Continuation of the discussion about interpretations from the Harad thread.

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**Da Boss**

I think the discussion in the post on Harad is interesting and worth having, but I am aware that the OP probably doesn't want his thread dragged further OT by people arguing back and forth.

So I am making this thread for people to continue their discussion, if they want. (I know this is normally a moderators job, but I figure if we step in and make the switch before a moderator has to, all the better.)

**Da Boss**

Spoilered posts to this point:

Spoiler:

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
BeAfraid wrote:

This is also yet another example of completely missing the point, and imposing one's one biases and assumptions on the thread without a hint of comprehension.

MB

Oh how very very rich.............

Good trolling.

No trolling at all.

I understand exactly what people are saying.

But everything (save for maybe two comments) are irrelevant to my original point.

It this has very much been an experience of making an observation about the color of someone's shirt, and then they, and everyone around them screams "I am NOT gay!" (Or, any one of "I did NOT have pancakes for breakfast!" Or "I DIDN'T do it!" Or "I was at my aunt's that night!").

None of the responses have addressed the points I made after the initial observation.

And... Somehow, I am the one who is being "rude."

If someone can produce an actual quote of mine that is actually insulting to someone.... Such as suggestions about their sex life, or other aspersions... I will apologize profusely.

But looking back through my posts, the worst thing I have said to anyone is that their "replies" have been irrelevant to my original observation.

MB

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Da Boss wrote:
BeAfraid: At first I was pretty sympathetic to your arguments and POV, but your posts have been getting a bit rude. To be fair, Namiel started it off with a VERY rude post attacking you, but your replies to Paradigm cross the line as well. Namiel would do well to consider the rules regarding politeness too,

You mean like making accusations about othe member's sex lives? Or just basic insults?

I don't recall saying any such thing, but if you point it out (quote it) I will apologize for any "rudeness."

I think we can all appreciate where you are coming from, at least I can, but I can also say that my own view on it is that Tolkien's canon simply isn't that important for people's enjoyment of Middle Earth or games etc based around it. This might seem heretical to you, but for example when I was reading it as a kid, the Shire reminded me a lot of the area of Ireland that I grew up in. There's a hill called Bree (Bree being derived from the Gaelic word for hill) with a town called Bree underneath it just up the road from me, a stream known locally as "The Water", and many rocky objects called Carrocks or Carraigs (again, the gaelic word for rock).

So as a kid, I had this idea that the story was taking place in a mythologised version of my own landscape, which made it all the more exciting and magical to me. Now, with age and further reading, I realise that the shire was not based on the Irish countryside, and that the similarities are just because Ireland and England are not really all that different anyhow. But I prefer to think of the personal Middle Earth that captivated me as a kid, rather than the correct version that Tolkien envisioned. For that reason, I enjoy incorporating Gaelic imagery into my middle earth (I imagine Dunlanders as being Gaelic Celts for example, and I give Gaelic stylings to the various elves).

I think this is not really postmodernism, as you've said, but just a natural consequence of people taking different things from what they read. I'd rather celebrate it, than force everyone to a narrow interpretation. I think your dedication to a narrow interpretation is just as interesting as my slightly-gaelic Middle Earth, and I enjoy reading your reasoning behind it, but there's really no need to condescend to others or act like we "just don't understand", because for the most part, we absolutely do.

What you are describing is a difference between your imagination and someone else's actual creation.

A Literary Work of Art is no less a work of art and creation than is a painting, or a sculpture.

You don't get to say that Lady Gaga holding Justin Bieber's body is the Rondanini Pietá, even if that is how you picture it.

If you do say that, then very few people are going to know what you are talking about.

It might be great fun imagining Lady Gaga to be the Virgin Mary and Justin Bieber to be the Crucified Jesus (I know I OFTEN think about how wonderful it would be to see Bieber crucified by the Romans... Pity that there are no Romans hanging around to indulge me).

But when it comes time to depict the Rondanini Pietá as it actually is when you visit the Sforza Castle in Milan.... It better be a crude half-finished block of marble from the 1500's.

I have not, and will never, say that people "Can't do what they want."

But that does not mean that people can choose or make up their facts (which is what you are doing when imposing a vision onto someone else's work of art). That is the very definition of Post Modernism.

Your description of what you "prefer" is yours to have... But your description about also happens to be the very definition of Post Modernism (Applying one's personal, subjective experience to an Objective Reality and insisting that it be recognized as the actual "thing").

If "You Understood" then there would not be two pages of people completely missing that point, or intentionally avoiding it simply to be obtuse (as was the guy who claimed that Frodo could be Black - He is free to make Frodo Black, but then it is no longer the Frodo Baggins that Tolkien created... It is something else).

Did no one ever go over the difference between Identifiers and the Identified?

MB
This message was edited 1 time

I take some exception to your examples of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber because I believe they are deliberately over the top in an attempt to make the people who are interpreting Middle Earth differently to you to look stupid and unrefined.

I can accept that my interpretation of Tolkien's work might not be what he intended, but that is true of pretty much every work of art ever made. It's impossible for an author or artist to communicate with 100% fidelity what they intended, so a degree of interpretation is always ceded to the observer. Even your attempts to get as close as you can to Tolkien's ideas are subject to this. (If we add to this that Tolkien was revising his ideas up until the point of his death, it becomes even more pointless to argue objective facts in a discussion like this).

I'm trained in science too, and I understand that objectivity is important. But art is a subjective thing in many ways. I think people take exception primarily not to the content of your posts but to the blunt tone and condescension that comes off them.

Namiel is dead out of order for what he said, no bones about it, but when your posts stir up a response like this it's worth reflecting on what you've said to figure out why. And the answer is usually not "All those other people are idiots who don't understand."

**namiel**

I sense some butt-hurt going on. aparently i have been out of order please allow me to share my condolences for the feelings i stepped on and demonstrate how many feth's i give about it. This many >>>_________________

I would like to respond to this quote from beafraid here in this thread

If that is the case, then what you are calling The Lord of the Rings or Middle-earth is no more The Lord of the Rings or Middle-earth than is a few guys in black robes handing out Pizza and Beer in an auditorium a group of Catholic Priests giving communion at a Catholic Mass. Cactus in a desert enviroment, what were we thinking!!!!!!!!

Or it is no more Michelangelo's Rondolini Pieta than is an image of Lady Gaga cradling the body of Justin Bieber. [/care]
You can call it whatever you want, but in the real world, things have definitions that are arrived at by a consensus that makes it possible to communicate and know what people are talking about. Who's consensus?

Otherwise, you are left with nonsense, because Frodo isn't a Sub-Saharan African any more than is Queen Elizabeth, or was Pope Leo X (or the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, or the Roman General Scipio). What page does it say he isnt?

And to claim he is is to be arbitrarily nonsensical. This is my Pièce de résistance. You are supposedly a grown man who plays with TOYS and you are going to argue the ecology of a made up place? I do believe that arbitrarily nonsensical is the point...........

MB

Well................

Congrats on being the most knowledgable about fairy tales. Can we talk about cinderella now?

**TheGrin**

Im not offended at all just laughing my ass off...

I dont really care whether Beafraid is trolling or just acward... he probably means well in a showoffy way... lets just give the guy a brake... reall live probably kicks him in the balls enough as it is...

ill just be enjoiying my little lumps of metal and plastic plants... all things are more fun when they are kinda inapropriate...

**namiel**

Rule 62...............

**Da Boss**

Poor attitude Namiel. Not impressed, but not butthurt either. There's just no need to be so aggressive.

**namiel**

Da Boss wrote:
Poor attitude Namiel. Not impressed, but not butthurt either. There's just no need to be so aggressive.

not agressive, im bored at work and this gives me many lolz

**BeAfraid**

Da Boss wrote:

I take some exception to your examples of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber because I believe they are deliberately over the top in an attempt to make the people who are interpreting Middle Earth differently to you to look stupid and unrefined.

I can accept that my interpretation of Tolkien's work might not be what he intended, but that is true of pretty much every work of art ever made. It's impossible for an author or artist to communicate with 100% fidelity what they intended, so a degree of interpretation is always ceded to the observer. Even your attempts to get as close as you can to Tolkien's ideas are subject to this. (If we add to this that Tolkien was revising his ideas up until the point of his death, it becomes even more pointless to argue objective facts in a discussion like this).

I'm trained in science too, and I understand that objectivity is important. But art is a subjective thing in many ways. I think people take exception primarily not to the content of your posts but to the blunt tone and condescension that comes off them.

Namiel is dead out of order for what he said, no bones about it, but when your posts stir up a response like this it's worth reflecting on what you've said to figure out why. And the answer is usually not "All those other people are idiots who don't understand."

The point about Lady Gaga was brought up to illustrate that a literary depiction is just as objective in its content as is a visual work of art.

It does leave open the subjectivity of interpretation of the reader.

But if the reader is reading a work that was created as an Anglo-Saxon mythology for England, and imagining the characters as Black (Sub-Saharan) Africans, then they are imagining something that really has no relation to what they are reading.

That might very well be what they are imagining, but people can imagine things that are totally and completely wrong.

If someone reads "2 + 2" they are completely free to think the answer is "13."

But when they went to either communicate that answer to another, or to use that answer to solve problems dealing with things such as buying hinges for a door, or building a house, they will completely fail in their goal unless they at the very least admit to themselves that the actual answer is "4" and act accordingly. And if they insist upon claiming "2 + 2 = 13"... No one will have a clue what is wrong with them, nor be able to understand much that they say. Would it just be "2 + 2" with which they have difficulty, or does their inability to do basic arithmetic extend to all numbers, real or complex?

As for my "tone."

Yes... I can come off as condescending, especially when someone is so obtuse as to claim that they can say Frodo is a Sub-Saharan African and have anyone understand to what they are referring.

Such a claim is reaching VASTLY further than my comparison of Lady Gaga/Justin Bieber and the Rondanini Pietá. It is nothing more than trying to pretend that anything can be anything, simply because "One imagines it."

I can imagine that my cat is a horse, and try to ride him to the store. But what would it say about me if I insisted this?

As I said before.... I have no problems with people imagining whatever they want for whatever purposes they wish. They might need to do an awful lot of explaining if they claim that Hobbits are Sub-Saharan Africans, given the prior depictions of Middle-earth, Hobbits, and the author's stated definition of Hobbits, but they are certainly free to imagine this.

But like imagining my cat as a horse, or Lady Gaga/Justin Bieber as the Rondanini Pietá.... They are not imagining what really is concerning Middle-earth, even given the subjectivity of the subject.

Even though there is a degree of subjectivity involved. There are still interpretations and depictions that are at greater variance with the author's stated intentions than others, and depictions that are at less variance than others.

Lastly.... When I pointed out the Cactus.... I had no idea how faithful to the Source Material the owner of the Haradrim wished to be.

I know that in my own case.... If there was GOOD evidence that my own interpretation was at odds with the canon. I would want to know about it!. And I wouldn't think it rude to have someone point it out, either.

MB

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Da Boss wrote:
Poor attitude Namiel. Not impressed, but not butthurt either. There's just no need to be so aggressive.

I can't say that I am impressed by him in any way whatsoever.

If he demonstrated any sort of actual understanding of my initial post, intellectual rigor in other responses, or just was clever about anything.... Whatever his point, goals, or intentions are, beyond being insulting and juvenile, then I might care more.

But outright denial of things that are pretty well-known facts, simply to be contentious and confrontational (or, to be "obtuse" simply for the sake of being obtuse)..... Ooooooh.... How scary and ”very mature" or him.

MB

**Manchu**

Rule Number One = Be Polite

This thread is almost completely made up of rules violations and there doesn't even seem to be a reason for this discussion to go on here rather than in the Off-Topic sub-forum. So I'm locking it.

If you guys want to continue talking about how people enjoy Tolkien's ideas, please do so in a new thread in the Off-Topic sub-forum and keep in mind Rule Number One.