A cite would be nice. I don’t disbelieve you, but it would be news to me.
[QUOTE=CandidGamera]
It’s a quote from Tolkien himself. I’m new around here, do you want me to dig up a cite for you? QUOTE]
By the way, you ought to stick around. You seem intelligent and visually literate.
I did this before the Internet boom, and it may be that my source is still relegated to the hardcopy format… however, his obituary, reproduced on the Tolkienology site, does provide part of the reference, where it quotes Tolkien speaking out against allegories.
I intend to. And I’m glad to see my sometimes terse manner hasn’t ruffled any feathers as of yet. I’ll look more for the rest of the reference later… in the middle of watching a movie.
One thing I always wanted to know - what make and model was that convertible Tippi was driving?
Very interesting indeed.
What movie? 
Aston Martin DB2/4 Drop Head Coupe.
The Color of Money. I watched The Hustler yesterday, so I had to see the sequel.
Actually, I had been planning to see the sequel anyway… I got them both from Netflix.
Remind me to tell you about my movie list sometime. You seem like a film buff. I’d explain it now… but I want to finish the movie.
Ilsa: maybe it wasn’t a Criterion . . . but the commentary tracks were by the screenwriter and the special-effects guy . . . or maybe the cinematographer . . . Tippi Hedren. Faskinatin and enlightnessing.
I recently read Tolkien’s introduction to the last edition (in his lifetime) of The Fellowship of the Ring. He lays out the interpretations that he disagrees with, IIRC, but does not make any active claims as to his real intentions. Even if he denied subtext, it’s utterly impossible for an artist to make anything–anything at all, and I’ll defend this uncharacteristic absolute until, well, somebody convinces me otherwise–anything at all with absolutely no subtext. We do not all understand our own subconsciouses as well as some of us believe we do, so another person’s interpretation of an artists work can be perfectly valid, even in the face of the artist’s contrary insistance.
In the first place.
In the second place, art goes out through a filter (the artist’s) and is received through a filter (the audience’s). In this process, the audience’s filter is just as important as the artist’s–to the audience.
In the third place, the process of WRITING is distinct from the process of READING, and what an artist thought he was saying might very validly be overridden by what the audience hears.
Wouldn’t happen to be Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Alternative Top 100 American Movies, would it? The Hustler is on that list. If that isn’t the list you’re talking about, you ought to check it out.
It definitely wasn’t a Criterion. [URL-www.criterionco.com]Here is their website
Do you own it? I can’t seem to find any reference to any The Birds discs with any commentary tracks. If I found it, I’d have to have it.
I love The Hustler. Brilliant, brilliant movie.
And “having subtext” is different from “an allegory.” I totally accept Tolkien’s assertion that LotR is not an allegory. Allegories are necessarily consciously constructed by their authors. My point above is that symbolism and subtext are not always consciously apparent to the artist; allegories, indeed, are.
I love the Freudian themes behind many of Hitchcock’s movies but I saw The Birds for a second time a few months back and was bored out of my skull. I agree that it’s one of his lesser films.
Interesting discussion here about the possible subtexts to ‘The Bird.’ But I have a question: is there ANY rational explanation for the scene in which the two women force the children to leave the relative safety of the schoolhouse and run down the street like idiots to be attacked by the birds? The logic behind THAT move has always baffled me. Maybe there is some hidden ‘feminine sexuality’ subtext I’ve been missing…
Freudian subtexts are no stronger anywhere than in The Birds, IMHO.
As for fleeing the schoolhouse, I get the feeling that they just panicked. Had they kept walking, they may have gotten away.
I assume you’re refering to this quote, from the foreword to Fellowship of the Rings:
…which is the most often cited passage for people who decry any sort of critical investigation of Lord of the Rings. However, he’s refering to two specific interpretations of the book there: foremost, that it is meant to be allegorical to the second World War, and, less explicitly, that it is meant to be a Christian allegory in the C.S. Lewis mold. However, he doesn’t deny that such interpretations are possible, merely that those two were not intended, and later infers that he takes no exception to people projecting their own meanings onto his work, so long as they understand that those meanings come from them, and not from the author:
All of which is a bit of a hijack. Sorry, Ilsa. I’ve only seen a couple of Hitchcock films, The Birds being my favorite, but purely on a level of escapist fantasy. Which is, of course, not to say that there’s nothing more than that going on in the film, only that my expectations as a viewer were more than satisfied by engaging with it solely on that level.
Which is why Hitchcock is considered a god.
Interestingly, Paglia admitted that she had never seen the film on the big screen when she wrote the book, and after seeing it theatrically, she said her book would’ve been completely different.
I think the ending has some similarities to John Sayles’ Limbo, where the “resolution” is in the solidarity of the characters, not in the closure of the “story”. Plus, it’s a horror film, so having an ending that’s equal parts opaque and apocalyptic is true to the genre.
I was pointing out that the author wasn’t trying to encode a meaning in the text, but I agree that the subconscious can find ways to express itself. If one’s looking for subconscious expressions in an author’s work, though, doesn’t that amount to some kind of second-hand psychoanalysis?
And many folks draw parallels, as mentioned, between Lord of the Rings and World War II. While that’s great for them, and they’re free to do so, it doesn’t make it a ‘true’ meaning of the book, or anything.
Hitchcock, on the other hand, may well have been encoding a very specific message in The Birds. However, as I think we would all agree, that message may not be the same as the one the viewer extracts.
My faults with the movie don’t lie in the arena of ‘messages’. I understand everyone’s arguments for the symbolism of this, and that… but that’s not what I’m looking for in a movie… and the presence or absence of a message, hwoever cunningly expressed, doesn’t influence my opinion of the work as a whole.
That just seems a bit… shortsighted.
Hmm. That may be, but I honestly think there’s an interview Tolkien participated in with the more direct quote, in which he actually uses the word ‘Escapist’.
Note that I don’t decry critical investigation … I’m just explaining my reason for not becoming involved in it.
I find that analyzing something tends to destroy the fun of it, for me. Gandalf as a Christ figure? I can see it, but I don’t want to pick through the text for every parallel and write a dissertation about it.
As you can imagine, I was often very unhappy in English classes.