May 02, 2003
tolkien by chomsky
McSweeney's has recovered the "lost DVDs" of Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, deconstructed by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Fun stuff.
Link via SubIntoc.
I read LOTR twice, and never realized how saturated with pro-western propaganda it is.
How could I have been so blind? OF COURSE the Orcs are an oppressed people! They're not cute and lovable like the elves.
And Gandalf! Slinking around, assuming new identities at the drop of a pointy hat. Just where did he get those fireworks, anyway? This is no simple 'hedge wizard'. Wheels within wheels...
However, I disagree with Howard on the characterization of the Hobbits as 'criminals'. Do I detect a lingering touch of 'tall' chauvinism? Shame.
Why must short people forever endure the opprobrium of those less vertically challenged? You would think that at least these two would have managed to 'rise above' such pettyness.
But no, they must continue to look down on the 'little people'. Tsk. Don't hate the Hobbits just because they're cute.
Posted by: Big John on May 3, 2003 07:43 PMThanks for this. I was reminded of why I hated deconstructionism when I had to study it at university. It still has very little of any real meaning to say.
Posted by: erik on May 6, 2003 04:12 AMFor the ultimate in Deconstructionist satire, see:
eutopia.cua.edu/article.cfm?ID=11&Page=1
Eric, did they really FORCE you to study that garbage? I'd heard stories like that, but I couldn't accept that it might actually be true!
The horror.. the horror..
Big John, Deconstructionism was BIG at my university.
And I had to listen to a whole hour of Jaques Derrida making an absolute mess of his blather on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my favourite German poets.
Ah well, the indignities we suffer for an education. (And it didn't even help. Oh well.)
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