Monday, December 07, 2009

The Imperial Shire

Chomsky: We should examine carefully what's being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the "master ring," the so-called "one ring to rule them all," is actually a rather elaborate justification for preemptive war on Mordor.

Zinn: I think that's correct. Tolkien makes no attempt to hide the fact that rings are wielded by every other ethnic enclave in Middle Earth. The Dwarves have seven rings, the Elves have three. The race of Man has nine rings, for God's sake. There are at least 19 rings floating around out there in Middle Earth, and yet Sauron's ring is supposedly so terrible that no one can be allowed to wield it. Why?

Oh, snap! McSweeney's presents the Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky commentary track for Fellowship of the Ring. More here.

2 comments:

Brian Dunbar said...

I got as far as where they'd determined that Orcs are simple hunter-gatherers, preyed upon by an elf-man coalition of industrial barbarians .. and then my brains exploded.

Oh, McSweeney's: you are a gorgeous website of hilarity and satire.

Rufus said...

It's one of the best, definitely, with The Onion being my favorite overall.