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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   38191 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Right now, you all are probably sick to the back teeth of the discussion about Amazon's "Rings of Power", but I have to talk about this or I'll explode.

I haven't seen episode four yet, it's upcoming over here but it has aired in the US. I looked up some reviews (to see what is safe to skip if I watch this, because there's a lot of filler and not much plot in the episodes as yet) and I couldn't believe what the first one said, so I looked for a second one and yep, it's true.

The scriptwriters for episode four (apparently it's Stephany Folsom and J. D. Payne & Patrick McKay, yes our boys again) are introducing the reasons the Númenoreans don't like Elves. And - wait for it - it's because "they're going to take our jobs!". No, I swear, this is actually it.

Yes, ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who aren't too sure, a direct immigration reference. So I suppose I should take it that Pharazon is Donald Trump surfing to power on a wave of Númenorean populism which is racist and fascists, and Tar-Míriel is Hillary Clinton who is the true Queen from whom he usurps her power.

This episode, by the bye, is called "The Great Wave" because of the nightmare Tar-Míriel has about the great wave coming in to destroy Númenor, and by now it can't come fast enough for me. Excuse me while I run around screaming as though my hair is on fire, because I feel like it.

These - look, I don't want to be insulting about Mormons, but good Lord is it very, very hard to resist dropping one of the "m"s there - blond denizens of the Mountain West have not got one scrap of imagination above the banal. They cannot grapple with the deeper themes of death and immortality that Tolkien wrote into his work. Everything has to be something snatched from American political slogans. The Númenoreans don't envy and hate the Elves for the immortality they cannot have for themselves, it's because dey took er jerbs.

Let's go back to the source, shall we? From a very long and detailed letter of 1951:

The Downfall is partly the result of an inner weakness in Men – consequent, if you will, upon the first Fall (unrecorded in these tales), repented but not finally healed. Reward on earth is more dangerous for men than punishment! The Fall is achieved by the cunning of Sauron in exploiting this weakness. Its central theme is (inevitably, I think, in a story of Men) a Ban, or Prohibition.

The Númenóreans dwell within far sight of the easternmost 'immortal' land, Eressea; and as the only men to speak an Elvish tongue (learned in the days of their Alliance) they are in constant communication with their ancient friends and allies, either in the bliss of Eressea, or in the kingdom of Gilgalad on the shores of Middle-earth. They became thus in appearance, and even in powers of mind, hardly distinguishable from the Elves – but they remained mortal, even though rewarded by a triple, or more than a triple, span of years. Their reward is their undoing – or the means of their temptation. Their long life aids their achievements in art and wisdom, but breeds a possessive attitude to these things, and desire awakes for more time for their enjoyment. Foreseeing this in part, the gods laid a Ban on the Númenóreans from the beginning: they must never sail to Eressëa, nor westward out of sight of their own land. In all other directions they could go as they would. They must not set foot on 'immortal' lands, and so become enamoured of an immortality (within the world), which was against their law, the special doom or gift of Ilúvatar (God), and which their nature could not in fact endure.

There are three phases in their fall from grace. First acquiescence, obedience that is free and willing, though without complete understanding. Then for long they obey unwillingly, murmuring more and more openly. Finally they rebel – and a rift appears between the King's men and rebels, and the small minority of persecuted Faithful.

...In the second stage, the days of Pride and Glory and grudging of the Ban, they begin to seek wealth rather than bliss. The desire to escape death produced a cult of the dead, and they lavished wealth and art on tombs and memorials. They now made settlements on the west-shores, but these became rather strongholds and 'factories' of lords seeking wealth, and the Númenóreans became tax-gatherers carrying off over the sea ever more and more goods in their great ships. The Númenóreans began the forging of arms and engines.

From a letter of 1956:

The real theme for me is about something much more permanent and difficult: Death and Immortality: the mystery of the love of the world in the hearts of a race 'doomed' to leave and seemingly lose it; the anguish in the hearts of a race 'doomed' not to leave it, until its whole evil-aroused story is complete.

I don't know if swearing is allowed in our new realm of liberty and justice for all, but how the fuck do you, self-proclaimed huge Tolkien fans, read the above and come away with "Got it, the rebellion in Númenor was all about demagogues stoking fear of immigrant labour taking native jobs"????

The scriptwriters for episode four (apparently it's Stephany Folsom and J. D. Payne & Patrick McKay, yes our boys again) are introducing the reasons the Númenoreans don't like Elves. And - wait for it - it's because "they're going to take our jobs!". No, I swear, this is actually it.

I just watched it and had a different reading. That line about jobs was one part of the speech, but the broader polemic was much more racialized. The Númenoreans are depicted as racially jealous of the Elves, and this jealously has inspired disloyalty to and suspicion the elves. Furthermore it is heavily foreshadowed that disloyalty to the elves is displeasing to the gods (Valar) and is going to lead to the downfall of the Númenoreans.

I don't think you're giving the writers enough credit, they are smarter than you think. The general theme seems to be anti-racist, but anti-racist in a way that is fairly close to Tolkein's interpretation of his work as you described it. That theme is "racial jealously leads to non-cooperation with more gifted races, which leads to the downfall of the ethnocentric empire." That could be read in multiple ways.

Númenór is Hellenized in the show. Its downfall could harken to the downfall of Old Europe, which was destroyed in Tolkein's day because of its suspicion of the "gifted people" as Tolkein called them. It could also be a warning against anti-racism itself, for drumming up struggle against those more gifted in a way that's self-destructive. In any case, the messaging is more esoteric than criticisms of rote populism.

The general theme seems to be anti-racist

No, it's the Hollywood Liberal Woke Oscars notion of anti-racist. EDIT: I will give them this, they had a nicely multi-cultural all skin tones Númenorean crowd chanting a racist epithet. Progress!

Of course the Númenoreans are jealous of the Elves, that's part of the story. But a line about "The Elves are coming to take our trades"? Elf workers who don't age, sleep or tire? That's a dumb line to include, even if it's all a set-up to let Pharazon slide in with his "Númenor for Númenoreans" speech.

If Taemar (that seems to be the guy's name) is going to rile the crowd up over 'coming over here for our jobs', then he's got Halbrand as his A1 example: a Southlander, a Low Man (and did they swipe that out of Stephen King?) who is right now in jail for stealing Taemar's guild badge in an effort to get into a forge so he could do smithcraft. If he wants to rile them up about the Elves, he's got Galadriel and her "everyone jump when I say so" attitude. The Elves coming over to influence the Queen-Regent, acting as though they are the natural lords and masters of Númenor (and Galadriel didn't help when she said that line in the court about how the Númenoreans owe their island to the Elves) and persuading her to import cheap labour from the Men of Middle-earth - yeah, you could do that.

But Elves as cheap labour replacing the honest working men and women of Númenor? That's not anything at all in Tolkien, and it's not anti-racist in the sense you want it to mean, since Galadriel and every other Elf is white (except Arondir, and he's got white guys being racist to him back at home so that's covered). The writers aren't smart, this is just "hur hur see what we did there, this is MAGA country". Even favourable reviews think the dialogue is clunky.

Tolkein's interpretation of his work as you described it. That theme is "racial jealousy leads to non-cooperation with more gifted races, which leads to the downfall of the ethnocentric empire."

No, Tolkien's theme as he explicitly stated it was:

But they 'fell' again – because of a Ban or prohibition, inevitably. They were forbidden to sail west beyond their own land because they were not allowed to be or try to be 'immortal'; and in this myth the Blessed Realm is represented as still having an actual physical existence as a region of the real world, one which they could have reached by ship, being very great mariners. While obedient, people from the Blessed Realm often visited them, and so their knowledge and arts reached almost an Elvish height.

But the proximity of the Blessed Realm, the very length of their life-span given as a reward, and the increasing delight of life, made them begin to hanker after 'immortality'. They did not break the ban but they begrudged it. And forced east they turned from beneficence in their appearances on the coasts of Middle-earth, to pride, desire of power and wealth. So they came into conflict with Sauron, the lieutenant of the Prime Dark Lord, who had fallen back into evil and was claiming both kingship and godship over Men of Middle-earth. It was on the kingship question that Ar-pharazôn the 13th and mightiest King of Númenor challenged him primarily. His armada that took haven at Umbar was so great, and the Númenóreans at their height so terrible and resplendent, that Sauron's servants deserted him.

So Sauron had recourse to guile. He submitted, and was carried off to Númenor as a prisoner-hostage. But he was of course a 'divine' person (in the terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar) and thus far too powerful to be controlled in this way. He steadily got Arpharazôn's mind under his own control, and in the event corrupted many of the Númenóreans, destroyed the conception of Eru, now represented as a mere figment of the Valar or Lords of the West (a fictitious sanction to which they appealed if anyone questioned their rulings), and substituted a Satanist religion with a large temple, the worship of the dispossessed eldest of the Valar (the rebellious Dark Lord of the First Age). He finally induces Arpharazôn, frightened by the approach of old age, to make the greatest of all armadas, and go up with war against the Blessed Realm itself, and wrest it and its 'immortality' into his own hands.

The Valar had no real answer to this monstrous rebellion — for the Children of God were not under their ultimate jurisdiction: they were not allowed to destroy them, or coerce them with any 'divine' display of the powers they held over the physical world. They appealed to God; and a catastrophic 'change of plan' occurred. At the moment that Arpharazôn set foot on the forbidden shore, a rift appeared: Númenor foundered and was utterly overwhelmed; the armada was swallowed up; and the Blessed Realm removed for ever from the circles of the physical world. Thereafter one could sail right round the world and never find it.

This is not anything as simple as "racial jealousy" and not having learned to play nicely together, this is an attempt to change by force the very nature of Mankind which they cannot do, since it is impossible, but the pride and arrogance of Númenor is now so great, and the minds of its people so corrupted by Sauron, that they think they can seize the land of the gods and become gods themselves.

Kadô Zigûrun zabathân unakkha

Êruhînim dubdam ugru-dalad

Ar-Pharazônun azaggara Avalôiyada

Bârim an-Adûn yurahtam dâira sâibêth-mâ Êruvô

azrîya du-phursâ akhâsada...

Anadûnê zîrân hikallaba...

Bawîba dulgî...

balîk hazad an-Nimruzîr azûlada

Agannâlô burôda nênud ...

zâira nênud

adûn izindi batân tâidô ayadda: îdô kâtha batîna lôkhî

Êphalak îdôn Yôzâyan

Êphal êphalak îdôn hi-Akallabêth

The writers aren't smart, this is just "hur hur see what we did there, this is MAGA country".

...

He steadily got Arpharazôn's mind under his own control, and in the event corrupted many of the Númenóreans, destroyed the conception of Eru, now represented as a mere figment of the Valar or Lords of the West (a fictitious sanction to which they appealed if anyone questioned their rulings), and substituted a Satanist religion with a large temple, the worship of the dispossessed eldest of the Valar (the rebellious Dark Lord of the First Age). He finally induces Arpharazôn, frightened by the approach of old age, to make the greatest of all armadas, and go up with war against the Blessed Realm itself, and wrest it and its 'immortality' into his own hands.

Does this mean that Sauron will be Steve Bannon?

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