Lord of the Rg Taps a Gay Archetype - The Gay & Lbian Review

Contents:

• LORD OF THE RG TAPS A GAY ARCHETYPE
• IS ‘THE LORD OF THE RGS’ A QUEER LOVE STORY?IN TOLKIEN’S FANTASY WORLD, GENR IS “OTHER”JONATHAN POLETTI·FOLLOWPUBLISHED ???????????·8 M READ·FEB 18, 2021--18SHAREIT WAS STRANGE — AN ALL-MALE EPIC WHOSE HERO WERE THE FEME ON? NOT EVERYBODY WAS TO “THE LORD OF THE RGS.” REVIEWS WERE FULL OF TART REMARKS.IN 1955, ONE NOT THAT J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S CHARACTERS SEEM NOT TO KNOW “ANYTHG ABOUT WOMEN, EXCEPT BY HEARSAY.” BUT, YEAR BY YEAR, THE WORLD FELL LOVE WH THE BIGGT, QUEERT, MOST CLOSETED LOVE STORY EVER.GIZTHEGUNSLGER, “BEHD BLUE EY” (2020)TOLKIEN’S SPECI’ ARE FULL OF GENRED CU.A HOBB, FOR EXAMPLE, IS SORT OF GAY. THIS SEEMS TO ME OVERT AND UNNTROVERSIAL. HILARY WHEATON, A 2006 SAY, “MASCULY LORD OF THE RGS,” NOT THE HOBBS SEEM “FEMIZED,” WH A LACK OF “MASCULE TRAS.”BUT THE GENERALLY STRAIGHT WORLD OF TOLKIEN FANS, SUCH OBSERVATNS N TO TROUBLE. IN A 2015 SAY, “SEX AND SUBTEXT TOLKIEN’S WORLD,” DAVID LAFONTAE ADDS: “THE HOMOEROTICISM OF THE HOBBS, THE RACE OF BEGS THAT LNCHED TOLKIEN’S FAME, HAS OFTEN BEEN GLOSSED OVER, NIED, AND SOMETIM ATTACKED.”HE POTS OUT THAT GOLLUM READ AS A “LISPG HOLLYWOOD STEREOTYPE OF A BTER QUEEN.”TOLKIEN HAD ALL BUT SAID THAT BAGGS WAS GAY.
• THE LORD OF THE RGS FAN SE EMBARRASS ITSELF BY PROMOTG EASILY DISPROVABLE GAY ELV THEORY
• 'LORD OF THE RGS' ACTOR VIGGO MORTENSEN FENDS CISN TO PLAY GAY ROLE
• THE LORD OF THE RGS FAN SE EMBARRASS ITSELF BY PROMOTG EASILY DISPROVABLE GAY ELV THEORY
• THE GAY LORD OF THE RGS: READGS FROM MIDDLE-EARTH

LORD OF THE RG TAPS A GAY ARCHETYPE

Note: This say ntas discsn of homophobia and mentn of suici. Outsi of the safe darkns of the theater, the Mordor-like wasteland of middle school, the movi were synonymo wh the favored sult of the time — “gay.

Early-2000s preteen Ameri was a time of gay jok, of “no homo, ” of mockg voic and slurs, and secret, punive vlence enacted the locker room agast anyone who had a whiff of otherns. He never would have wrten about gay people! He faced a urt-martial 1918 after one of his letters scribed “homosexual relatns wh men his pany.

IS ‘THE LORD OF THE RGS’ A QUEER LOVE STORY?IN TOLKIEN’S FANTASY WORLD, GENR IS “OTHER”JONATHAN POLETTI·FOLLOWPUBLISHED ???????????·8 M READ·FEB 18, 2021--18SHAREIT WAS STRANGE — AN ALL-MALE EPIC WHOSE HERO WERE THE FEME ON? NOT EVERYBODY WAS TO “THE LORD OF THE RGS.” REVIEWS WERE FULL OF TART REMARKS.IN 1955, ONE NOT THAT J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S CHARACTERS SEEM NOT TO KNOW “ANYTHG ABOUT WOMEN, EXCEPT BY HEARSAY.” BUT, YEAR BY YEAR, THE WORLD FELL LOVE WH THE BIGGT, QUEERT, MOST CLOSETED LOVE STORY EVER.GIZTHEGUNSLGER, “BEHD BLUE EY” (2020)TOLKIEN’S SPECI’ ARE FULL OF GENRED CU.A HOBB, FOR EXAMPLE, IS SORT OF GAY. THIS SEEMS TO ME OVERT AND UNNTROVERSIAL. HILARY WHEATON, A 2006 SAY, “MASCULY LORD OF THE RGS,” NOT THE HOBBS SEEM “FEMIZED,” WH A LACK OF “MASCULE TRAS.”BUT THE GENERALLY STRAIGHT WORLD OF TOLKIEN FANS, SUCH OBSERVATNS N TO TROUBLE. IN A 2015 SAY, “SEX AND SUBTEXT TOLKIEN’S WORLD,” DAVID LAFONTAE ADDS: “THE HOMOEROTICISM OF THE HOBBS, THE RACE OF BEGS THAT LNCHED TOLKIEN’S FAME, HAS OFTEN BEEN GLOSSED OVER, NIED, AND SOMETIM ATTACKED.”HE POTS OUT THAT GOLLUM READ AS A “LISPG HOLLYWOOD STEREOTYPE OF A BTER QUEEN.”TOLKIEN HAD ALL BUT SAID THAT BAGGS WAS GAY.

Two years before The Lord of the Rgs was published, war-wng breaker and geni mathematician Alan Turg stood trial for “homosexual acts and gross cency” — that is, beg ught his own home wh another man. Lewis wrote a letter to Sheldon Vanken (later reprted Vanken’s tobgraphy) that Lewis had received a letter om a “p male homosexual [...

The only mentn is a bland reference his bgraphy by Humphrey Carpenter: “As to homosexualy, Tolkien claimed that at neteen he did not even know the word. Tolkien wrote of the openly gay poet W. As scribed by thor Reynolds Price, at least one member of Tolkien’s iend group, the Inklgs, “separated om his wife and lived a quietly homosexual life.

THE LORD OF THE RGS FAN SE EMBARRASS ITSELF BY PROMOTG EASILY DISPROVABLE GAY ELV THEORY

She beme an in the gay male muny for wrg sympathetilly about same-sex relatnships ancient Greece. Bilbo and Frodo’s home of Bag End is scribed by other hobbs as “a queer place, and s folk are queerer” — an adjective which had a strong nnotatn of homosexualy by the late 1800s. It’s tricky to apply morn labels to people that they did not claim life — but morn labels clu “straight” and “cisgenr” jt as much as “gay” or “transgenr.

One of them was Geofey Bache Smh, a poet whose work is nsired homoromantic by morn rears. “Homosexualy the First World War. In The Lord of the Rgs: The Fellowship of the Rg's st mentary, Ian McKellen, a gay in his own right who played Gandalf the Grey, revealed that he was rponsible for the cln of a small but ccial moment between Sam (Sean Ast) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) that featured the books but might not have ma to the films whout his suggtn.

'LORD OF THE RGS' ACTOR VIGGO MORTENSEN FENDS CISN TO PLAY GAY ROLE

"When I suggted to Sean that he take Elijah's hand, ” McKellen explas, “ was bee I thought that [] might be missed by two rolutely heterosexual actors who might not appreciate that gay people, like myself, saw a touch somethg, perhaps, more meangful than others might. McKellen’s suggtn exemplifi how The Lord of the Rgs so succsfully rved a niche for self as a part of queer fandom, and why LGBTQ+ fans are so drawn to the Sam/Frodo relatnship the books: Though Tolkien himself likely didn’t tend to the relatnship as gay, the sheer tenrns of the language and the nstant affectn between the two speaks to a kd of timacy that queer fans are able to regnize and ronate wh. THE LORD OF THE RINGS giv a signifint purpose and meang to endurg male-male partnerships that many more overtly gay narrativ do not.

THE LORD OF THE RGS FAN SE EMBARRASS ITSELF BY PROMOTG EASILY DISPROVABLE GAY ELV THEORY

The homoerotic aspects of this motif of male partnership are strikgly evint Tolkien’s novel, which Sam is portrayed as much more than jt a close iend to Frodo. While ’s te that Tolkien had a wife and raised a fay, extremely close male iendships were the primary foc of his social life, and ’s clear om his poignant pictns of male pannship that somethg eply homoerotic if not homosexual stirred his soul, somethg that was perhaps both aroed and cshed the trench of World War I. This same-sex nfiguratn of self-actualizatn echo closely the dividuatn procs for gay men scribed by gay-centered psychologist Mch Walker, who has brought a much-need homosexual perspective to Jungian psychology and elucidated the signifince of “a special, erotic, tw ‘brother’ who is felt to be the ‘source of spiratn’” a gay man’s psyche.

THE GAY LORD OF THE RGS: READGS FROM MIDDLE-EARTH

Walker has termed this ner archetypal figure the “Double, ” who appears the unnsc ner world of all men, straight or gay, as the unrpng for ego inty and the source of “brotherly love. ” Yet for gay men, Walker explas, this archetypal beg is erotilly charged and be the primary “soul figure, ” exactly the role that Sam plays for Frodo, as “a soul-mate of tense warmth and closens” who n “unlock creative procs” and lead to “signifint self-realizatns. The relatnship between Frodo and Sam is not only an o to same-sex love but also an archetypal dynamic wh each gay man, where self-reflectn may reveal the existence of an ner lover or a “soul figure” and gui who lov jt as Sam lov Frodo, and who, like Sam, n spur to reach our greatt potential.

In the two films so far released, Jackson has elected not to show much of the homoerotic behavr that the novel scrib as occurrg between Sam and Frodo. This means that gay filmgoers mt e their imagatns to “re-eroticize” the partnership between Sam and Frodo even as they wns a particularly rich, eroticized portrayal of the shadow the form of Gollum.