Long have writers who adapt books for the big screen taken the mantle upon themselves to shift plots, change locations, and to tinker with characters and their motivations in an attempt to make the story "filmable," "watchable," or " to make it flow better." In many cases, the entire story is re-adapted and set in a completely different world as it were. To wit: The Taming of the Shrew --> Ten Things I Hate About You. And I suppose there is nothing especially wrong with this practice, as long as the screenwriter is aware of, and honest about, what he/she is doing. But I have a bone to pick with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, the co-screenwriters of the recent film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novel: The Lord of the Rings.
First let me say, in their defense, I think they did a fine job with the films
overall, sticking to the most important, touching and recurring themes of the novel. However, what they did to Aragorn is something altogether different, (and perhaps--just perhaps, it was done unconsciously--which in itself is scary, but I'm getting ahead of myself). They reduced him to a doubting, visionless ghost of the stronger, more confident Aragorn penned by Tolkien. But why?
First, let's look at some of the glaring differences between Tolkien's Aragorn and Jackson's.
From the first few moments after we meet Aragorn in the book, it becomes clear he is man with a bold plan, sure of his place in the world, with the ability, foresight and (God forbid!) ambition to set about the task of re-claiming his birthright: the throne of men.
In the book, when Samwise challenges him in their room in the Prancing Pony, Strider immediately draws out the greater shard of Narsil, which he carries with him at all times. He even manages to make light of how silly it seems, drawing the broken blade, even on a Hobbit, but still he is not ashamed of his birthright. In the film, he shuns the very touch of the shards, and even refuses to carry them. Still, in the film, he does hold the Shards of Narsil in great regard, too much perhaps, as if they were worthy of some worshipful reverence, yet his face, laced with a pained self-loathing, speaks of the Jacksonian Argorn's shame and doubt over his lineage. Hardly the case in the book.
Then worst of all, we have Aragorn setting out on the quest without the reforged Anduril. In the book, he offers his service (by the power of the sword of Elendil, now reforged) to Boromir and Minas Tirith, and all but accepts the crown of the King of Gondor at the counsel of Elrond! Not the case in the movie, where his ambitious nature is played down to nearly nothing. In fact, even the siege of Gondor does not seem enough to motivate him to carry Anduril. Rather it's his love for a "dying" Arwen that seems to tip the balance in the film.
OK. So what? What difference does it make? (you may ask)
My answer: none really. Other than it points to some very interesting observations that can be made about how attitudes have changed in the world since the 1940's, when the greater portion of LOTR was written.
First, we must be aware that Tolkien was penning more than just a fantasy novel. As professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, his interests were steeped in the northern European languages, legends, myths and folklore. One might say that LOTR was an attempt to tie many of these fragmented "faerie stories" into a single grand work, piecing together a kind of long lost epic history for Northern Europe, and England in particular. We see this clearly when we acknowledge the fact that he lifted many scenes, and location & character names (especially in Rohan) directly from these older works (such as Beowulf). And the names of the twelve dwarves in Thorin's Company in The Hobbit came directly from an ancient Norse writing. As did the name: Gandalf. Considering all this, it should be clear that a love-lorn, doubting, self-loathing, would-be king is hardly in keeping with something one would expect to read about in Beowulf or The Kalevala. So instead, we get a strong, confident (soon to be) king from Tolkien, in keeping with the tradition of those epic legends.
So then, why do we get such a (relatively) wimpy Aragorn in Jackson's version? The easy answer is that the changes made the story more palpable to the modern movie-going palate, more tension-filled and therefore more exciting for "us," the audience. Was the reason they played up the love interest with Arwen (rather than the true Aragorn's ambitions to reclaim the throne) simply a monetary one? "Sure LOTR will bring in the sci-fi/fantasy geeks, but how do we keep the women interested? I know! Let's bring Arwen out of the appendices and make a love-story sub-plot! Perfect!"
Still, there could be something else behind all this.
Could it be that the social changes in the west have been so dramatic as to make the original Aragorn appear too much like Sauron? Ambitious, almost too confident? Or is it that he might appear too much like real-life characters? Like say...Nixon...or Stalin? And not enough like the very recognizable half-neutered, wishy-washy, metrosexual "heroes", that we have become all too familiar with in modern popular culture?
The strong, heroic figure is all but gone from modern culture. Not necessarily a completely bad thing, for they too have their blindnesses and faults. But should they be done away with altogether? Is it really that bad to have maybe one or two white males show a little spine, and trustworthyness from time to time? Or have we all become to comfortable with the neomasculanglophobicism so in vogue these days.
Try watching television programs and commercials or listening to the radio with open ears for a week or two and it should be come rapidly apparent (if you really listen) that men, especially white men, have become the red-headed step children of today. They are taken out behind the wood shed and given a proper verbal beating on an hourly basis. They are made sport of constantly: belittled and insulted, never given the benefit of the doubt, and constantly accused of being stupid, moronic, over-sexed pigs without a moral, trustworthy, or intelligent bone in their body.
Does this sound familiar or alien to you? If you are a gen-x'er (or later) it probably just sounds like I'm a silly, angry white male myself (perhaps). But if you study history, or are over the age of 70, it should all ring an ugly, mis-shaped bell. For there was a time in America when this type of shamless, idiotic stereotyping in the media was aimed at African Americans, Asian Americans, Aboriginal Americans, etc., without remorse and without condemnation (See: Amos and Andy, Sambo's restaraunts, early Hollywood type casting, early westerns, early 20th century folk art from all parts of the country, etc). But we went through a period of great strife in this country to try to remove those types of attitudes and behaviors, with varying degrees of success. But people change slowly. Unfortunately, the need to look down on others seems to be inherint in the human make-up. A need to feel superior to someone else. And this has certainly not been driven from us by the civil rights movement or this new age of political correctness, it is only the target that has changed. Now it's white men.
Maybe it's just our turn, time for the Fateful Finger of Misfortune to point at us. If so, I can live with that. But I still think we are responsible for our actions, no matter how "deserving" we may believe a group of people are for they're being maltreated.
And so, for continuing the malicious circle of mistrust we owe a few thanks. I think we can begin by thanking the feminist movement. (Which is silly really, where would the feminine be without the masculine? Dead. Unprocreated. That's where.) Then we can move on to thank people like Nixon and Hitler and Stalin for being such fine examples of despicable human beings. We can thank Watergate, the Vietnam War, cocaine, the porn industry, the New York Times, Liberalism, Conservatism, Maoism, the Christian Apostasy, Hugh Hefner, Ronald Reagan, Joseph McCarthy, FDR, JFK, Dubya, the moral relativists, and a few million nameless others, but to be perfectly succinct: we can thank ourselves. Because they are we, and we are they.
We are the ones who tolerate the constant targeting of
them.
They are bad.
They are stupid.
They are not welcome.
They are going to destroy us.
They hate us, so we should hate
them.
To this I say: Hate destroys only the Hater.
So the next time you laugh at a commercial in which a male is made sport of by being a stereotypically white American male, ask yourself: if this commercial stereotyped blacks or Asians or Latinos, would you still be laughing? Would you feel comfortable doing so at work, in front of your boss? I wonder...
