McCalmont rips apart Jackson's Smaug

http://ruthlessculture.com/2014/04/08/review-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-2013/

"Peter Jackson is a terrible loss to the special effects profession and a terrible addition to that of professional film direction."

Ouch! Definitely worth a read if you like your film criticism insightful and acerbic.

I can't say that I rate Peter Jackson very highly as a director. I liked the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of films enough to keep watching but haven't experienced any desire to revisit them since.

Similarly I strongly agree that Jackson's decision to split the brilliantly concise action of the Hobbit across three films was a waste of good material. Ironically it matches Tolkien's own hubris in creating ever longer and more inaccessible fantasy epics as his career progressed. Fortunately he had the vision not to publish these literary monstrosities (a task that was left to his less restrained successors).

Pratchett and the Politics of Fantasy

So I've had a few attempts already (See http://stochasticreview.blogspot.com/2011/11/racism-and-fantasy-revisited.html and http://stochasticreview.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/racial-essentialism-and-fantasyscience.html) at articulating my concerns about the worrying racist assumptions that seem to lurk behind much of Tolkien's fantasy and the genre that he created. The main problem I noticed was the separation of characters into mutually antagonistic races that are fundamentally distinct. Crude physical and social caricatures are used in place of more complex characterisation and certain 'races' are seen as fundamentally warlike and irredeemable. This creates worrying analogies with issues of racial relations and assimilation in the real world which seem to be increasingly a concern of the media and certain political groups.

Having set the boundaries of the debate I intend to consider a writer who pushes the boundaries of this debate in a comic fantasy format and introduces narratives of persecution and emancipation to the traditionally racialised landscapes of post-Tolkien fantasy.

Terry Pratchett is a fantastic author who, a few one-off novels aside, has mainly concentrated on the fantasy world of Discworld (a flat earth that drifts through space on the back of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle). He rejects the traditional seriousness of fantasy with the addition of funny jokes, an irreverent tone and anachronisms such as the introduction of the railway and PDA to a world that has barely developed beyond the Renaissance.

He is at his best when siding with the underdogs of the Discworld. Everybody I've discussed Discworld with has loved Rincewind, the terminally unlucky failed wizard, and in his more recent books he has attempted an alternate characterisation of the oft-demonised goblins and orcs that had been previously been absent from his books.

Thus he by-passes many of the concerns that I have raised in previous articles. His goblins are not the perennial villains of mainstream fantasy but an oppressed and persecuted race who turn out to have many talents when they are allowed to participate on equal terms. Pratchett turns the table by instead vilifying the opulent landowners who exploit them on plantations reminiscent of the 19th century Caribbean. Similarly Dwarves and Trolls are not distant races that live in glorious isolation and racial purity but large immigrant communities in the increasingly modern city of Ankh Morpork.    

However, while Discworld is an improvement on other fantasy series, I am wary of giving Pratchett an entirely clean bill. He rejects racial essentialism by focussing instead on a value-based, meritocratic approach to characterisation. We are frequently presented with heroic, striving characters such as Commander Vimes and Harry King who have overcome their origins through sheer bloody mindedness and hard work. Similarly the goblins and orcs are redeemed by their great capacity for learning and hard work when not being kicked around by oppressive racists.

The problem with this is that Pratchett has to emphasise the heroic characters and virtues of these paradigms by contrasting them with their more stupid and lazy contemporaries who could themselves get on just as well if they were just a little bit cannier and more dedicated.

This approach is preferable to a lazy xenophobia but does require a portrayal of the masses as basically worthless and flawed. In 'Unseen Academicals' he explicitly discusses the crab-pot theory that says that ghettoes of class and race are often self imposed. Those who strive for improvement are held back by the masses who are suspicious of those who try to better themselves.

Such a characterisation of poverty misidentifies the real causes of ghettoisation and disadvantage. Working hard and being smart is a good precondition for social advancement but is not always sufficient if the odds are consciously stacked against you by heartless markets or an elite that merely wishes to cement the status quo and restrict social mobility.

Nevertheless Discworld is a bold experiment in avoiding the traditional biases of fantasy. The commercial success of the series prove that it is as popular and well written as any other contemporary fantasy, While I don't entirely agree with Pratchett's meritocratic focus he has at least made a conscious effort to include narratives of cross-race cooperation and the possibility for those of any race/species to be an individual rather than simply a stereotyped member of that group.

Racism and Fantasy revisited

Happy armistice day!

So I've talked about the political problems of most mainstream science fiction and fantasy writing before (http://stochasticreview.blogspot.com/2011/04/racial-essentialism-and-fantasyscience.html). However, then I only identified the problem and suggested methods of coping with it for the politically conscious, non-conservative reader. This time around I'm more concerned about why fantasy writers are so keen to champion racial essentialism, moral absolutism and conflict between races or species. I will argue that it is largely due to the influence of Tolkien on Fantasy writing as well as the unquestioning acceptance of the moralizing discourse of total war in the real world.

So let's start with Tolkien. His books about Middle Earth envoke many of these trends. Lord of the Rings is an epic tale of the fight between good and evil, with the combatant's allegiance decided mainly by race.

There are characters who cross this boundary. Saruman, the Wild Men and the Easterlings (Orientalism ahoy!) are conventional traitor characters. The Nazgul represent a more insidious form of corruption leading to evil and the Orcs are often described as corrupted men or elves. Finally it takes some characters time to throw off bad advice or weakness and oppose the dark force; Rohan is held back by Wormtongue's advice while Gondor is hindered by the madness and greed of the regent.

However, this by no means turns the battle ground of Middle Earth into an open conflict where participants are primarily divided by ideology or political considerations rather than race. While there are examples of good characters who defect to the side of evil there is never a case of the reverse. Sauron and his followers are portrayed as beyond redemption. They are ultimately responsible for the war and are killed in droves by the heroic fellowship without any signs of remorse. We are never given any hint that they might have a family life or engage in any activities beyond murder, theft and invasion.

This demonisation of the enemy is of course a major feature of modern wars. Tolkien claimed not to have been influenced by Germany's aggression in WW2 when writing the plot of LOTR. However, there are obvious parallels to be drawn. The war between Sauron and the 'good' races is fought to the finish. There is no suggestion that there could be a compromise peace or surrender by one side or the other. This pursuit of total victory is arguably the defining feature of the modern, total war.

Similarly the racial stereotyping of the enemy is a standard aspect of contemporary war. In his book, 'Colonial Madness; Psychiatry in French North Africa', Richard Keller relates how the conception of the Algerians as violent and irresponsible addicts with a fatalistic attitude was used to legitimate French imperialism in the Maghreb. During the Algerian war of independence the FLN resistance was invariably presented as destructive, primitive and fanatical. Similarly the varied propaganda machines of the World Wars and the following Cold War always attempted to present enemies as unchangeably evil. If an enemy can change then they can be negotiated with and that may not be in line with the aims of those running the conflict. If an enemy is not evil then how can we justify the morally dubious methods we must use to defeat them?

Therefore, the use in fantasy of ideas that seem politically extreme and hard to agree with may not be down to the personal views held by the writers. Readers of the genre can be assumed to be familiar with Tolkien or the many, many authors that have imitated him and therefore are assumed to want more of the same. Thus the influence of total war on Tolkien's fictional conflict (which was tellingly written during the period of the Second World War) is unquestioningly passed down from writer to writer with little attempt to change the fundamental assumptions about the fixed character of races or the genocidal methods justified by moralized, racial conflict.

Just when I thought I was out ....

Initially I was a bit wary of the two part film of 'The Hobbit' that is now in production. I love the book, much preferring it to anything else that Tolkien wrote. I've also got great faith in Peter Jackson after he directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, I always have the niggling feeling that if I go and see a film of a book I really like it will turn out to be crap or (worse) just good enough that it insidiously gnaws away at the mental impressions of characters and locations that I got from the book. Eventually I end up losing my own subjective image and just remembering the cut and dried package the director produced.

Later I found out out that my favourite film director, Guillermo del Toro, was working on it. I dread to think what he would have done with it (the words 'darker', 'weirder' and 'edgier' spring to mind immediately as this is the guy behind 'Pan's Labyrinth', 'The Orphanage' and 'The Devil's Backbone') but it would have been great to find out and gave me a real buzz about the whole thing. This lasted until last year when he quit and I started to lose my enthusiasm for the project again.

Then they pull me back in. Aidan Turner from 'Being Human' as (that well-known character) Kili. I love Aiden Turner's acting and it will be nice to see what he does with a new role as so far he doesn't seem to have done much outside of playing Mitchell. In fact the whole cast list is great (Elijah Woods as a slight exception although since Frodo wasn't actually in the book he shouldn't get much screen time) and I like that they have echoed the LOTR film trilogy by selecting most of them from Britain or the Antipodes.

I'm still curious as to how they will deal with its non-standard structure though. Film producers generally like films with a few main characters who stay involved throughout the whole movie and a larger cast of bit characters who are only present in a few scenes. With 'the Hobbit' they will have the difficult task of making thirteen distinctive dwarf characters memorable, who will be around for most of the movie but by their sheer number will be difficult to fully develop. Possibly this is part of the reason for turning such a short book into a two part movie. It might just let them flesh out the characters adequately.