Books, Films, Adaptations & Reader Responses (including backlashes!) 3.5/8

First, before I forget, here are links to the earlier parts of the “Adaptations & Backlash” series:

Part 1 of this series links to two great posts on adaptation and Tolkien (one on the Jackson film, one on the Rings of Power series) that I highly recommend reading and which inspired this series!

Part 2 of this series describes my journey (completely unplanned until Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyen kicked me out the door of Bag End) of falling in love with the film, which brought me back to my earlier adoration of Tolkien’s legendarium, all in a fannish mode (seeing it 45 times before it left the theatres definitely counts) and then switching my academic specialization and “research agenda” to ALL Tolkien, Jackson, and related topics (including reception and fan studies).

The link for Part 3 is in the next paragraph!

I admit I wondered how many people who are reading here for Tolkien (and in this series, the issues around adaptations) looked at Part 3 in this series and were “WTF Shakespeare?!??”

Maybe this is a good place to explain that the reason I love “Leaf by Niggle” so much (and have never had any interest in the Catholic/Religious/Afterlife interpretation of it, any more than I have had with regard to Tolkien’s legendarium in general) is because I read it as, wait for it, an allegory of Tolkien’s writing process.1 The older I’ve gotten, and the more I have experienced my own writing process which is fractally chaotic, the more I identify with the process in “Leaf.” So I ignore that “happy (because C/R/Afterlife) in the same way I ignore the canonical marriage of Faramir and Éowyn.

My reading is what fandom calls headcanon (IMNSHO, a brilliant term for what academics call, more boringly, “reader response.”) My headcanon definitely drives my fanfiction, and, at times, has been known to drive my scholarship.

The applicability of “Leaf” is illustrated in this series which keeps putting out roots and branches and leaves (and if you think I am in control of all of this or carefully planned it all out, well, we can pretend, retroactively, that I did, but I know it’s not true).

So with that in mind, of COURSE Shakespeare had to pop up when I started thinking about adaptation, canons, and conflicts over adaptations (and interpretations) of Tolkien’s legendarium for at least two reasons.

First: having been a Shakespeare fangirl as an undergraduate and an English teacher during the past thirty-five years, my weird brain cannot lose the sense that reception of “Shakespeare’s” plays over the centuries (and the historical and ongoing critical wrestling matches over them) maps fairly closely to how the critical, fan, and academic reception of “Tolkien” (both his works and his “authorial self” in the sense of whose “intention” is being claimed as the One True Meaning) has been playing out since The Lord of the Rings was published.

Second: one of my recent and sporadically ongoing projects is tracking the extent to which far-right extremists have been attempting to appropriate their vision of Tolkien’s imagined Middle Ages as an all-white, all-Christian, male-dominated straight utopia and their attempts to shut down any discussion (whether in fandom, academia, or with regard to commercial adaptations) of the possibility of diversity in Tolkien’s work, the adaptations, or the readership.

And in one of the imbroglios (their attacks on the 2021 Summer Seminar, “Tolkien and Diversity,” organized and presented by the Tolkien Society), I found textual evidence of comparisons between Shakespeare and Tolkien.

The three paragraphs below are excerpted from one of my presentations (available at the Journal of Tolkien Research) but also includes original data from my “Backlash Corpus” which I used in that presentation.

You can read the essay (linked in Note 2 below), but the data in this post was not a part of that presentation. It remains to be developed.

My methodology for this presentation draws on corpus linguistics, an approach Franco Moretti describes as "distant reading," as opposed to the traditional close reading done in literary studies. I created an electronic database consisting of the text of the backlash articles and public comments in order to do quantitative analysis to identify shared rhetorical patterns in the texts. One benefit of this method is that the articles are aggregated and anonymized in the corpus; as a result, I can avoid giving individual attention to the racism, misogyny, and homo- and transphobia of the authors while tracking rhetorical patterns across the corpus.

My Backlash Corpus is a small one, approximately 98,500 words, consisting of the text of the nineteen articles [listed in the published paper], plus publicly available comments at the time I collected the data. Some sites did not allow comments; others required an account to read the comments which I chose not to set up.

. . . .

This project uses applied linguistics to analyze key words/concepts (and collocations, or the words closely associated with the key words). I use open-access programs created by linguistics and scholars to generate the data I analyze.

The bolded words in the first list (the 60 words that appear most frequently in the corpus) are ones I discussed in the presentation [Tolkien + variant spellings; Tolkien Society; diverse and diversity). I have another (not yet published presentation) tucked away in the folder that focuses on all the ways “woke” and its variants are used as slurs.

For this post, I pulled out the data on “Shakespeare (+ variants)”3, and added two words that are not in the top sixty but are important because I know they are concepts often used in this context to defend Shakespeare (“canons/canonized” and “Western” and its antonym “non-Western”).

1. KEY WORD FREQUENCY

1. tolkien/tolkiens/tolkein/tolkeins        1024

2. months  672

3. like        386

4. people    293

5. society   214

6. lord        207

7. rings      200

8. work/works     365

9. book/books     196

10.read      179

11.think     172

12.woke     159

13.WOKE Spelling variants 40

14.good     144

15.open     143

16.options  128

17.world     125

18.time      124

19.diverse/diversity 118

20.man/men       115

21.orcs      108

22.evil       99

23.new      97

24.lotr       96

25.want     90

26.great     86

27.seminar 85

28.never    84

29.right      81

30.edited    80

31.queer   80

32.movies  78

33.white     78

34.first       73

35.story     73

36.hobbit   70

37.fantasy  69

38.might    67

39.gay      63

40.life        62

41.love      59

42.elves     58

43.old        56

44.saruman 56

45.middle   55

46.christian 54

47.earth     54

48.sex      54

49.characters 52

50.culture  52

51.different 51

52.literature 51

53.reading  51

54.author   50

55.better    50

56.history  50

57.human  50

58.identity  50

59.shakespeare 50

60.TRUE     50

2 CONTEXT/COLLOCATIONS

The following list includes the text immediately surrounding each use of the term in the corpus (meaning there’s no way to identify which of the multiple authors attacking the Seminar wrote it). Remember the corpus method clears out function words, also known as “stop words” (and I also removed all pseudonyms).4

I’m not taking the next step here which is to organize the words which tend to be associated strongly with the terms (you can see a collocations analysis in the publication if you wish): but that may come in the future. This rough data just gives a sense of the method but may explain why after working with this corpus quite intensely for a while, “Tolkien” and “Shakespeare” (and the whole debate over the so-called “Western” canon—or as I call it, the Dead White Guys reading list) popped up like another leaf when I started thinking about adaptations and conflicting interpretations!

Raw Data

2.1 SHAKESPEARE 51; SHAKESPEARES 10

SHAKESPEARE actually touched themes im worse

edited age yes indeed age discover interpret SHAKESPEARE anew example laurence oliviers film henry intend

lots annotated volumes SHAKESPEARE available purchase library checkout im literature

taking college course SHAKESPEARE basically cares literature poetry study william

oh okay besides common law rights SHAKESPEARE british monty python oh besides

thats normal son SHAKESPEARE class college homosexuality bisexuality shakespeare

wrangling allies sweeping military strategies SHAKESPEARE class shakespeare ploy advance agendas people

read scholar opines SHAKESPEARE closet catholic conservative day age note scene

plenty sexual jokes SHAKESPEARE comprehensible vowel shift affected smallish prop

SHAKESPEARE confuses lot modern readers dont share underlying

mentioning sexual themes course SHAKESPEARE course focusing sexual themes shakespeare course

course shakespeare course focusing sexual themes SHAKESPEARE course

instructor hisher specific expertise regarding SHAKESPEARE didnt offerings term easily waited term instructor

sexnegative neopuritan wokescolds ran college SHAKESPEARE doing rape

SHAKESPEARE england pretty pervy alive hed prudish lot

vengeful moneygrubbing loan shark easy cast SHAKESPEARE enlightened modern liberal dont clue heroes

themes sex nice son liked course simply title SHAKESPEARE fair amount time themes fulfilling eliminating to

bowdler beginning century moved create version SHAKESPEARE family fireside reading extremely popular maybe

course focusing sexual themes shakespeare course SHAKESPEARE focuses sexual themes people shakespeare actually

observation portia disguises merchant venice told SHAKESPEARE greatly concerned critical narratives gender

shakespeare class college homosexuality bisexuality SHAKESPEARE heavy emphasis sexuality gay sex bisexuality

shakespeare todays scholars teachers queer SHAKESPEARE im fine ps the true literary stood test time

actually SHAKESPEARE isnt sex child sexual revolution look sunset

purchase library checkout im literature huge SHAKESPEARE learned left college

session shakespeares plays exactly talks actually SHAKESPEARE meditation hamlets soliloquy rest fit following

basically cares literature poetry study william SHAKESPEARE obsess genitals libidos suggest little value

millions lives lost ruined suggests maybe reading SHAKESPEARE perspective wiser approach yes undergrad grad

women twenty minutes mentioning merchant venice SHAKESPEARE play matter

sharks jumped dont misses sex sexuality SHAKESPEARE plays understand light particular history course

suggests serious deficiency approach obsession topic SHAKESPEARE plethora study

sweeping military strategies shakespeare class SHAKESPEARE ploy advance agendas people century care

course focusing exclusively sex shakespeare titled SHAKESPEARE sense ought focus particular topic unless label

particular topic unless label course accordingly SHAKESPEARE sex basic course courses narrowed subject plenty

yes SHAKESPEARE sex homo bisexuality

malignant power shakespeares mind class implying SHAKESPEARE sex money gotta groundlings throw

unless course focus topic isnt difficult course SHAKESPEARE shakespeare study sex course focused below waistline

sex course titled sex obsession sexual themes SHAKESPEARE shakespeare

reading SHAKESPEARE century eyes means aim laser genitals libidos

topic isnt difficult course shakespeare SHAKESPEARE study sex course focused below waistline shakespe

written SHAKESPEARE thats course shakespeare willing look unless

shakespeare study sex course focused below waistline SHAKESPEARE thats desperately avoid

plays poems changed time care people read SHAKESPEARE sexual revolution happened bound affect

amazingly SHAKESPEARE time muse variety subjects themes sex nice

SHAKESPEARE time muse variety subjects themes sex yep thats

thats course focusing exclusively sex SHAKESPEARE titled shakespeare sense ought focus particular

agecenturygeneration discover SHAKESPEARE todays scholars teachers queer shakespeare im fin

SHAKESPEARE tolkien common writers catholics

yea written shakespeare thats course SHAKESPEARE willing look unless course focus topic isnt

titled sex obsession sexual themes shakespeare SHAKESPEARE

ah okay besides common law rights british theres SHAKESPEARE oh okay besides common law rights shakespeare

world war ii enjoy SHAKESPEARE read eyes possible by reading critical comment

wasnt tolkien white isnt influential SHAKESPEARES lessons ingrained society appreciated mainstream

johnson disapproved saying punning malignant power SHAKESPEARES mind class implying shakespeare sex money gotta

sorry burst bubble nine tenths SHAKESPEARES oeuvre involves sex jokes using awful awful puns

heavy emphasis sexuality ummmmactually sexuality SHAKESPEARES plays poems yea quoth dost thou fall thy

misfortune attending conference session SHAKESPEARES plays exactly talks actually shakespeare

soliloquy rest fit following format quickly talk SHAKESPEARES plays exhibits influence woke topic rant woke top

tell actually understand moral ideas time period SHAKESPEARES political social beliefs appear extremely conservervative

SHAKESPEARES priority read plays dont notice theyre sex gender

themes topics worthy discussion entire library SHAKESPEARES sex gender individual common shakespeares writing

library shakespeares sex gender individual common SHAKESPEARES writings

2.2 CANON/S/CANONIZED (6)

gatekeeper son pj film tremendous achievement CANON act material expanded middle earth world prequel

maligning dwg dead white guy and doing remove texts CANON serving multiculturalism

wholesome times seen unless professor tolkien CANONIZED despite universal ferocious sentiment hale sound

literature proliferation silliness lotr entered CANON ruined

english literary styles english literary reverences CANONS english ethics believe bad mothers

literary styles english literary reverences CANONS english ethics english superiorities cultural

2.3 NONWESTERN 2 & WESTERN 12

conference movies saving grace modern productions NONWESTERN audience priorities

read soviet chinese indian eyes pretty precisely NONWESTERN cultures dont share cultural obsessions wokeness

justification intellectual infantilism suffuses WESTERN academia percipiently displayed disney gay

add trying tear lotr rest WESTERN cannon simply jealous neither write nor create

honor continuing understanding basic worldview WESTERN civilization sadly wrong photo

cultural marxists destroy WESTERN civilization

please author word allegorical basically WESTERN cultures root christianity tolkien desired tell

die service beaurocratic war machine remember WESTERN front east england

set strictures applicable gentilesa set laws thst WESTERN governments signatories look particularly christian

walker percys remark WESTERN journalists wish alexander solzhenitsyn

weight lifting competition woke official religion WESTERN late stage civilisation serves reader consider

leftist corruption WESTERN literature

omg writing epic legend WESTERN world insert christianity whiteness african asian

diversity biggest scam pulled WESTERN world obligated accept destruction own culture

Click here to read Part 4 of this series!