footnotes

[calimac]

1) To my Lieutenant Kijé post:

One of the reference sources claiming that the film was never made is, of all things, the esteemed (but not as reliable as it'd like to think) New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, if that's what it means where the second edition says in Prokofiev's catalogue, "film unrealized."

I tracked down again the review of the film's original American showing that first proved to me it really had been made. The American title was actually The Tsar Wants to Sleep, and it was reviewed by Otis Ferguson in The New Republic, Dec. 26, 1934, p. 193. The evaluation is somewhat mixed, but overall Ferguson is pleased that the mighty Soviet has shown a sense of humor. Probably he'd felt bogged down; TNR reviewed a lot of Russian films in those days. One parenthetical comment, "The music, by Prokofiev, is good," is all he has to say about that.

2) To an entry in my survey "The Year's Work in Tolkien Studies 2006," in Tolkien Studies 6, now online at Project Muse, if you have access to that.

This is my summary of an article in the collection Tolkien and Modernity, beginning with a reference to the preceding article in the same collection:

Taking as a given the subtleties unearthed by Alliot, "The Maker’s Will ... Fulfilled?" by Jessica Burke and Anthony Burdge (Weinreich and Honegger 1: 111-33) is not a research article but a polemic, arguing that Tolkien had the ability to tap into (ultimately divine) inspiration – in older language, that he was possessed of a genius – and that his work has true magic; it is real in a sense that much of mundane reality is not. Critics who dismiss the literary value of fantasy do not appreciate this. Tragically, much of Tolkien’s modern readership – in particular, the "genetically bred fan" base of Peter Jackson (127) – cannot either. In Burke and Burdge’s striking comparison, they are unable to distinguish a unicorn from a surgically-altered goat.

And what I didn't add, but have been going back and forth on ever since on whether I should have, was this comment:

The incredulous incomprehension of these vital points by the professedly Jackson-embracing Shaun F.D. Hughes in his review of the collection (Tolkien Studies 5 (2008): 249) only underlines the need for the work Burke and Burdge undertake here.

The problem is that Hughes' comment, "There is no return to a pre-Peter-Jackson understanding of Tolkien" and advising scholars to "[take] advantage of this new reality," whatever that means (should we embrace the goat as a true unicorn?), itself shows a profoundly, and chillingly, un-Tolkienian attitude. I would suggest to Mr. Hughes a reading of the section of Tolkien's essay "On Fairy-Stories" titled "Recovery" and a long silent contemplation on what that means.

I should also point out that if Hughes is right, it completely puts the lie to all the other film fans who are trying to soothe us with the assurance that the book is still there, unchanged, on the shelf. What use is the constancy of the book if your understanding of it is necessarily changed? In fact Hughes is wrong; it's possible to recover Tolkien without the taint of Jackson, but it takes work, a lot of hard work - work which is not aided by constantly having to fight off people like Hughes who wish us to accept "this new reality." Those are like unto the words of Saruman.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I rather like the image of Jackson as a kind of evil demi-urge, a sub-subcreator gone wrong, breeding orcs from elves in the bowels of his darkroom. I'm not sure I quite buy that, but I certainly take your point about the importance Tolkien placed on recovery. Though I suspect that, even as he rejected Sarumaniacal compromise in this matter, he'd have had a tragic consciousness that recovery can never be perfect or complete.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It cannot, but the main reason for that in this case is the insistence that it shouldn't even be attempted. Let Tolkien go his way and Jackson his, and stop reading the films as having any sort of authority over the text, or having a "special" relationship with it, and that would be sufficient for a fallen world.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I am waiting for a return to "orginal" fan art, which I would take as a sign of a growth of that "recovery" you mention. Since the films, most of the fan art I see is either of the actors as the characters, or obviously taking its style cues from the films. I regard it as just one manifestation of the diluting effect of the films on the imaginative effect of the books.

But I agree: Hughes is wrong in declaring that the films will trump the text. The internal logic of the last film is so mangled that finding out the "reality" in the books should be a relief. I mean in particular: why is Arwen's life-force suddenly tied to the existence of the Ring? What possible connection could she have to it? (Her father was in its presence when it should have been destroyed? Don't think so.) I don't see how Huges could possibly justify that as an "improvement" over Tolkien's own creation.

But I will stop with that observation, since further that way leads to ranting.