This is one of the most impressive pieces of bullshit I've ever read. She quotes BOTH Freud AND Marx, so you know it's going to be especially nonsensical:
"One of the most dramatic scenes in the first Lord of the Rings
film, The Fellowship of the Ring, is the Council at Rivendell at
which elf and dwarf nearly come to blows, while in a golden
glow worthy of a Glassner jewelry advertisement, the Ring
shines serenely on, untouched and untouchable. The focus
shifts so that the combatants fade to soft-focus, and the ring in
close-up fills the whole screen. We are all drawn to the Ring:
readers, filmmakers, and a number of contributors to this volume. Although the Ring is a feature borrowed from ancient
Germanic and Nordic myth, I shall argue that we are all in thrall
to the Ring because of its contemporary relevance to the way
we perceive, lust after, and use the "rings" or commodities of
our own society. For me Tolkien's text is not an escapist fantasy
but a challenging work that "reads" us as fetishists and offers us
an alternative model for our relations with the world of things
by means of sacrifice and gift.
Stockings, Rings, and Erotic Control
To explain what I mean by fetishism let us return to that cinematic frame of the chastely glowing ring. Like any close-up shot
the effect is to separate the object from its context, so that it
seems to exist alone. In that sense, every photographic or filmic
close-up operates fetishistically in the sense emploved by the psychologist Sigmund Freud. For the fetishist the stocking, the
glove, the fur or the individual body part becomes the focus of
sexual desire in so far as it is fixed and separated off from any
relation with the whole person or body. In his 1927 essay,
"Fetishism," Freud attributes this desire for fixity to a refusal to
fully accept that one's mother is not all-powerful-or, in
Freudian terms, does not have the phallus. In pursuing and possessing an object that stands for his mother, the fetishist is able
to own and control this maternal sexual power he both fears
and loves. For a deep terror of the female genitals underlies
such behavior and the fetish provides a safe substitute for the
risky self-giving of the sexual act.
It is interesting that the One Ring of Power, which I want to
suggest is viewed fetishistically, is twice gained as a result of literal separation from the owner's body, once by Isildur hacking
off Sauron's finger, and again by Gollum biting off Frodo's finger. Separation marks the Ring from its creation, since it is
forged by Sauron in secret, and is deliberately hidden from the
makers of the other nineteen Rings of Power. Even these beneficent Rings, however, have something fetishistic about them
because they were made in order to prevent the loss and decay
of beautiful things. In aiming to create preventatives against loss,
the elves share the fetishist's desire to fix the object of sexual
arousal, so that it is untouched by age, decay, or mortality. We
are told explicitly in Tolkien's myth collection, The Silmarillion,
that the Noldor elves won't give up living in Middle-earth and
yet they want also to have the bliss of those across the Sea in
the Blessed Realm (S, p. 287).
There is, of course, an element of fetishism in much sexual
behavior, but usually the stocking merely articulates a boundary
of difference and is a means to arousal because it creates a distinction between flesh and clothing that draws attention to the
naked leg above the stocking-top. For the lover, the stocking
recapitulates the pursuit and uncovering of the desired body; for
the fetishist, possession of the stocking is an end in itself. In the same manner we see the Ring's owners becoming transfixed by
the Ring, rather than using it as a means to their desires.
Chillingly, each owner, from the great Isildur to the hobbit Bilbo
Baggins, comes to find it "Precious," and impossible to give up.
They become as Smaug the dragon, hoarding treasure for its
own sake and meeting threat of its removal with violence. Once
Gollum becomes the Ring's possessor he finds himself drawn to
underground places, and it is deep in the Misty Mountains that
he loses it to Bilbo.
Critics have often noticed the lack of sexual activity in The
Lord of the Rings. This, I believe, can be explained through the
corrosive power of the Ring, which takes the focus away from
the romantic quest and subsumes to itself the power of the
erotic. Only with the destruction of the Ring can the characters
truly love, marry and have children. And those who have borne
the Ring for any length of time do not marry at all. While not
wishing to send readers off on a genital-spotting expedition
through Middle-earth, it is noticeable that Tolkien offers a most
convincing Freudian vagina dentata (teethed vagina) in the
ancient and disgustingly gustatory spider Shelob. She represents
an ancient maternal power that swallows up masculine identity
and autonomy. According to Freud, her castrating hold is pre-
cisely what the sexual fetishist fears, and seeks to control by his
possession of the fetishized object. She must be faced up to and
outwitted before the Ring can be restored to the true maternal
source of the fiery "Cracks of Doom." Appropriately, it is the
equally ancient and yet empowering woman, Galadriel, who
earlier renounced the temptation to be the all-powerful female
principle, a "She-who-must-be-obeyed," who provides the light
by which Shelob may be overcome. If men in the novel must
give up fetishism, women must stand down from their frozen
idealization, as Arwen does when she renounces immortality to
marry Aragorn.
Paradoxically, although the fetish is intended as a means of
erotic control-and a means of warding off the castrating
female-its importance as the only possible means to erotic
pleasure and the self-identity of the fetishist renders him in its
thrall as if it were a god, in the manner of the totemic religious
practice from which Freud took his original concept. This
process is most graphically exemplified in the transmutation of
the river-hobbit Sméagol into the craven Gollum. Possession of the Ring by murder of his friend leads to his self-division and
alienation, so that he now speaks of himself in the third person,
in babytalk- "Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious!"-
while the Ring is now personified and looked to as a source of
aid and protection. Like early Native American totemists, Gollum
has figuratively placed his soul inside the fetish for safe-keeping. Without the Ring, therefore, he is literally torn in two, and,
as he replies to Faramir, "no name, no business, no Precious,
nothing. Only empty" (TT, p. 335).
In his enthrallment Gollum gives the reader insight into the
secret of the mighty Sauron himself. When he forged the Ring,
Sauron actually placed some of his power inside, to his great
cost when it was lost. Now having lost his physical body he lives
a wraithlike existence, akin to that of his slaves, the Nazgûl, with
his power transferred to the Ring. Indeed, he is now present
mainly as an agent of unceasing surveillance, as a giant and lidless eye, which Frodo glimpses in Galadriel's mirror: "the Eye
was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's,
watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a
pit, a window into nothing" (FR, p. 409). Like Gollum, Sauron is
empty and there is no purpose in his will for power apart from
the desire for the Ring itself. Rather, Sauron is completely nihilistic and seeks to reduce Middle-earth to ashes, to render everything as null as himself.
Rings and Things
It is central to Tolkien's conception that it is not just the
depraved who fetishize the Ring but anyone who has to do with
it, and even those who, like Boromir, merely see it occasionally.
One can infer from this that Middle-earth is already a fallen
world, enmeshed in evil. That this evil makes its effect through
fetishism, however, marks the onset of a relatively recent form
of alienation, particular to a modern capitalist economy. Fifty
years before Freud's essay on fetishism the term was employed
as a central concept in German philosopher Karl Marx's great
critique of industrial capitalist economy. His groundbreaking
book Capital describes the disconnected and phantasmal nature
of our relations with the things we produce. As Marx observes,
once a piece of wood is made into a table, it is still just a table,
but once in the market "as soon as it steps forth as a commodity it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands
with its feet on the ground, but in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head and evolves out of its wooden
brain grotesque ideas." Any television advertisement showing a
nubile woman caressing a car's bodywork provides evidence of
our tendency to treat commodities as if they had a life of their
own.
Marx went on to argue that in the modern market economy
we lose relations between makers and consumers, and are
estranged even from the objects of our own labor. Relationships
between things are substituted for those between people, and
these commodities acquire an idolatrous character as fetishes:
they are totally of our own creation but we fail to recognize this.
In our own lives this can take the form of a lifestyle constructed
by means of designer labels, and of the near impossibility of
finding out information about the producers of our clothes and
our food.
I am not trying to suggest that The Lord of the Rings is a
Marxist text and that Tolkien hoped for the Peoples' Republic of
the Shire, but certainly by means of the Ring the novel provides
a thoroughgoing critique of our dragonish tendencies to hoard-
ing, idolatry, and alienation, the radicalism of which is revealed
when put alongside these psychological and economic analyses.
Moreover, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and the papal encycli-
cals on social teaching in the twentieth century were as critical
of capitalism as they were of state socialism. And while secular
writers may offer insight into Tolkien's critique, it can be
claimed that for an adequate response to the problem of
fetishism a religious dimension is important.
For Tolkien, all created things are good, as he states in the
myth of creation that opens his Silmarillion. And it is evident
from Tolkien's various Indexes to the third volume of The Lord
of the Rings that the world of objects is important to him, for he
gives an entire section to the category, "Things" (RK, pp.
488-490). Looking down the list of items one finds an unusual
combination of those one would expect, such as rings,
weapons, flowers, and books, and the unexpected, such as a postal system, battles, meetings, dates, and languages. The reason for the inclusion of such immaterial concepts lies in
Tolkien's adoption of a much more ancient usage of the word,
"thing." The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its earliest example of the usual modern meaning of "thing" as inanimate object,
a reference from 1689.3 Prior to that, a thing meant a matter, an
event, even, in Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and German, a
Parliament, as Heidegger emphasizes in his essay on the Thing,
"a gathering, and specifically a gathering to deliberate on a matter under discussion, a contested matter." It is from a matter
brought forward for important deliberation, an event or experience, that our modern understanding of "thing" evolves as
something separate from ourselves, and an object of our perception. In origin, however, there is something inherently com-
munal in a thing as a matter between people in a meeting-place.
"Thinging gathers," as Heidegger puts it. Today, when we are
not in thrall to fetishized objects, we go to the opposite extreme
and treat things as inert and of no account. Indeed, the object
of desire in the December shop-window quickly loses all aura
on the January sale rack.
Tolkien's theology so validates making and creativity that the
most important objects in his fictional world are good. The relatively rare bad objects are inevitably dominatory or destructive
in character, as, for instance, the Grond, the nasty battering ram
named from Morgoth's mace, with an iron wolf-shaped head.
Furthermore, there are not very many things in The Lord of the
Rings, and the "Things" appendix is much shorter than that for
people/creatures or places. After leaving the relatively thing-filled Shire, there are few objects, and most of these are "things"
in the Middle English sense of the equipment one takes on a
journey. The items taken by the Fellowship are few: food, cooking utensils, water bottles, pipes and pipe-weed, gray elven
cloaks, and weapons. The world has been pared down to the
few things necessary for sustenance and protection. Thus, the
paucity of items renders them doubly precious, as, for example, the rope Sam suddenly remembers he brought from the Lórien
boat:
"Rope!" cried Sam, talking wildly to himself in his excitement and
relief. "Well, if I don't deserve to be hung on the end of one as a
warning to numbskulls! You're nowt but a ninnyhammer, Sam
Gamgee: that's what the Gaffer said to me often enough, it being
a word of his. Rope!"
"Stop chattering!" cried Frodo, now recovered enough to feel
both amused and annoyed. "Never mind your Gaffer! Are you try-
ing to tell yourself you've got some rope in your pocket? If so, out
with it!"
"Yes, Mr. Frodo, in my pack and all. Carried it hundreds of
miles, and I'd clean forgotten it!" (TT, p. 237)
There is a distinctly comic tone to this scene with Sam dancing
with delight over the rope while Frodo clings to a cliff-face, and
the homely language contrasting with the extremity of the situation. This in no way detracts from the magical quality of the
rope, indicated by its silken texture and silvery sheen. As it dangles down it evokes other salvific ropes, such as the line let
down by the Biblical Rahab for Joshua's spies that then became
the sign to spare her when Jericho was attacked.
With or without literary parallels, the rope has a fullness of
presence in this scene. It is prompt when needed, beautiful and
useful. Sam accords the rope full appreciation: "It looks a bit
thin, but it's tough; and soft as milk to the hand. Packs close too,
and as light as light. Wonderful folk to be sure" (TT, p. 238)! Sam
refers here to the elvish makers of his rope and he begins to
undo the fetishism of things by restoring the relation of object
to maker, and the fixed object to potency and use.
Gift-giving and Ring-bearing
It is also important for the full presence of Sam's rope that it was
given to him as a gift by the elves of Lórien. Indeed, practically
every good object in the whole novel turns out to be a gift,
beginning in the very first chapter with Bilbo's birthday party at which, according to hobbit custom, he gives rather than receives
birthday presents. Gandalf too provides a gift in the form of fireworks, which in their spectacular self-destruction are a very
pure form of gift-giving. Many of the company's weapons are
gifts, the very food they eat comes from Rivendell, or Gollum's
rabbit hunting (in the closest he gets to human community), or
from the lembas of the Lórien elves. Galadriel and Celeborn are
primarily gift-givers, whether by sight of the seeing-pool of
prophecy or in the magic objects they give Sam and Frodo-the
box of super-potent fertilizer and seed and the phial of light.
In granting gifts, Galadriel and Celeborn imitate the actions
of the kings in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon sources from which
Tolkien derived his Rings of Power. In one such source, the
poem Beowulf, on which Tolkien was an important authority,
the king, Hrothgar, is called a "ring giver" and he showers
Beowulf with presents after Beowulf has killed the monster
Grendel. Rings are gifts that bind the wearer to the giver in
these ancient tales. And if one receives gold objects as gifts from
the true owner, no harm ensues to the wearer.
A prominent example in Norse mythology is the ring,
Draupnir, made by the dwarves Brokk and Eitri for the god
Odin, which produced eight new rings every ninth night. It was
this ring that the desolated Odin placed on the pyre of his son,
Baldur, after the latter's death from the mistletoe dart, and which
the son returned to his father as a keepsake via Hermod, who
visited him in Hel.8 This enriching ring, marked by gift and sacrifice, is not usually mentioned as an influence on The Lord of
the Rings, even though it is the only ring in the early sources
that is voluntarily renounced. More frequently discussed by
Tolkien critics is the dragon Fafnir's ring that was taken by his
slayer, Sigurd, which led to his downfall and that of the whole
house of the Volsungs.
What these Northern stories of rings show is that a ring
stolen curses its possessor, whereas a ring given cements relationships, even beyond the grave. Both positive and negative
connotations can be found in Beowulf, in which the hero first
receives rings from Hrothgar, later becomes a ring-giver himself,
and only dies when he seeks gold rings for his people from a
dragon's lair. Similarly, the elven rings in Tolkien are beneficent,
concentrating the powers and unity of their bearers, Galadriel,
Elrond and Gandalf, all of whom were given the rings by others, which frees them from the trace of fetishism involved in the
original forging, as does their willingness to sacrifice the power
of their rings for the common good.
Letting Things Go
In order to benefit from these gifts, the protagonists of The Lord
of the Rings have first to give up their possessions, their homes
and families. The Quest of the Fellowship charts an attempt to
deal with the fetishism of the object, and to restore relations
with people and with things. The only way this may be secured
is through acts of self-sacrifice, and by the destruction of the
fetishized Ring. Unlike most quests, in which a beloved object
is gained, the Fellowship is inaugurated to return the Ring to its
place of origin, and thereby to reverse the fetishizing process
that cuts it off from context, origin and materiality. The whole
process is presented in comic mode in the opening of the novel
when Bilbo, who had not been candid in his account of how he
acquired the Ring from Gollum, sets about a potlatch scale sacrifice of everything and every object in his life. He throws a lavish party and gives away what remains of his dragon gold to
make up for his Sigurd-like possession of it; he gives away his
home and its contents, his hobbit existence itself, and goes off
like some Indian holy man. Frodo then follows the same path
and makes the sacrifice of giving up his happy life in the Shire
to bear the Ring. Like the Ring he becomes separate, and is
unable to return and be accepted by his own community. He is
also badly wounded by the Morgul-knife of the Black Rider. So
Frodo does not merely sacrifice the Ring but himself, as he indicates to Sam as they leave for the Grey Havens, "When things
are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that
others may keep them" (RK, p. 338). Note that it is not just people that are in danger but "things," the whole phenomenal cosmos, and it is all that that he must give up.
Frodo, who gave his life, is then himself given passage to the
Undying Lands by Arwen to show that giving up is the means
of restoration. And in order to show that an unfetishized life is
possible, we are earlier given the example of Tom Bombadil
and Goldberry, who are notably also the exemplars of romantic
fulfilment in the story. They were left out of the films, and are
often something of an embarrassment to critics as being extraneous to the epic form of the novel. In my view Tom and
Goldberry's difference is deliberate and is important to the
novel's purposes in offering a challenge to the fetishism rife in
Middle-earth. For Tom Bombadil is the unfallen "master of
wood, water and hill" precisely because he does not own them.
Rather he receives everything as a gift and is himself a gift-giver,
who is first seen bringing water-lilies to Goldberry. That a gift-economy is being opposed to fetishism is made quite plain by
Tom's behavior with the Ring. To Frodo's disapproval he treats
it with scant respect, throws it up in the air, and can see through
its invisibility magic. He treats it, in fact, like a very pretty ring
and nothing more.
Bombadil nicely illustrates the distinction Tolkien draws
between magic and enchantment in his essay "On Fairy-stories":
magic "is power in this world, domination of things or wills,"
whereas enchantment "does not seek delusion, nor bewitch-
ment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in
making and delight, not slaves." There is something cheerfully
fictive and enchanted about Bombadil (signaled to us by his
talking in verse), and this tells us that we too can transform our
world into one of enchantment in which we see things as they
really are: rings as pretty pieces of shining metal, and men and
women as utterly real and yet utterly mysterious. In contrast to
Tom's singing that rescues the hobbits from entrapment, the
honeyed tones of Saruman are merely tricks of dominatory
magic that fixate their audience so that they do not see what is
really going on.
The novel ends, very simply, with Sam's return home from
the Grey Havens. His hobbit home is a scene of simple objects
appropriately arranged that deliberately recreates the yellow light, fire and waiting woman of Bombadil's house. The great
and onerous quest ends with the restoration of the objectified
world, which is now freed from fetishism for use:
And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and
the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose
drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon
his lap.
He drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm back," he said. (RK, p. 340)
The objects of fire, food, light, and shelter unite here to signify human warmth and community. By making Sam function
as a chair for his little daughter in a family trinity, the text
affirms the familial relation of objects to persons. Chairs are
only chairs; they have no magical qualities, but they allow
human connection-"Thinging gathers." The fetishized Ring is
now replaced by the family circle. There is a triumphant
emphasis on the word "and" in these two final sentences. Its
repetition sets up a rhythm of connections between the different things in the scene that asserts their unity in combining to
bless human life.
Now that objects are returned to full participation they can
signify themselves. Galadriel's phial caught the light of the star
Eärendil, and its magic came from participation in the source of
light that Eärendil redeemed by rescuing it from fetishization by
warring groups and returning it to its origin. Thanks to all that
has gone before to redeem the object in The Lord of the Rings,
any light can now have that same quality, when it serves human
need and is valued for its utility and its beauty. Hobbits in the
story seem to have been invented precisely in order to appreciate this ordinary domestic world of objects, just as the proper
end of the ents is to love trees. In one sense, the whole complex
nest of invented languages and creatures, histories and mythologies exists in order that, like Sam, we can see the ordinary world
in an unfetishized manner. This is the "recovery" of vision that
Tolkien himself states is the purpose of the fantasy or fairy-tale.
And that he means the recovery of a right relation to objects as
intrinsic to this recovery is seen in the following passage:
And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly,
with simple or fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting.
For the story-maker who allows himself to be "free with" Nature
can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first
divined the potency of the words, and the wonder of the things,
such as stone and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house and fire;
bread and wine.
Tolkien calls this love "wonder," as a faculty of vision that
accords full presence to that which one sees and is challenged
by in its otherness. We learn to see things as if for the first time.
This wonder is very far indeed from fetish worship because it
celebrates the connections that fetishism denies. Treebeard's
word for "hill" exemplifies this relationality:
"A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë. Excuse me: that is
part of my name for it; I do not know what the word is in the outside languages: you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and
look out on fine mornings, and think about the Sun, and the grass
beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world." (TT, p. 66)
In his sign for "hill" Treebeard reconnects the object with the
world of phenomena, and of thoughts, and with himself. In ent
language an object is signified by the range of its connections
by which it achieves its true identity, not by separation, as in hill
being defined by those things it is not: "hill" not "rill."
Individuality thus comes from the multitude and variety of inter-
connections. Again, "Thinging gathers."
The Lord of the Rings, then, is an ethical text that teaches us
to give up dominatory and fixed perceptions in order to receive
the world back as gift. The novel itself offers an inexhaustible
plenitude of things, but they are not self-referential. For the
elves, their songs and their gifts originate outside Middle-earth
itself in a Blessed Realm just glimpsed by the reader before
Frodo disappears forever. This realm is the source of the "light
and high beauty" (RK, p. 211) that Sam perceives in the sky
above the dreadful plain of Gorgoroth. The wonder and abundance of all the things that constitute Middle-earth have a divine
origin, so that, as we leave the novel, we are somewhat melancholy. For we are unable to remain fetishistically fixated by the
details of the story, but left rather with a craving for something
more: a hunger for breaking our own unnatural attachment to
things, a hunger for transcendence itself."
--- "My Precious": Tolkien's Fetishized Ring / Alison Milbank in The Lord of the rings and philosophy : one book to rule them all
Comments from r/counciloftherings:
"Some “Tolkien experts” certainly have some odd takes. Alison Milbank referring to Shelob as a “teethed vagina” gotta be at the top though 😅
Worse than David Day? What do you think? 🤔"
"Freud was a hack who brought 95% of his theories back to sex and sexuality, usually involving the parents of the kids.
A great deal of his ideas have been widely discredited by the psychological community.
So no, Shelob was definitely not some metaphor for teethed vagina."
"Freud has inspired generations to prove him wrong"
"Isn’t incest like the number one most searched genre of porn? As much as I’d love to discredit him, I fear he was right and actually ahead of his time… "
"No. It has some forced popularity since it's comparatively easy to shoot and a fine excuse to for different age combinations between actors. Here are the 2023 statistics:
https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2023-year-in-review"
[Ed: In the US, step mom was #11 in the list and that's not even real incest. There were no other incest terms in the top 14 and it was not in the top 5 categories either nor was it one of the top 5 categories more viewed compared to the world. the Philippines. In France even step mom didn't appear, much less other incest related terms (odd, given France's history with incest). Mexico, the UK, Japan, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Australia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Sweden didn't have incest as popular by any measure either. Egypt had step mom at #11/#14 in keywords]
"Someone can make whatever interpretation they want, but so much of literary analysis is really just grasping for straws or applying a framework for the sake of it. Sure you can apply almost any kind framework for interpetation but that doesn't make that particular analysis valuable or relevant except to a niche academic group"
"The author is desperate to convey their intelligence."
You just described 90% of literary analysis"
"I have no words... Not just that Shelob description but this entire paragraph makes zero sense."
" Isildur was married as well (though before wearing the ring). Tom also had Goldberry. Her getting basic lore stuff wrong makes her lose any credibility"
"Her use of “for any length of time” is an academic weasel phrase designed to invalidate any counter examples. Only Sauron, Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo count, because they’re the ones that fit her theory. Everyone else can be discarded because they’re inconvenient to her."
"And Bilbo was a noted bachelor before the Ring... Gollum was an exile (who probably lacked opportunity), and Sauron was a bachelor for thousands of years prior to the Ring. So really only Frodo fits cleanly."
"This is the most absurd and offensive thing I’ll read today. And I say this w confidence in today’s political climate. Lol."
"lol at the emphasis on “Crack of Doom”"
"Why
did it take me so many years to run into this joke"
"Man people will just publish anything these days huh"
"I’m just curious why they asked her to write a chapter. She gets basic lore facts wrong."
"Short answer is that publishing companies are often lazy and academic writers are sometimes desperate to get their name out there (sometimes for vanity but sometimes to save their position or career).
The publishing world (especially in academia adjacent topics) is sort of a weird one. It's mostly who you know until you've established yourself. Sometimes bigger titles are willing to roll the dice on someone if they have solid enough connections. I'm assuming that's what has happened here. I'm in the world of "The Philosophy of Art & Literature" which is sort of a weird half way point between the two disciplines. I was once asked to write a book review for a journal over Bettany Hughes' "The Hemlock Cup" (I believe that's the title. It's been years ago).
I'm all for book reviews, but this is a historian/Archeologist writing about Historical facts uncovered in archeological digs. I had to respectfully decline this ask. They wanted a "Philosopher" to write about this book from a "Philosophical point of view" (whatever that means) because it touched on the life of the Historical Socrates, but it was way out of my realm of study. They asked me because 3 of my other philosopher friends (with whom I'd produced other works) had declined for the same reason. Some folks will simply take whatever writing gigs they can get, give it a go, and fall flat on their face."
""Lack of sexual activity"? Tom Bombadil wanders the forest singing songs about he can't wait to get home and bang Goldberry."
"Right? Plus Gimli the simp/hair fetishist"
"WTF was this author smoking?"
"Not everyone should be an academic. Like this one for example."
"In the list of worst takes on Tolkien I need to mention the Belgian nun Mellie Uyldert. She explains all the symbolism and archtypes from Tolkiens work without any knowledge of the writer.
More info https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Symboliek_van_Tolkien%27s_In_de_ban_van_de_ring
For anyone wo understands Dutch, grab your copy here; https://www.veelboeken.nl/alle-boeken/niet-gecategoriseerd/symboliek-van-tolkiens-in-de-ban-van-de-ring-9789020248340/"
"You know, it's actually cool to just enjoy LOTR and keep your batshit insane takes to yourself"
"The representation of Shelob as a vagina dentata is a nonsense.
First and foremost, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is deeply rooted in his serious philological studies, mythological leanings, and, above all, in his devout Catholicism, through which overt sexual symbolism is hardly ever his primary concern.
In contrast, Shelob is more straightforwardly presented as a monstrous creature in the tradition of mythic beasts, dragons, and trolls, designed to evoke fear and peril within a high-fantasy context, rather than conveying psychoanalytic themes.
This makes it easier for us as readers to understand Shelob’s dangerous role as a stumbling block for the heroes, mainly Frodo and Sam, to fit into the larger narrative framework of “The Lord of the Rings” as an epic journey full of diverse challenges. Her menace represents just another of the monstrous challenges; among others are the Balrog or the Nazgûl, which stand for emblems of heroism and perseverance, not some act of gendered symbolism.
More significantly, it is the very broad mythological context within which Tolkien elaborates his world and the creatures: among them, monstrous spiders are a symbol of danger and chaos but never directly representing female sexuality.
So, reading Shelob exclusively through the perspective of vagina dentata completely fails to acknowledge the wider mythopoetic and narrative significance that her character holds within the tightly woven universe created by Tolkien."
"Sometimes a giant evil spider is just a giant evil spider."
"This is a shippers desperate attempt to justify applying horny thoughts to a text wholly absent of erotica."
"I'm currently selling tickets to a genitalia-spotting expedition through Middle-Earth."
"Legolas: ARAGORN, WHY AINT WE FUCKIN!!?
Aragorn, Gotta, deliver the ring dude.
Legolas: AH, right...we fuck later?
Aragorn: HELL YEAH, I love you bro!"
