The Lord of the Rings: From A Sociological Perspective The Lord of the Rings, is a fantasy style movie filmed from 2001 to 2004. It is set in the setting of Middle Earth where Sauron forges a great ring from the fire of Mordor to provoke havoc upon the lands. Frodo, a hobbit from the Shire, is "gifted" the ring of power from his uncle Bilbo, when he stumbled upon the ring from his adventures in his past time. Gandalf the Grey, an old friend of Bilbo, figures out this ring Frodo beholds is the one ring of power and decides the only option is to destroy the ring from where it came from, Mordor. Frodo stumbles upon people who accompany him on the way to Mordor, when they all decide to form a "fellowship" with all the same mission to help Frodo the destroy the ring. This fellowship starts off as a group of mostly strangers to each other in the beginning, but across the three movies they all become a family. (IMDB) They all split up in different ways at the end of the first movie, but each group becomes a family within a family throughout the movie. Enemies become friends, friends make sacrifices for each other, and each "family" serves a purpose for the quest of destroying the ring. I'll explain more in the paper about each "family" and why I'm writing this paper on this movie. While re-watching this whole series from a sociological standpoint, it opened my eyes in a different way. I wasn't just astounded by the acting or directing, but by the whole plot and how it indirectly points out conflicts in today's society. I always had the same mind-set when going to watch this movie, "damn this movie is awesome". So I had a lot different outlook while watching his movie again. Throughout this paper, it will discuss how this movie involves struggles of gender and race conflict and how this completely different group of people would be considered a family in my eyes. Reviewing the movie as a sociologist, I would say this movie needs a lot explaining if you aren't aware of the books or know of the lore of this movie. Explaining everything in this review would have me type at least thirty pages, but to do this as short as possible this movie is my favorite movie of all time. It has everything I could possibly want in a movie, action, drama, romance, comedy, interesting characters, etc. But that's a review as just a fan. (Since this movie was filmed after the books, I would be mentioning J.R.R Tolkien instead of the director Peter Jackson, since it was his ideas) Quoted from J.R.R Tolkien himself on his premise of writing this books was that "the prime motive was the desire of a tale-tell to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of reader, amuse them, and delight them." (Olsen) What I feel makes this such an amusing series is the way he makes each character unique in their own possible way. You grow on each character through their triumphs and defeats. Some characters you start to dislike off the back, but turn into your favorite character at the end of it all. That happens into today's world also. It doesn't just happen in movies where people change and realize what they've done. You could me someone the first day of high school, hate them, but notice this person isn't the worst person in the world. Next thing you know, this person turns into your best friend. That is what great stories do. The reader is particularly drawn to the story because the reader gets to know and cherish real, not cardboard, characters, and the characters are real because they have souls, exhibiting basic goodness amid failings and able to make choices even when they realize these choices are but part of a larger tale. (Mcpartland) (There is more character development I would like to add, but I'll talk about when I get to the race issue part of the paper) What else this movie does right is how it makes the viewer feel like this "fellowship" is an actual family. You don't really see it when the movie first starts out. It's until the end of the first movie and the whole second movie, you start to feel emotion toward the mutual love each character has for one another. This fellowship has a person from each different province on Middle-Earth, but all seem in the end to care for each other to accomplish their goal. Not all families have to be related and not all start off the right foot, like this one did. The social issue this movie dives in are the roles women play. Always in the back of the scenes, women are either cleaning, cooking, or just there for support. There are strong female characters in the movie that break the misogamy of the movie. But then again these strong female characters also have the being two of the main characters lovers in the end. Back to the point, in the lore of Lord of the Rings, women are suppose to take care of the elderly and children, while their husband is fighting in wars. I'm not positive if women are not allowed to fight at all, but very looked down upon. This character, Eowyn, is the niece of the King of Rohan. Since she was younger, she always had the tom boy personality and wanted to fight like her brother Eomer. She was bickered at when she was a small lad by the other boys for being a girl wanting to fight. It's another role of misogamy in the movie (book) that woman had to experience. She was taught to fight by her brother, but her uncle the king kept putting in her mind that she was to be a queen someday and wasn't lady-like. But in the third movie, when the army of Rohan was on its way to help the Kingdom of Gondor to fight against Saurons Army, Eowyn's uncle told her to stay with other women and children when she clearly wanted to fight. Disobeying her uncle's orders, she puts on a helmet a rides with the army disguised as a man. To clarify how she did that, in the lore of this movie, most men already had long hair so it was easy to not look different than the others. This broke the gender role she was supposed to play during war times and something done that was unheard of in that time period. Another scene in the movie was at the end of one the battle in Pelennor fields, Eowyn was fighting the Lich King (one of Sauron's servants) and he murmured, "Fool! No man can kill me" and she responds with, "I am no man!" and stabs the Lich King in the face. It's not very often you see a women battle a legendary monster and come out victorious, or see a women in an action movie fight at all and have one of those roles in the movie. The other issue I didn't really think about until I watched it again with a different mindset that goes in on the Lord of the Rings universe is how each of the different races are treated. Of the 4 races in the lore, dwarves and elves hate each other. In the books, one of the dwarf kingdoms was getting attacked and called to the elves for aid. The elves arrived to the battlefield, but a little too late. Noticing that the dwarves were getting overrun, the elves turned their back and went back home, not wanting to waste their lives for a lost cause. Dwarves to this day (in the movie) have never forgotten about it. So at the council where they made their fellowship for Frodo to destroy the ring, there's a scene where elves and dwarves bicker at each other. They make racist slurs, comment on stereotyping, and almost get into a fight in front of everyone. That's not even the only scenes where those kind of events happen. Those two races absolutely hate each-other. I kind of relate this to how racism goes on in this world today. How some people have "muslimphobia" and stereotype every muslim because of other Muslim radicals. Elves stereotype other dwarves as being lazy, do nothing but drink and sleep, and insult the women dwarves with haves "beards". But then again, the dwarves do the same thing to the elves by calling them feminine for not being able to grow beards and being as pretty as women. So in this fellowship, Legolas, an elf from the Woodlen Realms, and GImli, a dwarf from Erebor, joined to help the quest to destroy the ring. Throughout the journey Legolas and Gimli have their altercations about how things are handled, but both know that destroying the ring is far more important than their history. It seems that Legolas is friendlier of the two when they speak to each other, and Gimli is the one who is all up tight and rude. Gimli never calls Legolas his name throughout all 3 movies and just calls him by "the elf". Through time and their time adventuring together they both seem to get really close. In the last battle in the third movie, the allies were out-numbered to the enemy. Approaching their impending doom, Gimli utters to Legolas, "Didn't think I would have died fighting alongside with an elf." and Legolas says back," What about fighting alongside with a friend." Gimli responds back gladly," Aye, I could do with that." I feel in this moment, where everything was pushed behind them, every fight, nag, and clash was put in the past. They were brothers to the end after that interaction. The example of the social exchange explained in this movie, I would say, would be the weight of danger the ring of power has if it gets into the hands of Sauron again. If they destroy the ring, evil is cleansed from the land. This theory is used a lot but that would be the broadest form of it. In the process of this exchange, (spoilers) a member of the fellowship dies trying to save two other members of the fellowship by sacrificing himself so they could escape from the army of Sauron's orcs. A lot of other sacrifices are made in the process of the quest, like the whole fellowship being split up at the end of the first movie. These sacrifices seem like nothing to what could have happened though, if the one ring was in the wrong hands. Middle-earth would've been taken over by a swarm of orcs, it would be the end of human, dwarf, hobbit, and elf life. In the end through. What I really wanted to put out this whole time typing this was friendship of Frodo and Samwise Gamgee. They really became brothers to the end for each other. They were only acquaintances when they both lived in the Shire. Sam was Frodo's gardener, but when Gandalf was talking to Frodo about the ring, he found Samwise ease dropping on the conversation. Gandalf forced Sam to go with Frodo, where he'd meet them at an inn nearby. Their friendship is then history. They went from traveling from the small little town of the Shire, to the dangerous and ferocious lands of Mordor, to destroy the ring. They encountered close calls, disguised themselves as orcs to get past the Black Gate, and fought over if they should listen to a mysterious creature who says he knows the way into Mordor. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but Frodo barring the ring put a toll on him. Every second the ring of power wasn't with Sauron, the heavier the ring felt to the person holding it. Frodo had to carry that thing all across the land with scarce materials. Also the longer he held the ring, the more attached he became to it, so Frodo changed a lot throughout the journey. He acted in a kind of bi-polar way. One second he'll act normal and then explode on Sam. He became very paranoid that Sam wanted to take the ring from him. Sam knew the ring was changing Frodo, but he still had to go on with the quest to save his best friend. Sam's truest acts of friendship was when he saved Frodo from the clutches of an orc tower called Cirth Ungol. Frodo got into an argument with Sam over their guide Gollum. Frodo told Sam to go home because he believed Gollum more than Sam. When Gollum betrayed Frodo, Sam had to fight his way through the tower to reach Frodo. The other act Samwise showed his true friendship was in the last act of the last movie. They were both too dehydrated to climb to the top of Mt. Doom, where the one ring was forged, to destroy it. Samwise mustered some strength, and put Frodo on his back and carried him up the mountain. I don't think he got enough credit in the movie of how many times he saved Frodo. But in the end when it was all over, Sam and Frodo went back to the shire closer than ever. Those experiences really bring people closer together. These sociological theories and issue are scattered throughout the film. To answer your question about how this movie helped me understand these topics, I feel noticing it now actually helped me understand it in a different sense. It wasn't your typical run of the mill family movie like cheaper by the dozen. How these issues could still play out in a fantasy themed movie, it's unbelievable. Since this series is my favorite movie of all time, I'll be using it as examples a lot more. I've never really thought about viewing movies or television shows in a the lens of a sociologist. I usually just do it for entertainment, not to compare those conflicts with societies problems. My social location and biases, I feel, don't affect the way I viewed the movie. If I were to say I was offended by the misogamy of women during that time, I couldn't say. It's a fictional world with fictional characters. I know the roles women played back then probably wasn't what they wanted to do with their life, but it wasn't the modern, progressive world it is today. The only bias I have would be that I watched this movie was between the elves and dwarfs. I feel the elves were correct to pull out of the fight to let the dwarves be overrun. The dwarf race is filled with too much pride to let go of the past. If the elves were to go into that battle, their whole army would've been wiped out, and no army to back them up later. I also would like to consider myself as a feminist, but I also understand the situation of each character and what role they had to play in their society. It still wouldn't affect my view during the movie. Watching this movie through a sociological lens, it's probably going to change the way how I'm going to view mostly everything, If I remember. There were some things that bothered me throughout the movie that I didn't notice before, in a different mindset. First of all I even learned how to learn how to view things in a sociological way by doing research.
"The sociological perspective invites us to look at our familiar surroundings in a fresh way. It encourages us to take a new look at the world we have always taken for granted, to examine our social environment with the same curiosity that we might bring to an exotic foreign culture." (Robertson)
It changed how I would view other things, too. Not just entertainment. Just having an intellectual conversation with someone. I hope to not be one of those snobby college kid conversation starters to bring the mood down, but to show the people there that I know what I'm talking about. This movie will always stay very dear to me, but I made a new memory of it by doing this project. My girlfriend is a sociology major, and she watched all three with me, and she thought that this movie did indeed open her eyes in a different way toward social issues because of the way it was presented differently. . In conclusion, this paper/ project has done a lot for mind and how I view things. Me viewing someting else in a different "lens" made me think like I never have before. This movie turned out to be even better by pointing out social issues that are not even the main plot of the storyline. It made me think about issues like racism and how this group of strangers could become family like. I would like to point out the last scene where the fellowship get reunited. Frodo and Sam finished the mission to destroy the ring, but not without the help from everyone in the fellowship helping them buy time, fighting a battle outside the Black Gate. But in the last scene of the movie, the whole fellowship get reunited. Everyone's happy, bouncing around, realizing almost all of them are still alive. They all went through tough times together and separate. They all had to overcome personal battles, friendship altercations, and all around had to change their way of thinking to reach their goal. I highly recommend to watch this film/ trilogy. It's probably one of the greatest film series to be ever be created from a book so perfectly. I enjoyed doing this research paper a lot. Bibliography
Mcpartland. THE LORD OF THE RINGS: MYTHOPOESIS, HEROISM, AND PROVIDENCE (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
"The Sociology of Middle of Earth." Arrow Through the Sun. N.p., n.d. Web.
"Sociological Perspective." Geneseo. N.p., n.d. Web.
"The Lord of the RIngs." Sparknotes. N.p., n.d. Web.
Mitchell, Elvis. "Movie Review: Lord of the Rings." New York Times. N.p., n.d. Web.
Robertson, "The Tolkien Professor." The Tolkien Professor. N.p., n.d. Web.
Cohen, Philip. The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change
"The Lord of the Rings." IMDB. N.p., n.d. Web.