Inevitably Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has attracted scholarly attention. Apart from my own book, there are about half a dozen anthologies in print and undoubtedly more publications will follow. A notable new one, Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy has just become available. The table of contents is at the end of this post. (Amazon doesn’t seem to have started shipping yet, so I’ll link to Barnes & Noble, which has.)

[Added August 20: Amazon is at least taking orders now, though they list the book as out of stock.]

Its editors, Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny,  have been friends of mine for many years. I asked if I could interview them about the new collection via email, and here is the result.

So far the books on the Lord of the Rings films have focused largely on the history of the filmmaking and the franchise or on the reception of the films. What approach does your anthology take?

While we asked authors to either talk about the films or do comparisons between the films and the books, we also asked that they not use this as a forum to criticize the films in comparison to Tolkien’s novels, but rather to address the films as another sub-creation, a sort of alternative version of Tolkien’s story, which is how we believe all book-into-film discussions should be approached. We therefore have a mix of essays with different theoretical orientations as well as different writing styles. We wanted to include the many perspectives critics have on how the films and the novels worked.

So we have essays on the films themselves, on fan cultures in relation to films and novels, and on the various kinds of armor and weapons created for the films specifically as interpretations of the information in the novels. We also have essays on the development of the storyline in each version, individual characters in films and fiction, and even considerations of what works better in film or in the written word (several of those). Our theme was not the films, nor the books, but sort of like the two expressive universes, how they related to one another, and where they did and did not intersect. Nevertheless, I am sure it is clear in each essay that Tolkien’s version is the primary, authentic one and Jackson’s, as he also asserts, is built on this vision but, as with all creators, on his own background and experience.

By now there have been quite a few essays published by Tolkien scholars who take a dim view of the films’ failure to be faithful to the novel. I gather that you have tried to avoid having your book turn into another venue for complaints about the films. How widespread do you think this attitude is in Tolkien studies?

The book into film problem seems to have taken on a life of its own for Jackson’s film trilogy – some fans and critics seem to have refused to even consider films – and I gather this may be somewhat justified around the issue of franchising – but I don’t think that there will be a Middle-earth theme park as there is already for Harry Potter. And for me, like many others, this is a great relief.

On the other hand, Tolkien himself wanted people to play with Middle-earth – he said so – and Jackson was respectful, despite his forays into filmic monster, quest, etc. conventions that don’t come from the books at all.

You’ve got an impressive group of Tolkien scholars contributing to the book. Many of these won’t be familiar to fans of the film who might be interested in reading Picturing Tolkien. Could you tell them something about the authors and their contributions?

One of our writers is a film critic, another studies fan cultures as well as Victorian culture, and especially fairies, a third is versed in the many forms and media already used to present Tolkien such as audio tapes, BBC recordings, and long and short plays; Yet others deal with questions of text over visual mediums; others over moral, ethical, and luminal considerations in fiction and film.

Almost all have published on Tolkien in some form or another; at least half of them have published scholarly books, essays in others’ collections, and scholarly annotated versions of Tolkien’s texts. We had met some of them before we put out the call for papers on several discussion lists and by word of mouth, and others were suggested by colleagues and friends. In some cases we had not yet met them at all. Several have come to the Kalamazoo Medieval Congress which Phil and I attend frequently and some the Leeds conference which we don’t get to as often. In at least two cases, I we have not yet met the writers but know of their work. All have a reputation as conference presenters, book reviewers, and published critics, but not all in the same sets of critical dialogs.

I know that, like me, you were fans of Tolkien long before the films came out. We all have our reservations about some of the decisions made by the filmmakers, but I gather that you both basically like the film version a good deal.

I (Janice) liked the films, but I have to admit I like the extended editions a lot more and I like the ‘making of’ products on the extended edition – in fact we just bought another copy of the extended edition on Blu-Ray and are watching it again. My favorite Making of film, as some of you who’ve heard my other papers may know, is the one on the horses as they are used in the films but I also enjoyed ones on the landscapes in New Zealand that were chosen. If you haven’t watched the promotional film on the making of The Hobbit, yet, btw, I would highly recommend it – I love how they take five or six helicopters to look over locations and you probably enjoyed the scenery in the first three films, LOTR as much as I did – can’t say I’ve been to a tour in New Zealand yet but it’s not out of the question and I’ve spoken with several folks who have.

I do have reservations about some of the same choices that others have – for example I REALLY wanted to see Tom Bombadil, and I think way too much effort was put into the massive scenes with thousands of Goblins in Moria, with thousands of horses in the battle before the gates of Moria, and too little on the otherworldly nature of Rivendell and Lothlorien – I agree with one of our essayists that the films underrepresented those very qualities which drew me to the books way back in the mid-1960s (64-66 for me) when I was first able to get hold of them.

How did you go about putting the anthology together?

We discussed whether or not we should get involved in this project with Tyler Cloherty for two years before we decided to go ahead. Largely I was motivated by being granted a sabbatical so that I could concentrate on the work and not be too involved in my position as an academic librarian at a mid-level liberal arts university. We discussed the project also with friends involved in SF criticism, fandom, medieval and literary studies. When we finally felt confident that Cloherty/McFarland was interested in the project, we solicited contributions, using the proposal we got tentatively approved, through contacts we had in those venues – either in person on conferences or through discussion lists and contact points such as Humanities Net. We received more than enough proposals and got abstracts. Then the McFarland editorial board asked us to revise the proposal for their intended market and I agreed to write a two part introduction, one summarizing the history of attempts to make The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings into film, and the second part the more usual introduction, which in the end meant I had much

less time to write my own article. I also asked, at their request, if any of our authors could add information to their essays which would reflect on this history. At the end of the first year, it was clear that two and perhaps three of the authors would not be able to submit articles, so we started looking for others – in this case we were looking for things to supplement what we already had and that’s when I worked with authors such as Kristin (Thompson) and Bob Savage to see if they were interested. I also had some odd experiences – one person demanded to see the list of contributors before he would commit and I just told him I couldn’t do that. Another questioned the orientation of the book (well not only one other) as we intended that, while we knew there were reservations about the Jackson films, this book would not dwell on those as had been done with so many other articles. Another was with

An author who told us three times they didn’t have time and then submitted a paper at the last minute after I had assumed they were out of the picture. We also had an expectation that the articles would be between 6000 and 8000 words but McFarland seemed to change that opinion as some of the articles came in – some are much longer – and so we were able to create a book of almost 300 printed pages rather than their more usually 200 pages. Then we began the editing process – complicated by the fact that people used different endnote and bibliographic formatting and had issues with some of the conventions we tried to use to make indexing easier. At one point, I just paid someone to convert the endnote/bibliography to the right format for some more familiar with British conventions. At another, I had to correct the page proofs for misnaming the Royal Armouries. The formatting question created complications when I tried to merge the papers – that was a two month delay as I tried many methods.

Meanwhile Phil was helping with contacts between us and the authors and us and McFarland. About half the authors in this essay collection were people I knew already and the other half I had either not yet met or still haven’t met. And what was the most exciting for both Phil and I was to see how the essays fit together, fell naturally into groupings (at least it seemed natural), seemed to complement each other, and always taught us each a lot. And then the indexing was another whole enterprise – in fact I drew indexing terms from all the papers first before I started determining page numbers but I also had a PDF version of the page proofs from the publisher which, since I have the Adobe editor version, I could use to help identify pages for the terms – in many cases, however, I still had to look at the pages to be sure I was dealing with the term under the meaning I expected – so for example ‘shot’ can refer to arrows (elf-shot arrows) or to scene ‘shots’, and some people call the thing Frodo is holding on the cover of our book ‘Galadriel’s star glass, the starglass, etc. I also regularized some spelling and ‘macron/accent’ differences at that time which I had not noticed when reading each essay separate – My index came out to be over 30 pages but I don’t know if they will keep it all.

The entire experience has been absorbing, and often delightful. Janice’s favorite parts were conversations on email, telephone, or in person with some of the authors. One called her regularly from England in the early spring of 2009 and also later, at a time when Northern Wisconsin can be a very grim place and the work seemed to have stalled – his cheery voice on the other end of the line was both precious and unexpected. Encouragement from several others of our authors, who joined us at occasional conferences where we discussed the book project, as well as colleagues in my library at Eau Claire and on our campus was very valuable. She feels that she’s been given an opportunity to broaden and develop her talents in ways that were totally unexpected.

Thanks, Jan and Phil!

Here’s the Table of Contents for Picturing Tolkien:

Acknowledgments vi

Preface by Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny 1

Introduction 5

I. Techniques of Story and Structure

Gollum Talks to Himself: Problems and Solutions in Peter Jackson’s Film Adaptation of The Lord of the Rings

KRISTIN THOMPSON 25

Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures

VERLYN FLIEGER 46

Two Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

JOHN D. RATELIFF 54

Tolkien’s Resistance to Linearity: Narrating The Lord of the Rings in Fiction and Film

E.L. RISDEN 70

Filming Folklore: Adapting Fantasy for the Big Screen through Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

DIMITRA FIMI 84

Making the Connection on Page and Screen in Tolkien’s and Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

YVETTE KISOR 102

“It’s Alive!”: Tolkien’s Monster on the Screen

SHARIN SCHROEDER 116

The Matériel of Middle- earth: Arms and Armor in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy

ROBERT C. WOOSNAM- SAVAGE 139

 

II. Techniques of Character and Culture

Into the West: Far Green Country or Shadow on the Waters?

JUDY ANN FORD and ROBIN ANNE REID 169

Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems the Blood of Kings

PHILIP E. KAVENY 183

The Grey Pilgrim: Gandalf and the Challenges of Characterization in Middle- earth

BRIAN D. WALTER 194

Jackson’s Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth

JANET BRENNAN CROFT 216

Neither the Shadow nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film

RICHARD C. WEST 227

Concerning Horses: Establishing Cultural Settings from Tolkien to Jackson

JANICE M. BOGSTAD 238

The Rohirrim, the Anglo- Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F : Ambiguity, Analogy and Reference in Tolkien’s Books and Jackson’s Films

MICHAEL D.C. DROUT 248

Filming the Numinous: The Fate of Lothlórien in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings

JOSEPH RICKE and CATHERINE BARNETT 264

About the Contributors 287

Index 291