noWizardme
Gondolin
Mon, 1:15pm
Views: 505
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2319 Days free of 'Balrog wings' incidents!*
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In fact it has been so long that maybe some newer forum members would like some background?
The LOTR passage in which the Balrog appears on the Bridge of Kazad-dum is exciting (and so probably first-time readers go at speed). It's vivid (so that whatever the impression is from that first reading, it lodges firmly in the reader's mind). But it turns out that there's a point on which it is ambiguous.
And this led to a group of fans who thought balrogs had wings, and a second group who were puzzled how anyone could have got this impression. In the early 2000s, people asking 'do balrogs have wings' were everywhere online. I'm not sure but I think it might have become part of a driniking game played by forum members then, in which overly-frequently-answered questions were greeted with people posting " *glug*" (would anyone like to reminisce about that game, and say whether balrogs were included?). Later, I remember the question still coming up from time to time, and the lovely forum member Elizabeth politely explaining each time that it was a popular question, and why it had no definitive answer.
But now, not so much?
I want to ask and ponder about why that question used to come up so much, why it doesn't now - or not here, at least! For anyone wanting to know how come the answer is ambiguous, I can think of no finer reference than this post, originally 2003, by Reverend (a titan of this community at that time and someone who I feel sorry I didn't overlap with.)
But why did people get so exited about it, and why doesn't it continue? I don't know, but have some hypotheses:
- It's possible that the debate rages on, but nowadays on sites and apps I don't use. In that case it would be a change in the prominence of this board, or the types of users it attracts. Or perhaps the rate at whcih new forum members are arriving (then and now): folks who don't know about balrog's wings already...
- Was it a feature of the sudden growth of the Internet just before then? People meeting and being puzzed by the ideas of other fans for the first time? In the pre Internet days, you just read the book. If you had friends who liked it too, you discussed it with them. But I think my experience of the pre-internet era was common enough: Tolkien fandom existed from the late 1950s (I later discovered) but I had no access to it. Even if you discovered it, it likely meant travel to physical moots and meetings, or sending some stamped, self-addressed envelopes and a cheque of to someone who would send out 'Roneo'd' or 'Gestetner'd' copies of fanzines or newsletters, probably in luridly-coloured ink. (The machine we had at school offered vermillion, purple, or a bright green.). Or maybe no fanzines or newlsetters would come back, if the Editor got busy, or got in trouble for using the office photocopier; or had one of those fearsome but incomprehensible squabbles that I'm sure affected fandoms even then, and gave up the editing job. And interntational postage rates would have prevented me in England getting someting from America (or vice versa) Anyway, the idea here is that in the early 2000s, with the rapid expansion of teh Internet, there could have been many fans who had always assumed that balrogs {had metaphorical wings/had literal, physical wings} and were confused to be encountering for the first time others who had always assumed the opposite. That was my situation - the ambiguity in the text had never occurred to me until I was on this forum.
- Was it the film? PJ's ROTK appeared in 2000, including a balrog with wings (or at least wing bones). Was it that point at which come fans who'd read the balrog as wingless went Huh? or It's an outrage! and this is what started it as a subject for posts?
- Or, has the contoversy died down now because the PJ films have in effect settled it? That is, is it that whatever Tolkien intended (if he intended any settled thing - refer to Reverend's post) the film is what people mostly have in their heads these days. In that case, just like if ask peoeple to imagine Frankenstein's monster, a lot of people imagine him as played by Boris Karloff (bolt through neck etc.). But I'm told that is not how Mary Shelley described him.
Whichever it is, I think the balrog is a useful example of how there can be multiple interpretations of the text, just as valid as each other. And how someone can not even realise there's another way of looking at things unti you meet someone who thinks differently.
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* Last discussed, I think, in this thread from February 2019 Which, mathematical whizzes may well notice is not 2319 days ago. TBH I was thinking more "2319!!"
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"I am not made for querulous pests." Frodo 'Spooner' Baggins.
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Mon, 1:19pm)
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