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.com) 16 Ernest Mathijs and Murray PomeranceSo, from a focus on politics that inevitably includes aesthetics todiscussions of medium specific aesthetics that cannot ignore the politicalconnotations they contain, this book offers, through one trilogy, a look atwhat one part of cinema is today, and what it means.Perhaps these essayscan also be understood more broadly, as being about not only The Lord ofthe Rings but cinema itself.Now, unwearied but out of bread crumbs, we need a good ending,or at least a new start.No chain of long farewells as Jackson made.Wejust say, dear reader: read on. The Lord of the Rings as Allegory:A Multiperspectivist ReadingDouglas KellnerSince the 1970s, Hollywood film has been feeding on a rich tradition offantasy literature and stories, myths, and legends that resurrect heroes of along-forgotten past for entertainment and moral guidance in a degradedand confused present world.Following the trauma of Vietnam, the StarWars cycle nourished fantasies of adventure and redemption in a mythicworld where the distinction between Good and Evil was clear, heroeswere paragons of virtue and villains embodiments of malevolence.Superman, Batman, Conan, Hulk, and other cycles of superhero filmsnourished fantasies that powerful figures would triumph over evil andmaintain order and stability.But it is perhaps Peter Jackson and hiscolleagues The Lord of the Rings cycle that goes furthest in providing afully-developed alternative fantasy world that provides moral instruction,compelling mythical narratives, and epic transcendence of the horrors ofthe contemporary world.Certainly, The Lord of the Rings trilogy has been the most popular,acclaimed, and fetishized film cycle of the Third Millennium and hasintensified and expanded Tolkien readership for the novels that are thebasis of the cinematic epic, while generating a devoted following for thefilms.In this study, I counter the reading that The Lord of the Rings is 18 Douglas Kellnermere escapist fantasy and argue that it reproduces the dominantconservative and patriarchal militarist ideology manifest in the UnitedStates and elsewhere during the past years and that, if we are to grasp itspower and effects as well as decode its ideological subtexts, it should beread in the light of the epochal Terror War now raging.Although Tolkienscorned allegorical readings of his The Lord of the Rings cycle, I assertthat the novels and film cycle can be read as socio-political and moral-existential allegory that articulates conservative ideology.1 Of course, thetext is highly polysemic, subject to multiple readings, and has beenwidely read as religious allegory, a reading whose popularity I will takeas symptomatic of its conservative ideological underpinnings.As a moral-existential allegory, The Lord of the Rings relates to theGerman Bildungsroman theme of maturity and development (MarcuseKunstlerroman; Kellner Marcuse).Like the figures in Joseph Campbell shero myth, the young heroes of The Lord of the Rings have adventures,undergo challenges, and grow and mature into exemplary moral figures,and their relationships and fellowship convey specific social values, arange of which I engage in this study (Campbell Hero; Lawrence andJewett Myth).As a political allegory, both the novels and films are clearlyconservative attacks on industrial and technological modernity, yearningfor an idealized past of stable communities, social hierarchy, andromantic attachment to the soil and earth.These thematics, as I willhighlight, have profound similarities to Nazi ideology and articulate in thepresent with the patriarchal conservativism and crusading militarism ofthe George W.Bush administration.Indeed, I will argue that despite itscontradictions, complexities, and positive aspects, The Lord of the Rings1On allegory, see Benjamin (Origins) and Jameson (Unconscious).I am not offering one privilegedallegorical reading for The Lord of the Rings, but am arguing that a plurality of allegorical readingsare possible of the novels and film cycle.While some critics scorn allegorical interpretations becausethey allegedly build on one-to-one schematic readings of texts, I am using a model of allegory, basedon a reconstruction of the positions of Walter Benjamin and Jameson cited above, that posits differentlevels of allegory in texts ranging from existential and moral to political and philosophical.I am alsointerpreting The Lord of the Rings as a polysemic text that has multiple readings and effects so thatnumerous allegorical dimensions and readings are possible; hence, I am articulating certain possiblereadings that can claimed to be well grounded in the text, reception, and historical context of the filmsand am not reducing the Lord of the Rings phenomenon to a single reading or dimension. The Lord of the Rings as Allegory 19provides ideological sustenance for Bushian rightwing conservativismand militarism.2Tolkien s The Lord of the Rings cycle was written during an epochof world war when totalitarian systems arose that threatened democraticcountries like England who were forced to enter into alliances to defendthemselves against fascism
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