The Surging Popularity of Fantasy

[Keith K]

Well, the Lord of the Rings has made the cover of Time Magazine in the Dec. 2, 2002 issue! It has a nice little article concerning the release of the Two Towers movie, but of far more interest is the following article FEEDING ON FANTASY Forward into the past! At a time of uncertainty, American culture looks backward for comfort by Lev Grossman.

The article discusses the popularity of such things as the Society for Creative Anachronism, Harry Potter, EverQuest, Magic: The Gathering and of course LOTR. Quite thought provoking from a socialogical point of view, here are some interesting quotes from the article.....

"Popular culture is the most sensitive barometer we have for gauging shifts in the national mood, and it's registering a big one right now. Our fascination with science fiction reflected a deep collective faith that technology would lead us to a cyberutopia of robot butlers serving virtual mai tais. With The Two Towers ....about to storm the box office, we are seeing what might be called the enchanting of America. A darker, more pessimistic attitude toward technology and the future has taken hold, and the evidence is our new preoccupation with fantasy, a nostalgic, sentimental, magical vision of a medieval age. The future just isn't what it used to be - and the past seems to be gaining on us.

"the funny thing" says Simon Tolkien, grandson of J.R.R. ..."was that he was most famous on your side of the Atlantic. I think the English establishment was slightly suspicious of him." In fact, Tolkien found all the fuss distasteful. "Many young Americans are involved in the stories in a way that I'm not, he once remarked about his fans- or as he called them, "my deplorable cultus." He wondered what Americans saw in his long, deeply Anglophilic and, let's be frank, overwritten epic.

But the Rings had struck a chord. The burgeoning environmental movement saw in his wasteland of Mordor a strip-mined industrial dystopia. On a deeper level, a country drowning in the moral quicksand of Vietmam and Watergate found comfort in the moral clarity of Tolkien's epic story of a just, clear war. Good and evil are fixed stars in the skies of Middle-earth even as they're starting to look wobbly in ours.

Like a sleepy Balrog in the depths of Moria, fantasy fever is stirring again.

Change and technology are so pervasive a part of daily life that for the most part there's no magic to it anymore. The promise of science and technology has been normalized. The utopian vision we had didn't come to pass. The magic would have to come from somewhere else, and we found it in fantasy. Swords, not lasers. Magic, not electricity. Villages, not cities. The past, not the future.

Fantasy envisions a society modeled loosely on agrarian medieval Europe. though with plenty of Vaseline on the lens. Antitechnology, antiglobalist, it's a misty, watercolored memory of a way we never were. But if the vision is imaginary, the longing for it is very real.

At its core LOTR isn't a story about frilly shirts and talking frogs; it's a tale about temptation. Frodo isn't a knight in shining armor; he's not even a wizard in a pointy hat. His only claim to fame, his sole superpower, is his uncommon ability to resist the seductive, corrupting temptation of the all-powerful Ring he carries. And as hard as he fights against that temptation, in the end he fails. Is there a message there for contemporary America? As the world's only superpower, we're carrying the Ring on behalf of an entire planet, and our burden is every bit as heavy as Frodo's.

Any toughts on these quotes fellow Entmooters?

[Telperion]

I liked the last quote. All though Tolkien said ( I think in the front cover of LOTR) that he didn't have a specific message in mind when he wrote LOTR, I think that it is applicable to modern America. Of course, America is slightly larger than a hobbit, it might be more a ..... oh, I don't know, a man or an elf.

[Sparky]

I'm in the process of reading that article.

[Nibs]

Originally posted by Keith K
"the funny thing" says Simon Tolkien, grandson of J.R.R. ..."was that he was most famous on your side of the Atlantic. I think the English establishment was slightly suspicious of him." In fact, Tolkien found all the fuss distasteful. "Many young Americans are involved in the stories in a way that I'm not, he once remarked about his fans- or as he called them, "my deplorable cultus." He wondered what Americans saw in his long, deeply Anglophilic and, let's be frank, overwritten epic.

That's my favorite quote. It brings to mind ways that we are involved in the stories that Tolkien was not... dressing up as characters... spending money on assorted paraphernilia... others?

He was just being modest. Middle-Earth rules.