you don't know exactly what defines good and evil.

If you buy the 4 DVD set or LOTR FOTR you will get plenty of background story on Tolkien and LOTR. Here is a short summary:
Tolkien lost both his parents before he was 11 years old and grew up in a new town with basically no friends. He was drafted for world war I and survived the trenches in France. I think he got a pretty good picture of good and bad there. The outlines for Midgard was drawn out in the trenches actually. Tolkien realised that people aren't evil, but capable of evil actions.

[CiM]

I have a disturbing feeling that I'm wasting my time as I sit down to write this reply...   (I Agree with you completely on this one....Smite :twisted:  :twisted: )

CiM wrote
The Bible is a mixture of history, poetry, prose, allegory and personal letters. As Sadako said, LOTR/HP are pure fiction stories, designed neither to have some kind of deeper meaning nor to make any kind of statement.

.........in which I rest my case that the two are not dissimilar??!! :roll:

Well, rest your case if you wish, but no jury I've ever heard of would find in your favour based on that bit of logic

LOTR is a fictional narrative, with brief inclusions of poetry and quoted letters to further the story at relevant points.

In other words, it's a novel.

The Bible is not a novel.  In fact, it's nothing like a novel.  Read Homer if you want epic classical fiction.  The Bible is also a book with an awful lot to say, unlike LOTR, which, as Tolkien was at pains to point out, and even wrote in the foreword which is published along with every edition of Part I of the Lord of the Rings - the Fellowship of the Ring, which in fact is two books - isn't.

That sentence makes sense.  Read it through again and you'll get it.

Also, the Bible is comprised of over sixty separate books by different people, many of which are 100% history or 100% poetry or 100% letter.  The six books which make up LOTR are all narrative fiction, with tiny little excerpts of poems (etc.) continuing the narrative flow, rather than interrupting it or standing separate from it.

Tolkien lost both his parents before he was 11 years old and grew up in a new town with basically no friends. He was drafted for world war I and survived the trenches in France. I think he got a pretty good picture of good and bad there. The outlines for Midgard was drawn out in the trenches actually. Tolkien realised that people aren't evil, but capable of evil actions.

It's arguable that, in WWI, neither the Triple Alliance nor the Triple Entente represented "Good guys" or "Bad guys".  Thus we can discount WWI as the basis for LOTR.  I know this isn't what you were suggesting, but I wanted to get that out of the way

I reckon involvement in two world wars must have given Tolkien a wide range of experience from which to draw when he did write LOTR - and indeed other books - but I would dispute the idea that he got his concepts of good and evil from those experiences.  He may have attained a heightened awareness of good and evil, or have experienced something of the finer points of how good and evil relate to the running of nations (for example).  In fact, it's almost certain that his sense of good and evil was in some way developed or enhanced or simply given more substance through the world wars, but it probably doesn't account for the whole story.

OTOH religious doctrine is the only non-subjective way to define good and evil, and it is this method that Tolkien uses in the creation story he builds for Middle Earth.  This leads me to believe that Tolkien's sense of good and evil was founded in theology and honed in life experience, rather than the other way around.

I could be wrong.  It's not really that important, as both things - the Wars and Christianity/Catholicism - were major influences on his life.  As Tolkien himself writes:

"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous."

- CiM

[JB]

Meathook Pcs forum's. Helping insomniacs sleep since Tue Dec 17, 2002 10:49 pm

[Dingo]

LOL!!........but surely more entertaining than sleeping pills and a glass of water??  8O  8O