The Capturing of Myth

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Where, after all, did Greek drama originate? It originated in the stories of Greek mythology. And what is the role of ritual in religion or mythology? There are strong links between ritual and theatre. I can think of several other examples where mythologies are represented in art and in the physical form of dance and drama: I have seen Canadian First Nations myths enacted in dance and song and story. And I have seen West Coast mythologies carved on totem poles, represented in masks, and shaped into canoes and boats. And I know the brutal story of how aboriginal culture and mythology was nearly wiped out by a mainstream culture which feared a cosmology that did not denigrate the body.

I think that you are right to question Tolkien's premise, Bêthberry. But it seems to me that an important distinction between drama and cinema is that drama will often, due to the constraints of the medium, use symbolism to convey ideas, wheras cinema (mainstream cinema at least) leaves little to the imagination. There are, of course, films that work on a symbolic level. Perhaps LotR could be done successfully in that way, but it would be unlikely to have mass appeal.

As I said, the LotR films get about as close as a film can while still having that (important, to investors at least) mass appeal element.

[davem]

I don't think Tolkien was condemning drama per se, or even illustration - he illustrated his own myths many times. I think he was merely pointing out that the more we are given the less we participate, the less we contribute.

What drama does is to effectively take away our participation in the experience - particularly so with fantasy. An actor performing a dramatic reading of a fairy story is different to a full cast movie, with sfx & close ups, where the actors effectively take over. Faerie is, simply, different. I don't think we can accuse a 'bells & smells', high church catholic of puritanism. Dramatisation of myth - which is by its nature impersonal - as far from the everyday as possible - requires as much participation from the individual as possible if it is to work.

We have to keep in mind that Tolkien is speaking specifically of fantasy in the essay. Some things can be dramatised, some can't. It is fantasy, for Tolkien which cannot be dramatised. Tolkien is also putting forward a defence of literature as an artform in its own right. There is now almost an assumption that books are effectively, as I said, 'first draft screenplays' Tolkien saw it differently. Some literary works are not dramatisable - by their nature. Its not a matter of how much money, or how good the effects or the director/writers are. And in a work like LotR, where so much of the power of the work is due to the language (It began with language, after all) that is especially the case.

How can one dramatically reproduce the effect of the 'drums in the deep', with their onomatopoeic 'boom- doom, doom-boom', or adequately reproduce a creature of 'shadow & flame'?

Presenting realistic drama is one thing - especially if the piece was written as a drama to be performed - but to attempt to present something written to be read as a drama, especially if the piece is a fantasy, is, as Tolkien states, asking too much.

LotR was never intended to be dramatised - one of the most powerful & affecting things about it is the use of language (of which Tolkien was a master), & that is all lost when the story, stripped to its bare bones, is presented as drama in any form other than a dramatised reading (which, lets face it, is effectively what Greek drama, as originally performed, was). How many times have we heard the filmmakers say that 'x' would not have worked on screen? This is an admission that the material they were working with is not suited to such adaptation.

Of course, drama & illustration can give us images, but that's the whole point - we are given the images, we don't participate in their construction, so that world is not our world. I didn't see my Middle earth on screen at any point, though at times I was vaguely reminded of it - mostly by my feelings about how they'd got it 'wrong'. I could watch it as a 'drama' & be affected by moments in it - Eowyn singing Theodred's funeral dirge made the hairs stand on the back of my neck - but it was not 'Lord of the Rings' to me, for the very reasons Tolkien gives in the essay.

[Bêthberry]

SaucepanMan posted
But it seems to me that an important distinction between drama and cinema is that drama will often, due to the constraints of the medium, use symbolism to convey ideas, wheras cinema (mainstream cinema at least) leaves little to the imagination. There are, of course, films that work on a symbolic level. Perhaps LotR could be done successfully in that way, but it would be unlikely to have mass appeal.

As I said, the LotR films get about as close as a film can while still having that (important, to investors at least) mass appeal element.

I take your point generally about the plodding condition of mainstream North American cinema, SpM, but once again I want to stand back from the idea that the opposite is absolutely impossible. You could be right, of course, but I cannot help but think of, say, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or even Hero or Kurusawa's films as films of substantial appeal which incorporate something of symbolism rather than a rank realism. Hitchcock's films, while thoroughly grounded in the particular, invoke an erie sense of something out there beyond our normal range of vision, whether it is The Birds Psycho or Vertigo--or at least this is my memory of them. Look too at what was possible with American Beauty. Possibly the mix of Star Wars with LotR is what doomed Jackson's movie to miss out on the numinous. In the end, it did not strive to achieve its own kind of imaginative vision but rather clumsily hooked its star onto Lucas' coattails. (now, how is that for a mixed metaphor?)

davem posted:
There is now almost an assumption that books are effectively, as I said, 'first draft screenplays' Tolkien saw it differently. Some literary works are not dramatisable - by their nature. Its not a matter of how much money, or how good the effects or the director/writers are. And in a work like LotR, where so much of the power of the work is due to the language (It began with language, after all) that is especially the case.

How can one dramatically reproduce the effect of the 'drums in the deep', with their onomatopoeic 'boom- doom, doom-boom', or adequately reproduce a creature of 'shadow & flame'?

I take your point that there is a difference between novel and script or screenplay. In fact, this is one reason why I have given up on reading John Le Carré; after Little Drummer Girl ]\, all his books are essentially driven by the needs of a script. However, to my mind, this does not mean that in the hands of an artist of any medium, a true interprète would not be possible. As for sound effects, well, perhaps I should refer you to Mr. Underhill for his understanding of how sound effects people can hear things newly and persuade us of that new vision. Think of what [i]Star Wars[/b] did for our sense of light sabres. It is the ear for sound and the eye for light which art/film-making can bring to us which is not possible in a novel unless the novelist himself or herself had that sense imagination. I also hesitate to assign to fantasy qualities or affects which make it radically unlike any other form of literature or set it aside as opperating under different conditions. This no doubt derives from your belief that fantasy comes from something other, but it is not a belief I share.

[Essex]

of course there is symbolism in jackson's lotr.

2 examples from rotk within seconds of each other

denethor gorging on his food as faramir charges towards almost certain death

almost directly after this we gandalf sitting on the bench outside showing us the real bleakness and low point we have reached in the tale

Tie this in with Jackson's incredible skill of directing scenes and actors with a flair I can't compare (except for maybe godfather I and II) and we have a trilogy of movies that, for me, rank alongside great directors from the past (kurosawa has been mentioned on this thread, and it is not sacriligeous to mention him and jackson in the same breath)

No doubt given 20 or 30 years, most people will look back on these films and see them for the great works of art they are, for their superb production values, for their acting, but mainly for the story that they tell. We can talk about whether these films show us the true meaning of myth, or whether they stand up to tolkien's genius, but what we can tell is that the films themselves have given countless people huge enjoyment.

Isn't that one of the main reasons to make a film? To tell us a story so well that we can be tied up in it and taken away from the world's troubles for a few hours?

sorry, rant over and totally off topic.....

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bethberry

I also hesitate to assign to fantasy qualities or affects which make it radically unlike any other form of literature or set it aside as opperating under different conditions. This no doubt derives from your belief that fantasy comes from something other, but it is not a belief I share.

Drama has, of its nature, already attempted a kind of bogus, or shall I say at least substitute, magic: the visible & audible presentation of imaginary men in a story. That is in itself an attempt to counterfeit the magician's wand. To introduce, even with mechanical success, into this quasi-magical secondary world a further fantasy or magic is to demand, as it were, an inner or tertiary world. It is a world too much.

Actually, I think Tolkien's point does apply to fantasy alone. Its a matter of how much an audience can 'believe'. Everyone has limits! Essex has given an example of where Jackson has 'succeeded' - for me it didn't work, because I simply couldn't believe in Denethor - he was too much of a pantomime villain, so the whole effect was destroyed (bit like the 'inquisitor' at the end of Braveheart).

But take another example - the Balrog - to show the Balrog fully, & particularly in long shot, destroys the impact, & the sense of terror & overwhelming power is completely lost - we see a Balrog of Morgoth a few inches high. The mythic dimension is too easily lost when translated into other media.

As for sound effects, well, perhaps I should refer you to Mr. Underhill for his understanding of how sound effects people can hear things newly and persuade us of that new vision.

You simply cannot communicate all the connotations of 'doom-boom' in any other from than the literary. Language is essential to the communication of myth & fairy story. Literature, for its power, relies on either detailed back story, which cannot be translated into drama, or with myth & fairy story, on what the reader/hearer brings to the experience in terms of the imagery. So, realistic fiction can be translated into drama, because we are seeing something close to our own lives, our everyday experience. Or if we take modern dress productions of Shakespeare we see that the producers feel the need to enable the audience to bring their everday experience to the play.

What's interesting in traditional folk tales is the way they are adapted to the audience's experiences - even fairy palaces are described as being like large versions of the houses the people knew - this is especially clear when you read Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, but what we see in this is a movement away from myth towards realistic fiction. Drama has to present the story in a way, a form, the audience can relate to, & the more 'popular' it seeks to be, the more it will have to play down the magic - hence Jackson's approach to LotR - but the more that is done, the further away from myth we move.

Myth is probably the artistic form furthest from drama. I'm not here speaking of a native people's presentation of its myths in dramatic form, which grew out of ritual & worship practices, & has a religious dimension/purpose.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I’m really going to stick me neck out here and say that I disagree with the two premises that underlie so much of this thread…

1) I don’t agree that Tolkien has created a myth (but then, I don’t think that any one person can)

2) I don’t agree that this attitude or ‘feeling’ which we attribute to a tale and call ‘mythic’ must forever and anon reside only in the original work (that is, a ‘mythic’ book cannot become film or vice versa).

To tackle my first point: with all due respect to Lewis, I think he missed a major component of myth – that it is not something that can belong to any one person, but is instead a communal/societal experience. Works of art can be ‘mythic’ (like classical Greek drama) only insofar as they rewrite or represent a body of myth that the society is already organised around or in response to in some way. But no-one can just sit down and write a myth; when we come to read such a work, we are not finding an expression of something that we share, but something alien. (Unlike the citizens of Thebes hearing about Theseus, the ‘founder’ of their city, we read of Aragorn and the refounding of some place called ‘Gondor’ that is meaningless outside the book.) Myth is not just a story that one person tells and that we like, it is a living body of tradition that finds expression in and through a wide range of social and communal experience. Yes, LotR has become widespread and lots of people find meaning in it, but it is not the expression of our own societal belief system – it is the expression of a belief system, but we do not look to Aragorn and Frodo, Boromir and Éowyn as part of the ‘us’ the way that the ancient Greeks looked at Odysseus, or Native Americans regard Old Woman or Coyote.

What LotR is, is ‘mythic’ which is an entirely subjective attribution that some people are willing to give it and others are not. By ‘mythic’ I mean, does it ‘feel’ like a myth? As I said, this is entirely subjective and personal, so I will not attempt to argue anyone into or out of their position toward the mythic in LotR, since if you think it is, it is. But where I will take issue is with anyone who would want to move from their own subjective response to the text (“This feels mythic to me”) to a normative stance that they wish to impose on others (“therefore, it really is a myth, and therefore expressing a value and belief system that describes and embodies the world we live in”).

This is why I make my second point. Because a reader decides that the book is mythic and the film is not, or the film is mythic and the book is not – well, that’s their subjective response, and they are not only welcome to it, I cherish that response and embrace it. But to take the step beyond that and start claiming that the film is categorically not myth but the book is, is to make the mistake of assuming that something one has attributed to the book (the mythic ‘feel’) is part of the book. Again, this is not how myth is. Myth does not adhere to the work of art that represents it: Odysseus is not a character in a poem by Homer. Rather, the Odyssey is a work of art that is meant to capture and reflect a myth that already has cultural, social, religious reality in its world. That is why LotR, great as it is, cannot be myth, and that is why to say that it is myth and the film is not is to do what I can only describe as a form of interpretive violent to other viewers, for that statement assumes that one’s own subjective assessment of the book is somehow part of the book, not part of one’s individual experience of the book.

And another thing…

The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, it’s a single book in three volumes. I know that nobody in this thread has made this mistake, here or elsewhere, but as long as I was being cranky I figured I’d get that one off my chest too.

[davem]

Yet, the creation of a mythology for England was Tolkien's (original) motivation, so He clearly believed it was possible for an individua to create a mythology.

That aside, Tolkien did make use of mythic themes & elements, & his approach was, in large part to re-create what had been lost. My own feeling is that the sense we have that LotR is 'mythic' derives from this - the Legendarium itself may not be genuine myth, but there is enough genuine myth in there for it to affect us in the way genuine myth does.

Aragorn may not have existed prior to LotR, but Arthur, did, Gandalf may only have come into being with Hobbit & grown with LotR, but Merlin had existed long before.

The point for me, is that LotR communicates the remanants of our mythology in an incredibly effective way - & I think that has a lot to do with the form Tolkien uses - literature. The movies don't communicate the mythic dimension to me, & I think that's because they make the characters too 'real', too 'everyday'. The magic, the mythic elements are played down, in order to make the characters acceptable & believeable for a modern audience.