The commercialization of the Lord of the Rings (part 1)

I first read Tolkien's masterpiece when I was nine. It was the third epic fantasy I had read, C.S. Lewis's Narnia having been the first; Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles the second. I had also consumed many Arthurian legends and other mythical tales.

The Lord of the Rings was by far the most difficult read of my childhood, and the most satisfying. I've read it many times since. If there weren't so many other books in line on my book shelf, I would probably pick it up again, but it will have to wait.

Then again, if I wanted a quick Lord of the Rings fix, I could get one just about any time these days. There are three overly-long movies available on DVD that only cut out some of the most essential parts of the story; there are at least a dozen or so video games to be found for Play Station (1, 2, and 3), Wii, Xbox, and the PC. There are strategy war games and third person hack-and-slash games, and even a World of Warcraft style Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). I've seen action figures, costumes, party-favors...I'm not sure if one of the Fast Food Chains had Aragorn figures or little plastic orcs in their Happy Meals, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Of course, all of this "materialistic progress" that has lead to the easy availability of Tolkien's work is really just exactly what the man warned of, isn't it? Cheap commercialism and soulless industrialism. Why even bother with those long, wordy novels anymore? They are so time-consuming and slow. It took me an entire month when I was nine to read the Lord of the Rings. It only took a total of about 12 hours to get through the movies. I can play those video games without any committment whatsoever...certainly no committment to the deeper message Tolkien was attempting to convey.

I won't go into that too much now. I envision a part-two to this diatribe. But what modernity has done, it seems, is given people less of a reason to read Tolkien's work. It has sucked something vital and important from the work. The religion is gone from it, the age and the history of it are all dried up. We've replaced it with cool battle scenes and special effects. Hack-and-slash has usurped Frodo's journey. The mediocrity of the vast majority of the fantasy genre is all these mediums ever hope to attain.

We've all learned how to kill an Uruk-hai, or bring down a Nazgul with our Level 18 Elven Archer, but at the precipice, would any of us be able to throw the ring into the fire?

Orthodoxy

I'm fascinated by the Orthodox Church, I must admit. I'm enthralled by the artwork and iconography. I love the history and the depth of theology. Still, I come at this world with a generally open-minded, even dare-I-say liberal view--I regard homosexuality, for instance, as totally normal, totally natural. I'm pro-life but I have huge reservations about banning abortion, as we are in no way as a society ready to handle that backlash, nor are we prepared, I think, to morally handle the rise of an abortion black market.

Certainly as a country and a society we haven't done nearly enough to change the situation on the ground that leads to abortion. We have not embraced or provided for the single mothers of the world, nor the rape victims, etc. To be truly pro-Life I think we must start from the other end, working toward fixing the problem rather than just sweeping it under the rug, as a ban would most certainly do.

I've always been at odds with my faith and my personal experience of the truth of this world. I think there is always something that draws me toward the Catholic or Orthodox Church--that sense of age, of history, of theology and a sort of deeper, more mystic understanding of the divine that you really can't find in protestant Church, and certainly not in something like the Unitarian Church.

Still, difficult to find a way to reconcile these conflicting things--the social conservatism of these older, more conservative Churches, and my own more modern views.

Well, Andrew Sullivan manages and he's Roman Catholic. So I guess anything is possible.

A Christian Left?

Tony Jones wonders if there is a Christian Left in America.

This is a question that interests me, in part because I'm now commonly placed in the "liberal" camp, not only by self-proclaimed conservatives, but also by emergent movement leaders who wish that the theological provocations of McLaren, Pagitt, and Jones would just go away. I've been invited to a summit of leftward theologians in March who have a Ford Foundation grant to "rekindle theological education" among progressives.

Tony goes on to say,

I tend to think that the bipolarities of "liberal v. conservative" are a holdover from Enlightenment epistemology and, as such, are less and less helpful. I thought of this again as I heard Pat Buchanan proclaim on Morning Joe this morning that Obama's cabinet picks thus far are "center-right."

Good question, and good point.

I would probably fit more into the Jones brand of liberal Christianity than into Dreher's more conservative vision (though I love the earthy aspects of Dreher's philosophy, and the simplicity of it all). For one, I think conservative Christians and evangelicals focus far too much on dogma and far too little on the point, and yet still fall far short of the radicalism preached by Jesus. As Freddie notes,

One of the greater tragedies of the Christian evolution in America, concurrent with the terrible policy positions it has led to, is the gradual watering down of the teachings of a genuine radical into bland pablum. Jesus does not merely advocate charity. He advocates charity at almost any cost. Some people say give 'til it hurts, Jesus says that hurting is no excuse to stop giving. Turning the other cheek does not just mean don't fight back. It means present your other cheek for your attacker to hit you again, to extend the bonds of charity to such an extent that it involves helping someone who wants to hurt you to hurt you.

I would say that the Christian community, right and left, fall far short of this standard, which is okay. To live in the mold Jesus put forth is nearly impossible. And that's the point. You have to cut and paste to some degree in matters of faith, any faith. This is why fundamentalism is so absurd.

I find myself on the left on social issues, and yet I think I could justifiably call myself a social conservative in that I believe in the importance of faith, family, and other old institutions in building and maintaining a strong culture. I'm in favor of limited government, and lately classify my foreign policy in the owl/realist/occasional hawk mold, though I'm against nation building.

We're all a little more complicated than our ideologies would allow. Quite frankly, I can't come to a personal consensus on the bailout. Economics appears too complicated for even the economists these days. I don't think there's much evidence for the efficacy of supply-side economics. I think there is evidence that low taxes can help the economy, but they have to be accompanied by low spending, and that ain't happening any time soon...

So I say out with this question of Right and Left altogether. Aren't we all becoming a little tired of being boxed in? Conservatism, after all, isn't so much an ideology as a disposition, correct? Is Liberalism any different? Pragmatism? Realism?