On Faerie Stories

In J.R.R Tolkien’s essay On Faerie Stories, he argues in the defense of myth and fantasy in literature. He claims that their purpose is to access the transcendent, thus myth is fundamental in the understanding of the Primary World. In this essay, I shall argue the Peter Jackson’s film Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring cannot fully embody the literary transcendence of the fantasy genre as Tolkien seeks to portray in his novel, The Fellowship of the Ring, as films are restricted to the human realm the same way plays are. I shall do so by comparing the initial Shire scenes in both the novel and the film, using the dramatical critiques from Tolkien’s essay On Faerie Stories to analyze these differences, as well as observing how important

In the film, as is necessary for the medium, the explanation and need to act quickly is important. Tolkien constructs the novel with a vast amount of detail that immerses the reader into a world that feels real. The movie constructs a world too, but the Shire and the Hobbits some how seem to reflect medieval Europe peasantry. The connections to real human experience seems more important than the suspension of belief. The films are limited to symbolic representation and interpretation of the literary content instead of thinking about the grander purpose of myth to encourage imagination and thinking about a world that is close to our world but unreachable. Films in a sense steal the magic away from myth and appropriate it.

The appropriation of myth in film is linked to the human desire for power. This can be done in two ways. The first is through technology. Unlike stage plays, films can utilize technology like computer generated imagery (CGI) to more accurately represent fantastical elements of a story. This is not done for the sake of creating spiritual or transcendent works. Film uses fantasy as a tool to engage audiences with the illusion of depth and meaning. The imaginative power of the literary myth is lost by trying concrete visuals to abstractions. For Tolkien this would be like “breathing a lie through silver” (Tolkien