Middle Earth Merch

In the late 70’s I was a Tolkien geek. I’ve mentioned this before. I wasn’t a Tolkien geek in San Francisco or New York or any other big city, where I might have seen ‘Frodo Lives’ painted on a wall, hung out with other Tolkien club members, and visited science fiction & fantasy conventions.

Nope. I was a thirteen-year-old Tolkien geek in the middle of a charming, unpretentious, aggressively rural flyover county. Circuses, tent revivals, and police reports in the newspaper were brilliant entertainment. The nearest bookstore with any stock of science fiction or fantasy was 13 miles away, the next was 60 miles away, and the big city was almost 200 miles away. Long-distance fannish interactions were conducted through the mail, and subject to parental approval and the time lag of the postal service.

Even so, when The Silmarillion was published, it was An Event in my little world. My parents got the deluxe hardback edition in a gold-tooled box (2nd printing was all we could afford) and we scuffled over who got to read it first. By the time my turn arrived, family reviews had evolved to somewhere between ‘Meh’ and ‘Reads too much like the Bible.’

That didn’t faze me. Nor did the frustratingly dry, truncated stories, alive with scant glimmers of real personality and adventure. I’d glimpsed another door into a world alive with the same perilous magic as Tolkien’s short story ‘Smith of Wootton Major’, and I jammed my foot in the door to keep it open. I began my first horrid attempts at writing fiction. Middle Earth and other fantastic worlds were balm for the isolation of a bright, bored, and somewhat lazy teenager. Most kids in my school knew about George Lucas (another early Beacon of Hope), but almost no one read Tolkien.

So fantasy became a private passion.

That old perilous magic withstood the Star Wars Holiday Special and Jar-Jar Binks, stacks of literary rejection letters, the distance of once-close friends, and the reality behind the words ‘I am a writer’. I still tend to look sideways at both Lucasfilm and the Tolkien estate for the umpteen gazillion novelizations they’ve commissioned over the years. As a once die-hard fan of both Star Wars and Middle-Earth, I’ve only read a few of each franchise’s offerings – and have no real wish to read more. Magic runs deep: a single line in The Silmarillion pushed me toward discovering embroidery, beadwork, and fiber arts. Magic survived the first round of Peter Jackson’s cinematic vision of Middle Earth. Jackson did a reasonable job, after all, and it was fun to see new fans stumbling into wonder and fantasy. (I won’t even dignify ‘Saturday Night Live’ skits and the porn industry with a more complete mention.)

The first ‘Hobbit’ movie is due out in a few weeks. I’m bemused and dismayed by the newest onslaught of merchandising and movie tie-ins. Okay, I can see New Zealand turning itself inside out to entice tourists, and I’ll forgive Air New Zealand for that not-quite-funny airline safety commercial. Hobbits have appetites like starving weasels, so maybe Denny’s can be forgiven a Hobbit-themed comfort food menu.

But the Tolkien estate is absolutely correct to smack down Warner for ‘an $80 million lawsuit over online slot machines and other digital merchandising’. Really. Slot machines?

Magic isn’t dead, but it’s taken a beating.

 

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