The first book to analyse the commercial and cultural impact of The Lord of the Rings phenomena from a truly international perspective. Comprehensive and meticulously researched, it follows the trajectory of how global cinema can be presented, appreciated, and appropriated in the 21st century.The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context takes the release of the film trilogy as a point of departure for an overview of the international impact of The Lord of the Rings in a range of cultural environments (the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Europe). This anthology examines the merchandising, box office figures, distribution, critical reception, fan following and cult status of the films. It focuses on how its many different facets; trailers, DVD editions, websites, computer games, music, location tours, and even its unlikely erotic spin-offs contributed to making The Lord of the Rings the most publicly recognised brand image of the 21st century so far.
The Lord of the Rings is a cult text, with devoted fans across the world. It is also becoming a shorthand for a certain lifestyle: utopian, idealist, ecologically aware, family- unit based. This book helps explain how such a status is negotiated by corporate Hollywood. The success of the films and franchise also indicates the bourgeoning success of fantasy as a genre in the 21st Century. This popularity demands in turn a careful investigation of how, why and where it is consumed. It is this previously neglected area of study that Ernest Mathijs successfully addresses in the publication of this impressively far-reaching volume.
Ernest Mathijs
Ernest Mathijs is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is co-editor of Big Brother International: Formats, Critics and Publics, Alternative Europe: Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945, and editor of The Cinema of the Low Countries (all Wallflower Press, 2004). He is writing The Cinema of David Cronenberg (for Wallflower Press’s Directors’ Cuts series).
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Contents list
SECTION 1: POLITICAL ECONOMY AND COMMERCIAL CONTEXTS
1. More than Just Rings: Merchandise for Them All, Janet Wasko and Govind Shanadi 2. ‘On the Brink of a New Threshold of Opportunity’: The Lord of the Rings and New Zealand Cultural Policy, Jennifer Lawn and Bronwyn Beatty 3. Making Middle Earth Sound Real: The Lord of the Rings and the Cultural Politics of the BBC Radio Edition, Martin Barker 4. Blockbusters and/as Events: Distributing and Launching The Lord of the Rings, Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers 5. Following the Money: The Lord of the Rings and the Culture of Box Office Figures, Warren Buckland and Christopher Long
SECTION 2: PUBLIC RECEPTIONS
6. ‘Wellywood’ and Peter Jackson: The Local Reception of The Lord of the Rings in Wellington, Davinia Thornley 7. Reviews, Previews and Premieres: The Critical Reception of The Lord of the Rings in the United Kingdom, Ernest Mathijs 8. ‘Apocalypse Now in Middle Earth’: ‘Genre’ in the Critical Reception of The Lord of the Rings in Germany, Susanne Eichner, Lothar Mikos and Michael Wedel 9. Realising the Cult Blockbuster: The Lord of the Rings Fandom and Residual/Emergent Cult Status in ‘the Mainstream’, Matt Hills 10. The Lord of the Rings Online Blockbuster Fandom: Pleasure and Commerce, Kirsten Pullen 11. ‘This is What it Must Look Like’: The Lord of the Rings Fandom and Media Literacy, Judith E. Rosenbaum 12. Sacred Viewing: Emotional Responses to The Lord of the Rings, Anne Jerslev
SECTION 3: ANCILLARY CONTEXTS
13. Framing Tolkien: Trailers, High Concept and the Ring, Erik Hedling 14. Bonus Material: The DVD Layering of The Lord of the Rings, Jonathan Gray 15. Playing the Ring: Intermediality and Ludic Narratives in the Lord of the Rings Games, Jonathan Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy 16. Cooperation versus Violence: An Ethnographical Analysis of the Return of the King Video Game, Mariano Longo 17. Fixing a Heritage: Inscribing Middle Earth onto New Zealand, Stan Jones 18. Musical Middle Earth, K. J. Donnelly 19. Tolkien Dirty, I. Q. Hunter
Wallflower Press is an independent publishing house specialising in cinema and the moving image. Publishing over thirty books per year, we are devoted to the publication of the highest-quality academic and popular literature in film, television and media studies as well as related areas of the visual arts.
edited by Ernest Mathijs
foreword by Brian Sibley
Publication date: 12 October 2006
360 pages
1–904764–82–7 £16.99 (pbk)
US$25.00 (paper)
1–904764–83–5 £45.00 (hbk)
US$75.00 (cloth)
6a Middleton Place Langham Street London W1W 7TE
Website: http://www.wallflowerpress.co.uk