Quote:
Originally Posted by Sauron the White
People here say I was wrong because I was judging Gimli by human standards in the real world. Okay. Seems that is just what Eomer was doing in proclaiming their achievement as so worthy of being sung about.
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Iconoclasm, my friend, is easy.
But mayhap it can be said that Elves, Dwarves, and Dunédain are exceptional. Eomer's exclamation does not necessarily reduce the accomplishment of the Three Hunters, who together can still be said to have done something exceptional by Eomer's standards, as well as by "exceptional Dwarf/Elf/Dunedain" standards.
But back to "mythic unities" and "secondary belief". (I have passed by most of page 3 in order to say this, so if someone feels neglected, apologies).
"Willing suspension of disbelief" is a concept invented by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to account for the reader's task of setting aside 'real world' doubts in order to accept some 'difficult to believe' things in works of fiction.
"Secondary belief", a concept invented by J.R.R. Tolkien, means that a reader does not merely suspend disbelief, but for the purpose of full enjoyment of the work of fiction, chooses to believe the story, on the whole, on its own merits. Within this understanding, the author's dedication is to realize the world s/he creates as believably and completely as possible.
Tolkien made every attempt to make Secondary Belief possible for his readers. The result is that readers and lovers of LotR "believe in" Middle Earth in a way that they do not necessarily believe in other created settings from fiction.
Enter the movie.
Lovers of Middle Earth watch the movie and find their secondary belief in Middle Earth compromised, countered, and even violated, by images with which they are confronted in the movies, such as the glaringly different character of Faramir (among numerous other examples).
"But such people are not being realistic," one might say. That's not the point. The point is that Tolkien did something that had never been done before by a writer, at least not to the degree that he did it, which makes LotR qualitatively different from any other book out there. It is the most completely realized world of imagination ever created. Therefore, Peter Jackson was dealing with something with which he was completely out of his reckoning. So I think J.R.R. was right: the thing should not have been turned into film. That it was, is a fact. That it did not succeed for lovers of Middle Earth is an undeniable fact. That some of these same lovers of Middle Earth are willing to accept the movies as far as they can (such as myself), such that they enjoy what they can while wincing at other parts, is also - - a fact.
I guess I better show how "mythic unities" has to do with this in another post. I gotta go to bed now. G'night all.