Here's a puzzlefuck: LOTR and Hippies

[Anonymous No.6070833]

In the 1960s and 1970s, The Lord of the Rings was very popular amongst hippies. "FRODO LIVES!" was a popular hippie slogan and hippie animator Ralph Bakshi even made a version of Lord of the Rings.

Why was this so popular among the hippie movement? The story's themes were based on themes glorifying the idea of just war and the inherent nobility of hereditary monarchy. All of that went against literally everything the hippie movement stood for. Why did hippies like it so much?

[Anonymous No.6070837]

>>6070833

Because most of it was a bunch of harry midgets singing songs in the forest.

[Anonymous No.6070846]

>>6070833

this >>6070837

and also Fantasy is extra cool on acid.

[Anonymous No.6070855]

Because it had hobbits smoking "pipeweed," along with elves in the forest and it was about the triumph of good over evil.

Hippies, being Baby Boomers and therefore incapable of seeing beyond the surface level of things, simply fell in love with the trappings of LOTR and did not absorb its messages about faith, perseverance, nobility, and goodness.

[Anonymous No.6070859]

>>6070837

The hairy midgets' lifestyle was portrayed as pleasant but boring and unadventurous. Tolkien's main characters were hairy midgets who rejected that lifestyle to participate in a Manichean conflict between good and evil. This narrative has more parallels with the worldview of a soldier going off to fight communists in Vietnam than it does with that of twentysomething left wing hippies of the same era.

[Anonymous No.6070866]

The age old question: was Tolkien's work inherently regressive or traditionalist?

C.S. Lewis expressed nostalgia for the idea of pure monarchy very explicitly in the Narnia books, and the sense of nostalgia is also present in Lord of the Rings where monarchy never goes unchallenged, but it isn't touted with a lot of preaching as a perfect system either.

[Anonymous No.6070873]

because pipeweed

And it's also a heavily anti-industrial book with environmentalist leanings. The hereditary monarchy theme is present but not particularly strong, the book feels like a Germanic epic where the noble, wild-dwelling hero (Aragorn) is displaced in favour of a inexperienced rural bourgeois (Frodo)

[Anonymous No.6070892]

>>6070833
Also, listen to some led zeppelin. plant loved tolkien.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-21AtiWV3TE

[Anonymous No.6070938]

Perceived environmentalism (servants of Mordor spoiling the land with machines of war)
Perceived anti-war message (which Tolkien strongly denied)
Nature-revering Elves
Pipeweed-smoking barefoot Hobbitses
Tom Bombadil is basically the ultimate hippy, and the whole section about him is trippy as fuck
General lush, descriptive prose probably got the tree huggers hot and bothered

[Anonymous No.6070945]

>>6070938
this

[Anonymous No.6070952]

>>6070938

How the fuck is there an anti-war message? The entire premise is based on the initially Catholic philosophical concept of Just War Tradition/Theory

Also the Elves are portrayed as a naturally elite class, which is an idea horrifying to anyone with hippyesque politics.

[Anonymous No.6070958]

>>6070938
Tolkien denied the anti-war message? I knew he denied WWII allegory but I thought he didn't really elaborate on any battles and stuff just because he didn't want to glorify war.

Also I have an idea that these covers might have had something to do with it, or the fact that previous unauthorized copies were so popular among hippies that these covers were thought as appropriate. Whichever way.

[Anonymous No.6070961]

Lord of the Rings can support a ton of conflicting ideas based on the readers interpretation and bias. Does the ring represent industrialism, which has to be destroyed to preserve the peaceful shire? That's essentially the hippy interpretation.

A more popular interpretation today is that the ring represents power, which corrupts all who seek it, but can be resisted (for a time) by those who have no personal ambition for greatness (Frodo).

Or we can go by what Tolkien said himself, which is that nothing represents anything and allegory is shit. He only used the ring to set a timer for the story.

[Anonymous No.6070971]

>>6070958

The same cover artist also did cover art of earlier American editions of the Gormenghast books iirc

[Anonymous No.6070998]

>>6070952
Mordor is a military-industrial complex and the Free Peoples are only fighting reluctantly. The temptation of the Ring's power is a continual test of whether they're fighting for the right reasons.

[Anonymous No.6071046]

>>6070866
I don't think Tolkien had a real message or theme to the books, and trying to take a political moral out of it is not what was intended. Regardless, there are obvious conservative themes that slipped in likely without Tolkien noticing. For example, the Shire is located geographically near where Tolkien's homeland of England is, and Mordor, the stronghold of evil, looks very similar to Anatolia, the homeland of the Ottoman Empire. I've always thought that was very Eurocentric and anti-Islamic, especially since Sauron's armies are aided by the barbaric eastern hordes, and the European equivalent in the world of Arda is literally called Middle-Earth, and it located right in the center of the world map. Again, though, I don't think it was intended as a message to be derived from the story, considering the purest land is located where the Americas are on Earth and is inhabited by people who resemble native Americans much more than Europeans.

[Anonymous No.6071071]

>>6070958
>I thought he didn't really elaborate on any battles and stuff just because he didn't want to glorify war
Read Children of Húrin. The very beginning of the book includes a very graphic and horrifying description of a battle in which soldiers are trapped by a massive army without escape and beaten to death with maces until their bodies are nothing but a mire of blood. If that isn't anti-war then I don't know.

[Anonymous No.6071089]

>>6071046
>the purest land is located where the Americas are on Earth and is inhabited by people who resemble native Americans much more than Europeans

Well, once the world is made round, the Western lands are cut off from the physical world and basically become "heaven"

It's basically his Gimlé / Elysium

[Anonymous No.6071092]

>>6071071

Hippies are anti-war pacifists. Tolkien, while he may have described the horrors of war, was pretty clearly not a pacifist.

[Anonymous No.6071108]

>>6071092
Anti-War isn't pacifism anyway, the War of the Ring was very much defensive for the Free Peoples

[Anonymous No.6071356]

>>6070859
Aaand, that's why hippies liked it. It accurately portrays the effects of war on hairy midgets.

Tolkien isn't glorifying war and hereditary monarchy as much as much as decrying industrialism and governments run by ideology rather than virtue.

[Anonymous No.6071374]

>why did hippies connect with a story about the power of the natural world, the evils of industry, the pain of war, and the destruction of power
I dunno

[Anonymous No.6071381]

>>6071374

It's pro-war and pro-traditional conceptions of power

[Anonymous No.6071388]

>>6071381
Gosh did I say it was pro war

Gosh does the ring represent truly ultimate power which transcends the bounds of state, faith, and tradition

[Anonymous No.6071407]

>>6071381
LOTR is not pro-war.

[Anonymous No.6072048]

>So refreshed and encouraged did they feel at the end of their supper (about three quarters of an hour's steady going, not hindered by unnecessary talk) that Frodo, Pippin, and Sam decided to join the company. Merry said it would be too stuffy. ‘I shall sit here quietly by the fire for a bit, and perhaps go out later for a sniff of the air. Mind your Ps and Qs, and don't forget that you are supposed to be escaping in secret, and are still on the high-road and not very far from the Shire!’

How does Merry know about this phrase acquired from the printing press industry?

[Anonymous No.6072049]

>>6072048
i.e., "Mind your Ps and Qs."

[Anonymous No.6072614]

>>6070998
Just war = war for the right reasons, anti-war = no war for any reasons.

[Anonymous No.6073181]

>>6072614

This.

[Anonymous No.6075016]

>>6072048
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_your_Ps_and_Qs#Origin_theories

[Anonymous No.6075410]

>>6070859
>The hairy midgets' lifestyle was portrayed as pleasant but boring and unadventurous.

The Hobbits were literally Tolkien's ideal people. They lived in his favorite type of English village, they smoked his favorite tobacco, they drank when he drank, you don't get more self-insert than Hobbiton

[Anonymous No.6075504]

>>6072048
Tolkien deliberately played up the anachronisms with Hobbits for whatever reason. That's just scratching the surface.

[Anonymous No.6075512]

>>6075504

Loved in the movie adaptation where they're wearing Regency era waistcoats in the midst of an otherwise medieval looking world

[Anonymous No.6075552]

>>6072614
Tolken's views on war were more complex than that. Even a just war is fundamentally damaging to the people who fight it.

[Anonymous No.6075559]

>>6075512
Humans in LOTR are just super primitive compared to Elves Dwarves and Hobbits.

[Anonymous No.6075580]

>>6075559
Humans were supposed to be like Medieval Norse people, while hobbits were supposed to be like the contemporary Englishmen of Tolkien's day. His world is just an awkward amalgamation of everything he liked.