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More Controversy over Tolkien
Over the Christmas and New Year's season, "The Return of the King" has been a box-office success, while the books by J.R.R. Tolkien have been rivaling the Harry Potter series in sales. While some evangelicals and Catholics have viewed Tolkien's series favorably in comparison to Harry Potter, Tolkien still remains a figure of controversy. Tolkien attended daily Mass, insisted his Anglican fiancée Edith convert to his faith in order to marry him, and his son John became a priest. His ethics, as well as his Catholic beliefs, make him a center of debate.
Ethics and beliefs? To the gulag with him!
Though the books and movies are popular, local people of faith find Tolkien's values debatable. Some disagree with his Catholicism, while others take issue with his morality. In the Wine Country, Tolkien is at once praised and reviled.
There's always somebody to bitch, isn't there? I notice they seldom write a better book...
Rev. Lynn Ungar, the Consulting Minister for the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of North Bay, said she saw all three movies. Ungar commented, "The movies are very violent. They are epic, grand, and large." Big, too.
And the people bitching are often Unitarians, for some reason...
However, she objected to Tolkien's world view, observing, "My largest objection is that good and evil get neatly divided. The evil ones are entirely evil. There is no blurring of the lines like in reality.
Hitler loved his dog.
"There is no Good. There is no Evil. There is no Dana only Zool."
I'm disturbed about clear lines between good and evil.
This judgemental contrast between genocide and feeding the hungry just bugs the shit out of me.
I have a view of human nature is both realistic and hopeful.
as opposed to these crazy cynics and other evil types who draw clear distinctions.
Rarely there are the good people and the bad people."
Except for the monsters Bush and Blair.
After seeing the movie, she said her partner Kelsey and herself commented there wasn't much character development and that the characters tended to be one-sided.
Not ambiguous enough.
Ungar believes Tolkien's Catholicism isn't reflected in the epic. She said, "There are writers whose writing is about their personal religion. I don't see 'Lord of the Rings' as particularly Christian.
So?
It's not Christian.
The oracle hath spoken.
Tolkien based it on Scandinavian mythology."
This person's fundamental error is the assumption that it is impossible to draw a clear distinction without assigning absolutes. This is not the case. Up and down are not absolutes if we consider the findings of geodesy and astrophysics, yet the distinction is very definite if one is trying not to walk off a cliff. By the same token, neither good nor evil must be absolute for a clear distinction to be drawn. I didn't think the characters were represented as absolute examples of good and evil in any case.
If you recognize the existence of Good and Evil you're expected to take sides.

Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2004-01-31
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=25341