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DarthMI
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Post How much had Tolkien influenced fantasy across other mediums and foreign works?
on: September 23, 2014 03:28
There is no doubt at all Tolkien singlehandedly created (or at least codified) fantasy as it is today at least for literature and so many franchises take a nod from LOTR.

I am curious however the extent Tolkien had impacted the fantasy genre in other mediums and other cultures' fictional works.

Right now I am finishing up Magic Knight Rayearth, which is a fantasy themed anime series. In addition I have been reading random golden age era comics. I have to state while Rayearth is a hybrid series (it incorporates mecha, fantasy, and Shojo tropes) I cannot see Tolkien's influence in the series. Many of the golden age era comics I refer to came before LOTR and those that were published in the 50s were too close around LOTR's first publication to have claimed a direct influence (some were even made before the Hobbit's publication). I will start on the Magic Knight Rayeart.

Rayearth certainly features magical spells, supernatural beings, and such but it gives off a totally different vibe from the Western fantasy series. Not even Harry Potter and Game of Thrones and other works that rivals Tolkien in fame can match the same vibe. I must point out Rayearth however even at its time of release was already a cliche storm of magical girl (a subgenre of fantasy in Japanese fiction partiuclarly anime/manga) even at its time of release (and Rayearth is easily one of the most important work in the magical girl genres in terms of impact and popularity). The Magical Girl genre definitely got western influence but it was the old 1950s TV shows particularly BeWitched that influenced the way the genre is today and I have not seen any serious studies about Tolkien influencing BeWitched and other golden age sitcoms. So its safe to assume Tolkien had no influenced on Magic Knight Rayearth but it does inspire the question of how much Tolkien impacted foreign fantasy fiction. By foreign I am referring to those outside of the English speaking world.

As I mentioned in my previous posts I am new to fantasy but a quick research does show that other countries such as France already had writers making fantasy stories. Off course most of them did not have orcs and trolls so Tolkien's influence can be see in modern works in other countries but as Magic Knight and the Magical Girl genre shows, I am in serious doubt without Tolkien someone would not have come up with fictional races such as dwarves and orcs hacking each other.

Princess Knight, one of the earliest anime/manga hits and which started its publication just a year after Fellowships original publish date in the UK, already had a tale with a hero thrown into a time of political troubles and later war not to mention a Sauron like antagonist. It had other fantastic elements such as aggressive wolves of large stature and aggressive nature akin to LOTR's wargs. The author Osamu Tezuka not only created other fantasy works but almost singlehandedly create the anime/manga industry and this without direct influence from Tolkien AFAIK. I'm not even counting all the other fantasy works in anime/manga that got a far more direct influence from other genres in the medium (which I won't name but to put up a quick example Rose of Versailles which is a historical drama directly influenced much of the big hits of the 80s that uses a fantasy themed story such as Saint Seiya).

Even The Slayers, perhaps the biggest purely fantasy franchise in Japan, has far less Tolkien in it and far more Japanese mythology entwined with pre-existing anime/manga fantasy tropes. The only thing Tolkienesque are the character designs (at least initially) and a close comparison shows more mangaesque vibe than Tolkienesque.

But now to move on to another even more glaring example: Golden Age era American comics. It makes sense for Slayers and Magic Knight Rayearth to have minimal Tolkienesque elements because they are foreign works from a totally different continent with a totally different source of inspiration. So American comics would be a better comparison. As early as the late 30s and 40s there were already comics with a fantasy setting featuring Aragornesque heroes taking on hordes of goblins/orcs/whatever they are called. There were even comics in the 50s just right before LOTR was published that features armies clashing each other (though on a much lower scale more like squad VS squad or raids between tribes than massive pitch battles and sieges). A more modern example is 300 by Frank Miller

If it doesn't help, there are game franchises that don't really take much from the traditional Tolkien model and goes outright creating their own original fantasy style (or primarily takes elements from other genres in their creation). Ragnarok takes directly from Viking themed elements and you won't see things like Orcs and Elves in it. This was released in the 2000s, nearly 50 years after Tolkien but there influence is nonexistent. What about Pokemon? Not strictly a traditional fantasy but it easily qualifies as fantasy in the strict sense and it has no Tolkienesque elements.

I do wonder if Tolkien's influence was exaggerated? Even if we take out foreign works like Magic Knight Rayearth out of the picture, would it be far fetched to say no one else would have come up with Elves or Dunmer or Nord sor whatever and create a story of war between such races and magical artifacts that need to be destroyed?

I would actually be generous and state without Tolkien we wouldn't have current fantasy megabestsellers namely Game of Thrones and Harry Potter.

But as comics shows, people would have created such concepts in other mediums due to their different nature. Especially gaming where even in this cliched ridden genre people take the initiative to look elsewhere for new ideas. If not for Tolkien I would say other mediums namely gaming would look elsewhere for inspiration and we'd have a far more wider variety of setting and themes. Arabian Nights anyone (which was featured in fantasy games)? How about Ragnarok and the Valkyries (a bunch of soap operas in Japan that did not take influence from literature had been making such TV fantasy dramas) using the Viking setting?

I am curious what you long time Tolkien experts think.

Don't get me wrong I am not bashing Tolkien. I LOVE Middle Earth its easily my favorite universe in fantasy and no other novel has inspired as much awe in me as LOTR did. But after recently watching some fantasy TV series from other countries (namely Magic Knight Rayearth) and reading some comics from the Golden Age I do wonder about how necessary Tolkien was for fantasy to exist in its current form.

[Edited on 09/23/2014 by DarthMI]
Gandolorin
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on: September 24, 2014 11:37
Tolkien was one of the best writers of the English language, simply because he was one of the greatest philologists of English, who could read anything from Beowulf onwards fluently in the original. He also felt, I'm paraphrasing here, that due to the Norman (speaking a dialect of the French of the 11th century) invasion of 1066, the English (then speaking Anglo-Saxon) lost much of their own native tradition of myths, legends and fairy-tales. And that in his slow writing of what eventually was published - in an unfinished, at very least unpolished state - posthumously as The Silmarillion he was attempting to fill a bit of this void.
Now LotR has been translated into at least 38 languages as per Wikipedia (the entry must be dated, as I have a number of 40 plus buzzing around in my bonnet - oh well). Taking 38 Translations for the sake of argument, I feel confident that the English original has outsold the 38 translations in total (though even the publishers do not seem to have total sales figures accurate to the last 1000 or whatever books). Perhaps JRRT was not alone in feeling the above-mentioned lack in the English-speaking world.
Now I'm moving more into the area of speculation: who would be the non-English-speakers who would feel most familiar with what JRRT wrote? All of those from whose myths, legends and fairy-tales he borrowed heavily. Those speaking languages derived from the same root as Anglo-Saxon. It would be interesting to see a sales ranking of those 38 translations.
So that would put those speaking Romance (or Latin-derived) languages at one step removed. They also have not suffered nearly the same desolation of their traditions as happened in Great Britain (without any part of Ireland) after 1066. Though I would wonder if the non-romanized Gauls, Celts, didn't suffer the same fate as the Anglo-Saxons did after 1066, i.e. a Roman overlay of all (or practically so) their Celtic traditions.
The further away you get from north-east Europe, the more the people would probably consider Middle-Earth as being a setting foreign to their own experiences. The south and east coasts of the Mediterranean are probably useful boundaries. So to anyplace without a fairly strong (north-west) European influence would most likely consider th LotR as a perhaps interesting, but exotic book, with limited influence.
One exception could very well be Russia, but to what degree it was a widespread feeling is probably dubious. But at any rate the (by necessity unauthorized) translations of the LotR in the pre-Glasnost era were hot "best-sellers" under the circumstances. Again it would now be interesting to see a time-line of sales since the early 1990s. The thing was, while Russia is the easternmost part of Europe, they can very well identify hostile Easterlings from their point of view: the Mongols / Tartars / Golden Horde.
So the fantasy genre JRRT reinvented / influenced will be very much that of (north-west) Europe.
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parluggla
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on: November 26, 2014 09:42
I agree, G., Tolkien was very specific to the Northern European latitude-longitudes. And anyone outside of that region might or might not "take Tolkien to heart." But no, I see hardly any Tolkien influence beyond the basic fact that many sat up and took note that his "fantasy" became so popular. His "secret sauce" was -- as we have discussed up here on the North Shore -- the Victorian world view, as Tolkien carried the Victorian sensibilities of his parents' era.

I like the whole Hegelian method of a "thesis" eventually producing an "anti-thesis" . . . which eventually brings a synthesis of the two. The great thesis of the 19th Century was the sort of vibe Sir Walter Scott, Ossian, Tennyson, Yeats, et al produced. But then its anti-thesis was birthed by the hard-core realists like Hemingway, Joyce, Faukner et al. But Tolkien crashed the party with LotR in the 1950s right when modern real was at its height. Today, modern realism is hardly a literary force (Jonathan Franz's "Freedom" of 2010 was the rare 1-million seller), but a low-brow, cruder version of it commands the field throughout film, TV, and pop lit. And so where is the synthesis? It's not here yet -- at least in lit.

No, Tolkien grabs some, repels most. And hardly anyone has figured out his secret recipe, i.e., his expansive Victorian/Romantic Era "high fantasy".

[Edited on 11/27/2014 by parluggla]

[Edited on 11/27/2014 by parluggla]
Gandolorin
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on: November 27, 2014 12:11
parluggla said:I like the whole Hegelian method of a "thesis" eventually producing an "anti-thesis" . . . which eventually brings a synthesis of the two. ...

OK, I have not read anything by Hegel personally, only read references to him by some philosophers and theologians whose judgment I believe I can trust. But "These, Antithese, Synthese" is a concept I am familiar with. (But was that Hegel? My wife just suggested it might have been Immanuel Kant from Königsberg, now Kaliningrad.)
But did the 19th Century thesis and the hard-core realists anti-thesis lead to a synthesis? I have my doubts.
I have read many books by and about JRRT, and as you say, Tolkien grabs some, repels most. As you say "But Tolkien crashed the party with LotR in the 1950s right when modern real was at its height."
My feeling after decades of reading JRRT and about him is that the "hard-core realists" felt that they had produced an antithesis to the 19th Century which had become a thesis to which no antithesis was possible.
OOOPS.
And then this book pops up which is very much an antithesis to THEIR thesis.
And written, panic spreads, by an Oxford professor holding one of the chairs (generally very few at the time) of English language and proving himself to be a master of Beowulf-to-today English that none of them could remotely rival.
And the "hard-core realists" felt themselves to be something of an avant-garde;
I'm guessing a bit, but not being understood by a vast majority of readers was a definition of their 20th Century elitism. The book a best-seller? What a no-no!
And since their avant-garde self-esteem is rooted in the 1930s, they are confused by their mounting irrelevance starting in the 1950s
Becoming irrelevant is the worst fate of a self-professed avant-garde; these people can become very sulky, or more.
Not that all of them have produced trash. Some most definitely did.
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Sarniel
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on: November 27, 2014 01:19
It was definetly Hegel, the thesis-antithesis forming sinthesys is the foundation of his dialectics, Kant's dialectics is basicly a misunderstanding where the mind forms an incorrect (you could say opposing) opinion about the world, God or itself.

As for the initial debate, I can hardly rival the two of you :/ but please keep it up, it's very interesting to read.



[Edited on 11/27/2014 by Sarniel]
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
parluggla
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on: November 28, 2014 08:05
Ha, ha, Sarniel. I am most rival-able.

Yes, Gandolorin, being "avant-garde" and then fading into irrelevance is harsh. But we live in a world that can't seem to settle on anything, so it just grabs at "flashy, shiny things," one after the other. It picks up one trend, discards it, grabs after another, and another, and another. I've heard it said that media simply needs a steady flow of "fresh content." Why not just settle on something classical (like Tolkien?) and ponder it long and deeply in quiet contemplation?

As far as a Hegelian synthesis is concerned, I truly believe we're the builders right now. These times represent a very "pregnant pause." Literary modern realism has run its course. That is to say, not many people want to read about dysfunctional, meaningless life. Maybe it can come back to its original purpose, social commentary/critique. Otherwise, good riddance.

I'm not living on the North Shore (Minnesota/Lake Superior) anymore. Spouse and I are now in Indiana, a sort of post-Sauron Mordor run by all the small-time Sarumans and their legions of Ted Sandymans. Spouse, a Christina, is attending a seminary here. But last week I was back in Minnesota and I got to talk with my old reading club. The topic that day was how in the future (100, 200, 300 ... years from now) they will see this whole era of the 20th/21th century as one super-bad time. One friend said, "They won't distinguish between Franco or Picasso, Hitler or Hemingway. All bad. All just a lot of craziness." Someone else quoted Daniel Quinn who said that if the human race survives the next 100 years, they won't be thinking or living anything like we are now. I then said I do think certain things will come through, Tolkien being one of them. Somebody then said the Medieval Age understood the importance of bards and lays and epics. They weren't so interested in "true, factual history."

But after all, history is written first in the quasi-present, that is, by "reporters." And is it always truthful and relevant what they write? Then historians sift through the reportings and put together an historical account. But none of it really captures the Zeitgeist or the real Story. Tolkien offers our Saruman/Sandyman era a Story to rally around, Story as lifeboat. People instinctively crave Story and identify with the characters. So, yes, modern realism has failed miserably at giving us Story and characters to identify with -- unless degenerate, dysfunctional people who live meaningless lives and lash out at one another are your cup of tea.

The powers that be, the gatekeepers of commercial fantasy are steeped in modern realism. Just look at one of their "big successes" Game of Thrones. Not a lot in common with Tolkien. No, Tolkien for the commercial media was just a new avenue to pump full of MR rot, IMHO.

[Edited on 11/28/2014 by parluggla]

[Edited on 11/28/2014 by parluggla]
Gandolorin
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on: November 28, 2014 12:34
Well, parluggla, as far as literature may be concerned, the "hard-core realists" (meaning, I guess, post-modernists - a term useful in Architecture, from which it originates, but useless like the massively misunderstood "quantum leap" of physics in other contexts) may have become irrelevant. But since "Dallas" and "Denver", television (and movies, making movies out of TV shows is a reversed trend that has been happening for quite a while) have been in a mind-numbing rut. Anything - and there is much on German TV, even in the still dominating public channels (I have given up on the private ones), that goes in the direction of dysfunctional life. I believe I have even seen cartoons, and one CG series about the small bird-like dinosaurs called Velociraptors (the ones in "Jurassic Park are much too big and have no feathers) that mede me want to say to one of the "actors" "hello, Joan Collins" (I forget her character's name). I may be paranoid here, but I had the feeling on these occasions that even the young cartoon etc. audience is being brainwashed into accepting that such a dysfunctional life, IMO the life of psychopaths, is normal.
As far as managers, politicians, high-level sports functionaries (FIFA, IOC etc.) or even non-sport functionaries, this may sadly be true.
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