Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithadan
Several years ago, Tolkien message boards were as thick on the ground as leaves in autumn. I have a favorites folder of boards and other sites that I now have to clean up periodically as they go off line.
When I first joined here a long time ago, I was considering several different message boards and chose this one because it was the most serious and least deluged in chatter about the movies. While there are still a very few decent options, my allegiance remains here.
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In going through the others....
I have found two basic types:
1) Boards/Forums where the movies are the Gospel, and the books are a tiresome bore.
2) Boards/Forums where most of the participants are Evangelical Christians who have attempted to co-opt Tolkien to some end that I cannot even fathom (and usually try to support various Social-Conservative Political Causes). That makes for some very twisted analysis of Tolkien's works.
Corey Olsen's (
THE Tolkien Professor) discussions that I have been in often tended to have the latter flavor. I have mixed feelings about his works, as he has this tendency to overly use the movies in too many discussions. He clearly has a deep knowledge of Tolkien's works, but I cannot escape feeling that his religious biases tend to dominate.
This forum seems to have a pretty decent mix of people who have a very deep knowledge of Tolkien's work, and do not seem to have overt biases working in their examinations of his works.
I might be the closest to having one such bias, but that bias is toward establishing an objective coherence to Tolkien's works - which I should beware of, having studied Mythology with Joseph Campbell when I was younger, who would warn me against seeking objectivity in Myth. Although with Tolkien's Middle-earth, it is not just Mythology, but a Mythological History; which complicates things, and is a "Thing" that Campbell's work does not really cover, exactly.
Although his work covering Christianity does apply, it is problematic, because of what the application of Historical Literacy did to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in relation to the Power of the Myths themselves.
But overall... I appreciate that people seem to be willing to textually support their claims and arguments.
As primarily being an academic (currently convalescing, due to a disability to became aggravated just as I was about to start looking at Graduate Schools - although this will be my second time through a University, the first being in the 1980s) I tend to value that kind of thing.
But I do know what you mean about Tolkien forums proliferating over the last decade.
The films really brought about a lot of excitement for Tolkien's works. But it seems to have been transitory for most. Which is, to me, very sad.
MB