What I find interesting about the show is that it's only aesthetically "woke," in that it employs colorblind casting (so does most theater, and no one would claim that say, the Kenneth Branagh Much Ado About Nothing is "woke"). It is, in general, very much respectful of natural law and Christian morality. My issues with it are largely with its craft, rather than its philosophy. They should be banned from inventing metaphors.
However, consider how it approaches the natural order. It clearly doesn't tip the scales such that women are more enlightened or powerful than men (Galadriel keeps finding rakes to step on); it is deeply grounded in an "enchanted" view of the universe where faith and prayer are rewarded by a benevolent deity and his servants; creation is a form of worship unless it is creation that is twisted against the will of the Creator.
Something that no one seems to appreciate is that there's not a single sexually perverted character. There's not even a hint of it. Compare this to any other major franchise show or film right now. In Marvel, the characters are platonic coworkers for the most part. In Star Wars, there's a strong theme of found family, but little romance.
Now, on TV, it's never the expectation that male and female characters will "naturally" fall in love with each other. I haven't seen the "five minutes into knowing each other a man and woman character start to flirt" trope in YEARS, and while I understand that it's dismissed as a cliché because "real life doesn't work like that," the reason it was a trope in the first place was because heterosexual marriage was considered a normal and even inevitable part of growing up. I was baffled that superfans complained that the show's female dwarves didn't have beards. We're in a different world from the one Tolkien lived in--it's a win that they made the dwarves look female.
Another element of the program that shows the creators' love of Tolkien is their use of Adar as a sort of "dark Aulë." In the Silmarillion, Aulë created the dwarves because he was impatient with God's timing--he wanted to precipitate the coming of men. Rather than punishing him, God accepted his repentance and granted life to Aulë's creations. Adar is to Sauron as Aulë is to Eru. Now, the way Adar's storyline played out--his twisted desire that the orcs might become more like the Children of Ilúvitar--doesn't really work. Orcs are just too monstrous, and orc families are a comical thought. But I see what they were trying to do. It really was an inconsistency that Tolkien couldn't figure out himself--if the orcs were merely tortured elves, how do they keep making more of them? I see this as an error of craft, but one grounded in a true desire to play with Tolkien's ideas in one of the most fraught subjects in his work.
Notably, one of the creators of the show is Mormon--maybe both of them. One could see why they might come to the wrong conclusions about sub-creation, though their error is one of degree, not kind (they're right that sub-creation is good when submitted to Christ, but they're wrong about just how "god-like" we can actually become because they're wrong about who Christ is).
The most interesting element of this season, of course, was Celebrimbor, whose seduction by Sauron could have been scripted by Screwtape himself. It's shockingly Christian in its assumptions. There's great wisdom in portraying moral corruption as the procession from peccadilloes into white lies into evil. It's a process of self-deception, as Celebrimbor says to Sauron himself. I felt convicted just watching it, seeing how the Great Deceiver plays on our vanity.
In conclusion, Christian conservatives need to appreciate when the culture hands them a W, even a flawed one. If you have to complain about it, be wise enough to recognize that its problems largely don't stem from wokeness, but from Mormonism and writing that just isn't as clever as it should be.
What a remarkable comment. Have you published this anywhere? I would like to dialog with this comment in a completely separate post. Also, are you operating a Substack? I cannot find it.
My wife and I finished Season 2 recently. We really appreciated how the show portrays good and evil.
Do any of you have ideas on why Amazon would spend so much money on the series? I doubt they've made it back. The best answer I can come up with is that when you are a billionaire, you can leverage massive piles of cash in order to influence culture. Cultural influence on this scale can be more potent than political or economic power.
It is clear to me that global tension is rising and amazon is aims to serve government and department of defense contracts. Bezos owns the Washington Post, has a house in DC, and has recently purchased a second headquarters right outside the Pentagon. With all this in view, perhaps he views it as a good investment to remind the world that there is a difference between good and evil and to show that being all you can be, fighting for the good against the evil can be a noble and glorious pursuit.
I'm running behind on LOTR. My personal guilty nerd pleasure is Star Trek, which has gone seriously woke. Star Trek Discovery had so many trans and gay characters and scolding plot lines that I abandoned it in the second season. When will creators learn that people won't pay to be lectured? I've quit the late night talk shows, The View, much of morning television, and even PBS. Apologies for having nothing meaningful to say about LOTR except that Legolas was very cute.
I can usually tolerate a fair bit of nonsense, but Discovery exceeded my limit. There were things I really liked about it, especially the first 2 seasons. But it just became unbearable, and from me that's really saying something. I've been watching TNG again. Night and day.
Long ago, in Denver Seminary days, I had students watch the classic Next Generation episode "The Outcast," which was a gay-rights sermon with a twist -- with a non-gendered character yearning to be female. The main goal of the episode was to attack religious groups that backed counseling on LGBTQ issues. Remember this episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
That's right - A woman-ish person fell for Riker and that was a no-no in their society. I actually think Roddenberry might have gone for all that woke stuff, but it seems preachy and heavy-handed.
I don't know if it's a gift or a defect, but I can love something (Tolkien's work in this example) and watch a substandard interpretation of it and still enjoy it for what it is. I thought season 2 was an improvement over season one, but I mean that primarily in terms of entertainment value. I wanted to keep watching and to see what happens. It is decidedly not a faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work, and while that's a bummer, it is what it is. The added challenge/consideration is that it's impossible to do justice to something as complex and vast as Tolkien's legendarium in a movie/show. It's NEVER going to measure up, if you accept that going in, you can chew up the meat and spit out the bones (in this case a lot of bones). The LoTR movies were much better and will long outlive the TRoP series, but still deficient in many ways when you compare them against the source material. I remember watching The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater with a good friend and Tolkien fan. I walked out thinking it was awesome (though not oblivious of the short comings, missed opportunities, changes etc.). I turned to him to get his take and he said "It was terrible!". I think I'll stick to my gift/defect which allows me greater enjoyment : )
The extended LOTR movies were a completely different work than the original releases. It was interesting getting to discuss them with Jackson and Boyens, in terms of what they knew and did not know. That was an honest, sincere effort on their part. I honestly don't know what to think of ROP. I honestly don't know what it IS. Struggling with that.
What I find interesting about the show is that it's only aesthetically "woke," in that it employs colorblind casting (so does most theater, and no one would claim that say, the Kenneth Branagh Much Ado About Nothing is "woke"). It is, in general, very much respectful of natural law and Christian morality. My issues with it are largely with its craft, rather than its philosophy. They should be banned from inventing metaphors.
However, consider how it approaches the natural order. It clearly doesn't tip the scales such that women are more enlightened or powerful than men (Galadriel keeps finding rakes to step on); it is deeply grounded in an "enchanted" view of the universe where faith and prayer are rewarded by a benevolent deity and his servants; creation is a form of worship unless it is creation that is twisted against the will of the Creator.
Something that no one seems to appreciate is that there's not a single sexually perverted character. There's not even a hint of it. Compare this to any other major franchise show or film right now. In Marvel, the characters are platonic coworkers for the most part. In Star Wars, there's a strong theme of found family, but little romance.
Now, on TV, it's never the expectation that male and female characters will "naturally" fall in love with each other. I haven't seen the "five minutes into knowing each other a man and woman character start to flirt" trope in YEARS, and while I understand that it's dismissed as a cliché because "real life doesn't work like that," the reason it was a trope in the first place was because heterosexual marriage was considered a normal and even inevitable part of growing up. I was baffled that superfans complained that the show's female dwarves didn't have beards. We're in a different world from the one Tolkien lived in--it's a win that they made the dwarves look female.
Another element of the program that shows the creators' love of Tolkien is their use of Adar as a sort of "dark Aulë." In the Silmarillion, Aulë created the dwarves because he was impatient with God's timing--he wanted to precipitate the coming of men. Rather than punishing him, God accepted his repentance and granted life to Aulë's creations. Adar is to Sauron as Aulë is to Eru. Now, the way Adar's storyline played out--his twisted desire that the orcs might become more like the Children of Ilúvitar--doesn't really work. Orcs are just too monstrous, and orc families are a comical thought. But I see what they were trying to do. It really was an inconsistency that Tolkien couldn't figure out himself--if the orcs were merely tortured elves, how do they keep making more of them? I see this as an error of craft, but one grounded in a true desire to play with Tolkien's ideas in one of the most fraught subjects in his work.
Notably, one of the creators of the show is Mormon--maybe both of them. One could see why they might come to the wrong conclusions about sub-creation, though their error is one of degree, not kind (they're right that sub-creation is good when submitted to Christ, but they're wrong about just how "god-like" we can actually become because they're wrong about who Christ is).
The most interesting element of this season, of course, was Celebrimbor, whose seduction by Sauron could have been scripted by Screwtape himself. It's shockingly Christian in its assumptions. There's great wisdom in portraying moral corruption as the procession from peccadilloes into white lies into evil. It's a process of self-deception, as Celebrimbor says to Sauron himself. I felt convicted just watching it, seeing how the Great Deceiver plays on our vanity.
In conclusion, Christian conservatives need to appreciate when the culture hands them a W, even a flawed one. If you have to complain about it, be wise enough to recognize that its problems largely don't stem from wokeness, but from Mormonism and writing that just isn't as clever as it should be.
What a remarkable comment. Have you published this anywhere? I would like to dialog with this comment in a completely separate post. Also, are you operating a Substack? I cannot find it.
I haven't written about it elsewhere! It's a take I've had for a while, but your post prompted me to create an account to write it up.
My wife and I finished Season 2 recently. We really appreciated how the show portrays good and evil.
Do any of you have ideas on why Amazon would spend so much money on the series? I doubt they've made it back. The best answer I can come up with is that when you are a billionaire, you can leverage massive piles of cash in order to influence culture. Cultural influence on this scale can be more potent than political or economic power.
It is clear to me that global tension is rising and amazon is aims to serve government and department of defense contracts. Bezos owns the Washington Post, has a house in DC, and has recently purchased a second headquarters right outside the Pentagon. With all this in view, perhaps he views it as a good investment to remind the world that there is a difference between good and evil and to show that being all you can be, fighting for the good against the evil can be a noble and glorious pursuit.
I'm running behind on LOTR. My personal guilty nerd pleasure is Star Trek, which has gone seriously woke. Star Trek Discovery had so many trans and gay characters and scolding plot lines that I abandoned it in the second season. When will creators learn that people won't pay to be lectured? I've quit the late night talk shows, The View, much of morning television, and even PBS. Apologies for having nothing meaningful to say about LOTR except that Legolas was very cute.
I can usually tolerate a fair bit of nonsense, but Discovery exceeded my limit. There were things I really liked about it, especially the first 2 seasons. But it just became unbearable, and from me that's really saying something. I've been watching TNG again. Night and day.
Long ago, in Denver Seminary days, I had students watch the classic Next Generation episode "The Outcast," which was a gay-rights sermon with a twist -- with a non-gendered character yearning to be female. The main goal of the episode was to attack religious groups that backed counseling on LGBTQ issues. Remember this episode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outcast_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
That's right - A woman-ish person fell for Riker and that was a no-no in their society. I actually think Roddenberry might have gone for all that woke stuff, but it seems preachy and heavy-handed.
I don't know if it's a gift or a defect, but I can love something (Tolkien's work in this example) and watch a substandard interpretation of it and still enjoy it for what it is. I thought season 2 was an improvement over season one, but I mean that primarily in terms of entertainment value. I wanted to keep watching and to see what happens. It is decidedly not a faithful adaptation of Tolkien's work, and while that's a bummer, it is what it is. The added challenge/consideration is that it's impossible to do justice to something as complex and vast as Tolkien's legendarium in a movie/show. It's NEVER going to measure up, if you accept that going in, you can chew up the meat and spit out the bones (in this case a lot of bones). The LoTR movies were much better and will long outlive the TRoP series, but still deficient in many ways when you compare them against the source material. I remember watching The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater with a good friend and Tolkien fan. I walked out thinking it was awesome (though not oblivious of the short comings, missed opportunities, changes etc.). I turned to him to get his take and he said "It was terrible!". I think I'll stick to my gift/defect which allows me greater enjoyment : )
The extended LOTR movies were a completely different work than the original releases. It was interesting getting to discuss them with Jackson and Boyens, in terms of what they knew and did not know. That was an honest, sincere effort on their part. I honestly don't know what to think of ROP. I honestly don't know what it IS. Struggling with that.
A cash grab :)
Ah. That requires success.