In July, distinguished English professor Karen Swallow Prior Politico article Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance is a J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings She claimed that “The Lord of the Rings” was a major influence on his political views. She said the news “The Rise of the Fantasy GenerationVance is a millennial, a title he holds, because he came of age during the popularity of Peter Jackson’s blockbuster film trilogy based on Tolkien’s works.
I too find that my personal and political views have been heavily influenced by fantasy literature, albeit through a very different body of work: comics.
In her article, Dr. Pryor gently pointed out that reading Tolkien’s work in terms of a dualism between good and evil, and applying it to the Trump campaign’s MAGA slogans, is a misappropriation of a work that Tolkien himself would have rejected. She argued that to love a book one must interpret its message accurately, and the key to this interpretation is time and experience. She suggested that Vance’s interpretation of Tolkien’s work benefits from more of both.
At that point, this GenX reader let out a sigh of deep regret.
A love of fantasy literature may be a millennial trait, but a defining characteristic of Gen X is the neglect of our experiences. My own life experiences have so many parallels with Vance’s – an abusive childhood, deep family discord, and a path to a more economically and situationally stable life paved by an academic scholarship and a career in Silicon Valley. And I, too, have found my personal and political views heavily influenced by fantasy literature through a very different body of work. Fantasy literature has a much longer history, a multimedia franchise whose pop culture and economic impact exceeds that of the Lord of the Rings film series by an order of magnitude. But if I were to pay tribute to Dr. Pryor, the genre on which it is based would not be the one she spent much of her time on.
It’s a comic book.
Manga first became popular before World War II. The Lord of the Rings‘ Published in 1954, this short serialized story centers around an otherworldly “superhero” and is told with action sequences peppered with dynamic artwork, speech bubbles, and onomatopoeic commentary. Comics have long been recognized as a more accessible (and more popular) storytelling form for young readers and those who are not good at reading, but this has led to skepticism from parents and teachers about their true literary value.
My personal encounter with the world of comic book characters was through its oldest and most beloved hero, Superman. Born on the planet Krypton and sent to Earth by his parents to escape the planet’s destruction, Superman grew into a man with superhuman abilities like flight (powered by Earth’s yellow sun) and superhuman levels of virtue, all hidden behind glasses and a desk job at a local newspaper. I first learned about and fell in love with Superman through television reruns of the 1950s black-and-white TV series, and later through comic book anthologies I found in libraries. I then discovered the Saturday morning cartoon series Superfriends, where I met Superman’s allies, characters like Wonder Woman, the Wonder Twins, and Aquaman, all in pursuit of truth, justice, and the American way.
C.S. Lewis coined the term “true myth” to describe the story of Jesus because it has all the characteristics that make fantasy fantastic.
Even if I’d been old enough to see the original Superman movie in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to see it; movie theaters were banned in my house. But that ban backfired in a big way when I watched it on VHS at a middle school sleepover a few years later. Rather than observing the obvious chemistry between Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane, as an adolescent girl, I absorbed it directly through my teenage pores.
My upbringing in fundamentalist Christianity was so intertwined with experiences of childhood trauma and neglect that it should have served to psychologically immunize me to any faith, but during my freshman year of college, thanks to a series of circumstantial disruptions that I can only describe as God-led, I became a Christian a few months before my 19th birthday.
“A real myth“Fantasy” is not a useful word to describe the story of Jesus, because it has all the fantastical elements: the existence of a world beyond our visible range, powers beyond our inherent power, a cosmic battle between good and evil, and a heroic deliverer who calls us into a battle where we can save ourselves and emerge victorious.Another important feature is that, to Lewis and to me, it’s all glorious truth.
As I graduated from college and grew into adulthood, as my story became interwoven with the true mythological tales of the Gospels, I began to appreciate the value of other myths that mirrored that story.
That was the case when I first saw it too The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
I had just turned 30, married with two daughters, and was approaching the 20th year of my spiritual journey as a Christian. I was familiar with the book on which the film was based; I had picked it up and tossed it aside many times in high school and college. After seeing the film, I was instantly filled with a desire to read the book again. The themes were all there: the call to something beyond oneself, the reality of evil and the determination that good will prevail, the need for a sacrificial savior. Peter Jackson had captured Tolkien’s vision and characters so amazingly well, and the box office success shows. But after seeing the film, I tried to read the book a third time and failed. There was something about Tolkien’s world that was too far removed from my own to fully engage me.
Then came the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Having grown up with Superman and the characters of the DC Universe, I was initially unfamiliar with the characters from the competing Marvel Comics universe. I enjoyed the first two films, Iron Man and its first sequel, not only because of the story itself, but also the redemptive storyline of the actor who played Iron Man. I skipped the subsequent Thor storyline, skeptical and confused by the connection to the character and story that seemed to be a pastiche of Norse mythology.
The fantasy world imagined by Stan Lee offered a more compelling mythological lens through which to interpret my own world than the one imagined by Tolkien.
But then came Captain America, the most platonically perfect reinterpretation of the true Jesus myth I’ve ever seen, a man born in weakness and given supernatural powers to save others, sacrificing his life to save the world. And then came The Avengers, the first film in which the stories of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and a host of other characters converged, bringing together their backgrounds and abilities in a joint quest to defeat the forces of evil once and for all (or until the infamous extra scene after the end credits suggested something else was on the horizon). And I was hooked.
Over the next 15 years, the MCU’s complex timeline of 34 films and 24 streaming series wove itself into the timeline and milestones of my life, and it’s only now, well into my 50s, that I can look back and understand why the fantasy world imagined by Stan Lee offered a more compelling mythological lens through which to interpret my own than the world imagined by Tolkien.
While Tolkien’s stories take place in a fictional Middle-earth, the stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have one foot firmly on the ground, in the costumes of the characters, in real places (New York, Oakland, suburban New Jersey) and in actual events on Earth, and the other foot in the fictional realm.
In the fictional world of The Lord of the Rings, power is a possession, and not everyone can wield it with the same capacity, much less possess it. In the MCU, power is inherent to existence, and all living beings possess it to some degree. Our force capabilities can be altered not only from the outside, by procuring a collection of magical stones or wielding an enchanted hammer, but also from the inside, instantly, by detonating a lethal weapon manufactured by one’s own company, being injected with an electron by a Vita-Ray, or being bitten by an experimentally modified spider. Whether we are human or superhuman, animal or android, male or female, our internal motivations and choices about what to do with the power we possess determine what kind of people we become and how we impact the world.
In the real world, we are all born powerless, and not everyone has the support they need to navigate the difficult path to adulthood. For those of us like J.D. Vance and I, born into the dark bedfellows of childhood trauma and neglect, fantasy literature offers a window into a world that names the darkness of our past and present, but also invites us to believe that a better future is possible, and that we can play a role in making it happen. That invitation is especially appealing when we can see ourselves in the characters who are making that future a reality.
There was no direct exposure to Tolkien’s stories for me, a 30-year-old mother, or for my daughters: we literally didn’t belong to The Fellowship of the Ring.
It is easy to imagine that teenage JD would have seen herself in the protagonist. Travel companionsAs a young person at the time, and as an aspiring adult, alongside the smoldering flames of the collapsed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It will take several more days for the fire to be put out. It’s easy to imagine how terrifying and vast the world he was heading into seemed when the first film was released, and how much larger the role he envisioned for himself in fighting the forces of darkness when the third film was released just a few months after he enlisted in the Marines.
But I saw it differently. As a 30-year-old mother, I had no direct access to Tolkien’s stories, nor did my daughters. We literally didn’t belong in the Fellowship of the Ring. The few female characters, while always beautiful and noble, were only supporting roles, never starring roles.
Not so in the MCU. From Black Widow and Captain Marvel to Laura Barton and Peggy Carter, from Wakanda’s Dora Milaje to Wanda Maximova, the MCU’s many heroines not only actively participate in the collective quests and battles, but also appear in their own stories. Just as importantly, their characters, like their male superhero counterparts, are constantly wrestling with the moral reckoning where power and responsibility intersect. And some of the most compelling and popular storylines are, like WandaVision, those that explore their characters’ triumphs as well as their grief and defeat.
The MCU’s democratic vision extends to its resistance to typicality and its deliberate incorporation of moral complexity into its stories and characters, which leads me to believe that, as a collection of fantasy stories, as Dr. Pryor points out, the MCU gets closer to the complexity of real people and real situations that play out in the real, 21st-century world.
Nevertheless, the political battle that is the 2024 election season continues to unfold. The bigger question is not how J.D. Vance saw himself in the Lord of the Rings stories of his youth, but how he saw himself in the stories. nowA husband and father who just turned 40 and is just 270 electoral votes away from the second-highest office in the land, the Politico article portrays him as a very young Gandalf, perhaps viewing Usha, who left her job at a prestigious law firm to accompany him on the campaign trail, as Éowyn.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has picked Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, as her running mate. Waltz, who is decades older and has more political and military experience than Vance, made me think of Dr. Pryor’s perspective and wonder what his take on Tolkien might be, though the middle-class dad-boy attitude that dominates the social media atmosphere might suggest he’s more of a comic book guy.
Only time will tell.
Source: Christ and Pop Culture – christandpopculture.com
