My daughter tells of her thrill at being introduced to JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings - the film version. She was five, and I let her watch the first ten minutes of the first movie. Today, she says of the experience, “It was real. They were actual creatures. There was a ring and it was powerful and it was a subtle type of power. It was shiny, attractive, and it corrupted.” She also says that, in addition, “ I was told by you, my Dad, that I would have to wait until I was twelve to see the rest of the film. That was awful. I was hooked.”
Alice didn’t have to wait until she was twelve. At eight we watched all of the first film together. Neither of us could wait. There’s a lot to take in, including high jeopardy for the characters, and a lot of blood and violence. To limit or mediate the potential harm to my daughter, I chatted before and after showing the film on VHS (remember tape?), introducing her to the idea of war and peace, talking about depictions of violence on screen, and asking how she felt about it. I was trying not to give a pre and post lecture. I was trying to be a Dad showing his daughter a (long) film and not be her teacher. I wanted her to form her own mind. I also didn’t want to damage her.
Note the power imbalance in this story - the parent (who feeds you, gives you a place to live/be safe) is telling you it will be OK to have this experience. Not quite a guarantee of safety, but certainly a hefty vote of confidence, particularly if this same parent has kept things relatively safe in the home up to this point.
But maybe you are already thinking, “Too young to be watching that type of movie” or even,
“There is no good age to watch this type of film - they are too violent for anyone to watch – what can be gained from watching a variety of races and characters slicing and saving with sharp swords and gleeful smiles?” These are relevant comments.
Recently, Alice said this about the experience of watching The Lord of the Rings, “They introduced me to a world I wanted to live in, dream about, write about. They made me want to read more and write my own stories and scour libraries for books that were similar but not the same. I have two degrees in English and a big part of studying that subject came from the film versions of Lord of the Rings. And I still play a version of the online LOTR game.” So, no big influence then.
I asked Alice if watching these films had any negative impact on her, and she said this:
“I believed in these tiny (hobbit) people, people my size who were in danger and who could be heroes. I was afraid for them for sure. But I also believed that one of the other bigger heroes would save them, would save the day. I believed it would be ok. Would I as a twenty-four-year-old want to live in that world and go on that quest? Absolutely not!”
We watched these films together - Dad and Daughter - Alice afraid and sitting beside a person who would hopefully keep her safe, or at the very least accompany her on an anxious thrilling journey.
Last week I asked Alice about the time she saw The Return of the King (the third and final instalment of LOTR) in the cinema. It was a 12 Certificate, meaning you had to be at least twelve years old to see it. Alice was nine. I broke the law to get her in. Dubious parenting. Alice said this of the experience: “I was tall, pale with long blonde hair, and there was someone on the screen who looked like me, one of the female characters (Éowyn) riding into battle, having been told not to, riding out risking all, and in the end doing something that men could not do.”
And then I thought: what if you are watching these films and you are a person who is Black. Who most looks like you in LOTR? The Orcs. The baddies. The Orcs, who are very dark-skinned, with the super-Orcs having dreadlocks as well. The Orcs, who are slaughtered without a thought. Who are viewed as beyond redemption. Who are the enemy. Could this imagery be visually saying Black Lives do not Matter in this story? That all the Orcs are good for is slaughter? Either violent or dead. And that the (white) goodies have all the power? It’s certainly one reading of the film.
There is a scene from the trilogy that I use in my work in Northern Ireland as a mediator and peace activist. It’s in the second movie – The Two Towers. Gimli and Legolas (who are the ‘goodies’) are having a competition. They are having a competition to see how many Orcs they can each kill. And as they slash and hammer and arrow their way through a battle, they are seen to be counting their kills… slash – thirteen! Punch – fourteen! They are counting their kills – the number of baddies they have defeated and destroyed. It’s a game to them. Now, clearly it’s a high stakes game: - they are usually outnumbered, and the Orcs are always trying to destroy the so called ‘goodies’ in really terrible ways. The “counting their kill” piece is partly a dramatic device – to alleviate the extended fight sequences with some humour, and to make the characters stand out with this little sub-plot of who can kill the most?. And it makes us root for the “good guys”, and as we get caught up in the competition, we are cheering for Legolas and Gimli. Who will get the most, and what new and original ways will they kill the bad Orcs? And the Orcs are fodder. Like most soldiers in a war. And the Orcs are expendable. Like most soldiers in a war. The Orcs are made, not born and so we don’t have to worry about grieving parents. When I used this Gimli/Legolas scene with former paramilitaries in Northern Ireland – men (and sometimes women) who had previously taken up arms, I used to talk to them about their past lives as people who were “violent for a cause”, about the bleak humour that emerged from a “fighting culture”, about the deep focus and purpose that a conflict can bring, about the sense of belonging to a tribe, to an army, about the adrenaline-high of battle, and about the lack of clarity and support when the war ended. Then the Lord of the Rings characters and these ex-combatants came together in a creative venture as I imagined what it might be like for the Orcs after the war was over. After the film was over. They have no purpose, no chain of command, no direction. And the way to deal with an Orc was to kill him if you met him. The only good Orc is a dead Orc. I thought – what if I gave one of these Orcs a voice? And what if I set him down in a certain part of Belfast and had him interact with some of the residents there? In other words, I was trying to humanize the enemy, without also justifying their acts of violence. What do fighters do after the official fight is over? And where do they go? And how might they be received? And so, the poem Cast came into being. Here it is.
Cast
(After Tolkien)
Winners rejoice.
After the war
I travelled.
There was
no running
from the scene
of the crime.
I limped.
No attempt made
to make sense
of the worlds turning.
After the Trouble,
nothing to aim at.
No-one to follow. No official
armour. No
formal protection.
It didn’t suit me.
After war, stories of war
are gold.
For the winners.
I am lost and broke.
Taken in
by the East. Belfast.
Found the people
great at staring.
They fill my silence
with talk
about the weather
and their tiny war.
A small pocket heard their own
melancholy echo
in my sullen canyons,
mistook my silence for wisdom.
I am an alien
in their mist,
a rare breed, exotic.
They call me their
friendly foreign warrior
in a tone that tries to tame
their fear of me. I am not
liked
or
like them.
I once growled
with impatience
in the chip shop queue
when the server in an apron and stupid hat
couldn’t make out my accent.
‘Cod or haddock?’ he said
‘Battered sausage’ said a clown in the queue.
‘Cowboy Suppers at dawn’ shouted another.
‘Give peas in gravy a chance’ said a third.
He got the gist
when I bared my teeth.
Several ladies took a shine,
mistook my singleness for sex-available.
Over beer they advised:
forget the past,
cut your hair.
Re-invent
your life with a perm.
Others said
I was cast
- bad, beyond fixing.
No costume change will change
the suffering I have caused.
One minute the dog was growling.
Next it was dead, neck broken.
I blame my
up-bringing.
Our dogs were food not pets.
Why care
for an animal?
Most locals are friendly,
shuffle away,
stare at their feet
when we meet. Virtually no
name-calling.
Some say Mr Orc
as a mark of respect.
A pony-tailed teen on a dare
sneaked behind me,
sniffed me like an animal,
gagged at my signature smell.
Orcs do smell.
We all smell
underneath
the fake flower
deodorant.
Two local chiefs
tried to recruit me
for their after-war
battle of greed.
Holding gold
holds no comfort.
I refused the offer
you can’t refuse,
ended the parley
by pulling teeth
from the mouth of the man with the threat
who formed his last words with a bloody tongue
and a cut lip.
Leave me alone
I wrote
on his face.
with my fists.
Bingo was confusing, the balls bright.
The callers amplified voice
threw me.
I roared, was asked to leave.
Two fat ladies
laughed as I left, shouting out:
“On its own, the number one!”
I sit and steam
in a damp derelict:
broken spouts,
leaking roof,
clogged drains.
I don`t want
to hear the devil
who comes with beer
and whispers
You were bred for brawls.
---
Paul Hutchinson is the founder/director of Imagined Spaces and the former Centre Director of Corrymeela, where he still regularly leads retreats. He is a mediator and educator (including Visiting Professor at Dalhousie University & the Atlantic School of Theology), and an award-winning documentary filmmaker and writer.
