My Take on Rings of Power (first 5 Episodes)

It may be too soon to say, but as of its fifth episode, The Rings of Power is well produced... but you won't remember it. You will remember some things about it. The controversy, the banter, the insults from one side or the other. You will remember the actors (and their characters),  and the agendas in-show and out. But not the story. It seems like this tale, shown to us in magnificent billion-dollar visuals and sound design, is worth more symbolically (as an ideological pillar and a statement of financial power) than in its own right as a fantasy-inspired story that needed to be told. And while I tend to dislike visually over-produced media with colors that seem too bright and dialogue that seems too precise (lacking an organic feel to it or a sense of gravitas), the show's problems transcend its presentation. 

    The issues I have are not the casting of racially diverse actors or the moments of female empowerment that are both well earned but also, at times, rather cheap. Instead, the story fails, so far, in the way it's told. I may be out of line when I say that, just because something is Tolkien-related, doesn't mean it's good. Also, I'm sure too few will gasp and wince when I say that seeing the billion-dollar budget on every take is irrelevant and that dazzling our senses does not mean a story is good or worthwhile. The fact of the matter is, high-quality visuals are expected by now and remain the bare minimum audiences are hoping to see on their screens. This may be unfair, but it's true. It's part of what producing on the elite tiers of audio-visual entertainment must entail; incredible cinematography, great sound design, high-quality editing, etc. This show lifts these two banners proudly. It screams "look everyone, this is Tolkien! This is high-budget! High budget Tolkien once again and on your home screens!" More so, the show seems to whisper and, at times, cry out loud "this is important! This is a milestone!" And it is. No doubt about it. On all counts the show is right in telling us of its importance. After all, we did crave more high-quality, high-budget Tolkien. We also want our cultural milestones to matter and be relevant to our time. 

    So let's be fair and give the show the points it deserves. 

    This is indeed a milestone, and a good one, for never in our history has so much money been given to art and to the genre of fantasy. We may imagine pre-modern societies pouring their sweat and blood into the creation of pyramids and cathedrals, great statues, murals, and paintings, but never merely for the art and never solely for the genre of fantasy. In their mythos it was neither art nor fantasy, not a genre but a dimension of their reality, the spiritual worth of the world brought to its physical form in the great deeds of our ancestors. The Rings of Power is art. Merely art. And that's the beauty of it. It's an aesthetic experience that speaks in the tongue of our current zeitgeist and that accounts, like a memory in our collective minds, for historical realities, wants, and wishes. Most importantly, it will account for what we were doing and enjoying (or not) as a society back in the 2020s. What gave us respite and a moment's solace in what we have been, what we are, and where we want to go from here. The show, like all pieces of art made in this time, is a part of our deeper voice, the fragment of us that whispers of transcendence, of inner reflection, of introspection, and growth. Beauty, like Dostoievsky so well put, will save the world, and art, being the minuscule nodes upon which beauty is made by us rather than the cosmos, might be where we ought to place our hopes for a better future.

    And that's my greatest concern about The Rings of Power and all the shows that so lately plague our screens and haunt our times of leisure. It tries to be beautiful. It tries to be art that can elate us and inspire us, and then forgets the type of art it should be. The show is not a painting or a statue, not a monolith or a great scroll in the skies. It's not a visual experience. It's not a song or a great concert of melodic wonder. It's neither of those things because it's both. It's a story. And as a story it seems lost and uninspired. Here's where watching the series came with constant disappointment. The story itself, for all its worth as the confluence of both cultural legacies as powerful and significant as Tolkien's and what all the money in the world can buy, is poorly written. It's based on coincidences and melodramatic moments, awesome vistas that soon become another flavor too sweet, and a score that, for all my love of OSTs, seems to simply vanish seconds after each of the violin's notes. It's unnecessary to delve into the deeper problems of the narrative and how it's jaded by the use of green screen, as when two elves travel cross-country to simply turn the corner of a hill and reach Khazad-Dum. No luggage, no servants, no horses or chariots, no struggle. I have been known to take more stuff on my journey to the grocery store. It's also unnecessary to question the coincidences or the misplaced slapstick comedy and incoherent fighting sequences, like when Galadriel faces Numenoreans as a petulant child would, rather than how a wise millenial swordmaster who actually wishes to teach his inferiors would. 

    The story that is there, the one we can see, is discernible only behind mists of supposed beauty that miscomprehends pre-modern societies and their art. It's behind dialogues that misrepresent the very characters that speak it. After five episodes of a show with all things going for it, all I can say is, this is not the foundational society of the Anglo-germanic tradition, with its fascinating pre-modern structure and belief systems and the beauty of its subtle yet intricate art. It's not the origin story of ancestral characters that contain centuries in one mind and breath; that have seen the great trees grow and wither and die, and that are all that humans wish to be, permanent. It's not a tale of them, of these great mythical people who could mold the earth to cities and share an existence with the oldest things. It is, and I'm sorry to say it, a story about us. And in this regard, in telling a story about who we try to be today, The Rings of Power finds its greatest triumphs. Perhaps this is the echo of our current zeitgeist, the soul of our memetic legacy. That we are lost. Lost in who we are and how we should look to others. That we are lost in where we come from and where we want to go. That we have been left forlorn in what we want on our screens and how it should look and feel. And while this might be where this show shines the most, in showing us this fault, it's not where it should. Not as art. Not as beauty. Not as a story.

    But there are reasons for this. 

    I think that I, like most inheritors of recent colonial territories, understand this show's pain. I can almost feel the anguish in its make, in its textures. Here we must speak of how The Rings of Power has been talked about more regarding its representation than its story. Because if it's going to be a story about us and not Tolkien's mythos of his own people, then we need to understand why. 

    It might seem like it doesn't matter, like coherence in adaptation is more important and that representation should begin locally, in its foundations. It's been said that if POCs want representation they should tell their own stories, their magnificent and fascinating foundational epics. And it's true. But what about the others? What about those who are neither here nor there? The Americas are a wonderful place to analyze historically precisely because its processes are so recent. Every civilization that exists today does so over the shoulders (or ruins) of another. But never as recently and as spectacularly fast as in the case of the Americas. Many races, belief systems, cultures, and peoples live here, and only a tiny minority are endemic. Some would say none are endemic, since even native-Americans came here merely a few tens of thousands of years ago. So who is from here and what is their culture? Is it European? Christian? British? Herein lies the issue, doesn't it? For what is the culture of one who has been stripped of his ancestor's culture and given another? Is it the one that was or the one that is? Do we want them to be assimilated, so as to become invisible, or not? If the first, then why complain when they make part of our culture as our culture makes part of them? If the second, then why become angry when they don't speak our language or follow our traditions to the point? 

    This is an important distinction because if POCs are not merely different members of our communities but actual members of our communities, then they are also participants in our cultures and makers of it. They not only find themselves in the memetic legacies of a shared history but are makers of that memetic legacy. Tolkien himself must have known this for he fought, maybe not alongside, but surely in the same team as millions of POC members of the United Kingdom and its global empire. And while some members of our current cultures may find divergences in shared histories some time 200 or 300 years ago, as far as their recent histories entail, the whitest brit is as worthy of Tolkien's mythos as the darkest. After all, they are both Christian/Catholic, both speak English, both share land and the issues of that land, both are on the same team, for good or bad. This is their modern reality. The sociological contradiction, which stems from what Emile Durkheim described as mechanical solidarity, is at the root of The Rings of Power's issues. The show focuses, not on telling us a story, but on displaying the contradictions of our time; that we want a return to our mechanical solidarities in which similitude and the collective unconscious was guide, but also wish for the complete assimilation of what used to be entirely different. In a way, we want the cake of colonialism and to eat it too. 

    I can only hope the story of Tolkien's first age will eventually unravel and the issues here presented will fade, allowing it to become something worth every minute. After all, as said before, never in history have art and the fantasy genre been as important. Never has such an effort been made for their graces. We who love fantasy would do well in remembering that the billionaire behind this show and the agendas that struggle for a crown over its glory or corpse are completely secondary. That as members of memetic societies we are bound to a future we create and that we can push our differences aside and demand, not that this art be political or not, but that it's good. That the story is well written and well told. That it takes us into a wondrous journey and makes us live on the edge of tears. Because a century from now the zeitgeist will change, but not the story told. Not the art itself. Fantasy needs this kind of heart, this kind of passion. If there's to be discussions about representation and POC elves, let them be secondary. If there's to be criticisms of billionaires and what they can do and should do, keep them in other places and moments. And if there's to be fantasy in our world, let it be for the glory of our kind, now and forever, for the guidance of our children and the elation of our spirits. Let it be as well told as we know we can tell them. Let them be art, so that beauty can continue to change our world for the better.