a weekend in cowtown

[calimac]

Vacaville (it doesn't really mean "cowtown" - it was named for an early settler named Vaca) is a tiny colorful circa-1900 historic downtown surrounded by a huge splotch of suburbia in the midst of the Central Valley, California's answer to the Great Plains. One of the shopowners in that downtown got the idea of attracting customers through one of those weekend street fairs, and - and this is where it got interesting for me - giving it a Tolkien theme.

I didn't hear about the first one, but this weekend was The Second Annual Middle Earth Festival, and having duly enquired I was invited as a speaker for the "Forums on Tolkien's Themes." They even gave me a hotel room for the night, which was really nice of them. (When I arrived at the hotel, the atrium was booming with a band playing cover versions of 80s pop songs for a wedding reception, but mercifully they packed up and departed before bedtime.)

I wasn't expecting much of the forums, just an opportunity to talk for a couple of hours with readers who knew enough about Tolkien to appreciate some more advanced discussion. I waved around a copy of the 484-page index to The History of Middle-earth to indicate how voluminous Tolkien's posthumous works are; in a discussion of the morality of the story I was able to outline the difference between Tolkien's characters named "Aragorn" and "Theoden" with Peter Jackson's very different characters of the same names without denigrating Jackson. (This magnanimity was achievable partly by entirely avoiding discussion of Jackson's character named "Faramir".)

For the most part we let the audience drive the discussion topics. The first of the two forums I attended was dominated by an audience member, a very tall and rather Ent-like woman who knew a very little about a very lot of things. The other forum was fairly skilfully led by a rather Calvinist Episcopal priest whose interest in teleology considerably outstripped Tolkien's. I think I managed to convey how Tolkien's own view differed, without stepping too far into a Christian theological dispute. Everybody knew their Tolkien well enough not to say anything dumb, and we had a good time.

As for the festival - well, the sales booths were the usual arts and crafts stuff, the food booths were exactly the same as the ones we get at festivals down here 80 miles away, there were a fair number of costumed folk mostly with badly-applied pointed ears, and the only people I saw whom I knew were the musicians of Avalon Rising, one of a few bands booked to play before small but appreciative audiences on the town square.

I also now know a little more of Vacaville than I did before, and can point you to a restaurant with very nice hamburgers. These are slightly overpriced, but not as much as the $2.50 they expected for a mug of Thomas Kemper root beer: I managed to ward that off. For the second day's lunch I went to Davis, home of a UC campus and a more notable culinary destination than Vacaville, where I found a really fine little Indian restaurant and chaat house.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Davis, home of a UC campus and a more notable culinary destination than Vacaville

Okay, it's been a while since I've been to either, but this seems an almost definitive example of damning with faint praise. Or humorous understatement. Or both.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

So have you written up your thoughts on the distinction between Tolkien's and Jackson's versions of those characters? One thing that struck me is that, unlike Tolkien, Jackson had no concept of nobility, archaic or otherwise, and thus Theoden and Faramir in particular came off as complete weaklings in the movies. I haven't given much thought to whether he substituted something else instead that makes those characters work within his story-scheme.

[(Anonymous)]

I have many fond memories of stopping at the Nut Tree in Vacaville. Definitely the kind of place that could have hosted a Middle Earth festival. Now, sadly, it's gone. Not into the west, mind you, although the idea of a western land of repose doesn't quite seem complete without its own airport, narrow-gauge railroad, and many restaurants and gift shoppes.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Oops. That was me.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

It is to say, "If you're stuck in those parts anyway, Davis is almost but not quite worth the 20-mile drive in search of somewhere better to eat."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Ah, I sense a little hostility to Jackson leaking out. I try to keep that bottled up when there are 10-year-old girls dressed as Elves in the audience.

What I said was that I believe a large part of Tolkien's appeal lies in the moral certainty of his heroes. They well doubt whether the deed can be done, but they never doubt their own moral courage to attempt it. See Theoden, who does suffer from the despair of lacking this when we meet him: Gandalf's cure consists of imbuing him with Nordic courage.

Now J-Theoden is different: he is ensorcelled, not in despair, from which he's freed by J-Gandalf: then he goes through his crisis of confidence, from which it is J-Aragorn who cures him. *shrug* It's a different story. Malory's Arthur is different from Chretien's is different from Geoffrey's. Just don't conflate them.

What I say in private? Jackson has no sense of moral courage and can't believe in it. Probably he thinks he's modernizing the characters, but he's just removing the Tolkien in them. He inserts episodes of despair into almost every character arc, wrenching the plot out of place and then having to wrench it back in again so that the story can continue.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I miss the Nut Tree too. What is it with these places? I thought the Nut Tree was doing fine commercially, and then it just ... closed. I know the Good Earth chain was doing fine, but the owner wanted to retire. He didn't try to find a buyer, he didn't even sell out to big business. One day he just ... closed them all. Poof.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. I actually liked the way Aragorn's crisis of confidence was handled in the first movie, but after that it got tiresome, as did everything else (including techniques like slo-mo and swoopy-cam). I actively hated how Theoden and Faramir and Treebeard and even Denethor were treated. However, your private point raises the question of whether Jackson has anything to say about despair. I'm not sure I can view the movies dispassionately enough to say. I just found them so ham-handed and overblown that any underlying point is lost on me. Maybe it's just that heros overcome despair, which is kind of a tautology. Maybe it's that heroism and the overcoming of despair are only possible through fellowship?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

But, how can it be called courage, rather than fearlessness, if it is never assailed by fear or doubt?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The heroes are constantly assailed by fear and doubt. Fear of the enemy (who indeed operate more by fear than by sheer physical strength, though they have that too), fear of the consequences should they fail; doubt that their goals can be accomplished, doubt that they can accomplish them, doubt that their tactical decisions in pursuit of those goals are correct.

What they never doubt is that they must make the attempt, futile though it may seem. They do not say, "Oh, this is futile, I give up." The darkest moment of the entire story is Sam, alone in the tower of Cirith Ungol, with no idea of where to go, where to find Frodo, or how to do anything else he might want to accomplish. What does he do? He sings:

Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.

That is moral courage, that is Hope against all odds. That is what Tolkien's characters have.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I don't think Jackson had any real point here. He just wanted to inject additional "drama" in to the story, like steroids. As if the story weren't dramatic enough as it was, which he apparently really believed.