https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1BYu4NOIv8&list=PLoyx2jXs6Le_MelDj_rJsmiYSYQBeVYxQ

I can't wait to finally see "Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien". It will be glorious!

Edit: I watched the first one ("Transgenderism in Gondor") and it is as political as it gets (beside being flat out stupid; at the end the speaker even torpedoes herself). I guess that it is better for this thread to be moved. Sorry for my naivete.

These idiots are destroying all of western society.

Quote from: Batjon on August 05, 2021, 08:19:27 AM
These idiots are destroying all of western society.

Sadly, we live in an age where other people (often dead) must speak for you.

During the Vietnam War protests and the MLK era we had Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and so on. When Joe Haldeman, a Vietnam War veteran, disagreed with Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", he wrote "The Forever War" - a sci-fi war novel that reflected his own experience. Moorkock flogged Tolkien and Howard but then he wrote Elric.

No one was molesting the Platters because of the "problematic lack of anti-war messages" in their songs. Or holding seminaries about "We Have All the Time in the World" by Louis Armstrong as an example of "crypto-cisgenderism in Second Wave Feminism". These people focused their own talents, worked hard and produced some of the best pop art of the XX Century.

Today D&D must be woke. Lovecraft must be woke. Tolkien must be woke. And, I assure you, there is a "problematic lack of awareness of the realities of transgenderism" in the first comic book I wrote - when I was nine.

I.e. These people have nothing to say. Or, better, they have a lot to say about "me me me". I watched the first seminar "Gondor as Transgenderism in Tolkien". While pontificating like God from the Mountain about how her ideas are sculpted in diamond, the speaker says over and over that "no one can attribute a single intent to Tolkien's words". Except her, of course. As someone more intelligent than me commented:

"Evil cannot create, only can corrupt what already exists" is one of the many themes Tolkien has in his works. This seminar is a perfect portrayal of such a theme.

Which is both true and not limited to Tolkien.

This great current effort to destroy the old landmarks and redefine the meaning of everything, is reminiscent of the French Revolution.

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 05, 2021, 01:40:44 PM
This great current effort to destroy the old landmarks and redefine the meaning of everything, is reminiscent of the French Revolution.

Reminds me more of the Cultural Revolution.

Quote from: Pat on August 05, 2021, 02:10:44 PM

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 05, 2021, 01:40:44 PM
This great current effort to destroy the old landmarks and redefine the meaning of everything, is reminiscent of the French Revolution.

Reminds me more of the Cultural Revolution.

  Well, Mao learned from Marx and Lenin, who took a lot of inspiration from the French Revolutionary model. Tolkien, of course, thoroughly detested the Revolution--he may have had little fondness for liberal democracy, but his antipathy towards Communism was much stronger.

So almost half of the videos have already been removed. There is no comments and doesnt count downvotes. (or upvotes)

I guess they felt really strongly about this.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Tolkien a self-professed reactionary theocrat who longed for a return to medieval morality and believed The Enlightenment and The Industrial Revolution were dire mistakes?

If Christopher Tolkien was still alive, do you think he would fight back against this type of crap?

The most telling part of it all is that these people rarely create their own (garbage). Notice how they must infect, take over, and ruin what already exists.

If I ever do get my own RPG effort off the ground- if you see the moon split in two you know it happened- there will be SJW complaining because it is not politically correct, especially where feminism is concerned. At no point will anyone whining about it ever bother to cook up their own "progressive" RPG, nor work on illustrations- although judging by some shown here that may be a mercy (a PROM?! Sword Lesbians?).

Of course Tolkein had to end up in the crosshairs. It does strike me as curious that the "Gor" books are overlooked by these people. Or Mary Gentle's "Grunts." Or...

Ursula K Le Guin wrote for 60 years about race, sex, gender identity and feminism, and produced a lot of good literature ("The Left Hand of Darkness" remains one of the best sci-fi books I ever read).

These people had these "modern, current beliefs" in the 1960s, rolled up their sleeves and produced their own works. I'm not aware of "seminars" where U. Le Guin tried to rewrite Tolkien - mostly, I think, because, amid all the hard work needed to produce your own thing, they enjoyed doing it.

Quote from: Doc Sammy on August 07, 2021, 02:53:28 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Tolkien a self-professed reactionary theocrat who longed for a return to medieval morality and believed The Enlightenment and The Industrial Revolution were dire mistakes?

If Christopher Tolkien was still alive, do you think he would fight back against this type of crap?

Word on the street is that it is not by chance that the "Tolkien Society" allowed this crap only after Christopher Tolkien's death.

Just Some Guy posted his opinions about the first seminary. He is a black male from Chicago's southern area who once was accused to be a "white supremacist" by confused people who disagreed with his opinions.

There is no need to say that he is a better (and more eloquent) Tolkien scholar than the clearly intoxicated (*) speaker.



(*) Intoxicated by herself. Edit: sorry, themselves.

Quote from: Reckall on August 07, 2021, 03:53:11 PM
Just Some Guy posted his opinions about the first seminary. He is a black male from Chicago's southern area who once was accused to be a "white supremacist" by confused people who disagreed with his opinions.

There is no need to say that he is a better (and more eloquent) Tolkien scholar than the clearly intoxicated (*) speaker.

(*) Intoxicated by herself. Edit: sorry, themselves.

Ugh. This is all so tedious and predictable from the titles of the presentations. A bunch of free association and deconstruction that has little insight on the actual material.

The Death of the Author is basically the entry point for all of this nonsense. None of these people can be bothered to actually do the work of investigating Tolkien's personal views nor ground themselves in the Catholic, British, & European cultural heritage from which his work is built.

Quote from: Zelen on August 07, 2021, 08:45:45 PM
The Death of the Author is basically the entry point for all of this nonsense. None of these people can be bothered to actually do the work of investigating Tolkien's personal views nor ground themselves in the Catholic, British, & European cultural heritage from which his work is built.

That's because actual scholarship is hard.  These "scholars" are the product of an academy that has coddled the mediocre and has made a virtue out of narcissism.  The education-media complex depends on pushing out dull, substandard students, at the costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars each, with constant publication as a criteria for advancement.  How many quality articles can be penned on any single subject?  Thus critical philosophy is simply a matter of extending the scope of material that can be written so that these mediocrities can get a tenure-track job...