Lord of the Megaplex
The onscreen Fellowship of the Ring launches a new wave of Tolkienmania
Steve Rabey | posted 11/12/2001 12:00AM
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Tolkien once dismissed his acolytes as a "deplorable cultus." One wonders what this Luddite, who disliked television and other modern "conveniences," would have thought about Lord of the Rings action figures and multimillion-dollar merchandising deals with Burger King.
One needn't wonder what the keepers of his flame think. Since rumors about possible Lord of the Rings movies first surfaced in the late 1990s, arguments between purists (who worry that movies will desecrate their sacred texts) and pragmatists (who hope this most influential medium will enlarge their ranks) have been raging on hundreds of Internet fan sites. And on the official movie Web site (www.lordoftherings.net), fans downloaded a promotional trailer nearly 1.7 million times within 24 hours.
Clay Harper, Houghton Mifflin's Tolkien Projects Director, says the hubbub has already spawned a new interest in books by and about the writer. Harper says 1998 sales doubled those of 1997. Sales doubled again in both 1999 and 2000. By fall 2001, sales were eight times higher than in 2000. The latest surge includes a fascinating new study, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey, Tolkien's successor at Oxford, and a plethora of tie-in products.
"I don't know if interest in the movies is wildly expanding the readership by capturing the next generation of readers, or if many millions of people are reading and re-reading Tolkien either for the first time or the first time in years," Harper says.
For now, Houghton Mifflin is distributing reader guides and teacher guides about the trilogy, regularly updating its Web site (www.lordoftheringstrilogy.com) and keeping the book presses rolling. "Right now, we're just printing them up as fast as we can," Harper says.
The last time Tolkien mania reached a fever pitch was in the mid-'60s, when cheap, unauthorized paperback versions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings captured the imagination of youth.
Many in the youth counterculture felt more at home in Middle-earth than they did in contemporary America. Those opposing the U.S. military buildup in Vietnam saw Lord of the Rings as a pacifist tract that Tolkien wrote after fighting at the Somme in World War I. Environmentalists shared Tolkien's distrust of technology and his disgust at the damage wreaked by the Industrial Revolution.
Hippies celebrated the Hobbits' love for pipeweed and Tolkien's affection for mushrooms. (The author smoked only his beloved tobacco, and ate only nonpsychedelic fungi. But that didn't stop thousands of college students from plastering their dormitory walls with day-glo posters showing elfen creatures puffing on elaborate water pipes.)
Readers everywhere have been drawn into Tolkien's richly textured Middle-earth. In an October cover story, Wired hailed this literary creation as "the first virtual world." Writer Erik Davis called Middle-earth "the most realized imaginary realm in the history of the fantastic," adding that this fictional world "has become a collective map of a moral universe."
Made by the Maker
Tolkien was a Catholic, and his Christian worldview clearly informed his work. Even though there are no explicit references to God in the Hobbit stories, Tolkien drew a clear contrast between good and evil. "The religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism," Tolkien wrote in one letter.
Tolkien further spelled out his views in the essay, "On Fairy-Stories." Tellers of tales who create believable "Secondary Worlds" enable fantasy to work its wonders. They offer readers "a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth." In all such labors, writers serve as "subcreators" who "make. … because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker."
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