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Originally Posted by davem
For Tolkien fantasy is not an 'anything goes' genre. It has its basis in, is founded on, primary world reality. It does not reject scientific fact - where it departs from them it does so for logical reasons
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Understood.
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Tolkienian fantasy has its basis in cold hard facts - it is not an anything goes genre. If it was he would not have spent so much of his life creating Middle-earth. Hence, when such 'cold, hard facts' are omitted they are omitted for a reason. A world 'where war isn't ugly' is a world which is not based on the 'cold hard facts' that Tolkien insists on. In fact, such a world is exactly the kind of 'morbid delusion' that he condemns.
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Show me once (I'm probably setting myself up for a big dose of stupid
) where any character, especially an elf, voids itself of what cannot be digested, metabolized or is the product of symbiotic bacteria in the gut, if you know what I'm saying. Sure is a lot of eatin' and drinkin' in Tolkien's world, yet his light never shines on the subsequent
requisite activity. Think that we all know that it's there, but somehow don't mind that it was left to our imagining.
How long a walk was it from Rivendell to the Bridge in the Mines of Moria? Was the Balrog brought down by magic or halitosis? Sure, Gollum is said to have stank, but me I'd rather be upwind of the Nine Walkers after such a long trip as well.
But you're going to tell me that, along with the dying moaning soldier lying om the Pelennor in blood, offal and other words whose meanings I'm not quite sure of, you thought about other biological realities of any or many of the main characters?
Now I get what y'all are saying, seeing that maybe, just maybe, Tolkien was glorifying war because he wasn't gorifying it. But maybe that's you. Me, the scene where Sam sees the dead man in Ithilien speaks loudly.
And just how much better was Jackson's depiction? Would anyone be more or less 'rah-rah' after watching the movies (which depict a few suffering souls) or reading the books?