`Two Towers’ film reflects tone of book
By David Ibata
Tribune staff reporter
January 12, 2003
Happily for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, director Peter Jackson stayed true to the fantasy author’s artistic vision in “Fellowship of the Ring,” the first film in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Unhappily, in “The Two Towers,” Jackson may reflect the “Rings'” racial view of the world as well.
As the United States wages war against an ominous “other” — currently Al Qaeda terrorists, soon perhaps Iraqis and eventually, North Koreans? — it’s worth keeping in mind Tolkien’s stern admonition against viewing his work as allegory.
For years, Tolkien scholars have waged a fight on two fronts: against an academic establishment that for the most part refused to take the author’s work seriously, and against white supremacists who have tried to claim the professor as one of their own.
The first controversy may be decided in Tolkien’s favor once the present generation of literary critics passes from the scene (I admit some bias in this regard), but the second probably always will flare up whenever some skinheads read more into the “Rings” than really is there.
And with the enormous popularity of Jackson’s film interpretation of Tolkien’s work coinciding with the current international crises, it’s possible some will start confusing villains on the screen with real-life adversaries on the battlefield.
In “Fellowship,” we saw non-human foes: Orcs, trolls, Uruk-hai, Ringwraiths and the like.
No connection can be made between ordinary people and these malformed uglies. No problem here.
Human adversaries
In “Towers,” though, which continues to do big at the box office as the second film of the Rings trilogy (the third, “Return of the King,” is to come out at the end of the year), the series’ heroes — hobbits, elves, dwarves and people — for the first time encounter races of human adversaries. They include the Easterlings and Haradrim, denizens of lands in the east and south of Middle Earth who have joined with the forces of evil.
The Easterlings can barely be made out under their armor; their faces are covered except for a narrow slit through which glare pairs of coal-black eyes. But their headgear looks like a cross between a Samurai warrior’s helmet and a cone-shaped “Coolie” hat. An Asian influence is obvious.
The Haradrim are more recognizable. They are garbed in turbans and flowing crimson robes. They ride giant elephants. They resemble nothing other than North African or Middle Eastern tribesmen. A recently released “Towers” companion book, “The Lord of the Rings: Creatures,” calls the Haradrim “exotic outlanders” whose costumes “were inspired by the twelfth-century Saracen warriors of the Middle East.” The Saracens were Islamic soldiers who battled Christian invaders during the Crusades.
The “good guys” include the human Dunedain, Rohirrim and Gondorians. All fair-skinned, mostly blond and mostly blue-eyed. ( A third group of human foes in the film is white: the Wild Men. The fallen wizard Saruman incites them by reminding them the horsemen of Rohan oppress them and have driven them from their lands. Cavalry against native tribes; does this picture seem familiar?)
In the nearly five decades since “Lord of the Rings” was first published, Tolkien fans were willing to overlook parts of the text some condemned as racially insensitive. In “Rings,” it was argued, race was never directly addressed in the book, and physical descriptions of enemy humans were rare. Things that might strike today’s reader as discomfiting were attributed to the intellectual, cultural and social milieu within which Tolkien (1892-1973), an Oxford don, moved.
Can anyone recall one white male author before the present literary era — other than perhaps the far-seeing Mark Twain in “Huckleberry Finn” — who, when the two sides came into conflict, depicted men of color sympathetically and Caucasian men as evil? Better to focus on the “Rings'” main themes: of courage, hope and love, of friendship, loyalty and spiritual strength, in the face of a fearsome threat.
But like the ghostly faces in the Dead Marshes, that irritating issue of race always lingered just beneath the surface.
Amid the pre-release hype of the “Two Towers” premiere, commentators such as John Yatt of the Manchester Guardian newspaper couldn’t resist stirring the water: “`The Lord of the Rings’ is racist. It is soaked in the logic that race determines behaviour,” Yatt wrote in a Dec. 2 essay. The book describes evil humans as “dark, slant-eyed, swarthy, broad-faced a rag-bag of non-white characteristics that could have been copied straight from a [British National Party] leaflet.”
The screenwriters who adapted Tolkien’s book to film sometimes muddied things further. For instance, they wanted to convey the idea that the threat facing humankind in “Towers” was not merely defeat in war, but extinction. In film dialogue not found in Tolkien’s original text, Aragorn warns King Theoden of Rohan that Saruman has bred an army “with a single purpose: to destroy the world of men.”
It is not explained how Saruman can threaten the demise of humankind when some of his own minions are human. (The human presence will be even more pronounced in the third film, when Sauron unleashes the Easterling and Haradrim upon the West.) Perhaps a more accurate statement would have been that the forces of evil have assembled an army “to destroy the world of civilized white men.” Of course, Aragorn — and the director Jackson — cannot say this.
Parallels with current events
With “Lord of the Rings” seizing the popular imagination, could some see parallels between the film and the current political climate: the fear of and anger against non-white immigration in Western Europe, as evident in the recent election successes of far-right candidates? Or, in the United States, the wholesale arrests and prosecutions of people of Islamic and Middle Eastern origin in the post-9/11 environment?
As a Japanese American, I cannot help imagining how the movie “Rings” would have been received had it appeared in 1942 instead of 2002. It would quickly have been seized upon as allegory, and there would have been no doubt whom the Orcs and Urak-hai represented: The “Japs.” Consider how closely the non-human adversaries in “Rings” resemble some of the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II.
Japanese propagandists likewise pictured the Allies as goblins and demons from that country’s folklore. This is how all cultures have portrayed a wartime enemy: as less than human.
You might ask if I’m looking for offense where none is intended. I believe the issue is not whether Tolkien or Jackson intended to offend — they did not, I am sure — but the author’s or filmmaker’s ability to create images that shape one’s view of the world.
Pernicious images
And certain scenes in “Towers” remind me of some of the most pernicious images of the cinematic past, from “Beau Geste” to western serials to John Wayne war flicks: that of faceless brown hordes hurling themselves against a band of white heroes.
I’ll admit that I joined everyone else, cheering as thousands of Orcs and Urak-hai were slaughtered at the climactic battle of Helm’s Deep. They are vicious, violent, ugly as sin, loathsome eaters of “man flesh.” As Aragorn tells the besieged defenders, we should feel no mercy for them.
Would we have felt the same thrill of victory if the massacred enemy were humans?
And by the way, where were they? In the book, but not in the movie, the Wild Men also fight at Helm’s Deep. We do see men killing men earlier in the movie, when Gondorian scouts ambush a band of Haradrim. Yet the latter mainly fall under hails of arrows. There’s no sword-on-sword, one-on-one combat. It all seems antiseptic, like a smart bomb on TV blasting a bunker without the splatter of blood and flesh.
In a passage from the book often cited in defense of the author, Tolkien described the Gondorian attack on the Haradrim. Hobbit Sam watches from cover as an enemy soldier falls dead close by, his neck pierced by arrows: “His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.” (This scene is in the film, but it goes by so fast it barely registers.)
“It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much,” Tolkien wrote. “He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace. . . .”
In “Return of the King,” will Jackson again reserve the bloodiest fight scenes only for those species too depraved to feel any sympathy for? Or will he follow Tolkien’s lead and acknowledge the humanity of at least some of the enemy?
———-
A defense of J.R.R. Tolkien against allegations of racism can be found at “The One Ring” Web site: http://greenbooks.theonering.net/quickbeam/files/040101.html
Copyright (c) 2003, Chicago Tribune
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Russell Barton loves making Bows. Recently Russell expanded that love of making bows, along side his love of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, and began crafting the Mirkwood Bow through StickStone.com, replicating the design and shape of the bow Legolas carried in the first portion of the Fellowship of the Ring. Fans across the globe have ordered and are enjoying this beautifuly crafted piece, and now Russell was kind enough to take the time to talk with us a bit about just what goes into making the Mirkwood Bow.
Flinch: Tell us a bit about StickStone.com.
Russell: Well… Sticks & Stones is the result of my love for archery, and the making of primitive and traditional archery tackle. I started making bows about 7 years ago out of a desire to shoot a primitive style, and first focused on Native American replicas. My first goal was to make something that worked! Later, after becoming more accomplished at it, I began focusing on why the Native Americans had such diverse styles of bows and arrows, and what made them the best suited for the region. After making many historically accurate, and museum quality replicas of Native American Bows, I decided to go a little deeper into other regions of the world, and do some experimenting with design and performance. I have found many of the things that work, as well as the things that don’t, and as a result I try to offer my customers the best bow I can make regardless of the style or demmands that will be put on it.
F: How did it come about that you began crafting and selling replica’s of Legolas’ Mirkwood Bow?
Russell: At first… I really didn’t want to even mess around with it… I was already busy with making other hunting and Native American designs, plus selling bow making supplies to others that were in the same field of interest. After a good deal of pestering, and because of my own interests in Tolien’s works, I finally agreed to make a few for some of the folks that wanted a “working” replica of the bow. The response to what they had in their hands was positive enough, that I guess they started posting my name on several of the LOTR related message boards around the world… Then the bomb dropped so to speak, and I have been scrambling ever since to keep the orders flowing.
F: You make bows that are built to fire an arrow, not just for display, have you considered a display line or will you continue to craft fully functional bows for your customers?
Russell: The neat thing about it is… I know how to make a functional bow, and it takes probably just as long to make a “wall hanger” as it does to make a fully functional bow. Besides, a Mirkwood replica that works is what people want, and that is what makes me different from a company that punches out merchandise by the thousands in third world countries where they are accustomed to exploiting cheap labor.
No… I don’t think I will ever want to compromise my trade and my reputation with something less than my best.
F: Have you found it difficult to craft the Mirkwood Bow, knowing the expectations of Legolas fans who have a vision in their head of what this bow should be?
Russell: Yes… to say the least. I make these bow to the customers specific draw weight and draw length, and I have gone through several designs and experimentations on making a functional, safe, and good performing bow, while still trying to keep it as accurate as possible to the “look” of the original in the movie.
I will possibly still work on some modifications to the bow, but as for now, I have made them to function the best that they possibly can, considering that they are of a cross section that is not really suppose to work well.
I have not gone to the full lengths of making the gold work completely identical for a couple of reasons… the first is that I don’t want to infringe too much on trademark rights. If I were to do this, the cost of licensing and back end royalties would be astronomical, and thus… the cost of the bow would be out of reach for most that want it. The second reason is that I am an individual and an artist… so, the interpretations are as unique as the Tolkien novels themselves.
F: How have those who now own the Mirkwood Bow reacted to it’s detail compared to the real thing?
Russell: I do recieve a few emails that have demmands without understanding the function… By this I mean things like “could you make the tips more curved?” or, “The gold work is not “exactly” the same…” But for the most part, if someone places an order, and then recieves the bow, they seem to forget all about the fact that it is not exactly the same in art work. Usually they respond with comments like… “WOW! I love it! This thing is much better than I even imagined…. and it shoots so fast too! ” and, “Your artwork is so beautiful… I bet it really takes a lot of time to do all of that by hand…”
Yes, it does take time… Thus, an explaination of the cost.
F: What materials have you utilized in production on the Mirkwood Bow? Anything that wouldn’t normally be used in bow making?
Russell: The Mirlwood bow is made of hickory, and backed with bamboo…
Both are common to bow making for thousands of years… so the combination is relevant to the historical fantasy of “Middle Earth”.
The reason for hickory and bamboo is that it is best suited for the “almost round” design of the Mirkwood bow, and will make a durable bow that takes the extreme demmands of stress on that particular design.
The Ranger bow is made of laminated baboo and bamboo backing… a process that has also been around for thousands of years, especially in the Orient. The benefits to this is a light weight bow that is easy to shoot and handle, which I am sure would be of great benefit to a warrior that had to move quickly and tirelessly through a long hard battle.
F: What is the process behind crafting the details and shape of the Mirkwood Bow?
Russell: Well first… the wood has to be selected, which can be an obstacle in itself. A good piece of wood that is suitable for making a bow is not always readily avalable, and when you do find a decent source, you still have to sort through it making tedious selctions of the appropriate grain structure so that when the bow is finished, it will last and function well without the danger of exploding on you at full draw.
The next steps are appropriate combinations of steam bending, glue forming and reflexing of the bow, and application of the bamboo backing, which protects the back from too much stress, and adds speed and performance to the bow.
After the glues have cured… it is taken out of the forms where it has been held to exacting shape by clamps until the glues have cured, and is shaped by hand rasps, scrapers, and files to get the general shape.
The next step is the tillering… By tillering, I mean the process of making the bow bend evenly. The funny thing about wood is that it really does not want to bend, so you have to take it to the point of almost breaking, and in studying the shape of the bows limbs, you can see where the stress may be too much in one area, and you relieve it.
It is truly an eye and hand coordination that shapes a bow to the place where it is reliable for the shooter.
Then on to the final sanding, smoothing, and finishing of the bow… after the bow is smooth enough for a finsh, the color is applied and allowed curing time. Then the artwork, and finally the finish that protects it all.
F: How does your Mirkwood Bow measure up as a fully functioning primitive bow?
Russell: That’s the amazing part…. Usually there is some kind of sacrifice that is made in creating a replica of sorts. But, the Mirkwood bow seems to perform with the best expectations of a primitive or traditional all wood bow. Just as an example… the average that most bowyers expect from their hand made bows is 100 + draw weight… By this I mean that the average all wood bow should shoot a total of feet per second that is equal to 100 + the draw weight of the bow. To figure this out for example… a 45 pound bow +100 as a denominator, should produce a bow that shoots 145 feet per second with a moderately heavy hunting or war arrow. In my own chronograph testing of a 45 pound Mirkwood bow, it produced 167 feet per second with a moderately heavy arrow…. So, I guess it is really above average for the expectations of an all wood bow.
F: How have the fans reacted to the opportunity to own such a delicate and elegant piece of Middle-earth?
Russell: Very excited to say the least! Yes, I do get some letters that are of a critical nature, but not from those that have actually accquired one of the Mirkwood bows…. For the most part though, the LOTR fans are very appreciative of the fact that there is actually someone that is making a functioning replica that won’t just serve the purpose of taking up wall space. Plus… I get to see many new and wonderful young people take a great interest in primitive archery by way of their interest in LOTR that otherwise would probably never have the opportunity to be introduced to archery at it’s best!
F: Have you put any thought into developing the Galadhrim bow given to Legolas in Loth Lorien?
Russell: Yes… I have had so many requests for this bow that I can no longer ignore the plea… I really had no desire to get into such an intricate design at first, but I feel that if it can be done, I can certainly accomplish it. It may not be for some time though, as I will be holding to the same standards of not releasing anything but the best bow I can produce, and make it safe and durable. As, I said before to many others… I not only want a bow to bend and look good, I want it to be the exception in performance! I am currently working on the design in physical theory… then it will be several experiments with form and function before I actually get to the beautiful designs that it displays. I am sure that this will be a challenge in itself, because this bow design by all rights should not work! When it is ready… the Lothlorien bow will be available at: www.armsofvalor.com who also at this time have the exclusive for the Mirkwood and Ranger bows as well. I have in the past taken orders personally as well, but due to the time constraints of handling orders, I have made the decision that it would allow me more time to get orders accomplished more quickly if there was someone that could handle the ordering and inquiries about the bow.
F: Does StickStone.com intend to produce other Lord of the Rings replica bows?
Russelll: Yes… but for now, the popularity seems to be with what the main characters have used. It is hard to justify a bow that the “now dead” villians used wouldn’t you say? If his bow was so great… and he was very proficient at using it, he probably would not be dead eh? One bow design that I think would be very nice to do in time would be that of the wood Elves, which was also portrayed by the warrior Elves at the battle of Helm’s Deep. This will depend on the feedback I recieve from the fans…
F: What has been the most rewarding element in producing the Mirkwood Bow?
Russell: I would say that it has to be the reactions of the fans who have ordered the bow… The response to opening the box when they receive it, and shooting it for the first time… I know that this has to be an exciting experience, to feel and be a part of what they admire so much about the story. Also…. I would say that it is very fulfilling to me to have people all around the world that are enjoying my works of art! My hopes are that one day there could be a big LOTR fair, where all of the Mirkwood bow owners can get together and have a blast doing some re-enactments! Only problem is…. everyone will want to be Legolas! 🙂
F: LOL! I’m sure our readers are rushing to their check books to own such a pivotal piece of Legolas’ arsenal. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us Russell, good luck with your future designs at StickStone.com
Russell: Thank you!
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Joey writes:
I noticed that recently there were complaints from the Japanese worrying about the quality of the subtitles. Well, i can understand their worries as the quality of the subtitles in Hong Kong is not very good either. Not to mention their mistakes made in FOTR and other foreign movies, as far as I can remember, here are some mistakes they made in TTT:
When Aragon found the elven brooch on the way of their persuit, the subtitle says, “Lothlorien people will not leave this behind”; in Edoras, when Gandalf says to Saruman ‘you will not kill me, you will not kill him’, the subtitle says, ‘you will not kill me, but you will kill him’; when Grima was begging king Theoden not to send him away, it was translated to ‘kill you!’; when Faramir told Frodo that the ring is within his grasp, it became ‘I have controlled the ring’; and, the translator has confused Gondor with Mordor! Boromir became the man of Mordor. Luckily he didn’t confuse Sauron with Saruman…
I didn’t read the subtitles often, I only took a glance a few times, but each time I would find a mistake. If I had read the sutitles throughout the whole movie, I think there would be more mistakes. No matter how great LOTR is, the audience would not understand its greatness with the bad-quality subtitles. I need to explain the whole FOTR movie to my friends because the subtitles just kept mixing things up.
Forgive me for my bad English, I hope you understand what I meant.
Yours Faithfully,
Joey
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Peregrine writes: The article is from “The University of Waterloo Magazine”, Winter 2003. The university is in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
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No single character from Two Towers has caused more controversy than the writing of Faramir. Some people have been outraged enough to brand it “character assassination”. Keeping in mind that there’s much more of Faramir to come in RoTK, what do we think so far?
The Movie Characterisation of Faramir. Success or Failure?
Is Faramir off-base and miscast, as some have suggested, or have Jackson and Boyens brought onto the spotlight the darkness within and desperate desire for his father’s approval? What can we expect to see in Return of the King? And regardless, does Jackson’s interpretation enhance or detract from Two Towers?
Join us this weekend at Hall of Fire for what is sure to be a very lively debate!
Upcoming Discussions:
January 18-19
Frodo, the Ring and controlling Gollum
January 25-26
Arwen’s Choice as handled within the Two Towers
February 2-3
RoTK Book 5 Chapter One – Minas Tirith
Place:
#thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .
Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]
Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]
ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast
CET = Central European Time, Central Europe
Do you have a possible topic for Hall of Fire? Drop us a line here.
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Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey wrote a piece for The Daily Telegraph on the Two Towers. We can’t post it all for copyright reasons, but here’s a few interesting snippets and a link to the full article. You need to register to read in full (pesky), but it is free.
Take courage – things may not be as bad as they seem
By Tom Shippey
None of the characters, as Tolkien wrote the story, really understands the whole of what is going on.
Not even Gandalf. In fact, the only thing they do know is that their fate will not, in the end, be determined by visible events but by a mostly invisible one: the stealthy crawl of three insignificant-looking characters into the lion’s mouth of Mordor. The great ones and the heroes are continually trying to see what is happening elsewhere, through the palantirs and the Mirror of Galadriel and the Eye of Sauron. The attempt is repeatedly disastrous. Denethor commits suicide because of what he sees in his palantir, but he has read it wrong. As Gandalf says, “Even the wise cannot see all ends,” and the really wise remember that.
The moral is the motto of the British redcoat: “Look to your front.” Don’t think about what other people are doing: you’ll get it wrong and it’s disheartening. Or, to quote Gandalf again – and Jackson picked out just these words to repeat in the first movie, varying the pronouns cunningly – “That [the future] is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Tolkien surely did not mean these words just for Frodo. They were a major part of his own conviction and a part of his own cure for the defeatism, the appeasement, the lack of will and the weary calculation of odds that he saw dogging the Western democracies as he was writing The Lord of the Rings and still after he had finished it. Tolkien’s achievement, it may be, was to reintroduce a heroic world view, drawn from the ancient texts he taught as a professor, to a world gone ironic.
And this world view was put across not only by the obviously heroic figures such as Aragorn and Faramir and King Theoden, but by the hobbits – and, most of all, by the very structure of the story. In this story, all the characters find themselves, literally as well as figuratively, bewildered: their bearings lost, not sure what’s for the best, but slogging on regardless. The most important ones, moreover, the hobbits Frodo and Sam, think they’re on their own. All the time, their friends are risking everything to distract the Eye of Sauron from them, but they don’t know that. They go on anyway.
The film version, adapted to the limited attention span of the modern viewer, can’t handle all of this, but it handles a surprising amount. Tolkien himself, commenting on the first of several attempted film scripts back in 1957, remarked that he had no objection to people cutting things out, but he disliked compression, trying to jam everything into three hours. It loses the uncertainty, the false trails and the fog of war that link The Lord of the Rings and the battle of the Somme, where Tolkien fought with the Lancashire Fusiliers.
You can read the entire article here.
We also received an excerpt from an anonymous spy of a review of Two Towers that Shippey wrote for the Times Literary Supplement.
“An Arwen sequence has to be introduced to keep her in the action, but Tolkien himself might have approved of this. Not only does it draw her and Aragorn’s story out of the Appendix to which it was consigned in the book, it also emphasizes Arwen’s choice between her lover and immortality, and does so with Elrond speaking to his daughter very much in the mode of Hrothgar warning Beowulf.
“Aragorn will go in the end, he says, by ‘the sword or by the slow decay of time,’ and Arwen will ‘linger on in darkness and in doubt’; he urges her to abandon Middle-earth for the Undying Lands. Serious stuff for an action movie.”
Great stuff.
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