TTT Thoughts

[lotesse]

I've always been struck by just how absolutely shattering the explosion of the wall at Helm's Deep is, especially in the film. There haven't really been explosions in the story yet. They don't belong in that world, and I think that we all like it that way. Helm's Deep becomes the intrusion of modern action films and violence and technological warfare into our wonderful archaic world. The sound of the masonry impacting on the earth is the sound of the tearing, in a way, of our own escapism. Middle Earth is no longer so much of a refuge for us. We cannot escape reality, not the reality of war or of death. Tolkien really is quite ruthless with our escapism. Sure, Middle Earth seems safer, but even there the same spectres that haut us rear their ghastly heads and heroes don't always get a happy ending. Peter pulls up the technological element of that ruthlessness, and it hurts so much. It hurts so much to see my Middle Earth intruded upon by the nightmares of our own world, stripped of metaphor and elegence. Not Dark Lords, but bombs and explosions. Not myth, but painful, painful literal violence. Degrading, ugly, raw, common. For Middle Earth to share in the evils of the morning news is the worst thing imaginable. And that's qhat makes both Peter and JRRT so bloody brilliant.