Garbowski,
Christopher. Lublin: Maria Curie-Sklodowska University Press, 2005. 75 pp. [No
price information available]. ISBN: 83-227-2391-1.
[1]
Christopher Garbowski’s Spiritual Values in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of
the Rings focuses on Jackson’s cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy.
An introductory chapter lays out the general themes of the book
and—perhaps too briefly—the author’s methodological framework. In
the first essay, Garbowski examines the meaning of Tolkien’s monsters (and
their sources—Beowulf, in particular) in connection with
ethical issues such as natural law and evil. The second essay explores fantasy
as genre, touching on Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Tales,” children’s literature
and its characteristics, Frank Capra, and Star Wars, and fleshes
out the central question in the book: is mythopoesis possible in today’s
disenchanted world? The third essay focuses on how the “sacramental” dimension
of Tolkien’s trilogy is preserved (and modified) in Jackson’s films by
stressing, for instance, the value of participation, community, and
craftsmanship. In the fourth essay, Garbowski draws upon Viktor E. Frankl’s
religious humanistic psychology and his concept of “self-transcendence” (54).
The author examines the significance of the metaphor of life-as-journey in
Tolkien and Jackson—a metaphor that implies freedom of choice. The final
chapter concludes that Jackson has managed to preserve the sacramental
dimension inherent in Tolkien’s work.
[2] The
questions presented in this small book are not trivial ones. In the
introduction, Garbowski makes a distinction between religious and spiritual
values; the latter, according to Scheler, encompass “among other things our
need for beauty, justice, and truth” (13). Even if Jackson has not felt
“compelled” to address the religious values found in the novel, there are, in
the film, spiritual values (14). The irreducibility of evil, the meaning of
life in the light of inevitable death, the role played in human lives by art,
creativity, sub-creation, co-creation, and (re)creation are all themes that, as
Garbowski shows, we find in the film.
[3] This book
makes two key contributions to the discussion of The Lord of the Rings and its
cinematic adaptation. First, it brings to our attention the existence of
complex interrelationships between ethics, literature, and cinematic
art—thus, this is a book that could be of interest for those interested
in ethics, as well as in literature and cinema. Second, throughout the four
essays it also illustrates how mythopoesis—the “crafting” of
myths—is indeed constitutive to human experience in Western culture.
[4] Some of
the points discussed in the book, however, deserve greater clarification or
further development. For example, Garbowski might have usefully drawn upon
works on contemporary magic—and on contemporary representations of magic
in children’s literature—to strengthen his argument in chapter 3. Also,
the author’s brief focus on gender in The Lord of the Rings (found at the
beginning of chapter 4) seems incomplete. Garbowski writes: “I tend to agree
with critic Sandra Miesel that: ‘In Tolkien, feminine virtues make life worth
living’” (30). This sounds dangerously essentialist—what are feminine
virtues in Tolkien? Are they domestic work, beauty, care, or healing—Goldberry
preparing dinner, Arwen sewing, or Eowyn taking care of her aging uncle? Saying
that “the author achieves a certain plenitude in his imaginary world that
simultaneously absorbs and transcends both gender sensibilities” (40) wipes
away several decades of feminist studies in the fields of literature and
religion. Drawing upon such studies, one could amend Miesel’s comment: “In
Tolkien, feminine virtues make life worth living—for men.”
[5] Nonetheless,
Garbowski’s book is fascinating and the author’s ideas emerge clearly from the
text, in spite of the fact that its organization and presentation are sometimes
perplexing. For example, the author discusses Frankl’s self-transcendence
theory, which informs his interpretation of book and film in the final (and
sharpest) essay. Given the importance of Frankl’s theories in the book, his
work deserved an earlier and lengthier discussion. At times, the author’s
somewhat elliptic style can make it difficult to follow the development of his
argument, a difficulty not eased by the number of typographical errors
throughout the text. His stylistic choices—which do not hinder the
overall clarity of the work—may well depend on the different way European
and Anglo-Saxon academics tend to organize essays. Roughly speaking, the
Continental European tradition often requires the reader to make an effort to
engage with the text, whereas the Anglo-Saxon tradition tends to be up front
about the paper’s argument and its development. In other words, while the
former considers the reader capable of understanding what is not made explicit,
the second has a tendency to carefully—sometimes too carefully—“guide” the reader along the journey. When both traditions come
together—as in Garbowski’s chapter 5—the results are excellent.
Maria Beatrice
Bittarello
University of Stirling
maria.bittarello@liberliber.net
