I am starting a new thread about this, because the other thread is mostly about Rage Against Roger Ebert.
Whilst raging against Roger (well-known hippie that he is!), some people have seen fit to, once again, blame the “tree-hugging 60’s hippies” for some misconceptions some people have about Tolkien’s work. Yes, it is a popular sport to bash the hippies and the 60’s in general for everything.
Sheesh.
My thesis in this thread is that Tolkien’s work would not be so popular today if it weren’t for the Sixties generation.
Tolkien’s work cannot be pigeonholed as either pro-war or anti-war; you can find elements of both. You can find exhortations to defensive battle right alongside Tom Bombadil’s pacifism and Bilbo’s “treason” with the Arkenstone.
What undoubtedly appealed to the Sixties generation was not so much the work’s views on war and peace as the stubborn idealism of the work: the idea that good really exists, and is really powerful against evil. If you’re going to fight for something, it should be something good and right instead of a cynical geopolitical power play like Vietnam.
Fighting and killing, if it is necessary, is not done out of blood lust or with cruelty. The heroes do not commit My Lai-style massacres or Afghan-wedding “collateral damage.” Notwithstanding the competition between Legolas and Gimli at Helm’s Deep, Tolkien’s main heroes do not kill anyone who is not trying to kill them. They do not kill in cold blood: there are no executions in Middle-Earth. When the enemy is human, the killing is even done with anguish and remorse: witness Sam’s distress when Faramir ambushes the mumâk-soldiers in Ithilien. The message is clear: “Humans should not kill each other.” They should fight together against what is truly evil, whether an Orc army or a really bad idea.
No doubt the children of the Sixties were glad to see the idea of good vs. evil proposed to them in something other than a Sunday sermon.
There are also other things in the tales that would appeal to an idealistic baby boomer: the explicit environmentalist message of the whole “Saruman vs. the trees” episode; the quest to give up power by destroying something that could be called a doomsday weapon; the small-town agrarian life of the Shire, where even Thoreau could feel at home; forgiveness and pity for even the most evil people; and the courage of simple little folk trying to save the world. Yes, there are many Sixties-inspired movements that could get “juice” from Tolkien.
It’s not all about battles and chopped heads. Sam stabs Shelob, threatens Gollum with a knife and kills one Orc by pushing him through a hole in the floor so he breaks his neck, but the Hobbits still accomplish their mission, defeating vastly numerous dark and violent forces, with surprisingly little violence.
The innocence of the tale must have also been very appealing to people numbed by the sexy, violent, turbulent disillusionments of the Sixties. Tolkien’s good guys really are good. They are not even lustful: there’s no sex in Tolkien, at least not until the Silmarillion.
Tolkien’s major work was around for ten years before American college students discovered it. That was when the Tolkien craze can be said to have properly begun, and it has never really subsided since.
By the way, not every young idealist of the Sixties generation who read Tolkien was a “hippie” or an anti-war activist, just like not everyone who listened to acid rock was a hippie or a druggie. Hippies were part of the grand tapestry of Sixties culture that included Tolkien, the Beatles, surfing, hot rods, car culture in general, TV culture, Las Vegas, Disneyland, the Tiki craze, the Renaissance Fair, the Afro-American cultural/political revolution, jet age/space age optimism, primitivism/back-to-naturism, renewed respect for handicrafts and farming, sexual openness, and drugs. The elements of that cultural tapestry all influenced each other, but none can be said to have deterministically caused another one.
Some of the nerds who formed the first Dungeons and Dragons circles were hippies, and some of the computer geeks who started the desktop computer revolution were hippies (especially at Apple), but that doesn’t mean any of it was “caused by hippies.” If some people choose to interpret Tolkien’s work more idealistically, that is not the fault of the hippies. But it is the fault of the Sixties generation!!! They do plead guilty to that.
It was the Sixties generation that first bought Tolkien’s works in paperback (authorized and unauthorized). My first memory of Tolkien is the pseudo-psychedelic paperback cover illustration with all the twisty monsters crawling all over it. When I went to see “The Two Towers” on Christmas Day, the teenaged box office guy had a tattered copy at the window with him.
It was the Sixties generation that first elevated Tolkien’s work to cult status, printing up “Frodo lives!” buttons by the thousands and starting fanzines like “Galadriel’s Mirror”, waaaaay before anyone had ever heard of the Internet.
It was the Sixties generation that provided the crucial core audience when Tolkien’s posthumous works began to appear, starting with the Silmarillion in the Seventies.
It was the Sixties generation that used Tolkien as a springboard for the fantasy subculture that exists today, still playing Dungeons and Dragons and providing an audience for all the fantasy/SF authors and computer games, some good and some not, that were inspired by Tolkien. (In my college the D&D players called themselves “The Third Foundation,” after the Foundation Trilogy.)
It was the Sixties generation that lifted movie science fiction out of dystopian despair for a whole generation, putting the “good vs. evil” plotline together with elements of Carlos Castaneda to provide the audience for the first “Star Wars” film.
It was the Sixties generation that provided the audience for the first semi-successful attempts, in the 70’s, to bring Tolkien’s work to the TV screen and the small screen. (“Well, that was a waste of time,” I heard someone comment on leaving the Ralph Bakshi movie. “Well, I liked it,” said my brother defensively. Hey, it was all we had at the time!)
And most importantly, it was the Sixties generation that introduced Tolkien’s work to other generations, keeping the dream alive.
Without the Sixties generation, Tolkien would not be the colossus he is today, rivaling Harry Potter for the dominion of the world. He would be at about the same level as C.S. Lewis, Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard of “Conan” fame: somewhat prominent, somewhat famous, but not godlike. He definitely wouldn’t have been voted “most influential book of the millennium.”
And by the way, I really liked Leonard Nimoy’s music video! I saved it for my fourth-grade students, who are already big fans of Bilbo, Gollum, and Sixties music.
