The Scourge of The Dark Side...Tolkien and Modernism

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

Ibrin, the whole thing began, as far as I can work out, because some posters on another forum declared their contempt for both Star Wars AND The Lord of the Rings, on the grounds that neither was sufficiently progressive. The response from the crew at stardestroyer.net was to a.) distance themselves from LotR and b.) think up some hair-splitting reasons why the criticisms of it were valid but the ones of SW weren't.

As I said, it's rather pathetic.

No kidding. With that history, I see very clearly what probably happened: rather than just defend their own turf, someone in the SW forum decided to turn LotR into a sort of common enemy. "We aren't bad, but these other guys are." It IS quite pathetic. It's rather like something I was told by many authors who were both friends and people whose opinions I respect: If in writing, the only way you can make your hero look good is by making everyone else look like witless fools and buffoons, your hero isn't a real hero at all. An argument intended to support your position that relies on bashing someone else is not a well-constructed argument. When dealing with the kind of contempt you describe, you're best to either ignore it utterly, or just defend your own part of it and leave others to their own defense.