Nobody Cares about TV and Film

[Innula Zenovka]

Evernote link because why not

 

[Free]

Nobody wants to see a horny Gollum or Orcs with raging hard-ons

Says who?

but why shouldn’t some of Middle-earth’s denizens be gay?

Shouldn't that be up to the author to say? And considering he's been dead for decades, I'm not sure we'll get an answer any time soon.

 

[Kokoro Fasching]

Says who?



Shouldn't that be up to the author to say? And considering he's been dead for decades, I'm not sure we'll get an answer any time soon.

 

[Free]

 

[Veritable Quandry]

Evernote link because why not

Um, no. First, the word "Queer" as it is used today would not be understood when Tolkien wrote the books. Not to say that same sex relationships, gender non-conformity, and related concepts didn't exist, but the current concept of Queer is a late 20th century construction. It is a concept that modern readers bring to Tolkien's books, not a concept within Tolkien's writing.

Second, Tolkien was well versed in medieval literature and concepts like chivalry and courtly love. He was also a devout Catholic (so much so that he intentionally published a creation story of Middle Earth in the Silimarilian that aligned with Genesis to stop pagans from co-opting his works). Tolkien created his characters as chaste (not sexless, but in the literary sense of without sexual sin, including any premarital sex, gay or straight). The few times characters break from that in his works always end tragically.

His books are a fantasy the reflects his scholarly and religious background. Gimli and Legolas, for example, were not a romantic couple, but an example of the kind of chivalrous comradery that would have been at home at the Round Table. Modern readers bring different romantic expectations to the Arthurian stories as well. He was writing fantasy including idealized relationships, not realistic fantasy where society is a reflection of past or present actual conditions.

I don't think it is wrong for modern adaptations to add diversity to the world Tolkien created. On the other hand, I don't think turning it into Game of Thrones would be a good use of Tolkien's work. Martin is already commenting on how Tolkien idealized his characters by contrasting them with his much more Machiavellian and sensual characters. Given Tolkien's position in fantasy literature, there are no end of authors who have reacted to his work in one way or another. But it is not exploring Tolkien to add these concepts, it is reinterpreting Tolkien for a modern audience. It is not his work any longer, but a fusion of it with ideas that he would not have understood the same way a 21st century audience would. Those queer leanings are not Tolkien's, they are modern readings of his work brought by readers with different expectations and experiences than Tolkien had.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Um, no. First, the word "Queer" as it is used today would not be understood when Tolkien wrote the books. Not to say that same sex relationships, gender non-conformity, and related concepts didn't exist, but the current concept of Queer is a late 20th century construction. It is a concept that modern readers bring to Tolkien's books, not a concept within Tolkien's writing.

Second, Tolkien was well versed in medieval literature and concepts like chivalry and courtly love. He was also a devout Catholic (so much so that he intentionally published a creation story of Middle Earth in the Silimarilian that aligned with Genesis to stop pagans from co-opting his works). Tolkien created his characters as chaste (not sexless, but in the literary sense of without sexual sin, including any premarital sex, gay or straight). The few times characters break from that in his works always end tragically.

His books are a fantasy the reflects his scholarly and religious background. Gimli and Legolas, for example, were not a romantic couple, but an example of the kind of chivalrous comradery that would have been at home at the Round Table. Modern readers bring different romantic expectations to the Arthurian stories as well. He was writing fantasy including idealized relationships, not realistic fantasy where society is a reflection of past or present actual conditions.

I don't think it is wrong for modern adaptations to add diversity to the world Tolkien created. On the other hand, I don't think turning it into Game of Thrones would be a good use of Tolkien's work. Martin is already commenting on how Tolkien idealized his characters by contrasting them with his much more Machiavellian and sensual characters. Given Tolkien's position in fantasy literature, there are no end of authors who have reacted to his work in one way or another. But it is not exploring Tolkien to add these concepts, it is reinterpreting Tolkien for a modern audience. It is not his work any longer, but a fusion of it with ideas that he would not have understood the same way a 21st century audience would. Those queer leanings are not Tolkien's, they are modern readings of his work brought by readers with different expectations and experiences than Tolkien had.

Yes, but what of it? Tolkien wrote the books. Any subsequent works based on them, directly or indirectly, are reinterpretations -- retellings of parts of the original story for particular purposes.

H P Lovecraft would be horrified at what Alan Moore does with his literary heritage (and his biography, come to that) in Providence, but that doesn't invalidate Moore's work.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

My point only being that contrary to what the article says, these ideas are not "in" Lord of the Rings. They are in modern readers. The article implies that the concept of queerness is inherent to the books, without recognizing that it is them applying the concept to an existing work that never considered it.

Moore's work does not invalidate Lovecraft. I am not familiar enough with what Moore wrote to comment on the finer points, but I would wager Moore is clear that he isn't just regurgitating Lovecraft, but is applying his own ideas to the interpretation.

For that matter, most of the homoerotic undertones the article points to are Peter Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings, not the text of the book.

 

[Free]

WHY?!?!?!

 

[danielravennest]

So Tom Holland and Zendaya have been secretly dating for the last four years.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

My point only being that contrary to what the article says, these ideas are not "in" Lord of the Rings. They are in modern readers. The article implies that the concept of queerness is inherent to the books, without recognizing that it is them applying the concept to an existing work that never considered it.

Moore's work does not invalidate Lovecraft. I am not familiar enough with what Moore wrote to comment on the finer points, but I would wager Moore is clear that he isn't just regurgitating Lovecraft, but is applying his own ideas to the interpretation.

For that matter, most of the homoerotic undertones the article points to are Peter Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings, not the text of the book.

We'll just have to wait and see what the dramatization looks like. Then, to my mind, the question is whether it introduces into the story something that wasn't there before or whether it simply re-examines, from an unexpected point of view, particular aspects and episodes from the books.

No one suggests that anyone in the stories is gay, but no one suggests they aren't, either, so I think the idea is, let's start from the assumption that some of the characters are, in fact, gay, take it from there without changing the story or characters too much, and see what happens.

There's nothing wrong, to my mind, with re-reading works against the grain, to see how they seem from a different angle. That's why people have kept on restaging new Shakespeare productions over the centuries, after all, and reinterpreting the classic roles.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

NBC Pulls Ultimate Slip 'N Slide from Schedule After 'Explosive Diarrhea' Outbreak on Set

NBC's upcoming reality competition Ultimate Slip 'N Slide has been pulled from its post-Olympics premiere time slot, according to a new report

people.com

So, the reality show NBC wanted to premier following the Olympics has been sidelined due to explosive diarrhea.

Even if they do manage to one day get the show on the air, who is going to be able to see the title, "Ultimate Slip-n-Slide", without thinking of that?

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

So I watched "In the Heights" yesterday, and realized it is set in and was filmed in the Washington Heights neighborhood where I lived as a child. Still looks pretty much the same as it did in 1971 as far as the buildings and storefronts, when my parents moved 1.5 miles north to the Bronx. When we left, it was in the process of changing from previous generations of immigrants to "Spanish Harlem".

I have no way of knowing how true this is or not, but I've heard at least that the Spanish Harlem neighborhood nowadays is basically Manhattan's current actual Chinatown and the Mott Street area is now functionally the same as "Little Italy" - i.e., purely for tourists.

 

[danielravennest]

I have no way of knowing how true this is or not, but I've heard at least that the Spanish Harlem neighborhood nowadays is basically Manhattan's current actual Chinatown and the Mott Street area is now functionally the same as "Little Italy" - i.e., purely for tourists.

There are now twelve "chinatowns" in the New York metropolitan area, with a total of 900,000 ethnic Chinese. About 100,000 of them live in the original chinatown in lower Manhattan. But anything in lower Manhattan is godawful expensive, so it makes sense that the people still living in the original area are shop owners and their decendants who have long-since paid off the buildings and now "work from home" (i.e. live above the shop front). Everyone else has moved to the other areas that are less expensive.

New York City has always had a bunch of ethnic neighborhoods. Immigrants would go to places where people spoke their language and sold the kinds of foods and products they wanted. After World War II, the suburbs opened up, and older ethnic groups moved out there, while new ones moved into the city proper. I haven't been to the "old neighborhood" for a while, so I don't know what it is like now. Google street view would probably tell me by looking at the storefronts.

 

[Caete]

 

[Noodles]

I have come to the acceptance that I am unable to refer to Marky Mark as anything other than Marky Mark. Despite that he has been a "serious" actor now for years and not gone by that name for years.

Every single time I see him in a movie, it's, "Hey, it's Marky Mark!"

 

[Noodles]

There are like 2 female characters in all of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Seems pretty homoerotic to me. So I guess this plan is a good idea.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

We went and saw Black Widow in the theater yesterday. If going to the movies wasn't so expensive, I could easily see it in theaters 2 or 3 more times.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

Says who?



Shouldn't that be up to the author to say? And considering he's been dead for decades, I'm not sure we'll get an answer any time soon.

And Tolkien was a very rigid no non-sense Catholic. Basically his friendship with CS Lewis ended because Lewis married a woman who had been divorced.... so I'm thinking he is probably spinning in his grave.

 

[Free]

Marvel says Black Widow made $60 million on Disney Plus

Black Widow also supposedly made more money than F9, but the official numbers aren't in yet

www.avclub.com

The official box office receipts aren’t in yet, but Disney put out a press release this morning saying Black Widow made $80 million domestic and $78 million internationally this weekend, which is conveniently just higher than F9 and therefore just enough to give Black Widow the highest opening weekend since Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (which is also a Disney movie, allowing Disney to say “we made two movies that made a lot of money”). But we’re not going to dwell on that here, because these numbers come straight from Disney and therefore might not mean anything, but one thing that is genuinely interesting from Disney’s press release is that Black Widow apparently made $60 million from Disney+’s pricey Premier Access tier alone.

Considering it's $29.99 USD to stream it right now, I'm hoping there were a lot of families (about 2 million of them?) watching it together. Because that's a high price tag for a single viewer.

 

[Khamon]

But there's already a gay pron version of LotR, maybe, been told, or something, nm