Uses & misuses....

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Its also, perhaps, odd, that the people buying all that love the world he created. Do they also love his philosophy, or do they take something else from it, something he didn't intend...

This question gets close to some of the points in the C-thread. In that the reader often (if not usually) 'sees' things within a text that the author might not have intended. And indeed, there may be references within a text so personal to the author that the reader will never notice them. It might well be that what the reader picks out from a text is ultimately wrong, but nevertheless they do pick these things out.

One of the things which makes Tolkien's work so enjoyable is that it is not didactic and we must search to find the meaning. It is subtle and doesn't come along and hit you over the head (so to speak), as shown by the changing interpretations over time; Tolkien used to be interpreted as primarily an environmentalist, while nowadays we see him more as a philosopher. His work is fluid, so its no surprise that a lot of different meanings can be taken from it. I suppose the difference between 'us' and 'them' is that we all see ourselves as reasoned fans and like to refer to things like Tolkien's Letters to see 'what he thought about it'.

About merchandising, Tolkien was already a huge money making machine before the films came out. Without even mentioning the vast publishing opportunities surrounding the books and their multifarious editions, there were already several lines of toys (Middle Earth Toys made action figures including Barrow-Wights etc), pewter figures, porcelain figures, etc. There has also been a line of calendars and diaries for many years, many different posters, and there have also been lines of jewellery. Much of this was quite hard to get hold of before the films but has since surfaced on such places as ebay, but the very existence of it suggests that Tolkien fans have always been greedy for merchandise, and that includes everyone who was a fan before the films.