LORD IMPERATOR
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2020
Basically, Moorcock is angry at epic fantasy that draws its cues from past religions and traditions, and for lionizing said past religions and traditions. He's essentially the old man version of an SJW whining about how racist and sexist old-world traditionalism is. He's angry that Lord of the Rings wants to be a Christian version of the Iliad and the Odyssey, instead of being a down-to-earth grey morality fantasy full of depression and darkness.
He doesn't like the fact that Tolkien's fiction comforts those with religious and conservative leanings, as if fiction isn't made as comfort food for the soul 90% of the time:
"Tolkien does, admittedly, rise above this sort of thing on occasions, in some key scenes, but often such a scene will be ruined by ghastly verse and it is remarkable how frequently he will draw back from the implications of the subject matter. Like Chesterton, and other orthodox Christian writers who substituted faith for artistic rigour he sees the petit bourgeoisie, the honest artisans and peasants, as the bulwark against Chaos. These people are always sentimentalized in such fiction because traditionally, they are always the last to complain about any deficiencies in the social status quo. They are a type familiar to anyone who ever watched an English film of the thirties and forties, particularly a war-film, where they represented solid good sense opposed to a perverted intellectualism. In many ways The Lord of the Rings is, if not exactly anti-romantic, an anti-romance.
Tolkien, and his fellow "Inklings" (the dons who met in Lewis's Oxford rooms to read their work in progress to one another), had extraordinarily ambiguous attitudes towards Romance (and just about everything else), which is doubtless why his trilogy has so many confused moments when the tension flags completely. But he could, at his best, produce prose much better than that of his Oxford contemporaries who perhaps lacked his respect for middle-English poetry. He claimed that his work was primarily linguistic in its original conception, that there were no symbols or allegories to be found in it, but his beliefs permeate the book as thoroughly as they do the books of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, who, consciously or unconsciously, promoted their orthodox Toryism in everything they wrote. While there is an argument for the reactionary nature of the books, they are certainly deeply conservative and strongly anti-urban, which is what leads some to associate them with a kind of Wagnerish hitlerism. I don't think these books are 'fascist', but they certainly don't exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don't ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what's best for us
I suppose I respond so antipathetically to Lewis and Tolkien because I find this sort of consolatory orthodoxy as distasteful as any other self-serving misanthropic doctrine. One should perhaps feel some sympathy for the nervousness occasionally revealed beneath their thick layers of stuffy self-satisfaction, typical of the second-rate schoolmaster so cheerfully mocked by Peake and Rowling, but sympathy is hard to sustain in the teeth of their hidden aggression which is so often accompanied by a deep-rooted hypocrisy. Their theories dignify the mood of a disenchanted and thoroughly discredited section of the repressed English middle-class too afraid, even as it falls, to make any sort of direct complaint ("They kicked us out of Rhodesia, you know"), least of all to the Higher Authority, their Tory God who has evidently failed them."
Tolkien, and his fellow "Inklings" (the dons who met in Lewis's Oxford rooms to read their work in progress to one another), had extraordinarily ambiguous attitudes towards Romance (and just about everything else), which is doubtless why his trilogy has so many confused moments when the tension flags completely. But he could, at his best, produce prose much better than that of his Oxford contemporaries who perhaps lacked his respect for middle-English poetry. He claimed that his work was primarily linguistic in its original conception, that there were no symbols or allegories to be found in it, but his beliefs permeate the book as thoroughly as they do the books of Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis, who, consciously or unconsciously, promoted their orthodox Toryism in everything they wrote. While there is an argument for the reactionary nature of the books, they are certainly deeply conservative and strongly anti-urban, which is what leads some to associate them with a kind of Wagnerish hitlerism. I don't think these books are 'fascist', but they certainly don't exactly argue with the 18th century enlightened Toryism with which the English comfort themselves so frequently in these upsetting times. They don't ask any questions of white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what's best for us
I suppose I respond so antipathetically to Lewis and Tolkien because I find this sort of consolatory orthodoxy as distasteful as any other self-serving misanthropic doctrine. One should perhaps feel some sympathy for the nervousness occasionally revealed beneath their thick layers of stuffy self-satisfaction, typical of the second-rate schoolmaster so cheerfully mocked by Peake and Rowling, but sympathy is hard to sustain in the teeth of their hidden aggression which is so often accompanied by a deep-rooted hypocrisy. Their theories dignify the mood of a disenchanted and thoroughly discredited section of the repressed English middle-class too afraid, even as it falls, to make any sort of direct complaint ("They kicked us out of Rhodesia, you know"), least of all to the Higher Authority, their Tory God who has evidently failed them."
In other words, "WAAAA! TOLKIEN IS A RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVE WHO LIKES TO WRITE FICTION THAT MAKES RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES HAPPY, HE'S A HYPOCRITE!"
How the fuck does a guy like Razorfist fall in love with Michael Moorcock? I mean, the man's a flaming libtard, and Razorfist hates libtards. That's even weirder than say, a Catholic who likes Bayonetta, or a capitalist who likes Star Trek. At least with the former, a Catholic player can maybe explain it by saying that the angels in Bayonetta worship a heathen goddess instead of worshiping the Holy Trinity, which would justify kicking the shit out of them for praying to the wrong god. And with the latter, maybe the capitalist viewer sympathizes with the Ferengi characters. But Moorcock is definitely of the same stripe as George RR Martin and other writers who despise traditionalism and religion. They'd be totally on board with socialism, cancel culture, intersectional feminism, and race-pimping to get the leftists happy. GRRM allowed for race-bending in House of the Dragon to turn the Velaryons black, and Moorcock supported the censoring of the Gor novels, showing how even back then, (2009) he was already in favor of cancel culture before the term was even coined.
And of course, Moorcock is shitting on Tolkien and other writers for affirming Christian truths, seeing it as them substituting faith for artistic rigor, as if you can't be an artist unless you go against what your grand-daddy believed in. (LOL, what does that mean for Renaissance Art?) Moorcock is basically one of those hipster douchebags who think that only the anti-traditionalist, anti-religious people are capable of artistic rigor. Razor's been trying to woo the Christian libertarian side. I wonder how this will pan out when they find out that his favorite author hates religion?
Not to mention the fact that Tolkien's works contained lessons about different races that hate each other having to work with each other-The Elves don't trust men because man had the chance to kill Sauron once and for all and they blew it, while the Dwarves don't trust Elves. And part of the story involves these races losing that mistrust and becoming fire-forged friends. That's not at all revolutionary now, but in the pre-Civil Rights Movement era, that was a rather revolutionary thought, especially since racial discrimination was still accepted as law in places within Western Civilization at the time when Fellowship of the Ring was published. (July 29, 1954) So it's quite obvious that there are parts of Tolkien's work that's anything but propaganda for old conservatives, when it shows that ideas of racial superiority are obstacles to freedom and peace, not traditions to be held dear. That kind of talk would make whites at the time queasy, especially since people in places like France or the Dixie South still believed in racial superiority.
So basically, not only does Razor love the kind of author who'd shut him up without a second thought, but said author is hilariously wrong about Tolkien, whining like a bitch that a popular author dares to comfort people who hang on to religion and tradition, instead of challenging them and making them queasy.
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