Flame Wars

[satori001]

While it's true that many arguments are better avoided, there may be a few that, for whatever reason, pass for entertainment.

This flame was recommended courtesy of JanH of the ex-JW board (Refiner's haunt). It may not be for the whine, cheese and spritzer crowd, but some of you may get a laugh.

Jan writes:

quote:

---

The whole article is funny and well worth a read. The real fun started only a few days ago, however, when some guy on the Ultimate Guitar (go figure!) message board posted the article and what evolved was a flame fest second to none, except most participants appeared to be pretty, if you'll pardon the pun, tone deaf.

Read it for a good laugh!

---

The first post is a spoof, beautifully written.

A "good laugh" is an understatement. Read it and weep.

PS Some of the posts contain bad words. Very bad words. Really, very bad words. If you are under age, ask your mom to read it to you.

Edited August 2, 2004 by satori001

[laleo]

I don't know, satori. It's definitely funny, especially the original LOTR piece, but this little sparkle of insight didn't appear until page twelve:

"I totally agree with this article, and also think that we should eat all of the babies in Ireland....

Anyone with the slightest semblance of intelligence should see that the article in question is obviously satirical... The author clearly had a wide knowledge of the LoTR trilogy (such as knowing that Aragorn is 80-some years old, along with the locations and names of most of the kingdoms of middle-earth.) The author obviously knows that tolkien wrote the books decades ago, but wrote otherwise in the name of humor."

I mean, really, twelve pages later . . . I don't know whether it's funny or terrifying.

At least I can console myself knowing that they're only musicians (what more can anyone possibly expect?). . .

Geez. Right now, even as I write this, there are 336 "currently active users" on that board. How much can possibly be said by how many people about a guitar?

[Sudo]

Page twelve???

Sheesh! You guys are sure expecting a lot to post a thread and expect folks to be patient enough to wait to page twelve!!!!!

sudo

[satori001]

12 pages? Didn't you find it a little funny as new posters would miss the point entirely, causing others to go ballistic? Pure slapstick.

[laleo]

Yes, definitely it was funny. It was funny because they were so genuinely dense, in an earnest sort of way.

Sudo: Did you read it? It's a quick read, actually. I think you'd laugh.

[Sudo]

Laleo,

Well, naw... I didn't read it but what the heck.. I was given sufficient warning... 12 pages!!!!

sudo

[laleo]

I realize my mistake. My first post was written in incredulity, not condemnation.

Sudo, you of all people, turning down a spoof. Here. I'll make it easy for you (do I have to read it out loud, too?):

quote:

---

http://www.bearstrong.net/peoplesblog/000557.html

The racist message of Two Towers

Thursday November 27, 2003 CET by Comrade Medvedsilnyn

I finally got around to watching this Lord of the Rings movie everyone talks about. I ended up shaking with rage during most of it. This movie is so thoroughly racist, and contains so many thinly veiled allusions to the war on "terror", that it can hardly be a concidence that mr Tolkien decided to release this movie three months before the Iraq war.

I didn't watch the first movie in this series, (and there's a third coming out next month), but the story goes something like this: There are these hobbits, who are extremely kind, goodhearted people. The hobbits have a powerful ring they're trying to take somewhere. To help them with this there are a wizard, a man, an elf and a dwarf. All of them just happen to be white, and to underscore this point for the dull-witted, the wizard is referred to as "Gandalf the White". He even dresses in all white clothes! (All that's missing is the hood.) The man, Aragorn, is some kind of ?mensch, a descendant of the superior Dunedain "race". He's 87 years old, we're told, but looks half his age - thanks to his "superior" genes, no doubt.

Working hard to foil the plans of these good, decent white folks are the "evil" Saruman, and the even more "evil" Sauron, rulers of two countries called Isengard and Mordor. Both are portrayed as near-demonic in their hatred of our white heroes. Sauron is no more than a big, red eye, hovering in the air, clearly implying that he's some kind of "Devil". Both have massive armies at their disposal, consisting entirely of filthy, ugly monsters that happen to be black, every single one of them.

The allegory to America's crusade in the Middle East is obvious, complete with a Good, white country (Israel) surrounded by "evil" darkies (Arabs): The human enclave of Rohan and Gondor, (a shining "white" city), nudged as it is in between Isengard and Mordor. It is clearly on the brink of being wiped out - the exact same defense used by Israel to justify its occupation of Arab soil. Every trick in the book is employed to dehumanize the enemy. Saruman's forces are shown committing "terrorism" against a small village, as if that's somehow the very definition of "evil". And the most effective way to dehumanize someone is of course to show them not as human at all. The enemy forces in Two Towers are literally subhuman, and most of the "heroes" are literally superhuman.

The ring is clearly a metaphor for the nuclear bomb. The good guys have it, and everyone's fine with that, but when the "bad" guys want the same power, that somehow makes them evil. Hypocrisy, anyone? Iraq, anyone?

But, I hear the skeptical reader protest, this is just a movie. You're not supposed to take it seriously. Does everything have to be about politics? Can't we just enjoy a movie like this for what it is, four hours of mindless entertainment? But that is naive. In the current climate, there is no such thing as an apolitical movie, or even an apolitical statement. Politics is all around us, in the air we breathe, in all we do and say. And in this case, the political undertones reek like the breath of one the Saruman's "urukhai" monsters. In one scene, for instance, one of the evil characters, a diplomat from Isengard, mocks the good guys for being "warmongers". And the good king of Rohan, formerly fooled into negotiating with the all-evil Saruman, is told, upon regaining his senses(!), that perhaps he'll feel better "with a sword in your hand". Lets try rewriting that in modern terms: A man coming out of a deep psychological trauma is handed a gun by the doctor who healed him, and is told "maybe you'll feel better with a gun in your hand". Tolkien isn't a right-wing gun nut, he's a right-wing sword nut! Same ****, different century.

And it gets worse. Consider: Almost all the major characters in the movie are male. Most of the women are weak and childlike background characters, who must be stashed away and protected from the "evil" darkies by the brave, heroic males. The two female side characters are both passive and weak, good for nothing but to cook (badly!) for the men.

And in a callous endorsement of the American practice of sending teenage boys to fight the president's dirty wars in faraway countries, the heroes of Two Towers order even male children to take part in the big battle at the end. One of the kids gets a lesson in sword fighting from the ?mensch Aragorn himself. And there's no ambiguity! No hint that it may be wrong to send children to fight the petty wars of their tyrannic leaders. Note also that there are no women fighting - only male children. In Tolkien's universe, even boys outrank adult women.

And there is of course no hint whatsoever that perhaps the other side isn't evil at all, that perhaps it too has its reasons for acting the way it does. Has anyone ever tried talking to Saruman and Sauron? Perhaps they too have grievances. Perhaps if everyone just sat down around a table and talked it all out, some acceptable compromise could be worked out between the white people and the black people. Perhaps they could share this ring between them? It's clearly more than powerful enough for one group alone to monopolize. But no, the conflict can only be resolved, it would seem, by slaughtering all the black people, while heroic music pumps out of the loudspeakers.

Look beneath the fairy tale wrapping. Every scene in this movie screams out the outdated idea that the world can be divided into us, who are good, and them, who are evil. This bipolar worldview is typical of the real life Gandalf and Aragorn - George W. Bush and Tony Blair. The Two Towers - funded by big Hollywood corporations with known Zionist connections - can thus only be seen as an elaborate propaganda spectacle aimed at Bush skeptics at home and abroad. And we Europeans, sadly, are falling for it. Another battle lost to the evil forces of neo-imperialism.

---

The comments following are every bit as funny as the movie review, because people didn't get it.