Dan Deluca's Article
Thanks, Nevvasaeil, for providing the article in your post above. Even better than providing a link, cos I actually read it! I think the author has summed up the situation eloquently and with great insight and common-sense. What he says makes more sense than anything any of us has posted on this thread. I think you misconstrue him when you think that it's an attack on Tolkien, and leap immediately to the Professor's defence like this was some kind of bar brawl.
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Nowadays, a movie or record or book exists and is interpreted in the historical moment when it is unleashed on the world. So, even though the Lord of the Rings books were published in the mid-'50s, we're experiencing The Two Towers in this cultural nanosecond. And it is the audience, rather than Tolkien or even director Peter Jackson, that decides just what the fantastic saga means.
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Dan points out the root of the problem right here - not PJs vision, certainly not Viggo's or Elijah's, and probably not Tolkien's (but I think that assuming he would not sanction war on Iraq is hasty to say the least), but the audience's perception. This is all a result of a few small-minded people seeing the movie, without reading the book, and jumping to a ridiculous conclusion. It's a shame that there are people out there like that, but it's something that we have to put up with, hoping in our small way to influence them to see the films as something other than pro-war propaganda.
I think the comment Deluca ends with is extremely apt:
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It doesn't matter what Tolkien meant or what Viggo Mortensen thinks. In the here and now, The Two Towers is a powerful piece of war propaganda.
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He cites several examples of how politicians or the media have stolen and bastardised films or music in the past (another example would be Money by Pink Floyd), distorting their meaning to further their own ends. The best we can do is to try and put a stop to this whenever we see it happening, by protesting against it however we think appropriate.