Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

LOTR: Two Towers trailer: accidental propaganda?

blackbeltjones

08:35 / 02.10.02

Just watched the trailer for new lord of the rings installment, and couldn't help to feel the resonance with 'the current situation', apart from the title, which Peter Jackson couldn;t do much about.

[Trailer here]

Lots of steely faced shots of Viggo Mortenson saying things like "We're going to take Sauron's Jewellery of Mass Destruction away from him, and we don't care if those Elven-Weenies want a mulitlateral, diplomatic approach"

Seriously though - does anyone think the trailer has been deliberately edited to make the us feel good about opening a can of smackdown on Saddam? Or do I need a lie-down?

The Natural Way

08:56 / 02.10.02

God...ummm. NO. And yes - lie down. S'goooood.

First shot of Gollum looks a bit unfinished, though. Rest of them are fine.

Oliphaunts and Wargs rule.

CameronStewart

15:46 / 02.10.02

Weird - the background music is from Requiem For A Dream.

videodrome

16:18 / 02.10.02

Bugs the shit out of me when studios do that 'use music from another film' trick. Especially something like the Requiem music, which is so recognizable.

As for the political content, I think it's inescapable, given the current context. It's certainly easy to read that into the trailer, and I can see current political context making some choices for the editors of the trailer, but I don't think it's deliberately cut to take advantage of the current situation. Of course, I wouldn't be at all suprised to find that it was deliberate after all, but looking at the trailer it seems more like the story uncannily fits into what's going on now.

Naked Flame

16:23 / 02.10.02

It's probably also worth bearing in mind that LOTR-the-book was held by some to be an fantasy allegory of the WWII and the subsequent Cold War issues. That was then. This is now...

kagemaru

20:32 / 02.10.02

... and keep in mind that Tolkien did imagine his orks as "eastern or Asian in appearance".
He _did_ buy that thing about the Yellow Peril, apparently.

Add to that that LOTR is considered a standard reading for Right Wing youth clubs organizations in certain countries (Italy, France), and the picture gets pretty sinister.

higuita

19:08 / 03.10.02

Aren't orcs green with pointy ears? I can't see the connection except for the 'other'ness, which is pretty typical.
I guess once you put something out there, it all becomes a matter of people's interpretations. For instance, I had someone have a go at me about listening to Rammstein, because they have a right wing following. 1 - I don't get why and 2 - what does it have to do with my lefty arse?
One thing I found interesting recently was reading the Dune prequels, which feature Emperor Shaddam quite heavily. Oooh!

The Falcon

00:42 / 04.10.02

I thought Tolkien's vision of Middle Earth was shaped by trips to Iceland.

It's smart reading Dune in Africa. I imagine this might be similar.

Naked Flame

08:42 / 04.10.02

Essentially it's far too simple a story to be any kind of modern political allegory. At least, if it is an allegory, it's allegorical in a vague and useless way.

As to LOTR's appropriation by extreme right-wing groups, it shouldn't surprise anyone that moronic politics requires ideological backup on a rather more simplistic level than, say, Marx... no disrepect to the writing, which I enjoyed as a kid and still do as an adult.

and duncan- dunno about that but Elvish is supposed to be based on Finnish. He had a thing for scandinavian languages.

Cat Chant

10:26 / 04.10.02

aren't orcs green with pointy ears?

Orcs are "swarthy" with "flat noses". But I keep getting sucked into this debate & getting nowhere with it so I'm going to shut up now (yes, it's racist, because it relies on a set of stereotypes connecting certain behaviours to certain physical appearances, such stereotypes coming from the same source as those made into a political imperative by right-wing groups; no, that doesn't mean it's not a damn fine trilogy).

Haven't seen the new trailer yet but part of the point of the whole Twin Towers thing is that it rewrote geopolitics to centre around the World Trade Center and is being used to justify global military-political action in the name of Good and Evil. So they wouldn't need to arrange the trailer to fit, necessarily: it's actually pretty hard to make or say anything that can't be comprehended/enveloped by the 9/11 rhetoric-war-machine.

Add Your Reply