XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   On 2012-08-02 11:38, Lewis wrote:   
   > In message    
   >    Troels Forchhammer  wrote:   
    >>   
   >> From the on-line translation of the recent /Le Monde/ interview with   
   >> Christopher Tolkien, 'The Ring of Discord':   
   >   
   >>       This policy, however, has not protected the family from the   
   >>       reality that the work now belongs to a gigantic audience,   
   >>       culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it.   
   >>       Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred   
   >>       not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an   
   >>       action movie for young people 15 to 25," Christopher says   
   >>       regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the   
   >>       same kind of film."   
   >   
   > So, he's annoyed that the movies are aimed at precisisley the same   
    > audience as embraced the books in the first place?   
      
   Hardly. /The Lord of the Rings/ was at first embraced by mature adults   
   (think 30+). Some ten years after the initial publication the books   
   became available to a wider audience and became embraced at the   
   universities (mainly) by students at 20 - 30. The younger audience   
   wasn't involved (in any significant way) until much later, and even   
   today I doubt (albeit I do not know) if that the majority of those   
   'embracing' the book are below 20.   
      
   I do, however, think that CJRT is being overly generous to the films at   
   this point -- the target audience appears to me to be rather the 12 - 18   
   crowd, and while you can certainly read /LotR/ at 10 or younger (when   
   you're likely to get nothing more than the action adventure), you can   
   /also/ read at 60 and get so much more from it. The films have nothing   
   to offer besides the action adventure -- they are, essentially, /only/   
   for the 12 - 18 crowd (or for those moments when we seek that sort of   
   adolescent entertainment).   
      
      
      
   > LOTR *is* an action adventure tale filled with battles and swords and   
   > magic and bad guys and risk and peril and *that* is what gets people to   
   > read it. Anyone who ignores that is ignoring a key facet of the work.   
      
   That is utter nonsense. It is a far richer book than that, even though   
   it does contain elements of action and adventure, that is certainly   
   /not/ what the book /is/.   
      
   > Yes, LOTR is one of those very rare works that has levels upon levels of   
   > story buried under the surface, but it is under that surface that   
   > Christopher Tolkien seems to discount.   
      
   He never claims that there is no action adventure in /LotR/, but he   
   deplores the removal of all the important stuff -- the rest of it, all   
   the stuff that require that you sit down to think about what you're   
   reading -- the underlying philosophies, the ideas about how the world   
   works, the ethical questions, the medieval inspiration etc. etc.  These   
   things are what /LotR/ /is/.   
      
   It is the difference between claiming something is a (small and   
   unimportant) part of the whole and then claiming it is all there is to   
   the whole: a very big and significant difference.   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
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