Tolkien’s Lobelia Sackville-Baggins is probably a misogynist satire of women's rights campaigner Victoria Sackville-West

[Brainspore]

@nungesser

There was actually a gigantic LotR musical put on a few years back in London that condensed the entire epic into one four-hour stage piece, and I have no idea how they pulled that off.

You can cover a lot of ground in song. Leonard Nimoy was able to relay the entire Ballad of Bilbo Baggins in just over two minutes.

[Otherbrother]

@Brainspore

Leonard Nimoy was able to relay the entire Ballad of Bilbo Baggins in just over two minutes.

You can’t just tease that fact without linking to this:

Leonard Nimoy - The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins

[d_r]

@knoxblox

the movie seemed incredibly apologist in favor of “educated” white men of England of the time.

I’ve not seen the movie, though the fact that the bar has always been low in the UK for men of “breeding” is no secret; if the filmmakers think that is a good thing, that is another reason to avoid the movie.

As a matter of record JRRT was a scholarship student (his father having died and left the family broke), and while at war he wrote that he preferred the working-class soldiers over his fellow officers. He was also on the record as opposing empires as a matter of principle, including the British empire (despite his later OBE). He seems by all available actual accounts to have been a person of generally good character with some social views we could even now describe as progressive.

In any event, I don’t think it is safe to assume JRRT’s success was due to this bar being so low; I hope that wasn’t an actual message in the biopic.

[knoxblox]

@d_r

In any event, I don’t think it is safe to assume JRRT’s success was due to this bar being so low; I hope that wasn’t an actual message in the biopic.

Nope, not intentional. But like most “white male centered” movies, oblivious to its own outward appearance.

[NativeSpeaker]

@theodore604

Just another reminder that any author or artist I liked from “long ago” was probably an asshole

Don’t fret too much. Half of the contemporaries you like are probably assholes, too.

More from the point of view of any adult grandchildren.

[Mister44]

My kiddo was a dwarf in The Hobbit this summer. Not early as nice of a production, but it was fun.

[Kris_Asard]

@nungesser

Now that the bitter, cruel, and curmudgeonly Christopher Tolkien has stepped down (as of 2017) as head of the Estate, I’m hoping whoever controls it going forward is a little less tight-fisted about people playing in that sandbox. (This is a guy who hated the very idea of making LOTR movies so much that when his son disagreed, he disowned him)

This is the guy who in many aspects is considered the co-creator, if not the outright co-author, of the entire LOTR franchise, and yet has voluntarily spent his whole life in his fathers shadow for whatever reason (there’s fodder for quite a biopic in there, when someone dares to pitch it).
Anyway, it’s his sandbox. He built it. I´d say he has earned the right to be dickish about it.

[coherent_light]

I’m sure he was a decent person overall.

But we have to accept and examine the flaws, too.

God, I remember arguing with someone who insisted Lovecraft—of all people—wasn’t “racist.” Apart from HPL’s letters (there were a lot I was able to read), there are so many of his stories that not considering HPL racist was only possible through wishful thinking.

The issue isn’t that HPL was an asshole—maybe he wasn’t—or even that he had contemporaries who thought the same way (different from now, how?), but that these things are also part of his character, and they should also be examined, otherwise it becomes possible to say he wasn’t racist, and that is colossally untrue.