With the arrival of The Rings of Power on our screens today it seems appropriate to consider some of the great themes of our age.
More and more I find myself asking, like Theoden, how did it come to this?
This clip always gives me goosebumps on my goosebumps. Of course we’re being emotionally manipulated by the scene setting, the script, the pacing, the acting, the music, and the cuts to scenes of the preparation for war - but that’s what it’s all about. That’s why we love this stuff. And this, for me, is a masterclass in manipulation.
I’ve no problem in being manipulated this way, because I choose to be manipulated and participate in it. It’s only a story, it’s only a movie, but it evokes something profound, like good art should.
Here’s the poem Theoden recites :
Bernard Hill’s performance in these movies is somewhat underrated I think, and in my view he steals the show in almost every scene he’s in. He gets my vote for “man of the match”. And he’s up against some very stiff competition.
Have you noticed how many of the ‘solutions’ to today’s apparent problems end up with us having less freedom?
It was a rhetorical question, because of course you have.
It’s never made very clear in The Lord of the Rings what the actual power of the One Ring is, but the consensus seems to be that its chief power lies in the ability to control, to manipulate, to dominate the will, to induce fear and to instil hopelessness. Sauron is described as an arch-manipulator who poured all his malice and desire for control into the ring.
The rings of power were made for, ostensibly, good purposes. Sauron manipulated the men, the dwarves, and the elves into their creation - all the while, in secret, forging the One Ring which would allow him to control them all.
Tolkien firmly and vigorously denied that his stories were meant to be allegorical in any way - but I can’t help feeling that Sauron’s manipulation and power-grab are something of a reasonable parallel to trends today.
It’s fun to speculate on the reasons. It’s fun to imagine some great dark conspiracy, to feel the tentacles of the “New World Order” (the Schwabicles?) tighten their grip. It might also be closer to the truth than other explanations. But the end result is the same, regardless of the reason. Governments, institutions, and large corporations are steadily increasing their power and influence.
They have seduced us with, ostensibly, “good” reasons. We must protect everyone’s health. We must save the planet. We must make everyone feel safe. We must allow everyone to express their own unique gender and sexuality. We must fight racism. We must stop the spread of misinformation. We must protect people from hate speech.
These are the ‘rings’ of power that are being forged - but, we might wonder, whether there’s a hidden ring being created behind the scenes.
Take climate alarmism, for example. Is the world’s climate changing? Yes, probably. It does that from time to time. Is it being caused by the activity of mankind? Maybe it’s a contributory factor. Does it constitute a crisis? Almost certainly not.
In order to address this hypothesised ‘crisis’ we are told we must accept restrictions on our movements, restrictions on our purchases, restrictions on our food, restrictions on our use of energy, and so on.
Sorry for mixing up the movies and genres, but for those of us who haven’t been able to ingest the Mealy-Mouthed Worms of our politicians it feels like there’s a gun to our heads. And we’re very much the punks, the problem to be addressed.
We all have to be in lockstep with the program. Or else. And we all have to accept these restrictions, willingly or not.
This attempted herding of us all into a uniformity of thought and feeling is happening right across the board.
And look at how dissenters are being framed. We’re no longer people who have a different viewpoint, we’re a “threat to democracy”, we’re “domestic terrorists” and “dangerous”. I’m not going to dive into Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech that he gave yesterday, but it certainly had undertones of Sauron of the Nation. And it was preceded, earlier in the day I think, by a statement from the White House press secretary.
If you don’t agree with the majority (or the alleged majority, one assumes) then you’re an extremist.
One does not simply walk into Mordor. No, it seems all you have to do is to vote Democrat.
All of these moves, all of the trends, are about increasing control. They represent a real “threat to democracy”. Get people used to the idea that people need to be safe (who could argue with that?), then vastly expand the number of things that make people afraid thus increasing the number of things that (allegedly) need to be done to ensure that (illusory) safety, and finally propose widespread government powers and control as a solution.
The armies of Sauron are besieging Gondor, only this time the Riders of Rohan have been cancelled.
They've been conditioning the masses via the education system for decades to accept what they are told without question. That is why so many simply accepted the nonsensical warnings of the impending ice age (late 60s - early 70s), global warming (80s - 90s), and the all encompassing global climate change hysteria. It is why the vast majority rushed to be injected with the Goo that the rest of us intuitively recognized to be useless at best.
I think this parallels our time exactly, and I think Tokien saw it. Behind the power of the rings (fear, etc. which you so aptly categorized), lies the one ring. I think the one Ring of power is Technology...or maybe I mean the Internet?
Anyway, keeping this. I see it too. And a frisson went up my spine with the "where are the riders of Rohan?