The Eye of Sauron Is the Modern Surveillance State

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I went back and forth about whether to post this here or in the Shibboleth forum, but ultimately decided it more belonged here. I did think this was a perceptive article about Tolkien's relevance to the modern age.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... _best.html

Thoughts?

[kzer_za]

I'm glad to see the literati writing something about Tolkien besides either "fantasy, haha" or "he was a patriarchal classist racist imperialist."

[Primula Baggins]

I thought it was interesting and insightful. Their points are not going to be surprising to people here, obviously, but people dismissive of Tolkien or who have read LotR once and not deeply might be led to realize there's more there than they thought.

It did clarify for me another difference between LotR and the Game of Thrones series: LotR is about evil and how people choose to respond to it, whereas GoT is about cruelty and how (for the most part) there's just nothing to be done about it—sort of an adult version of the Lemony Snicket series.

(Not dissing, much; I find GoT to be a compelling entertainment and very well written. I just haven't found much meaning in it, which is probably why I've been stalled in book 3 for quite a while.)

[kzer_za]

It's actually become fashionable lately to say that George RR Martin is better than Tolkien because his characters are grayer, while everything is black and white with Tolkien. And because his world is bleak and dark with no clear way forward, it's more realistic and more relevant to our modern age.

This seems to assume that moral ambiguity is always the same thing as moral insight, though. And it sells Tolkien's character development short. Frodo and Sam are fully-realized round characters and are not flawless. Some characters such as Aragorn are flatter, but LotR is meant to be a mythic/heroic world seen through the eyes of the hobbits, who are modern literary characters. The orcs are somewhat of a problem, but it's not fair to criticize Tolkien for it without acknowledging that Tolkien himself recognized this.

Besides, if you want dark and bleak from Tolkien, look no further than the First and Second Ages, particularly Húrin's family. Suicide, incest, nudity, a dark antihero who leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, a great hero turning bitter and even villainous after his family is destroyed - as dark and "edgy" as any storyline in ASoIaF. But Tolkien had the good taste to not write about Túrin and Nienor's sex in near-pornographic detail.

Okay, it might sound like I'm being a little hard on Martin, but I actually did enjoy the first three ASoIaF books (the first is the best I think). Though he seems to have lost control of his story over time.

[River]

People like to compare Martin to Tolkien because both wrote/are writing compelling stories set in intricately built words. But it's not really fair because, at the end of the day, their stories have different goals. Tolkien was relating a piece of his invented modern mythology with good vs. evil as a main theme. Martin's doing a remake of the War of the Roses with dragons and zombies with the acquisition and retention of power as the main theme. So I don't like to compare the stories and characters because they're such different things. Nor do we know how ASOIAF ends yet. Purely from the world-building perspective, though, Tolkien did it better. All those languages and that entire cosmology...Martin hasn't even tried.

Anyway, as far as surveillance states and the Eye of Sauron go, it's an interesting point. Do you think Tolkien had such a thing in mind when he came up with the Eye? Or was he just thinking of what an evil overlord might do?

[Passdagas the Brown]

I went back and forth about whether to post this here or in the Shibboleth forum, but ultimately decided it more belonged here. I did think this was a perceptive article about Tolkien's relevance to the modern age.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... _best.html

Thoughts?

Though the author confuses the "Eye atop a tower" of Jackson's world, with Tolkien's more metaphysical Eye, and probably applies too much allegorical intent to Tolkien, it is an excellent assessment. I agree with the author completely - Tolkien, averse to overt allegory of the Orwellian kind, was able to be far more perceptive, and intelligent, about how "powers" actually think, and operate. This is one of the many reasons it will continue to resonate throughout the ages.

[Dave_LF]

Tolkien, not Orwell, understood today’s spying best.

The spies are aware of that:
Project palantír

[halplm]

Anyway, as far as surveillance states and the Eye of Sauron go, it's an interesting point. Do you think Tolkien had such a thing in mind when he came up with the Eye? Or was he just thinking of what an evil overlord might do?

I don't think he did. One theme of Middle Earth is that the evil and power hungry will take what is good and beautiful and distort it for their own ends, usually to the point where it can no longer be used for its original purpose any more... Silmarils, Palantíri, Rings of Power... They were all created to do good things, but in the end were used almost entirely for evil and power.

An interesting bit about the Palantíri in LOTR is when Aragorn uses them against Sauron, showing how an enemy can so effectively use misinformation.

As an aside, it really bugs me that PJ's eye could be used to illustrate anything about Tolkien...