If Colbert ever writes anything based on Tolkien, I won't go anywhere near it. I got burned by Rangs of power and then I got burned by Wheel of time.
I don't want to watch anything filmed for "Modern audiences"
I want the classics, classic writing, classic tv, classic music.
Tolkien wrote about good against evil. That's what I liked about Tolkien.
Now it's just about how quickly they can take it and stick LGBT and politics into it.
I've been watching FBI on paramount. I'm on season 4 and I'm having to take a break, a long break.
The writers don't know how to let the show breath. They go from crisis to crisis, with no breaks, no days off, no joy. It's always death and destruction and betrayal.
Peace to them. The gardener hath gathered up this autumn's leaves. Who shall see them again, or who wot of them? And who shall say what hath befallen in the days of long ago?
Not that that's relevant, of course. (It can't be, since it's Dunsany.) I just felt like saying it.
This is a misunderstanding of how myth works (stories are myths). The great ones last for uncounted generations because they can be reinvented. The Odessey, Camelot, and Robin Hood have all changed for the needs of different cycles of the West. They can do that because they speak to what endures in the West.
It’s one of the paired dualities which are the essence of Western society, the source of our adaptability and power.
Copyrights aren’t forever. Mickey Mouse has already began to enter the public domain. Superman and Batman will in 1934. All Tolkien’s works enter the public domain in the UK on 1 January 2044. In the US, The Hobbit enters the public domain in 2032 and The Lord of the Rings in 2050.
Mickey Mouse is now in Public Domain. And if you use him, Disney will sue. It doesn't matter what the law says if a massive corporation can make the process the punishment.
The real disappointment here is that I was expecting you to be the one defending Lord Dunsany:
“Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.”
Irrelevant. The damage is already being done. That's three generations being negatively effected, which is more than long enough for popular works to be mostly forgotten.
Note: this is your only warning: if you don't stop trying to "correct" people you will not be permitted to continue participating in the discourse.
And if you attempt to argue with this, you will be immediately banned. The standards here are not up for discussion.
That’s a powerful insight. One of the dumbest of the many dumb actions by the Eisner team at Disney is converting the brand into a girls-only festival - interrupting the generation to generation hand-off of its stories.
The feminist dads of the Boomer & Generation X eat it up. I doubt dads of the following gens will pass that excitement to their sons and grandsons.
But powerful cultural legends are often lost rediscovered. Greek stories were lost in the Dark Ages; their rediscovery helped fuel the Enlightenment. Magna Carta was central to British law, then pretty much ignored, then rediscovered.
Perhaps most relevant, interest in the King Arthur stories died with the Medieval era, and returned with the early-19th romantic movement.
“People need stories, more than bread, itself. They teach us how to live, and why. …Stories show us how to win.”
— The Master Storyteller in HBO’s “Arabian Nights”.
That is not correct. The early versions of Mickey Mouse are already in the public domain. As its late copyrights expire, they to will enter the public domain. The trademark rights will continue to limit its use, however. See an explanation from Duke Law:
Interesting read. The relationship between trademark and copyright is certainly complex. The only iteration currently in the public domain is Steamboat Willie, which is not the version that most of us know. Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey, a fan favorite, won't be for another decade or so. And you can bet that Disney attorneys will be watching for any infringement of trademark.
Relevant to whom? Pop culture has always been, will always be, a competition of the LCD's preferences, and in an immoral and amoral society anything resembling Tolkien will be fringe.
I spent the decade of my adolescence immersed in Middle-Earth, but I couldn’t manage to read the Silmarillion. I was bored by the first movie — not enough magic and too many battles. When the second was released, my son said, “Don’t watch it, you’d hate it.” I still read massive amounts of fantasy but mostly the escapist kind with badass female demon-slayers and sexy werecats. Whatever enchantment I once found in Tolkien is gone yet I haven’t found it anywhere else.
This is a sobering reminder of the reality under current copyright law. It's why I encourage all creators to release their works into the public domain once they can no longer effectively control them.
But public domain is no guarantee of relevance either.
Even then, Jungle Book and Wizard of Oz probably have the most relevance of public domain works, and those are every bit as corrupted and ill remembered. (It's practically a trivia question to ask people how many good witches there are. Or the color of Oz's regions.)
You can release your works into the public domain at any time. The law governs when they are automatically released into the public domain after your death.
All that is required is a public statement to that effect and it is irrevocable. Because you obviously don't know how the public domain or copyright works or you wouldn't have stated "no one gets to release their works into the public domain." The copyright holder dictates what rights he retains or not.
What I didn't know is who I was talking to. I thought it was to another rational person. And that's also inaccurate. I looked it up. It's slightly more complicated than making a public statement -- does that mean shouting at the mall? Posting on Facebook? -- and it depends on whether the work has been copyrighted. But, of course, you know all of that, being the Substack expert on it.
I'm still making Zelazny homages with good Amazon sales ranks, occasionally hitting category #1s with them, so I wouldn't say he's irrelevant yet.
If it weren't for the intellectual property laws, I'd make a Nine Princes in Amber video series myself with neural networks. I wonder if Zelazny's estate has endorsed nonprofit fanvideography...
You are way too negative and pessimistic. Current year Western insanity is a passing aberration in the unshakable millennia-long ebb and flow of Christendom.
To say that Tolkien will become irrelevant is like saying that St Thomas Aquinas will become irrelevant.
We often have to exhume like pirates or archeologists what's been buried. Tolkien helped un-bury Beowulf; Chesterton helped restore Dickens, and has been in recent times resurrected himself. Give it some time. "Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!" Tend your garden, pull up your weeds. Beget children who can read. "History is the long defeat."
Notre Dame de Paris was restored to its former glory because of Hugo's novel written in defence of its value. It was crumbling in his time, until he did something about it.
Sauron as Walter White is an idea that's simultaneously brilliant and terrible. I wouldn't trust anyone other than JRR to write it and do it justice.
And it just doesn't fit within the moral and narrative arc of either the Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion. A story that focused on Sauron's personal emotional journey, could be told but Tolkien never focused on any character in any of his works in that way, including Frodo. The interest in Sauron as an individual really shows how culture and literature have changed since the 1940s.
Lastly, Sauron broke bad very early. By the time of Morgoth's attack on Almaren he was already corrupt. This would make a Sauron focused version of the Silmarillion or the Lord of the Rings rather boring. To tell an interesting story Sauron would need to feel inner conflict as he was corrupting elves and men, and he clearly does not do that anywhere in Tolkien's work.
“The Marring of Arda”, describing the first war in Middle Earth when Melkor tried to seize power over it from the Valar and in doing so corrupted many of the Maiar (including Sauron) into joining his side, would be a kick-ass story. But given that all of the characters would have god-like powers, it might be a little hard to pull off without descending into superhero farce. Especially if you tried to tell the story from Sauron’s POV.
This would be very much a Sanderson-like story, and I picture JRR writhing in pain if he was allowed to tell it. The Maiar could easily be the Knights Radiant and Morgoth Odium.
If you wanted to do a character-centric examination of Sauron’s corruption that didn’t get bogged down by the grandiosity of a War In Heaven/Gotterdammerrung with Morgoth & the other Ainur, there are a few avenues for that:
Tolkien describes how shortly after Morgoth got sealed away Sauron attempted to ask for rehabilitation from the Valar, who replied with a demand that he enter Valinor and submit to a trial and penance. Sauron actually started the journey but got cold feet at the possibility of failure or unendurable punishment, went into hiding, and eventually came back as the new lord of evil.
He also describes Sauron as over time becoming a pseudo-atheist, more precisely convinced himself that Eru stopped paying attention to Arda as a way to cope with his subconscious guilt; morality didn’t matter because God wasn’t around to judge him anymore, which is what gave him the confidence to talk Numenor into attempting to invade Valinor.
Finally, it is a highly important distinction in Tolkien’s notes that Sauron was for the most part not motivated by malice/resentment the way Morgoth was. Sauron was narcissistic and thought he knew how the world should “properly” be ordered, but he didn’t feel insecure about his power compared to Eru or take delight in senseless destruction.
These all present multiple openings for psychological drama in lower-scale environs:
Sauron on the run in the Far East or in hide-holes being consumed by paranoia of the Valars’ vengeance, perhaps attempting to perform his own self-directed penance and falling apart when he receives no sign of his self-harm earning him grace.
Sauron in his prophet-guise in Numenor, twisting the religion of the High Men to bring them low as outlet for feeling abandoned by God, praying in private moments for a chance to come back from his own corruption and responding to the silence by doubling down, tragically ignorant that the real issue is that he has made himself deaf to Eru. Realizing this only when he and the island are burned by Him.
Sauron & Morgoth having snuck away from the other Ainur, in their first secret fortress, drawing plans for how to remake the world and convince the other spirits that this is right, Sauron slowly being forced to realize that they are both evil as ideas for debate turn to strategies of war, Morgoth starts abusing him and openly admitting his hatred of life, the names and forms of Mairon & Melkor rotting away, and him grappling with the realization that this knowledge isn’t enough to get him to turn back. Culminating in the first march of monsters that they both know is ultimately doomed before they ever even make contact with the good angels.
It can be done, it just takes a better grasp of tragedy and the harrows of conscious-sinning than any Hollywood cretin has.
I agree very much with your character study. It's just annoying that it would have to be exactly that because the most interesting character moments for Sauron occur after the main narrative of the Silmarillion. It would be very hard to do a balanced story that had an Elven perspective and Sauron's perspective because Sauron is either a minion or Irredeemably evil. Unfortunately, the rights issues will prevent anyone from doing any such thing until after Tolkien's work falls out of copyright.
If Colbert ever writes anything based on Tolkien, I won't go anywhere near it. I got burned by Rangs of power and then I got burned by Wheel of time.
I don't want to watch anything filmed for "Modern audiences"
I want the classics, classic writing, classic tv, classic music.
Tolkien wrote about good against evil. That's what I liked about Tolkien.
Now it's just about how quickly they can take it and stick LGBT and politics into it.
I've been watching FBI on paramount. I'm on season 4 and I'm having to take a break, a long break.
The writers don't know how to let the show breath. They go from crisis to crisis, with no breaks, no days off, no joy. It's always death and destruction and betrayal.
Sounds like the black ryujinn is having a great time, then.
Good versus evil never gets old.
Peace to them. The gardener hath gathered up this autumn's leaves. Who shall see them again, or who wot of them? And who shall say what hath befallen in the days of long ago?
Not that that's relevant, of course. (It can't be, since it's Dunsany.) I just felt like saying it.
Dunsany always felt like saying it.
This is a misunderstanding of how myth works (stories are myths). The great ones last for uncounted generations because they can be reinvented. The Odessey, Camelot, and Robin Hood have all changed for the needs of different cycles of the West. They can do that because they speak to what endures in the West.
It’s one of the paired dualities which are the essence of Western society, the source of our adaptability and power.
They can't be reinvented when they're under copyright and controlled by corporate interests with a perspective inimical to the original creation's.
Copyrights aren’t forever. Mickey Mouse has already began to enter the public domain. Superman and Batman will in 1934. All Tolkien’s works enter the public domain in the UK on 1 January 2044. In the US, The Hobbit enters the public domain in 2032 and The Lord of the Rings in 2050.
That’s soon, as cultural evolution goes.
Mickey Mouse is now in Public Domain. And if you use him, Disney will sue. It doesn't matter what the law says if a massive corporation can make the process the punishment.
The real disappointment here is that I was expecting you to be the one defending Lord Dunsany:
“Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.”
No, Mickey Mouse is not in the public domain. Steamboat Willey is. Mickey Mouse is a trademark.
Until then, how much can Tolkien, and others, be ruined?
Not at all. His words remain. To be rediscovered by future generations. The abominations based in his works will be erased by the sands of time.
Will that happen with Star Trek. the original series. And enterprise, its only faithful sequel?
But its ruined. Thats the point of this post.
That something is dragged through the muck and buried, and then has to be unearthed again aint positive and it aint nothing.
You're not being a smart boy, you're missing the mark.
Irrelevant. The damage is already being done. That's three generations being negatively effected, which is more than long enough for popular works to be mostly forgotten.
Note: this is your only warning: if you don't stop trying to "correct" people you will not be permitted to continue participating in the discourse.
And if you attempt to argue with this, you will be immediately banned. The standards here are not up for discussion.
That’s a powerful insight. One of the dumbest of the many dumb actions by the Eisner team at Disney is converting the brand into a girls-only festival - interrupting the generation to generation hand-off of its stories.
The feminist dads of the Boomer & Generation X eat it up. I doubt dads of the following gens will pass that excitement to their sons and grandsons.
But powerful cultural legends are often lost rediscovered. Greek stories were lost in the Dark Ages; their rediscovery helped fuel the Enlightenment. Magna Carta was central to British law, then pretty much ignored, then rediscovered.
Perhaps most relevant, interest in the King Arthur stories died with the Medieval era, and returned with the early-19th romantic movement.
“People need stories, more than bread, itself. They teach us how to live, and why. …Stories show us how to win.”
— The Master Storyteller in HBO’s “Arabian Nights”.
Mickey Mouse is trademarked, not copyrighted. It will never enter the public domain until Disney stops renewing it.
That is not correct. The early versions of Mickey Mouse are already in the public domain. As its late copyrights expire, they to will enter the public domain. The trademark rights will continue to limit its use, however. See an explanation from Duke Law:
https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/
Interesting read. The relationship between trademark and copyright is certainly complex. The only iteration currently in the public domain is Steamboat Willie, which is not the version that most of us know. Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey, a fan favorite, won't be for another decade or so. And you can bet that Disney attorneys will be watching for any infringement of trademark.
They can be and are, and I am not just talking about fanfiction. Ideas cannot be copyrighted, only the expression of the idea.
Relevant to whom? Pop culture has always been, will always be, a competition of the LCD's preferences, and in an immoral and amoral society anything resembling Tolkien will be fringe.
Baloney. It's needed now more than ever.
I might legitimately hate this article for how true the final point rings.
Homeschoolers.
Nuff said.
He was never relevant to me. I couldn’t care less about all that elf/dwarf/magic ring crap.
Have you read the books?
You will be the first to sit in the chair. We will fix you.
I spent the decade of my adolescence immersed in Middle-Earth, but I couldn’t manage to read the Silmarillion. I was bored by the first movie — not enough magic and too many battles. When the second was released, my son said, “Don’t watch it, you’d hate it.” I still read massive amounts of fantasy but mostly the escapist kind with badass female demon-slayers and sexy werecats. Whatever enchantment I once found in Tolkien is gone yet I haven’t found it anywhere else.
This is a sobering reminder of the reality under current copyright law. It's why I encourage all creators to release their works into the public domain once they can no longer effectively control them.
But public domain is no guarantee of relevance either.
Even then, Jungle Book and Wizard of Oz probably have the most relevance of public domain works, and those are every bit as corrupted and ill remembered. (It's practically a trivia question to ask people how many good witches there are. Or the color of Oz's regions.)
No one gets to release their works into the public domain. That's governed by law. The most anyone can do is simply ignore theft.
You can release your works into the public domain at any time. The law governs when they are automatically released into the public domain after your death.
What is the process for doing that? Yes, I know what the law does, thank you. Why do you think that I don't?
All that is required is a public statement to that effect and it is irrevocable. Because you obviously don't know how the public domain or copyright works or you wouldn't have stated "no one gets to release their works into the public domain." The copyright holder dictates what rights he retains or not.
What I didn't know is who I was talking to. I thought it was to another rational person. And that's also inaccurate. I looked it up. It's slightly more complicated than making a public statement -- does that mean shouting at the mall? Posting on Facebook? -- and it depends on whether the work has been copyrighted. But, of course, you know all of that, being the Substack expert on it.
Your level of knowledge doesn't even rise to the level of Wikipedia.
Look, you didn't know what you were talking about. It was obvious. Just accept that and move on.
Why do you keep hijacking this account to publish your petty complaints?
?
I'm still making Zelazny homages with good Amazon sales ranks, occasionally hitting category #1s with them, so I wouldn't say he's irrelevant yet.
If it weren't for the intellectual property laws, I'd make a Nine Princes in Amber video series myself with neural networks. I wonder if Zelazny's estate has endorsed nonprofit fanvideography...
You are way too negative and pessimistic. Current year Western insanity is a passing aberration in the unshakable millennia-long ebb and flow of Christendom.
To say that Tolkien will become irrelevant is like saying that St Thomas Aquinas will become irrelevant.
We often have to exhume like pirates or archeologists what's been buried. Tolkien helped un-bury Beowulf; Chesterton helped restore Dickens, and has been in recent times resurrected himself. Give it some time. "Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!" Tend your garden, pull up your weeds. Beget children who can read. "History is the long defeat."
Notre Dame de Paris was restored to its former glory because of Hugo's novel written in defence of its value. It was crumbling in his time, until he did something about it.
Zelazny is relevant to me, but yes. I'm generation X
Sauron as Walter White is an idea that's simultaneously brilliant and terrible. I wouldn't trust anyone other than JRR to write it and do it justice.
And it just doesn't fit within the moral and narrative arc of either the Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion. A story that focused on Sauron's personal emotional journey, could be told but Tolkien never focused on any character in any of his works in that way, including Frodo. The interest in Sauron as an individual really shows how culture and literature have changed since the 1940s.
Lastly, Sauron broke bad very early. By the time of Morgoth's attack on Almaren he was already corrupt. This would make a Sauron focused version of the Silmarillion or the Lord of the Rings rather boring. To tell an interesting story Sauron would need to feel inner conflict as he was corrupting elves and men, and he clearly does not do that anywhere in Tolkien's work.
“The Marring of Arda”, describing the first war in Middle Earth when Melkor tried to seize power over it from the Valar and in doing so corrupted many of the Maiar (including Sauron) into joining his side, would be a kick-ass story. But given that all of the characters would have god-like powers, it might be a little hard to pull off without descending into superhero farce. Especially if you tried to tell the story from Sauron’s POV.
This would be very much a Sanderson-like story, and I picture JRR writhing in pain if he was allowed to tell it. The Maiar could easily be the Knights Radiant and Morgoth Odium.
If you wanted to do a character-centric examination of Sauron’s corruption that didn’t get bogged down by the grandiosity of a War In Heaven/Gotterdammerrung with Morgoth & the other Ainur, there are a few avenues for that:
Tolkien describes how shortly after Morgoth got sealed away Sauron attempted to ask for rehabilitation from the Valar, who replied with a demand that he enter Valinor and submit to a trial and penance. Sauron actually started the journey but got cold feet at the possibility of failure or unendurable punishment, went into hiding, and eventually came back as the new lord of evil.
He also describes Sauron as over time becoming a pseudo-atheist, more precisely convinced himself that Eru stopped paying attention to Arda as a way to cope with his subconscious guilt; morality didn’t matter because God wasn’t around to judge him anymore, which is what gave him the confidence to talk Numenor into attempting to invade Valinor.
Finally, it is a highly important distinction in Tolkien’s notes that Sauron was for the most part not motivated by malice/resentment the way Morgoth was. Sauron was narcissistic and thought he knew how the world should “properly” be ordered, but he didn’t feel insecure about his power compared to Eru or take delight in senseless destruction.
These all present multiple openings for psychological drama in lower-scale environs:
Sauron on the run in the Far East or in hide-holes being consumed by paranoia of the Valars’ vengeance, perhaps attempting to perform his own self-directed penance and falling apart when he receives no sign of his self-harm earning him grace.
Sauron in his prophet-guise in Numenor, twisting the religion of the High Men to bring them low as outlet for feeling abandoned by God, praying in private moments for a chance to come back from his own corruption and responding to the silence by doubling down, tragically ignorant that the real issue is that he has made himself deaf to Eru. Realizing this only when he and the island are burned by Him.
Sauron & Morgoth having snuck away from the other Ainur, in their first secret fortress, drawing plans for how to remake the world and convince the other spirits that this is right, Sauron slowly being forced to realize that they are both evil as ideas for debate turn to strategies of war, Morgoth starts abusing him and openly admitting his hatred of life, the names and forms of Mairon & Melkor rotting away, and him grappling with the realization that this knowledge isn’t enough to get him to turn back. Culminating in the first march of monsters that they both know is ultimately doomed before they ever even make contact with the good angels.
It can be done, it just takes a better grasp of tragedy and the harrows of conscious-sinning than any Hollywood cretin has.
I agree very much with your character study. It's just annoying that it would have to be exactly that because the most interesting character moments for Sauron occur after the main narrative of the Silmarillion. It would be very hard to do a balanced story that had an Elven perspective and Sauron's perspective because Sauron is either a minion or Irredeemably evil. Unfortunately, the rights issues will prevent anyone from doing any such thing until after Tolkien's work falls out of copyright.