The Long Defeat?

I’m just now hearing about Amazon’s new Rings of Power miniseries, which apparently boils down to a ghastly moral and intellectual abattoir of Woke Faux Tolkien (hereinafter simply Wolkien). In the article linked above, Ben Reinhard draws a shrewd parallel between Jeff Bezos, witch-king of Amazon, and the idiosyncratic manifestation of Pride in Middle Earth: that is, as a specifically Feanorian sin of jealous, overwhelming love for the work of one’s own hands. This (false) love amounts to a sort of self-idolatry, which—like every heresy—is also an obvious fallacy: anything we creatures may create is ultimately just the reassembling of elements already created by our Creator. In the insightful words of physicist Carl Sagan (who remained bafflingly atheistic), To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe. (Or, as God tells the scientist in the old joke, “You get your own dust!”) And after all, the light of Feanor’s Silmarils was not his own, but captured from the Two Trees of Paradise (hence Tolkien’s insistence on the term sub-creation to describe the artistic process).

 

The arrogance of the Wolkien portrayal is that it presumes to improve upon the very material it is founded on, with the explicit intention of refuting (one might even say defiling) the moral and intellectual underpinnings of that work. As Chesterton once said in a different context, “It is like watching a man energetically sawing from the tree the branch on which he is sitting.” Yes, Galadriel made vain and foolish choices long ago in her youth (unlike the rest of us, I suppose?), but the mature Lady we meet in The Lord of the Rings is expressly based on the Blessed Virgin Mary, by Tolkien s own statement. She is certainly not Woke in any comprehensible sense (insofar as Woke ideology is comprehensible to anyone, anyhow), and a very obvious example of this is the grave and conscious deference which she pays to her husband Celeborn despite her clearly having the final say on the governing of Lothlorien. Even when she corrects him (“Do not repent of your welcome to the Dwarf”), it is quite distinctly done in a wifely capacity of encouraging his practice of Charity. In the same way, the Blessed Virgin certainly deferred to St. Joseph as the spiritual head of their household despite “outranking” him in the hierarchy of Saints—just as Jesus Himself, in turn, was “subject unto” His mother and foster father (Luke 2:51). Call it toxic patriarchy if you must, but it’s still an ordered and dynamic dance of loving, logical subordinacies which fall neatly into their place when rightly ordered under the Kingship of God; and it contrasts cataclysmically with the ugly, sloppy chaos of Wolkienian solipsism.

 

But as I’ve hinted, we all perpetrate/suffer from the same species of arrogance. Honestly, by what audacity do I criticize Jeff Bezos? As gratifying as it is to conflate Amazon with Angmar, for Pete’s sake, I’ve got orders coming to me in the mail from Amazon right now. It just underscores the horribly inevitable hypocrisy of admonishing any sinner, a Spiritual Work of Mercy which must be moderated by Our Lord’s admonition to us all: “First remove the beam from your own eye, that you may see more clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye!” (Matthew 7:5).

 

In truth, I must confess to a deeper hypocrisy than merely using Amazon while criticizing it. Not unlike the Wolkien writers, I may have used my knowledge of the Faith to undermine that very Faith in my own writing. Not on purpose—not consciously, at least—but, well, judge for yourself. Last year, I wrote an article arguing that the duty of a writer (as distinct from that same person in the other parts of his or her life) is strictly to the work itself, irrespective of any potential harm to the souls of readers. In my defense, I did attempt to clarify that another part of the writer’s life is his or her role as self-editor: that, having finished a piece of writing, a wise writer will sleep on it, switch hats, and come back to it with a sternly critical eye (“murder your darlings,” they say). But in the time since writing that article, I have come to fear that I leaned far too heavily into the Devil’s Advocacy, as it were. Our Lord once said, “If anyone causes these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it were better for him to have a millstone hung about his neck and be cast into the sea” (Matthew 18:6). I can’t seem to find a footnote where He added, “unless, of course, you’re a novelist.”

 

I love the things I write. I love them so much that, as my own wife once pointed out in her capacity of encouraging my practice of Charity, I have sometimes been guilty of making an idol out of my own work. And I suffer the same paradoxical bifurcation that tormented Feanor, of craving adulation for that work while at the same time wanting to keep it under lock and key. I cherish those readers who praise it; snarl at those readers who offer critique. At least, part of me does these things—thank God (non nobis, Domine), I’m now aware enough of this poisonous tendency in myself that I can begin to attempt to correct it.

 

The good news, in a certain sense, is that the Wolkien stranglehold on our media actually provides me with a kind of spiritual safety net, as I am unlikely to become exposed to the hazards of vanity which accrue to success and celebrity. I’m an openly Catholic writer in Woke America; am I in any grave danger of becoming famous? If I can keep a low enough profile to stay off Google’s “unsearchables” list (yes, it's a real thing), I’ll consider myself as fortunate as Meriadoc in the mud, overlooked by the chieftain of the Nazgul (at least until I can creep up and hamstring the son of a so-and-so).

 

Lady Galadriel once remarked that, together with her husband, “through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” It’s a sad, grim view of the never-ending (until He comes again!) struggle against Evil, and it’s naturally bleaker than our own perspective because Galadriel existed in a world before Christ; as such, her remark contrasts reassuringly with St. Paul’s infinitely hopeful “I have fought the good fight” (2 Timothy 4:7). My final confession (for today) is that I personally identify far more with her perspective than with his. I realize I’ve been including a ridiculous number of links in these posts; but if you click on only one of them, may it be this one to a beautiful and brilliant reflection on the Love that casts out fear. God bless you.