Well I'm an old cynic and one of my favourite arguments is that anything and everything we buy is just another 'product' no matter how wonderful they make it all seem to us. No matter if I'm buying home-knitted-organic bread or anything like that, it is still just a product and I am just another consumer. And so the films have enabled a vast 'market' to grow up which I have been sucked into. There wasn't as much available Tolkien paraphernalia to buy before the films, but now we can get just about anything, even socks and incense sticks! I personally have a rather large collection of books and memorabilia, including around sixty of those action figures; my excuse is that once I had a few, I thought I might as well try and get a 'full set'. And I just plain like them, anyway,
so there.
Now I'm beginning to wonder about certain things in the films with this comically cynical idea. Was Arwen's heightened role just a ploy to get us all to buy more hair products, so that we too could dream of having Liv Tyler's super-shiny hair? And I noticed that all the Elves had perfect skin, so maybe this was marketing new make-up products at us, or else photo editing software
I for one have certainly been smoking more following the films; perhaps they have influenced me? On second thoughts - that kind of question would be taken as
disturbingly serious in some quarters...
The thought of a smoke-free Middle Earth is just too much to bear!