Lord of the Rings TV series gets multi-season order at Amazon

[mhagain]

The Silmarillion has rape, attempted rape, incest, lust, nudity: it doesn't pull any punches and gives the lie to notions of Tolkien as some kind of puritan prude.

The old complaint that the Amazon series was going to go down the route of GoT style gratuitous titillation seems largely founded on the hiring (or at least advertising for) some kind of "nudity consultant" over a year ago. That's old news and seems disproven by the nudity actually being captured and tortured elves in a concentration camp type scene, possibly in the process of being twisted into orcs. There's seriously no other reason for it, other than unfounded Internet worries.

[Galadriel55]

I think the issue around sex/nude scenes is not so mich in their presence as in their use. GOT early seasons are known to have sex scenes just for the purpose of sex scenes - the story does not necessarily benefit from the expliciteness, nor even from the existence of the scene at all. Tolkien can write about nudity and sex and rape, but he'd never spend half a page describing someone's private parts in exquisite detail. He is more the type to let you know exactly what haplened, but to keep the details of the bedroom behind the curtain. It's not the presence of the scenes so much as the way they are done and the purpose they contribute to the story.

Would I watch a GOT style sexed up thing with Tolkien names? I would for Second Age material, to give it a fair chance as a very loose adaptation. I wouldn't if it attempts to adapt any more solid material. However, Hui said before that some sources say the sexualized angle is not what they are going for. Still, the nudity is not the reason I wouldn't watch it - I purposefully haven't watched movie adaptations of books that I really liked because I know they won't do it justice for me. Hence, if it's a very loose adaptation, I don't really care what they do with it, I will treat it basically as a work of its own, or a fanfiction. But if it sticks to the text enough to sort of follow the stoey but also warp everything, nah.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Michael Murry

Now, does anyone who has read The Silmarillion and seen Game of Thrones have any idea if the richest man on earth will get what he wants out of this television series and whether the "discriminating" television audience will swallow it as J. R. R. Tolkien's work without gagging?

Unknown on both, but what the richest man on earth wants is the series to make him lots of money and that may well happen. Fundamentally, this is just an attempt to make a quick buck off the name and work of a better creator.

Whether the discriminating audience will swallow it depends on how the source material is treated, but the philosophical perspectives of Tolkien's work and Game of Thrones (even as a separate thing from A Song of Ice and Fire) are miles and miles apart. I have a hard time imagining that they will mesh well.

Originally Posted by mhagain

The old complaint that the Amazon series was going to go down the route of GoT style gratuitous titillation seems largely founded on the hiring (or at least advertising for) some kind of "nudity consultant" over a year ago. That's old news and seems disproven by the nudity actually being captured and tortured elves in a concentration camp type scene, possibly in the process of being twisted into orcs. There's seriously no other reason for it, other than unfounded Internet worries.

This is not true, at least in my case. I had a bad reaction to the idea the moment I learned of the project and who was behind it. My concerns were increased tenfold when I saw in the statements from Amazon itself that they wanted to mimic the success of Game of Thrones. Per the links provided by Michael Murry provide ample evidence that everyone knows why GoT was so successful. Even the current overall cultural milieu is cause for concern that Tolkien's work will not be treated respectfully.

To the point I made above, based on their own words I think the Amazon production is more sympathetic to the philosophical point of view of GoT and will have every motivation to titillate the audience because that was the secret to success of GoT; and that is just one problem (although admittedly a major one) I have with this production.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

I think the Amazon production is more sympathetic to the philosophical point of view of GoT and will have every motivation to titillate the audience because that was the secret to success of GoT; and that is just one problem (although admittedly a major one) I have with this production.

Precisely. I have little faith that fidelity to the spirit of the source is a concern for the project (if, indeed it is even possible to capture it in such a medium).

[Michael Murry]

The richest man on Earth has spent some money:
two-hundred-fifty million, so we hear,
for rights to make what some will not think funny:

a TV-series "based on" "writings" "near"
to what an Oxford don had not completed
but "might have" had he lived another year

or ten. His death left fandom feeling cheated
who wanted more of Tolkien's Middle-earth.
Escapist fantasies: Morgoth defeated!

In fact, where joined by Amazon's net worth,
the HBO and Netflix "streaming" plan
distracts from sights of "good guys" doomed from birth,

defeated by the common peasant man
in Vietnam and now Afghanistan.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021

[Michael Murry]

I kid you not, fellow Crimestoppers. Just as I started thinking about another way to lampoon in verse the forthcoming Amazon "steaming" [spelling intentional] television series and it's Amazon-ordered mission to mix Tolkien's Middle-earth mythology with HBO's Game of Thrones sexploitation, I catch this little item from Sputnik News:

Monica Lewinsky Pushed 'Thong-Flashing' Scene to Be in Upcoming 'Impeachment' TV Show
https://sputniknews.com/society/2021...hment-tv-show/

"Impeachment: American Crime Story" a forthcoming FX TV show, is set to hit the small screen on 7 September. It is based on the widely-known sex scandal involving the 42nd US president, Bill Clinton, and a former White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, which led to Clinton's impeachment in the US House of Representatives.

Monica Lewinsky, one of the show producers for "Impeachment: American Crime Story", insisted that writers include a scene depicting her flashing a thong at then-US President Bill Clinton at the time of their White House affair, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The screenwriter team was at first afraid that re-enacting the scene would "retraumatize" Lewinsky, but the former White House intern greenlighted the "thong-flashing" section.

. . . [snip] . . .

Initially, Lewinsky shared the intimate detail in 2018, saying that she exposed her thongs to Clinton in 1995 in the middle of a government shutdown.

Lewinsky became a part of the production team of the show after Ryan Murphy, an FX producer, urged her to reconsider her concern and pledged that the show would be about the affair between her and a president, from the perspective of the women involved.

Despite the spicy topics raised in the show, "Impeachment", according to executive producer Nina Jacobson, will be "mindful of what we show when, and why, and what we don’t show, and why".

The show is scheduled to be released on 7 September, starring Beanie Feldstein as Lewinsky and Clive Owen as US President Bill Clinton.

Oh, well. At least I've got a working title for my next poetic polemic: "Game of Thongs."

[Michael Murry]

Again, from what I understand: Amazon plans to start televising the first episodes of their "Lord of the Rings" series next year (2022) which I look forward to lampooning given the sort of material that I assume will disgrace the entertainment industry -- a difficult task, I admit. Others more knowledgeable than myself in Tolkien Lore have said that The Silmarillion will constitute the literary basis for the intended rip-off. I don't have a copy of The Silmarillion, but I do have a copy of Unfinished Tales, where the Editor, Christopher Tolkien, writes in the Introduction:

"The problems that confront one given responsibility for the writings of a dead author are hard to resolve. Some persons in this position may elect to make no material whatsoever available for publication, save perhaps for work that was in a virtually finished state at the time of the author's death. In the case of the unfinished writings of J. R. R. Tolkien this might seem at first the proper course; since he himself, peculiarly critical and exacting of his own work, would not have dreamt of allowing even the more completed narratives in this book to appear without much further refinement." [emphasis added]

"On the other hand, the nature and scope of his invention seems to me to place even his abandoned stories in a peculiar position. That The Silmarillion should remain unknown was for me out of the question, despite its disordered state, and despite my father's known if very largely unfulfilled intentions for its transformation; and in that case I presumed, after long hesitation, to present the work not in the form of an historical study, a complex of divergent texts interlinked by commentary, but as a completed and cohesive entity." [emphasis added]

Without a copy of The Silmarillion, I have had to research the Internet -- Wikipedia and other on-line sources -- so that I have some clue as to the "divergent texts" that the television series plans to pilfer and "adapt." As a model for how I might go about lampooning this stuff -- as I did with the "Itaril/Tauriel" butt-kicking elf-chick love interest in The Hobbit movies -- I consulted National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" and the terrific send-up of Star Trek and its fan base in Galaxy Quest. I trust that this influence will come through in my next verse offering:

Demiurge Dementia

Valium, Land of the Vulgar, it seems,
features some real-estate made up of dreams
parceled-out absent competitive schemes,
"built" by The Owner for "his" chosen teams:
“Angels” who mouth metaphysical memes;
“Demons” who thump theological themes.

Boron and Lithium, man and elf female,
teamed up to perpetrate – down to the detail –
theft of a mineral stone (cheap at retail):
Morbid’s crown missing a rock, now for resale.
Lithium’s dad asked his girl why should she wail?
Boron knew that he’d get shafted should he fail.

Where do the Halfwits come into this story?
Trying to separate Labor from Tory,
What should we call them? A “truck” or a “lorry”?
Do they not serve as an apt allegory:
Rustic and “Middle” and “common” and hoary?
Who, if not them, will suffice as pure quarry?

Somehow this story sounds already told,
Like a stale meal having long since grown cold;
Fetid like swamp water covered with mold;
Reeking of avarice; done; over sold;
Amateur alchemy: tin made from gold;
Narrative nonsense: escape from the fold.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2021