[lbo-talk] Reading the Ring

dredmond at efn.org dredmond at efn.org
Wed Jun 9 18:49:59 PDT 2004



> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 at 5:00pm Todd Archer wrote:
>
>> LOTR has lots of Biblical and Christian references.
>
> duh.
>
> like i said, i have read them.
>
> why read the knockoff when the original is available?

LOTR isn't Christian. In terms of theology, the books come closest to what Walter Benjamin would've called allegories of monopoly capitalism. Tolkien couldn't know that, any more than Balzac could've known that his novels were a savage critique of liberal-era capitalism.

It's not about personal taste, though. The LOTR epic is hugely popular and touches some deep-seated geopolitical anxieties in the multinational consumer culture, in ways that other narratives can't. It's worth asking why that's so.

-- DRR



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