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semi-imaginary-place · 3 months

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Tolkien's Legendarium in the Modern World

It has been over 100 years since Tolkien first began his work on Middle Earth with the first draft verses of Luthien and Beren's story and the world has changed much in that time. Tolkien never published most of Legendarium until the end of his life he continued to draft and redraft its stories, and this begets the question of what Tolkien would have wished a completed Legendarium to look like and what I would have liked the Legendarium to be.

I personally disagree with most of Professor Tolkien's political opinions. While I do not think he was ever mean spirited, to the grave he carried with him many old fashioned ideas that while not quite bigoted in themselves, underpinned a lot of bigoted talking points. For example after people wrote to him about the troubling implications of his Dwarves on the Jewish people, Tolkien in response changed his depiction and mythology about Dwarves, he genuinely tried to do better. However what he never corrected was the view was that there were inherent differences between the different kinds of people of the world. Giving minorities a positive stereotype is not necessarily a good thing (hardworking, good with money, etc.). It feeds into the model minority myth that pits minorities against each other and acts as a rallying point for white supremacists that X minority is a threat to the white race.

The more racist parts of the Legendarium however are not the Dwarves but the descriptions of the Lesser Men, the Men of Darkness. There exists this hierarchy of the types of Men with the enlightened and European-like High Men such as the Dúnedain at the top, followed by the Middle Men or Men of Twilight like the Rohirrim or most of the other European-like Men, and at the bottom are the Men of Darkness those groups of men who fell under the control of Sauron (note how the European men were wise/strong enough to fight off Evil but the other types weren't) like the Haradrim, the Hill-men and others who are described with racist language that was also used to describe Middle Eastern peoples, African peoples, and really anyone Europeans considered a savage. Yikes, let's just scrub that, it would be impossible to rid the Legendarium of the eurocentrism but I would at least remove the most racist parts. Nor would I want to remove all of the Eurocentrism, Tolkien after all was directly inspired by European literature and epics, that is the literary ancestry of the Legendarium and I would not discredit it.

It is not bad for works to include racism or other sensitive topics, I would instead turn the Eurocentrism present in the Legendarium into a commentary on the ignorance of Middle Earth on the rest of Arda and the woes of a limited perspective. This idea was present in some drafts, that the entirety of the Legendarium was a story told to a human sailor that had washed up on the shores of Tol Eressëa and thus what the audience sees is actually a story within a story, thus making all the biases of the Legendarium the biases of that in universe storyteller. Of what Tolkien ever drafted, most of it is Noldorian history or history recorded by those associated with the Noldor. We barely hear mention of the Elves that refused the Great Journey presumably because the Noldor did not care for the histories of those people, placing themselves (Eldar and Calaquendi) above the Avari. Even the words used to describe groups of Elves are primarily Noldorian (or High Elvish) or Sindarian (normal Elvish) and the Sindar were greatly influenced by Thingol who saw the light of the Trees and Melian who was a Maia. Much of the Lord of the Rings is told from the perspective of Middle Earth (Gondor, Elrond, Hobbits), instead of completely eliminating the racism I would tone it down and make it more clear that the racism present if a product of the in story authors and their perspectives. Another option though I am not as fond of it and it would be harder to do is to lean into the bigotry, confirm that it is baked into the universe and thus lean more heavily into the tragedy that all the character's live in a universe there racism and a lack of free will are inherent parts of the fabric or reality and inescapable (more on this later).

There are many social issues I could talk about here, but for me what is most blatantly chaffing is the Catholicism. Tolkien's Legendarium is a Catholic work. Professor Tolkien himself was devotedly Catholic and traditionally Catholic, and that undercurrent of Catholicism permeates every aspect of the Legendarium. The Catholicism shows up everywhere from the mythos have a one true god that is a all powerful, all knowing, and benevolent creator, to how weird the Legendarium is about divorce (like a divorce had the butterfly effect causing most of the First Age's problems), discussions of morality and free will are very much made with Catholic theology in mind, the Catholic focus on purity, marriage is a sacred act between two soulmates destined for each other, sex is what makes a marriage real, and divorce is evil. It would be impossible to remove all the Catholicism and have the Legendarium to still be recognizable. As someone who recognizes the sheer amount of cultural destruction Christianity has wrought upon this world, if I were to rewrite the Legendarium, to create its ideal form, I would tone down the Catholic-ness of it though not entirely eliminate it, the question is how.

In the Legendarium, alignment with Eru Ilúvatar's will equates good and to turn away is to be evil. Melkor, Sauron, and Saruman are all examples of this, all three started out wanted to do good, to improve the lives of the people of Arda. For example in the beginning of the universe Melkor wasn't out for destruction and suffering, no what he wanted was freedom of will and choice, individuality. It was in defying Ilúvatar that he was corrupted because Ilúvatar's will is good and to rebel against it is to do evil, good and fix are fixed universal constants in Arda. I personally am fascinated by the inherent existentialist themes present in the Legendarium's cosmology. If there is a fixed path before each person and to stray from it means to become cosmologically evil, what is the moral thing to do? The relationship between creator and created, Elves and Dwarves were designed for a purpose what does it mean to fulfill that purpose or nature? Ilúvatar's Theme as first envisioned was never realized, Arda was created marred, suffering and discomfort are inherent aspects to existence on Arda. Similar themes can be found in other existentialist series such as the NieR games. Elves in Arda are bound to it, they cannot escape their fates even in death, their very essences are tied to the fate of Arda. It is curious then that humans are the sole beings that can escape Illuvatar's will and the fate of Arda, the have what Morgoth sorely coveted, the freedom to individually choose how to live their lives, The Gift of Man. I would keep this aspect even if it does still reek of Catholicism.

This brings us to one of the pivotal events of the First Age, The Finwë Divorce Saga. Tolkien himself wrote that he did not intend the Legendarium to be a Catholic allegory mostly because he hated allegories, but the man was so deeply Catholic that it just permeated everything he created. One could view The War of the Jewels as a cautionary tale of how divorce is evil and will only cause trouble to everyone even if Tolkien did not intend that specific reading, his views on marriage and divorce still leaked through. But Feanor and his family drama is such a keystone to the events of the First Age that the entirety of that era cannot exist without him. What I would do then in a rewrite is shift the narrative blame away from Finwe and Miriel and over to the Valar. The problems that followed were primarily because of the Valar mishandling the situation, not that Miriel and Finwe wanted a divorce. Hints of this interpretation already exist in The Silmarillion and HOME so its not that I would be creating something new so much as shifting emphasis.

This would also necessitate making the Elves less Catholic as Elf culture is very Catholic. Because Elven spirits (fea) are tied to the fate of Arda they are immortal so long as the world exists, unlike humans when Elves die their spirits do not leave the world, so their loved ones and partners are not truly gone. To each elf, they have one true soulmate and thus their marriages are eternal, until the end of existence. I would just get rid of this or at least tone it down, remove some of the mysticism or marriage being a literal magic bond. For one I feel what the Elves do takes away the true joy and uniqueness of each romantic relationship, that it is something people chose, that people chose each other and they could have chosen differently. I think Tolkien wanted to highlight the unchanging eternal nature of his Elves, because to support divorce would mean acknowledging that people and feelings change (just like his marriage, yes I said it, in their later years John and Edith lived lives that little to do with each other even if they shared a house). There is something to believing that because each soul is inherently and immutably good, every single person can be saved no matter how far they fall because its impossible for that base nature to change. I do not believe that, but even if it were true (which would fit the cosmology as discussed above), that does not discount all the "surface" level changes a person can undergo. Take Maedhros one of my favorite characters for example, even if he had an unchanging immortal soul or whatever Catholics are calling it these days, his behavior changed. Maedhros had all the set up of a classical hero (eldest son of a storied and prestigious lineage, skilled at both pen and sword, a diplomat, a leader, loyal, determined), and his story is about him failing to become that hero and just becoming worse over time to where by the end he's killing innocents and people fighting against the great Evil, and he commits the ultimate sin of killing himself (also suicide being a sin is very Catholic).

Others have discussed the problems with depictions of women in the Legendarium but to cover a couple major points, the Legendarium just lacks women there are barely any female characters, and of the women present it's like they are only allowed to act within the bounds of traditional European femininity. Take for example Luthien who is probably the single most powerful non-Maia in the series (well she is half but she's counted among the elves), and yet her power in the story manifests solely through traditionally feminine domains like weaving. This on its own would not be a problem, women are allowed to like feminine things and Luthien has a lot of agency within her story, the problem is that there are so few women in the Legendarium and they are all like this, what powers they have always coming from the feminine sphere.

And of course because the Legendarium is a Catholic work the concept of purity is tied to morality and applied to women. Through reading many different drafts and letters Galadrieal can likely be suspected of being one of Tolkien's favorites. Her role in the Swearing of the Oath and First Kinslaying at Alqualondë vary drastically between drafts. In earlier drafts she sided with Feanor and the Noldor and though she did not swear the Oath of Feanor and thus doom herself, in these earlier drafts she is counted among the leaders of the Noldor revolt and like them is exiled from Aman. In other drafts she alternately does not participate in the attack on Alqualondë or even fights with her mother's brethren the Teleri against Feanor's forces, in some she crosses the Ice with Fingolfin's forces and in a particular draft she has nothing to do with the Exile of the Noldor and comes to Middle Earth by her own boat for her own means the timing just so happens to coincidentally line up. Generally in later drafts Tolkien bends over backwards to make exceptions for Galadrial so that she commits less sins and remains pure, he removes her rebellion against the divine and associations with the Exiled Noldor and thus retcons the most interesting aspect of her character in order to keep her unstained. This is one of two time where I have a strong preference for earlier drafts of the Legendarium (the other is draft epilogue where The Lord of the Rings ends with Sam looking back before closing the door as he hears the whisper of Aman on the wind). Those later drafts do a massive disservice to her character. Galadriel's whole character arc is that she starts off a headstrong, prideful, rebellious princess who want a kingdom of her own because she wants the power to rule over other people and through the devastation of the First and Second Ages she mellows out to become one of the wisest people in Middle Earth who would look power in the face and say no, who rules to serve and protect the people in her kingdom. Galadriel is so much more if Tolkien allows her to make mistakes when she was younger, to carry the guilt of what she enabled and allowed or perhaps participated in and have that weight shape her for the better. Then her actions in Middle Earth become not about how she was always good and pure, they become about redemption and taking the marred and the ugly and making something worthwhile out of it.

Éowyn the one character who noticeably steps beyond the boundaries for women, gets shoved back into traditional femininity at the end of her story, choosing to leave the battlefield to tend hearth and home. Now this likely was not intentional on Professor Tolkien's part. What he intended was a continuation of his anti-war stance seen throughout his works. World War I was brutal and massive shock to the world, recent innovations in technology made killing easier and faster, so while not the bloodiest conflict in history it was an abrupt wake up to the traditional modes of war. Soldiers went out and were slaughtered, most of Tolkien's tight-knit friend-group died in that war. On the battlefield Tolkien found no glory or honor, all he saw were the horrors of war, the human cost and the purposeless suffering inflicted. His anti-war stance can been seen most clearly outside the Legendarium in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son which is a dialectic between an veteran soldier and a new soldier. Within The Lord of the Rings we see this is how Sam in the true hero of this story, in how hobbits value peace and good food over war or politics, in how the best men like Aragorn and Faramir are peaceful and would rather choose the pen over the sword. We see this most strongly in "The Scouring of the Shire" which arguably is the most thematically poignant part of The Lord of the Rings, because the a person's story does not end with the battle, sometimes war never ends for some people, and yet there are things worth fighting for in this world. War is terrible, but sometimes we have to fight to protect the simple good things in the world and it is not some destined hero that will save us but ordinary people rising to the occasion together. However it is incredibly conspicuous that the only major female character shown on the battlefield was the one forced to carry this narrative of putting down her sword to take care of a household. There are dozens of men in this story that fight in the War of the Ring and we do not see any of them retiring from fighting and choosing domesticity. It would have been so powerful if Tolkien chosen her brother the war chief Eomer to carry this message, imagine if it were him who came from a warrior culture and becomes warrior-king who chose to put down his sword and forswear fighting. So yes I would have rewritten Eowyn's ending, let malewife Faramir have his kickass girlboss wife. Let Eowyn's arc be her fielding herself out of despair and a desire to prove herself, and her character development learning that she is more powerful than she thought and that she will continue to wield the sword in service of Rohan, her people, and in service of peace.

Now I have typed some 3000 words about what I would change and why so let me end on some of the things I would keep the same for I love the Legendarium dearly and I would preserve far more than I would change. I would keep the hope and love that is written into these stories. I would keep that there is beauty in this world, there is good in friends and family. I would keep the awe and wonder for the natural world, that mountains and forests and streams can be their own characters. I would keep the sense of magic, not in the sense of spellcasting and sword and sorcery style magic, but that wonder and joy for the world that makes everything magical. I would keep that life is a journey and all you have to do is take the first step out your front door. I would keep the believably that this is just an untold forgotten history and like it there are still many mysteries in the world. I would keep the wide scale of continents and forces beyond us moving to their own stories. Tolkien crafted the Legendarium out of love, from that first poem about the woman he was in love with, to his love of philology stories and creation, Arda was made with love. In the Legendarium is deep love of the world, the natural world and the people that inhabit it, in here is hope too that no matter what evils plague the world there is still good there too in the hearts of the most ordinary person.

#tolkien #lotr #jrr tolkien #lord of the rings #silmarillion #the hobbit #middle earth #eowyn #galadriel #Last time fundamentalist christian tradwife tumblr found me so im gonna say:#christianity is a force of western colonialism imperialism bigotry and hate #It has been globally one of the biggest drivers of genocide ever #also TRANS RIGHTS terfs get out

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avarindigenous · 2 years

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well, I’ve now seen episode 5 of The Rings of Power, and my hopes for meaningful commentary on empire are entirely dashed.

the Easterlings of Tir Harad might not be devil-worshiping barbarians caught between Yellow Peril and the Saracen Menace, but they are quick and eager to submit to an evil overlord, and Bronwyn’s insistence that in fact the elves were right about her people while Arondir tries to explain to her that mortal Men are in fact good was stereotypical and insulting. watching a group of people who have been classified as faceless servants in the source material immediately cave to the slightest pressure was intensely upsetting. the placement of a Black person as the first to raise their hand to volunteer to fight and resist only to have white and white-passing people agree to submit was adding insult to injury.

on top of that, Númenor continues to be anything but imperially ambitious. Pharazôn may have the desire to craft a vast empire, but he’s also little better than Iago from Othello or Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin. he’s the obvious villain, and giving him the evil plots and schemes and twisted ambition means that the writers are classifying imperialism and colonialism as, again, something only evil individuals do. it’s not a systemic problem or an institution that benefits those who are born into it, and the good Númenoreans are now in a position where they can say they were tricked into doing bad things by a single bad man. it’s blatant, and disheartening.

and, most frustrating of all, the elvish table that is sent back with Durin because it’s crafted from sacred stone is heavily implied to be something Gil-galad obtained through graverobbing or other forms of looting, but the writing neither states this outright nor denies it and no characters address this as the act of deeply traumatic violence that it is.

the way it’s introduced is jarring and badly written, with no setup or explanation in advance to allow the audience to share in Durin’s anger and sadness, and as a plot thread it’s dropped immediately and solved by the elves instantly agreeing to repatriation. watching this was deeply upsetting to me, not because the Noldor are exempt from committing violent acts against the dwarves (Finrod’s colonization of Nargothrond happened, after all) but because by neither confirming it nor denying it the writers are attempting to have it both ways. they can both preserve the Noldor as good white people who do the right thing and are culturally sensitive and introduce the question of politically topical subjects like violence against marginalized ethnic groups. if the elves are in possession of a sacred dwarvish artifact that they’re using for a table, that indicates a level of disregard for and ignorance of traditions that aren’t their own, and implies they see nothing wrong with stealing from other races. if the elves found the stone by accident and didn’t know it was sacred, then they’re totally innocent and their guilt is only because they’re good people. it should be one or the other, if we must have this plot at all. both cannot exist at once.

also, I can of course only speak to this issue from the indigenous perspective, but I want to point out that the dwarves are not indigenous-coded in Tolkien’s works, they’re Jewish-coded. there is a long history of theft and desecration of Jewish religious items and artifacts by Christians. while I immediately thought of indigenous people having our graves robbed and our sacred items stolen for display in private homes or museums, and our spiritual practices commodified for settlers, I want to acknowledge that my voice isn’t the one that should be the loudest. personally, I’m of the opinion that either the writers are trying to comment on the Jewish coding with this plot or else they’re ignorant of it and have unintentionally echoed real-life acts of antisemitism in their story that’s meant to be addressing some sort of anti-indigenous racism. (I personally don’t feel as if these dwarves are meant to be Jewish-coded, but I’m not Jewish myself and don’t feel comfortable drawing that conclusion definitively.)

I didn’t intend for this blog to turn into prolonged discussions of the flaws of this adaptation, but I do think that there are flaws worth pointing out. it concerns me greatly that the version of this story with the greatest amount of racial diversity and the greatest focus on racial diversity is failing to even begin to meaningfully address the racism in the source text, and is introducing additional racism or reinforcing the biases of the author.

#the rings of power #rings of power #I don’t hate the show but I do want to critique it

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burnbrighterthanever · 3 years

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The exiled Noldor, mostly the ones who followed Nolofinwe and the Arafinweans, have a saying, "Next year in Tirion". It's used when someone is leaving and will not return for a long time, or when someone leaves to go into battle.

The appropriate response to "Next year in Tirion", is, of course, "Next year, may we all be free."

#silmarillion #noldor #house of nolofinwe #house of fingolfin #house of arafinwe #house of finarfin #jewish noldor #jewish #for the goyim in the notes #next year in jerusalem #is what jews say at the end of a passover seder #and everyone responds to it with #next year may we all be free #I AM BACK ON MY JEWISH NOLDOR BULLSHIT #stel speaks

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elvesofnoldor · 5 years

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to find yourself gazing through the looking glass at the people you are supposed to find belonging in, and feel alienated and even rejected by the people who are supposed to be your home--it hurts. Like, not to be overdramatic but i know this hurt, to a certain extent, i tried not to think about it too much cause it doesn’t matter, and not to rant about something unimportant again but...you know i just notice why im so attached to both noldor elves from tolkien’s universe and the elves from dragon age universe....it’s cause their stories embody diaspora experience. i have to say my diaspora experience doesn’t resemble what diaspora means in its original meanings, and my hurt honestly isn’t that big of a deal compare to what real hurt is other diaspora groups live through, but like, what im saying is that there is a reason bioware writers tried to parallel jewish/romanian/indigenous people’s experience with the experience of their fictional race of elves. of course they have done so quite poorly, these whites were trying to parallel this fictional race to three different nuanced ethnic/cultural experiences, and obviously that did not work out well when they were trying to impose this extremely generalized experience on a fictional race. And to be a fun police but it’s always questionable when people try to impose real marginalized and/or racialize groups’ experiences on fictional races, it’s always coming too close to exploiting real pain for entertainment instead of shining light on real issues. i digress. Anyways, i have to say dragon age elves, specifically the dalish elves, resemble a simplified and perhaps semi-mystified version (yeah, not good) of the extremely nuanced indigenous experience in north america, but the recurring theme of loss of home, and the experience of living in “exile”--seeking the life your people had or could have had which has been “stolen” from you? i do think these themes comes from silmarillion and specifically noldor elves’ story (i mean, not to state the painfully obvious here, but dragon age elves are rebranded tolkien elves, probably more so than any other elves from other stories but im not going into all the other evidences right now). And it’s what makes noldor elves’ story so...sympathetic? to me? at least? Noldor elves are literally exiles ( they are specifically exiled from Holy Lands but i don’t really want to delve into what real world narrative that could have parallel because tolkien is catholic and im not jewish). Everything the noldors have done? they have done to ultimately seek justice for a life that’s stolen from them, it seems that they waged war on an unfathomable evil for the sake of three jewels, but it was never really about shiny stones. The jewels literally embodied the light that used to nurture the life that is stolen from them, the stones embody the bliss and comfort of a stolen home. And in a desire of carving out their own justice and their own fate outside the influence of deceiving gods, they have lost their innocence. And it was where their tragedy begins and ends. Diaspora, in its original meaning, is inherently tragic. It means to be in exile, to be rejected from home. And noldor elves’ story embody all the tragic connotation of diaspora. And i suppose, for better or worse, dragon age writers just took that and decide to shape it into a parallel to indigenous experience? But the thing about noldor elves that make me like them more than dragon age elves is that, while i feel for both of these fictional races because of their deeply human experiences, at the end of the day noldor elves’ stories don’t resemble any specific marginalized groups’ experiences. They have their own story, and that story does not exploit real pain--at least as far as i can understand it. their pain is deeply reletable and it makes them sympathetic but the story itself is not bordering exploitative?

#smh this rant went to nowhere but i gotta try to put it into words #yolanda talks

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semi-imaginary-place · 1 year

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Tolkien's Legendarium in the Modern World

There's many social issues I could talk about here, but for me what is most blatantly chaffing is the Catholicism. Tolkien's Legendarium is a Catholic work. Professor Tolkien himself was devotedly Catholic and traditionally Catholic, and that undercurrent of Catholicism permeates every aspect of the Legendarium. The Catholicism shows up everywhere from the mythos have a one true god that is a all powerful, all knowing, and benevolent creator, to how weird the Legendarium is about divorce (like a divorce had the butterfly effect causing most of the First Age's problems), discussions of morality and free will are very much made with Catholic theology in mind, the Catholic focus on purity, marriage is a sacred act between two soulmates destined for each other, sex is what makes a marriage real, and divorce is evil. It would be impossible to remove all the Catholicism and have the Legendarium to still be recognizable. As someone who recognizes the sheer amount of cultural destruction Christianity has wrought upon this world, if I were to rewrite the Legendarium, to create its ideal form, I would tone down the Catholic-ness of it though not entirely eliminate it, the question is how.

Other's have discussed the problems with depictions of women in the Legendarium but to cover a couple major points, the Legendarium just lacks women there are barely any female characters, and of the women present it's like they are only allowed to act within the bounds of traditional European femininity. Take for example Luthien who is probably the single most powerful non-Maia in the series (well she is half but she's counted among the elves), and yet her power in the story manifests solely through traditionally feminine domains like weaving. This on its own would not be a problem, women are allowed to like feminine things and Luthien has a lot of agency within her story, the problem is that there are so few women in the Legendarium and they are all like this, what powers they have always coming from the feminine sphere.

#tolkien #silmarillion #tolkien legendarium #lotr #lord of the rings #the hobbit #eowyn #i love the catholic elves i hate the catholic elves im using the catholic elves as a chew toy #just to be clear since tradwife tumblr of all groups has found this post #christianity is the religion of western imperialism bigotry and hate #also terfs can fuck off

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