• zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    In the Hobbit, the class story is “fat rich boring kulak can be a badass hero - maybe because he comes from an adventurous bloodline on his mother’s side”.

    The Hobbit was woke in its own way. It told the story of a diaspora of bourgeoise landlords who were so keen on recovering their property that they'd risk their own lives and throw every neighboring country into chaos in order to reclaim a giant mountain full of shiny rocks. They were belligerent, curmudgeonly, reckless, rude, and routinely quite cowardly for all their bluster. They needed to drag in a petite bourgeoise "burglar" to do all their dirty work, while demeaning him every step of the way.

    And when they'd finally lucked into the impossible - luring out the monster on top of their treasure long enough for a neighboring archer to put an arrow in its heart - they proceeded to behave just as miserly as the dragon they'd dispossesed. They kicked off a race-war for their troubles, and proceeded to lose around half their number long after the dragon was dead. In the end, King Thorin was buried with his beloved treasure, while Bilbo came home with a pony-full of wealth and a head full of horrors.

    In hindsight, Bilbo's "heroics" were far more about being practical enough to survive while his companions were constantly throwing themselves to the wolves. He juxtaposed the humble civilian's level-headedness against the reactionary Zionist's zealotry. And he embodied the adventurer's spirit as a person wishing to simply experience the larger world against the mercenary's spirit of ones who wished to loot and plunder it.

    It's a fundamentally liberal story. But it's still a better one than you're giving it credit.

    • Audeamus [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Tolkien's dwarves are an Antisemitic caricature at their worst (though not as bad as the racist descriptions of orc-aligned humans in LotR) ... but yeah, at the end of the day it's a great story of timeless lessons about human nature. I enjoy it immensely and heartily second your comment. Don't take my mockery too seriously.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Tolkien’s dwarves are an Antisemitic caricature at their worst

        Mostly because he cribbed them from Wagner. And, I suspect, also because he was English. The English literally can't not be racist. I think it's genetic.

        Don’t take my mockery too seriously.

        Christ, I'd be on the wrong website if I did.