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Unaccountably annoyed
2/3/04 19:42For the second time in two days I've heard someone joke about what drugs J.R.R.Tolkien was on--first on the Academy awards, and second on one of the Canadian news satire shows, probably "This Hour Has 22 Minutes." And this drives me crazy. I know it's just a joke, and it's not that I have objections to my art being under the influence of drugs... I would make the same jokes about Kunihiko Ikuhara or Hideaki Anno.
Part of it, perhaps, is the picture I have in my head of Tolkien: Gandalf as a university professor. And I guess I'm just enough of a geek to think that, of all the fantasy genre, LOTR shows just about the least influence of drugs. It's serious, sincere, earthy. Too serious, at times. It does not pretend that it knows all the secrets of the universe. '60s hobbit fanboys nonwithstanding, the canon doesn't have any more evidence to support a mystical new-agey reading than it has to support an everybody-is-gay reading.
I don't know why this should bother me. I'm not even particularly attached to the books, having made it only as far as the end of the Rohan section of The Two Towers. But I'm bothered.
Part of it, perhaps, is the picture I have in my head of Tolkien: Gandalf as a university professor. And I guess I'm just enough of a geek to think that, of all the fantasy genre, LOTR shows just about the least influence of drugs. It's serious, sincere, earthy. Too serious, at times. It does not pretend that it knows all the secrets of the universe. '60s hobbit fanboys nonwithstanding, the canon doesn't have any more evidence to support a mystical new-agey reading than it has to support an everybody-is-gay reading.
I don't know why this should bother me. I'm not even particularly attached to the books, having made it only as far as the end of the Rohan section of The Two Towers. But I'm bothered.
