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Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle
I must say that I kind of read some of the scenes between A & A somewhat differently -- given that the expectation of modern audiences is that the lovers will have sex, it's interesting to note how PJ perhaps suggests that they are not as frankly and openly sexual as we might expect. Where are the revealing dresses? At what point do they kiss, embrace and then fall backwards into pillows? They are always fully clothed around one another and NEVER kiss in a private space (i.e. a room with a closed door) but out in the open where all the eyes of Rivendell (or Minas Tirith) are upon them.
It's almost as though PJ is taking it as a 'given' that they are sexual with one another and then working against that. Their most passionate scenes are upon the bridge when Arwen gives Aragorn the Evenstar (and I can guaranteed you that that moment didn't get beyond a kiss -- can you imagine what Daddy Agent Elrond would think looking out his window and seeing anything more?) and when they kiss each other at the coronation with thousands of people there gazing on. Again, not much more happening than a kiss.
Just occurs to me that the only moment in the films that is somewhat obviously sexual (that is, "these two are going to have sex now") comes at the very end when Sam and Rose go into their hole and shut the door. Yeah, they've got the kids with them, but they're purposely leaving the camera outside and so as soon as the kids are asleep, who's to know what happens?
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Ohh,
Fordim, the "less is less" approach! I like it! However, it seems to overlook the thorny issue of symbolism. We might not have a smoking cigar, but we do have a typical kind of understatement.
Since when are clothes an encumbrance? I seem to remember a scene in George Eliot's
The Mill on the Floss involving two fully clothed people and a bare arm. There was quite a description of an elbow and of a gentleman's handling of that elbow as the couple disembarked from a boat. When is a social act more than a social act?
And a kiss at a marriage ceremony or coronation is, after all, a symbolic public act which represents the union of the couple. And the scene on the bridge that stradles the two sides, water running beneath their feet? Where Arwen gives Aragorn a necklace to ring his neck?
Obviously your literary approach is just too, too post modern to consider old Freudian chestnuts.
