Lord of the Rings series!?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Maybe, but it certainly seems to follow from his previous statement. In any event, I find the Stranger is one of the other things in the show that I find absurd.

[Smaug's voice]

The harfoots, for example, have deep and complicated nomadic customs, that can be both beautiful and brutal. (And as an aside, they’ve managed to make a completely invented storyline one of the most Tolkienesque in the series!)

while at the same time finding the similarity between Sadoc Burrow's speech and Bilbo's farewell speech to be fairly ridiculous.

I didn't get this feeling really, unless you meant visual similarities between the scene and PJ's scene from Fellowship. Here are the two speeches:



Sadoc's:

"Most agreeable, honorable Harfoots. Another season has passed in this glade, leaving us with full carts and fuller bellies. Some fuller than most, if we're being honest about it. Uh, what else... The Moon is very full, so be careful where you're having your shenanigans later on. It'll be in full view of the entire camp. And nobody wants that I'm only jokin' ya. And now, before we begin our next journey, we remember those from prior migrations, who fell behind. And should any Harfoot fall behind this migration, they likewise will be carried with us in our hearts and in our memories. In life, we could not wait for them. But here, now, we welcome to our circle..."




Bilbo's:


"My dear Bagginses, Boffins, Tooks and Brandybucks, Grubbs and Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, Bracegirdles and Proudfoots. Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday. But alas eleventy one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits. I don't know half of as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
I... I have things to do...I regret to announce that this is the end. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye”



Both in form, style and content they seem different to me except for the greetings both the speeches start with.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I mean both visually and sensibility, not the exact words. To me it felt that they were trying to make the Harfoots feel as Hobbit-like as possible, despite acting as on Hobbit-like as possible.

[Smaug's voice]

I see! I like the scene but I'm interested to hear why it was unbecoming of hobbit-ancestors

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'll put my answer in spoilers, since I realize we are not talking in the spoiler thread for the third episode.

Hidden text.

When I think of Hobbits, the last thing that I think of is "survival of the fittest." I think of a community that supports each other, particularly the weakest among them, not leave them to die a cruel death because of an ill-timed minor injury that renders one temporarily unable to push a cart.

[Stranger Wings]

Maybe, but it certainly seems to follow from his previous statement. In any event, I find the Stranger is one of the other things in the show that I find absurd.

You’re much more of a literalist than I am about Tolkien adaptations. I am much more interested in the tone and tenor being in a Tolkienian spirit. This is responsible for nearly all our differences of opinion.

And this far surpasses PJ’s interpretation on the tone front, in my view. This doesn’t feel like an often puerile action adventure, as those films did (for me). This feels like a much deeper exploration of Tolkien’s themes, with a much much more in-depth exploration of culture and language. The harfoots and the Stranger both are very Tolkienesque. We’re seeing a backwards-drawn history of the hobbits, which reminds me a lot of Tolkien’s linguistic exercises of taking words and extrapolating their histories over time, and what cultures they may have been attached to. And if as Tolkien described, they had “wandering days,” then the harsh realities of nomadic existence would have likely come into play. It feels true and not airbrushed. Not Disneyfied. And I think Tolkien would’ve responded well to that.

Another thing that’s critically important for hardcore Tolkien fans to enjoy the show is that we are (necessarily) seeing what happened in between the major events that are outlined in the Appendices. That’s what this show is. The showrunners have repeated that time and again. We are seeing who these characters were, what they did and what they thought, before they arrive at the positions they take in the text. But they will eventually arrive there.

As Voronwë knows, I am a very picky and harsh critic of Tolkien adaptations, apart from the one adaptation I look at through very rosy glasses as I saw it when I was seven (R&B Hobbit). My critiques of LOTR are centered in a mix of both purism, in terms of capturing the tone of Tolkien’s stories, and a very critical eye on its cinematic qualities, as I am also a cinephile. And for me this show reached heights of Tolkien purism (in tone) and in cinematography and production design that I did not expect after the lackluster trailers.

And that’s a huge relief to me.

So far. It could all come crashing down, of course.


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[Stranger Wings]

I'll put my answer in spoilers, since I realize we are not talking in the spoiler thread for the third episode.

Hidden text.

When I think of Hobbits, the last thing that I think of is "survival of the fittest." I think of a community that supports each other, particularly the weakest among them, not leave them to die a cruel death because of an ill-timed minor injury that renders one temporarily unable to push a cart.

Hidden text.

This is a nomadic culture that predates the settled hobbits (and habits) of the Shire and Bree. That particular unfortunate practice strikes me as very historically justified, but one that will eventually fade and disappear once there is abundance and security in a settled agricultural system. Not to mention that they don’t leave Largo. He’s with them on the trail. They almost get left behind because of the danger Nori brings to the community with the Stranger. And harfoots shunning weirdos who meddle in dangerous business is VERY Third Age Hobbit behavior.

As for the Stranger? Whether you think of him as the origin of the Man in the Moon legend, or inspired by the Tales of Tom Bombadil or even Tolkien’s other faerie stories like Roverandom, etc, he just feels absolutely right to me. That storyline is absolutely bursting with Tolkienian fire, literally and figuratively.

I think if we absorb Tolkien in a more poetic mode than we often do in the fandom, and don’t treat his words as legal texts, we can all find significant joy in this adaptation so far.


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[Eldy]

Hidden text.

I don't claim to be a historian, but I have a hard time believing there were (m)any historical nomadic peoples who had a custom of abandoning people to die because they had an ankle injury at a bad time. (Yes, Largo ends up not being left behind for that reason, but it's clearly a serious fear for him and his wife.) Especially not when they live in groups small enough that everyone would have to be cousins, not that ROP seems inclined to acknowledge this.

[Stranger Wings]

Hidden text.

I don't claim to be a historian, but I have a hard time believing there were (m)any historical nomadic peoples who had a custom of abandoning people to die because they had an ankle injury at a bad time. (Yes, Largo ends up not being left behind for that reason, but it's clearly a serious fear for him and his wife.) Especially not when they live in groups small enough that everyone would have to be cousins, not that ROP seems inclined to acknowledge this.

Hidden text.

My climate research involves existing nomadic pastoral communities. And in some regions, yes, injuries that prevent or make difficult necessary migrations can lead to abandonment under certain circumstances. If they can be accommodated - for example if there are enough Bactrian camels for carrying the injured - it’s done. Most of the time that’s the case. But some do get left behind from time to time under severe circumstances. But it’s a very big deal if it happens. Just as seems to be the case here. And the “list of the left behinds” seems to be due to accidents and not abandonments. Being “de-caravaned” in the show is presented as an extreme and very serious punishment for endangering the community, not for being injured. And the leadership rejects that punishment in the end. I find the anthropological depth in the harfoot storyline to be very complex and interesting, and much more compelling than the Ren Faire/ Disneyfied hobbits of the Jackson films, where the nastiness of the miller and his son, and other social complexities, such as Lobelia’s greed, were cut in favor of broad country stereotypes. I find these showrunners smarter and more sophisticated in their world building, and detail-oriented. This feels Tolkienian. And I place their approach high above PJ’s.

To be too honest, perhaps, I find the broader Tolkien fandom discourse disappointing at this moment in time. It’s highly uncreative in its approach, and quite literalistic and analytical - in a way I don’t think Tolkien would have found particularly inspiring. To me, JD and Patrick are thankfully not just creating a work derivative of Tolkien alone. They are plumbing the original sources and inspirations that Tolkien drew from, from myth to language to cultural history. Their well is deeper than PJ’s, and I feel that strongly. And am not very fulfilled by the Tolkien scholar community’s discourse on the show, for the most part. It’s missing the poetic, and sometimes awkward, beating heart of Tolkien. IMO. And it’s hardened into near-contempt.

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[Voronwë the Faithful]

I think if we absorb Tolkien in a more poetic mode than we often do in the fandom, and don’t treat his words as legal texts, we can all find significant joy in this adaptation so far.

If that is meant as a dig at me as an attorney, I think it is completely unjustified.

To be too honest, perhaps, I find the broader Tolkien fandom discourse disappointing at this moment in time. It’s highly uncreative in its approach, and quite literalistic and analytical - in a way I don’t think Tolkien would have found particularly inspiring.

I have not seen enough of the "broader Tolkien fandom" with regard to this show to judge (I took a look at that TORN discourse site that you have mentioned and I found it impossible to take), but I think that there is room for different opinions without insulting people who disagree by calling them "uncreative" or "uninspiring".

[kzer_za]

Hidden text.

Leaving people behind comes across to me as a standard practice, not something they reluctantly do under extreme circumstances. They don’t make any real effort to accommodate Nori’s father even before the Stranger is discovered (I don’t remember if everyone knows about the injury, but regardless he and his wife are not asking for help because they know his people wouldn’t give it). As far as I know about real nomadic peoples, the Harfoots are crueler - at least as far as how they treat their own.

And the Hobbit vices such as pettiness and small-mindedness we see in the Third Age are just in a completely different category. I just don’t agree at all this sort of social darwinism is in the spirit of Tolkien or makes sense as proto-Hobbit history, in my opinion it is one of the most anti-Tolkien things put to film.

Setting both Tolkien and morality aside, it also just doesn’t make much sense from a worldbuilding perspective. Letting your weak die this flippantly both makes it very difficult to sustain a tiny population and loses valuable supplies.

The leadership does not fully “de-caravan” Nori’s family, but the punishment sending them to the back still seems intended to put the sword of Damocles over them with the possibility they’ll be abandoned. Which is what almost happens until the Stranger joins in.

Ok I’m being harsh but I’m glad you can enjoy this show. To some extent “poetic tone” is subjective and we’re going to see it differently, but I just really don’t see that rich Tolkienesque tone you do, except perhaps in the visuals occasionally. And the implication that people who dislike or are lukewarm this show just lack imagination isn’t fair.

I’m not a purist, but I don’t think very many writers are capable of the level of fanfic invention this show inherently requires. But clearly our tastes in this regard are very different.

As TV without Tolkien it’s…fine I guess? But there are so many shows nowadays that are fine.

[Stranger Wings]

Hidden text.

Leaving people behind comes across to me as a standard practice, not something they reluctantly do under extreme circumstances. They don’t make any real effort to accommodate Nori’s father even before the Stranger is discovered (I don’t remember if everyone knows about the injury, but regardless he and his wife are not asking for help because they know his people wouldn’t give it). As far as I know about real nomadic peoples, the Harfoots are crueler - at least as far as how they treat their own.

And the Hobbit vices such as pettiness and small-mindedness we see in the Third Age are just in a completely different category. I just don’t agree at all this sort of social darwinism is in the spirit of Tolkien or makes sense as proto-Hobbit history, in my opinion it is one of the most anti-Tolkien things put to film.

Setting both Tolkien and morality aside, it also just doesn’t make much sense from a worldbuilding perspective. Letting your weak die this flippantly both makes it very difficult to sustain a tiny population and loses valuable supplies.

The leadership does not fully “de-caravan” Nori’s family, but the punishment sending them to the back still seems intended to put the sword of Damocles over them with the possibility they’ll be abandoned. Which is what almost happens until the Stranger joins in.

Ok I’m being harsh but I’m glad you can enjoy this show. To some extent “poetic tone” is subjective and we’re going to see it differently, but I just really don’t see that rich Tolkienesque tone you do, except perhaps in the visuals occasionally. And the implication that people who dislike or are lukewarm this show just lack imagination isn’t fair.

I’m not a purist, but I don’t think very many writers are capable of the level of fanfic invention this show inherently requires. But clearly our tastes in this regard are very different.

As TV without Tolkien it’s…fine I guess? But there are so many shows nowadays that are fine.

If I implied any such thing, I apologize. It wasn’t meant for you. I was talking about the broader dialogue in the Tolkien fandom which I find lacking, and overly analytical. I’ve tried to engage with it, and am mostly ignored for focusing on tone and imagery over textual faithfulness. So I was judging that dynamic, not your opinions.

Re: the harfoots and the Stranger, even if one finds the premise absurd (and I don’t - I find it delightful and plenty Tolkienesque), let’s acknowledge the absolutely brilliant acting by Nori and Poppy. I find them to be both more believable and entertaining (in a non slapstick way, as were Merry and Pippin in much of the films) than the hobbits in the films. The dialogue is natural, they have wit, and they show genuine emotion.

Re: the moral character of the harfoots, I never agreed with the idea that Tolkien’s world needs to be more sanitized and black and white than other TV fantasy worlds. In the Sil, UT and elsewhere, Tolkien wrote about human societies with deep flaws and injustices embedded in them. As hobbits derive from humans, why would their ancestors not have observed similarly immoral or unjust practices? Not least as the hobbits of LOTR are also flawed - they. can be xenophobic, envious, parochial, and sometimes quite nasty. And even violent and unfaithful, as we saw after Sharkey spent some time there.

As with Tolkien’s exercises in excavating the history of a word, I find the showrunners’ excavation of hobbit history to feel genuine and true. This has impressed me a lot.


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[Stranger Wings]

I think if we absorb Tolkien in a more poetic mode than we often do in the fandom, and don’t treat his words as legal texts, we can all find significant joy in this adaptation so far.

If that is meant as a dig at me as an attorney, I think it is completely unjustified.

To be too honest, perhaps, I find the broader Tolkien fandom discourse disappointing at this moment in time. It’s highly uncreative in its approach, and quite literalistic and analytical - in a way I don’t think Tolkien would have found particularly inspiring.

I have not seen enough of the "broader Tolkien fandom" with regard to this show to judge (I took a look at that TORN discourse site that you have mentioned and I found it impossible to take), but I think that there is room for different opinions without insulting people who disagree by calling them "uncreative" or "uninspiring".

I think you know me well enough to know that I would never engage in that kind of petty attack. I was simply explaining my approach to purism in adaptation, in contrast to the approach I have been seeing in a lot of the discourse elsewhere. And in that discourse, artistically unconventional views on adaptation are regularly and routinely met with contempt and dismissal. I don’t get that from here. If you think something I enjoy is absurd, you explain why. That’s not a practice most critics employ elsewhere.

Note, again, that I was talking about a group of suffocating views elsewhere, not here. And if that was interpreted as an insult to anyone here, that absolutely was not the intention. But I apologize anyway, as I take no pleasure in accidentally insulting people!


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[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks for saying that!

[Eldy]

kzer_za said everything about the Harfoot's customs that I would've tried to, so I'll refrain from beating that dead horse any further at the moment.

It’s highly uncreative in its approach, and quite literalistic and analytical - in a way I don’t think Tolkien would have found particularly inspiring.

It's not my intention to say that you, or anyone else, are wrong to take a non-literalistic approach to discussing and appreciating ROP, but I'm skeptical that Tolkien would have done so. Of course, Tolkien cared about his themes and the tone of the work, but one need only read Letter 210 to get a sense of how fussy he could be about details in (proposed) adaptations, ranging from timeline contraction to Hobbits eating sandwiches on occasions when Tolkien described them doing something else.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of course, Tolkien cared about his themes and the tone of the work, but one need only read Letter 210 to get a sense of how fussy he could be about details in (proposed) adaptations, ranging from timeline contraction to Hobbits eating sandwiches on occasions when Tolkien described them doing something else.

Also some of the comments he is quoted as making in Stuart Lee's paper in The Great Tales Never End, "A Milestone in BBC History? The 1955-56 Radio Dramatization of The Lord of the Rings."

[Stranger Wings]

Fair. The truth is that it is almost impossible to divine how Tolkien would’ve reacted to this adaptation, and it’s folly (on my part) to try to appeal to Tolkien’s authority in that context.

The only thing I can say for certain is that as a very hardcore Tolkien fan, and as a very harsh critic of PJ’s adaptations on largely purist grounds, I find this show to align much more closely with what I imagine a visual and dramatic adaptation of his work should look like.


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[Eldy]

I have very much enjoyed getting your take as an old school purist, both here and on TORn! Even when we disagree, it's heartening to see that perspective still represented in modern Tolkien fandom.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Me too. And honestly, I'm not too concerned about 'what Tolkien would have thought.' I'm much more interested in what all you guys think!

[Frelga]

A large part of my criticism of PJ's alterations was that often, a better option was right there in canon. For example, the comically panicked eye vs. Tolkien's image of a great shadowy form stretching a menacing arm.

That's not the case here. This show is built on the thinnest textual framework. I had expected them to cling to it and fill it with fluff. I had expected it to be silly, maybe even stupid. Instead, they made bold choices, with wholly invented storylines and characters that nevertheless promise to weave into a beautiful tapestry.

Most importantly, it's fun.