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I’m giggling at myself in retrospect at the idea that JRRT and/or his publisher decided that a drawing of “a brick wall” was the perfect illustration for the cover of the final volume of his epic magnum opus
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Mar 25, 2022 16:09
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Ginette Reno posted:It is impressive that Tolkien could draw at all and his maps and illustrations do add a lot to his mystique as an author. Not really, English gentlefolk were expected to have a well-rounded education which included sketching, painting, drawing, music, poetry etc. See literally any Jane Austen book. It was a mark of good breeding.
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Mar 25, 2022 16:23
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I went and googled around and found some compilations of descriptions of barad Dur from the books. I don't think John Howe gets it very wrong. The words Tolkien uses are to describe something of immense size, not just power or influence. Orthanc is at least 500ft tall and Sauron is described as seeing Orthanc as mere flattery. So its implied to be taller and bigger. Tolkien uses words like Mountain of Iron to describe it, and says the battlements alone are as tall as hills, with pits of immeasurable depth beside them. Its describing something akin to the giant fortresses of Angband and Utumno, not just a big castle. Orthanc is compared to Barad Dur quote:But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes and made it better, as he thought, being deceived - for all those arts and subtle devices for which he forsook his former wisdom and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, The Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength. Frodo's vision on Amon Hen quote:Then at last his gaze was held: wall upon wall, battlement upon battlement, black, immeasurably strong, mountain of iron, gate of steel, tower of adamant, he saw it: Barad-Dûr Fortress of Sauron. All hope left him. Frodo's vision on the slopes of Orodruin quote:Far off the shadows of Sauron hung; but torn by some gust of wind out of the world, or else moved by some great disquiet within, the mantling clouds swirled, and for a moment drew aside; and then he saw, rising black, blacker and darker than the vast shades amid which it stood, the cruel pinnacles and iron crown of the topmost tower of Barad-dûr. One moment only it stared out, but as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye; and then the shadows were furled again and the terrible vision was removed. The Eye was not turned to them: it was gazing north to where the Captains of the West stood at bay, and thither all its malice was now bent, as the Power moved to strike its deadly blow; but Frodo at that dreadful glimpse fell as one stricken mortally. His hand sought the chain about his neck. Sam's Vision of its destruction quote:A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed. Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land. And then at last over the miles between there came a rumble, rising to a deafening crash and roar; the earth shook, the plain heaved and cracked, and Orodruin reeled.
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Mar 25, 2022 16:26
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WoodrowSkillson posted:I went and googled around and found some compilations of descriptions of barad Dur from the books. I don't think John Howe gets it very wrong. The words Tolkien uses are to describe something of immense size, not just power or influence. Orthanc is at least 500ft tall and Sauron is described as seeing Orthanc as mere flattery. So its implied to be taller and bigger. Tolkien uses words like Mountain of Iron to describe it, and says the battlements alone are as tall as hills, with pits of immeasurable depth beside them. Its describing something akin to the giant fortresses of Angband and Utumno, not just a big castle.
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Mar 25, 2022 16:32
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Tolkien’s design for Orthanc is pretty cool also tbh.
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Mar 25, 2022 16:34
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That’s so “7th grade biology textbook cover” I love it lol
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Mar 25, 2022 16:35
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skasion posted:Tolkien’s design for Orthanc is pretty cool also tbh. To go along with my point about not entirely trusting his drawings vs the vision in his head quote:A great ring-wall of stone, like towering cliffs, stood out from the shelter of the mountain-side, from which it ran and then returned again... one who passed in and came at length out of the echoing tunnel, beheld a plain, a great circle, somewhat hollowed like a vast shallow bowl: a mile it measured from rim to rim. Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake. But no green thing grew there in the latter days of Saruman. The roads were paved with stone-flags dark and hard; and beside their borders instead of trees there marched long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains, to the centre all the roads ran between their chains. There stood a tower of marvelous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain.
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Mar 25, 2022 16:37
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Oracle posted:drat Sam's vision sounds like a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. Sounds like an avalanche or a landslide to me But, like, one of the really big deadly ones that scatter house-sized boulders for miles and erase entire towns
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Mar 25, 2022 17:31
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Oracle posted:Not really, English gentlefolk were expected to have a well-rounded education which included sketching, painting, drawing, music, poetry etc. See literally any Jane Austen book. It was a mark of good breeding. Whatever the reason for it, I think drawing is a neat skill to have and I wish I had it.
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Mar 25, 2022 18:45
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Oracle posted:Not really, English gentlefolk were expected to have a well-rounded education which included sketching, painting, drawing, music, poetry etc. See literally any Jane Austen book. It was a mark of good breeding. This is true but Tolkien's art does manage to have a distinct style and not everyone manages that, even with technical skill.
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Mar 25, 2022 18:53
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Tolkien's descriptions of Barad-Dur really make me think of it as a fortress-city like Minas Tirith but even moreso, probably built on either a mesa or an artificially truncated mountain. I think that's the best fit for both what he describes it as having as well as his understanding of the strong places it was supposed to dominate. There's probably a giant tower associated with it, but I'd expect walls at several levels along the mountain, containing a whole city worth of stuff, forges and the support buildings and all the staff that go with that, and so forth. That fits with Orthanc being remade in its image and Saruman despoiling the surrounding lands and bringing in a bunch of labor, too.
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Mar 25, 2022 18:59
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What's the deal with black people in the series as a whole? I'm not familiar with Tolkien but is there something written hard in stone that prevents black people from appearing in the books/show/whatever? I only ask because I've heard about the controversy about the recent LoTR show from a friend.
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Mar 26, 2022 22:29
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It’s an adaption so they can do whatever they want
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Mar 26, 2022 22:33
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Big Scary Owl posted:What's the deal with black people in the series as a whole? I'm not familiar with Tolkien but is there something written hard in stone that prevents black people from appearing in the books/show/whatever? I only ask because I've heard about the controversy about the recent LoTR show from a friend. There’s very little in Tolkien’s work that physically describes any character or race beyond some broad strokes. What color is Gimli’s hair? Does he have hair on his head? Or just a beard? Speaking of beards, does Aragorn have one or no? I think the Aragorn’s beard thing actually got answered by Tolkien while he was still alive, but it’s not actually answered in the text. Even the stuff like all the elves having long straight hair was essentially made up by Peter Jackson.
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Mar 26, 2022 22:51
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Even if Tolkien said “no black people ever !!” a tv or movie producer should in 2022 ignore that and hire a diverse cast
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Mar 26, 2022 22:53
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euphronius posted:Even if Tolkien said “no black people ever !!” a tv or movie producer should in 2022 ignore that and hire a diverse cast 
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Mar 26, 2022 22:55
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Also, there’s this:
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Mar 26, 2022 23:01
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Mahoning posted:There’s very little in Tolkien’s work that physically describes any character or race beyond some broad strokes. I agree with everyone who said that even if the books described everyone as looking as white as Rupert Grint, producers now should ignore that and hire a diverse cast. However. You could get absolutely blasted playing a drinking game where you take a shot every time JRRT describes someone in glowing terms as "fair" (i.e. pale and/or blonde in the sense he's using it) or someone in a negative context as "swarthy", dark, black, etc. He may not describe the skin tones or appearance of every character in the books, but absolutely every single good guy he does he uses synonyms for 'fair-skinned' to describe, and every single villainous character he does bother to comment on skin-tone wise just happens to be dark skinned. Even the ones who are described as maybe-just-normal-people-who-were-tricked-into-fighting-for-Sauron such as the Easterlings and the Haradrim just happen to be described as dark-skinned. Imagined fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Mar 26, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 23:18
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Imagined posted:I agree with everyone who said that even if the books described everyone as looking as white as Rupert Grint, producers now should ignore that and hire a diverse cast. Buttressing this is the whole deal with "Middle Earth" as is ever seen in the books and drawn as a map really just being Europe, with the whole rest of the world (Africa, Asia etc.) left uncovered in the text. White people are in Europe, not-White people are everywhere else. Where are the Haradrim and Easterlings from? Oh, yeah. Nthing not giving a poo poo about racial purity or whatever for the TV show or any other media made for the rest of time. Judgy Fucker fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Mar 27, 2022 |
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Mar 26, 2022 23:50
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Big Scary Owl posted:What's the deal with black people in the series as a whole? I'm not familiar with Tolkien but is there something written hard in stone that prevents black people from appearing in the books/show/whatever? I only ask because I've heard about the controversy about the recent LoTR show from a friend. No, not really. As others have said there's definitely some pretty uncomfortable race-based stuff in LOTR particularly, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a racist work. Considering the era it was produced, it could have been a whole lot worse. As for the show itself, the only "controversy" about it really is that some people don't like that it's got a diverse cast. That's it. Usually they'll dress it up in terms of "Amazon going woke" or "injecting politics into fantasy", but the reality is that we haven't seen more than 60 seconds of the show itself, and we have no idea about the show's "politics". So yeah it's almost entirely just bigots complaining that black people are in the show at all - the same recycled poo poo from 10 years back when the new Star Wars featured - gasp - a woman, and a black man. There's plenty of room to wonder whether the show will be any good (and like most in this thread, I'm still pretty on the fence), but if it sucks it won't be because of a diverse cast.
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Mar 27, 2022 00:01
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Lotr is literally racist . Some races are better then others due to inheritance . In the views of the authors
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Mar 27, 2022 00:36
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Yah but it's Low racism as opposed to the Middle racism of Doyle or the High racism of Lovecraft.
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Mar 27, 2022 00:56
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Imagined posted:Yah but it's Low racism as opposed to the Middle racism of Doyle or the High racism of Lovecraft.
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Mar 27, 2022 03:21
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I mean, I said it in a joking way, but that's what I was amazing to also.
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Mar 27, 2022 03:53
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Tolkien was fairly critical of explicit racism and seems to have been aware enough to avoid the very worst sins of implicit racism, but he wasn't quite able to analyze his own cultural biases in the way a post-modern scholar might do, so a lot of racist assumptions are unfortunately part of his work.
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Mar 27, 2022 15:17
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Gondor is a Mediterranean kingdom built from the descendants of the greatest seafaring nation Arda had ever seen. They sailed all across Arda and discovered lands that were never spoken of outside of the Akallabeth, but come on. It's a maritime nation that had city states like Umbar further south. Southron isn't a perjorative term and I can totally buy that Gondor would have emissaries from other nations that weren't allied with Sauron. Numenor I feel could be the same way.
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Mar 27, 2022 16:59
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Arc Hammer posted:Gondor is a Mediterranean kingdom built from the descendants of the greatest seafaring nation Arda had ever seen. They sailed all across Arda and discovered lands that were never spoken of outside of the Akallabeth, but come on. It's a maritime nation that had city states like Umbar further south. Southron isn't a perjorative term and I can totally buy that Gondor would have emissaries from other nations that weren't allied with Sauron. Numenor I feel could be the same way. It's more his use of terminology like swarthy men being basically synonymous with evil, fair being synonymous with good, the entire depiction of the orcs, and most of the cultural subtext of the dwarves imitating Judaism while also making them greedy money hoarders.
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Mar 27, 2022 17:09
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I mean the world inside the frame is the book is racist . For humans If you have better blood you are better. Live longer, taller, stronger, more handsome, etc. elves are better than humans and some elves are better than others for old reasons .
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Mar 27, 2022 17:14
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euphronius posted:I mean the world inside the frame is the book is racist . For humans If you have better blood you are better. Live longer, taller, stronger, more handsome, etc. elves are better than humans and some elves are better than others for old reasons . There is a CYOA on these very forums that takes this premise to it's logical extreme, set in a pre-biblical not-Mesopotamia.
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Mar 27, 2022 17:35
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Poldarn posted:There is a CYOA on these very forums that takes this premise to it's logical extreme, set in a pre-biblical not-Mesopotamia. I had to give up on following that CYOA a couple years ago because trying to keep up with what was going on was exhausting even filtering out all but just the OP's posts.
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Mar 27, 2022 18:02
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Even Bill Ferny gets hit with the “swarthy” tag then he palls around with a “slant-eyed southerner.” It was disappointing on a recent rewatch of the movies how closely Jackson stuck to these trends with the men of the east/south (or even exaggerated them) so any adaptation that tries to alleviate them is good in my book.
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Mar 27, 2022 19:43
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Yeah there's some problematic stuff in the books for sure but very little of it is plot-important (only the "elf blood makes you better" thing which at least is explicitly a fantasy aspect, even if not ideal) so there's really no reason not to do whatever you want with it. Especially given how many people are not given meaningful physical description at all - we know that in history when you have large empires like Rome you get a lot of people moving about, and we know Middle Earth has a lot of history of that kind of communication, so we'd expect a variety of people in old settlements like Bree, Mias Tirith, etc. Instead if anything most adaptations make people whiter; some minor and support characters are described as being dark at least in a tanned sense (Bombadil I recall from last time I looked this up, but some of the hobbits too IIRC, and maybe some of the common folk of Gondor, who certainly are portrayed sympathetically), and no one feels beholden to doing that, generally making all of them quite pale.
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Mar 27, 2022 20:07
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Ultiville posted:Instead if anything most adaptations make people whiter; some minor and support characters are described as being dark at least in a tanned sense (Bombadil I recall from last time I looked this up, but some of the hobbits too IIRC, and maybe some of the common folk of Gondor, who certainly are portrayed sympathetically), and no one feels beholden to doing that, generally making all of them quite pale. Bombadil's described as red-faced, but you get things like "The Harfoots were browner of skin" when talking about Hobbit clans/subraces/whatever that could easily be textual justification for casting them as brown-skinned rather than just tanned. But yeah, the fuss at the moment is just racists kicking off about non-white people in muh fantasy adaptations so gently caress 'em. Block and move on; nothing of value will be lost.
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Mar 27, 2022 20:50
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Runcible Cat posted:Bombadil's described as red-faced, but you get things like "The Harfoots were browner of skin" when talking about Hobbit clans/subraces/whatever that could easily be textual justification for casting them as brown-skinned rather than just tanned. They describe Bombadil as red-faced but also his hand holding the ring as "brown," which I interpreted to mean that he was likely heavily tanned. But it's certainly open to interpretation, and yeah, the Harfoots being notably brown could definitely be a justification (not, again, that you need one) and indicates that Tolkien didn't intend for all of the free peoples to be light-skinned.
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Mar 27, 2022 21:16
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It’s not just elf blood it’s human numenorian blood which makes a special and better “race” of humans I don’t know if it’s “problematic” . It just is. In the book there are magically (or spiritually) enhanced groups of humans and elves that are better . euphronius fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Mar 27, 2022 |
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Mar 27, 2022 21:18
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I’m using this sense of racist by the way “having, reflecting, or fostering the belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”
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Mar 27, 2022 21:23
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I mean define "superior," certainly it doesn't seem the Numenoreans were superior in the moral sense. They were granted long lives and whatever but look what they did with them.
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Mar 27, 2022 21:47
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Elves are NOT weak like the race of man. Elves are about *opens The Silmarillion* uh oh *Frantically starts flipping though pages* uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh
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Mar 27, 2022 21:55
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Winifred Madgers posted:I mean define "superior," certainly it doesn't seem the Numenoreans were superior in the moral sense. They were granted long lives and whatever but look what they did with them. Living longer is objectively superior They were also taller, better looking, magical etc This is from the frame of the book mind you. It just “is”
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Mar 27, 2022 21:58
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‘But in the wearing of the swift years of Middle-earth the line of Meneldil son of Anárion failed, and the Tree withered, and the blood of the Númenóreans became mingled with that of lesser men. Now that’s from Elrond so maybe you can see it as only being lesser from the pov of Elrond
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Mar 27, 2022 22:01
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