LotR 'Nazi Propaganda' - Germaine Greer

[Michel Delving]

This intellectual snob Germaine Greer (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/review/panel/1953342.stm) , who is always wheeled out for Arty debates in the U.K, last night described how much she hated Lord of the Rings, saying it was Nazi propaganda full of Nordic Supermen. What an offensive idiot! She hasn't even read more than ten pages of the book!

The discussion was over this Big Read Top 100 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml) and involved various University/Journalist types saying how low brow the list was. They derided both the Lord of the Rings, Stephen King's The Stand (which they also hadn't read) and even Harry Potter in a that's far too popular, it can't be any good elitist way. Then went on to list various obscure books they liked.

Another University Dean in his mid-fifties, sporting a I wish I was still young leather jacket said he forced himself to read LotR and it was a real struggle.

What a bunch of idiots in ivory towers!

[Ithrynluin]

I remember sneaking a peek into Greer's The Female Eunuch and finding it rather dull. Perhaps I should read it again, after all I was only 14 at the time! :eek:

J.R.R.T. put it best in The Foreword to the LOTR:

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

I wonder if J.R.R. would fancy The Female Eunuch? :D To each their own.

P.S. The Top 100 link doesn't work. EDIT: It works now. Huh.

[Michel Delving]

That was quick move from LotR section of the forum to Related topics! I though I'd been censored for mentioning the N word!

The Top100 link works for me. Try this one instead: Big Read (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/)

That's a great Tolkien quote Ithrynluin, I was reading that only the other day.

Greer also said that LotR seemed untouchable as far a criticism goes. I'd agree with her on that. It really devastates all criticism by the sheer wait of it's completeness and genius. Anyone who finds it dull has no Soul!

[FoolOfATook]

How appropriate that The Stand, a book that is in many ways an homage to LOTR also made the list. In fact, I think Larry Underwood even mentions Tolkien in the book.

As for Greer, I generall pay about as much attention to her as I do to Chomsky or Susan Sontag- other intellectuals who have lost all touch with reality, prefering to live entirely in their own heads.

[Inderjit S]

I have about as much respect for Miss. Greer as well...well I hate her guts, thats not to say that we can discount her views, even though in this case and many others they're a load of ****.

[Aulë]

OMG! I actually agree with Michel for once (What is the wordl coming too...)!

And that "It can't be good because it's so popular" theory really annoys me.
*Remembers a South Park episode*
The only reason that it is popular is because it is good...:rolleyes:

[Idril]

'Plah!'

Who cares what these 'intellectuals' think. or say?

I didn't see the discussion, and I'm glad - otherwise I might have thrown something at the tele - and this is what we (the same ones who voted) pay our annual TV licence for - to be insulted (our choices/tastes) by a panel of self-important gits.

[Rangerdave]

What surprises me most is not the complete lunacy of her claim: but rather that she centers it on the fascist issue.

I would have assumed, given her past offerings of pseudo-psychological pap, that she would have taken the stronger (yet equally inaccurate) arguement that LotR is an exercise in misogynistic conditioning.


Pity that. :p

RD

[Turgon]

I remember watching The Late Review a few years back when the entire panel (Greer being the most vocal) slammed the Lord of the Rings for being hippy claptrap. It had just been voted Book of the Millenium by the British Public, and I remember her being epecially bitter about the fact that James Joyce's Ulysses did not win the crown. I was shocked about it really, she seemed to be saying that if the public had voted for Tolkien then they were low-brow fools - the worst kind of arrogance in my opinion.

Nazi propeganda and Hippy Claptrap? That's quite a mix!?! Perhaps Peter Jackson should have cast Lorenzo St. DuBois in the role of Aragorn?

:p

[Rangerdave]

Originally posted by Turgon
I remember her being epecially bitter about the fact that James Joyce's Ulysses did not win the crown. :p

That reminds me of a wonderful story.
Shortly after Joyce's Ulysses was first published, Mrs Joyce was quoted in an interview for the New Yorker that she wished James would write books that people could read.


RD

[Michel Delving]

I managed ten pages of Ulysses and got intensely bored as there was zero story and an over dependence on stream of consciousness.

Unlike LotR which had my hands nailed to it for weeks.

As was Stephen King's The Stand and all his Dark Tower books (Mid-World indeed, I wonder where he got that from;) ) so far...

[FoolOfATook]

I liked Dubliners, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a great deal, but have decided on holding off from Ulysses until some professor forces me to read it... ;)

[Zale]

It's all too easy to slag off a book before knowing the whole story (no pun intended). I found myself doing it to Dickens the other day, without having read any 'proper' Dickens.

[Eledhwen]

I've been following the Big Read, and voted for LoTR (of course!). Did anyone else follow the Author link? It's got a little LoTR quiz on it. I got 18 out of 20. I said Treebeard had 9 toes, and I said the IVth age started when the ring was destroyed. I was misled by Samwise being told that "in Gondor the New Year will always now begin upon the twenty-fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King." I know better now - the Appendix makes it clear.

Germain Greer would have been happier if Aragorn had been a woman.

Quiz Link (http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/books/genre/children/quizlotr.shtml)

PS: I noticed that both The Hobbit and LoTR made it onto the list. No Silmarillion though :( *sigh!* , and I was suprised to see Robert Tressle's "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists" which is good, but I thought it might not appeal to a 'modern' audience.