Month: May 2017

misbehavingmaiar:

i-gwarth:

misbehavingmaiar:

misbehavingmaiar:

@i-gwarth​ Tumblr is not letting me reply to messages anymore?????  

But YEAH, Yes. Exactly.  I cannot afford NOT to be wary of that sort of language. That kind of language is responsible for an immense amount of harm, to the world and to me personally. AND INSULTINGLY, Tolkien frequently holds up wishy-washy, “Let’s-Hear-Both-Sides-And-See-What-Happens” councilors and propagandistic language as tools of the enemy– things to beware of. And I’d like to agree with him! Except that he clearly shows both sides using the same or similar tools to achieve their ends. 

Tolkien’s protagonists rely on is this *sense* of evil; when Evil speaks it does so in fair words which cannot be trusted, while Good speaks the truth, whether or not it seems fair (which is why Gandalf gets shit everywhere he goes for being the Bearer of Bad News).  In theory, right and wrong should therefore be easily parsed: Objective Reality ought to be the focal point of the text’s moral compass. Mordor is untrustworthy and bad because what Mordor DOES is bad; they tear up trees and torture people and Sauron has is historically and personally opposed the Edain in all they do. Meanwhile, what Gondor does is good because they have libraries and trees and value wisdom and peace and kittens, while valiant warmongering is listed as a trait gained in the decline of its wisdom. 

But it just ain’t always so! 

The text frequently tells us one thing and shows us another, usually muddier, reality. If you run down a side-by-side list of “Things Sauron Has Done” and “Things Numenor/Gondor/Gandalf Have Done”, they come out looking disturbingly similar, right down to bullet-points such as: Torture, Cursing People with Undeath (”I only made NINE! Isildur made a whole tribe into ghost zombies!”), violent total slaughter and disrespectful treatment of enemy dead, slavery (not depicted but frequently mentioned), destroying enemy cities, keeping vassal states and people, conquering territories both peaceful and belligerent–

And on the flip side, both sides can also claim: having the loyal and willing service of kingdoms generations after their initial rise to power, creating things of lasting functionality and worth, giving due notice to enemies before invasion and offering fairly reasonable terms of surrender and reparation, not discriminating on a basis of skin color, religion, species, or class– OH WAIT, THAT ONE WAS JUST MORDOR. 

The actual reality of the situation is that neither side is wholly despicable or wholly trustworthy. They each have a particular aim– and that is keeping their respective dynasties in power. And we are told to believe that one side is better than the other mostly because it is being held up as a Symbol Of Good, and for me, that rings all kinds of alarm bells; especially when the text leaves so much obscured.  Yes, yes, one side loves books and singing and waterfalls, and the other side looks like Hell On Toast. But Mordor has been at war for literal Ages with the entirety of the West, forced back into itself, cut off from trade and probably forced to mine its own resources, to the point of making the already sparse volcanic environment unsalvageable. Last time it had occupancy, it was on the losing end of a protracted siege, after which, the forces of Gondor razed everything to the ground!

 And we never get to see Sauron’s empire in the East. We only know a couple of things about his rule there, and those are: A) he was worshiped, B) people followed him into battle generations after his previous rule, and C) the local populace really, really hated Numenorian/Gondorian rule but tolerated Sauron’s. What was THAT kingdom like? How successful and prosperous was it in its heyday? Does the East also have citadels and libraries and music? They must! They’re humans! We only see how Sauron treats his enemies (specifically the Edain and Elves), and his troops. (His orc troops, who we’re told are slaves, seem like they’ve actually got a pretty standard deal as far as foot soldiers go, and from their dialogue we can presume they won’t be forced to serve after Sauron wins the war.)  This is meant to provide us with all the evidence we need to reject him as an unlawful tyrant. (Also, he doesn’t have a shiny rock.) Humanity in Real-Life Non-Fantasy Earth has done far worse things in the last century than Sauron ever did given thousands of years’ time to cause trouble. It’s not enough evidence for me to be comfortable with a Biblical condemnation of one side of what appears to be a fairly complex struggle– especially when it bears uncomfortable resemblance to historical and contemporary excuses made by western imperialists to justify the conquest of eastern territories, and the erasure of their “barbaric” cultures, due to the threat of their “spreading tyranny” and non-Christian religions. 

And in fact, propagandistic language is used most excessively, by the narration to justify the author’s choice of rightful authority. …And all I can say to that is, in the words of the wise mud-farmer: “I didn’t vote for you”. 

Saying ‘the enemy will always reveal himself to be a fraudulent coward and a liar despite all appearances otherwise’ is every bit an untrustworthy statement, even if it’s coming from the mouth of Gandalf or the voice of the Narrator.

Made some substantial additions to this post because I obviously haven’t exhausted my spleen yet.

Look listen this is such a Good post I love it!

I am first in line of the Sauron Shouldn’t Be Defended squad. The text is pretty clear that his motivations have decayed into petty revenge against humans and Elves, and he was never good, but rather selfish and close-minded in his ideas even when he was “trying to redeem himself”. Mordor is the way it is because he is a Bad, malignant power in the world that corrupts and/or everything around it. Morgoth 2.0. That’s all fairly clear for me.
BUT
The narrative against him and Mordor in Lord of The Rings is so weak in a bunch of places, up to and including the fascist rhetoric I mentioned. Tolkien struggles between depicting an evil force worthy of the terror it inspires and… a kind of cartoonishly evil place run by idiots, where Orc guards kill one another in droves over a shiny shirt. In terms of boots-on-the-ground soldiers people, Mordor and Gondor are probably not seen in terms of absolute good and absolute evil, but rather two different shades of oppression or feudal influence. One is slightly better polished than the other but still employs slaves and does the whole ancestor worship thing, despite the fact that its ancestors were Huge Dicks.
It honestly reminds me of the Cold War versions of the US and USSR. Tolkien may have hated allegory but it feels like he keeps slipping into them involuntarily.

What a wonderful addition, thank you! “Two different shades of feudal oppression” and “Ancestors were Huge Dicks” sums it up very nicely. I very much agree, and frequently wonder about Tolkien’s own experiences with war and how they, and the political climate of the 30′s and 40′s, influenced his writing, even though we know he was adamant about it being a work of pure fantasy and not intended as commentary. (I think he took a similar stance on religious influence? I am now thoroughly out of my depth on this topic; I haven’t yet gotten to Letters or biographies in my reading.) 

I have to confess, despite my near total agreement, you made me do some soul-searching! XD 

“DO I think Sauron should be defended?” Wesley asked themselves, briefly disturbed by the potential drift of their own moral boundaries, as they hunched in front of their glowing monitor. –By all accounts, as an unemployed drain on society, I do have more time than most to spend dicking about on the internet and over-projecting onto imaginary people. 

Obviously, and it shouldn’t have to be said, but this is Tumblr: as a real life human being on real life earth, I don’t condone murder, torture, enslavement, revenge-wars, deforestation, or, to a lesser extent, blood sacrifice. (I take an indifferent view on necromancy). 

Furthermore, every part of my soul shrivels when I see the phrase “Good Guy Sauron”, or posts inferring that he did nothing wrong. I DEMAND he be allowed to remain a villain; both he and Melkor are antagonists, they antagonize, that is their vital and essential function in the narrative and you will have to pry that status from my cold, dead hands. 

But that itself is a defensive reaction! And I do, frequently, defend my favorite villains against allegations made by their own author, for all the reasons we were just vigorously meta-ing about. ESPECIALLY when the author lays all of his personal aesthetic dislikes and biases at the feet of the Ultimate Prime Evil, thereby inferring that things like cats, spiders, and volcanoes are objectively demonic, and– more problematically– so are things like phonetic reduction and descriptive linguistics (Sauron: “Hey Tolkien, from one con-langer to another– what the hell?”), technological advancement, science, and “The East”.

I think I am willing to concede that I do think the baddies of Middle Earth deserve some kind of defense. Not for BEING the bad guys or doing bad things, but from being reduced to placeholders: dimensionless figureheads who can conveniently represent anything we disagree with. 

Let us say I am for the Miltonian Defense of Sauron and Melkor; as characters with internally consistent motivations, concrete goals beyond “do bad things just because”, whose sentiments are recognizable, even sympathetic, whose victories challenge the status quo, whose very existence makes one ask vital questions about the nature of authority, and whose ultimate failures are deeply cathartic. 

I don’t think Sauron is good, or defensible, I think he is Tragic, and interesting, and his positions worth investigating. The same with Melkor. I think those properties are far more valuable than just being “good” or “redeemable”, and I will absolutely defend that aspect of them against all comers.