The Blackberry Walk

At TK Maxx yesterday, I saw a Legolas mug. On the mug, Legolas looked cartoonish and bishie in a Western way. And then I realised I had hardly ever seen any tat of this ilk before for The Lord of the Rings - what had changed? MAL has listed a new Lord of the Rings anime - which will most likely be bad; Amazon Prime have released a Lord of the Rings spin-off series - which no matter what my colleagues say, is without doubt beyond bad; and strangest of all, a slice-of-life Nintendo Switch game where you can live as a hobbit in the Shire, which looks very ugly. I look up Tolkien's Wikipedia page: "died 2nd of September 1973". Fifty years have passed since his passing, and the vultures of mediocrity descend. In a sense, it feels as if a castle's walls have been breached. The clamouring peasants beyond the castle walls have, through a long siege, managed to plunder the great loot of this sacrosanct franchise. A franchise which Tolkien delicately and carefully built - an ornate model village, if you will - which represents and contains a part of him. In Middle Earth you can see Tolkien's devout Catholicism; you can see his love of the English countryside; and you can see his deeply reactionary character, with regards to industrialisation and the political centralisation of the 20th century. If an Englishman's house is his castle, no man made a more conscious effort to construct so ornate a castle as Tolkien. But again, these castle walls have been breached, and the peasants make off with the treasury's gold. But wasn't Smaug the hoarder of gold? Was Tolkien's plan not to share his vision of Middle Earth, so that his readers could dream with him? Tolkien's beloved Beowulf was once a folk story shared from family to family by oral tradition. Undoubtedly the version of Beowulf we have today wasn't the only one; indeed, many hundreds were most likely passed round across the Anglo-Saxon world, taking on the many flavours of their locales. Today, we have a canonical Beowulf because it was written down, and transcribed across the ages. Whilst Shakespeare's canonicity is beyond doubt, what of Homer? Homer wrote so long ago, it is hard to know whether the works attributed to him are solely his own - what is likely is that Homer's works emerged from an iterative tradition of oral traditions across generations. And what of folklore and fairy-stories? We are perfectly content for the differing endings of Little Red Riding Hood to be up for interpretation to live and breath alongside one another without dispute. Folklore is fanfiction; and it is as old as time. So in what sense did Tolkien 'own' Middle Earth? He owned the words written in his book, granted, for those are the words he chose and sold in his story. But he also owned the 'franchise'. Middle Earth-themed mugs were not on sale because Christopher Tolkien was diligently acting guardian for his father's legacy. Once the fifty year cap is reached, the modern folklore proliferates. Sherlock Holmes' 'naturalisation' into the popular sphere is a forerunner to this effect. His name appears everywhere, merchandise is made by anyone, and fanfiction is sold without scrambling his name. And Holmes' name has taken on a truly mythic quality. People travel to Baker Street to see his apartment from across the world. I remember as a child thinking Holmes was a real person - that was before I knew of the canonical book. A canonical book almost concretises folklore as fiction. In the case of Robin Hood, many stories are written about him from the Mediaeval age to the present, but there is no original canonical work to which he can be described. Therefore, he is a legend. Before there were writings, there were rumours and hearsay; and before the hearsay... did he live? The very existence of the Sherlock Holmes books means that Sherlock Holmes is not real; and the very existence of the Lord of the Rings means the Lord of the Rings never happened. Historians argue about the historicity of the Iliad - and some, more unnecessarily sceptical historians, argue about the historicity of whether the Trojan war ever happened. One day we might debate about the events of Middle Earth, and the historicity of mountain-dwelling Dwarven kingdoms. Folklore takes on a life of its own. The life that Middle Earth's story seems to be taken down is, however, unpleasant to watch. These newer works - particularly what I've heard from this new Amazon show - appear to be diametrically opposed to Tolkien's vision, intentionally misunderstanding his vision to progress the modern causes. This is not right. How, then, can these two concerns, for modern folklore and faithful vision, be squared? Recently, I've gotten into Stilton. Growing up, I was never a big cheese lover - and even now, I find many cheeses too strong on the tongue - but Stilton, I've discovered, is delicious. The complexity of flavour no sacred spice mix could match. And to ensure future generations can enjoy the same flavour of Stilton, and the same authenticity of Stilton, there is a PDO saying that Stilton has to be made and derived from cows in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, or Derbyshire (ironically the town of Stilton is in Cambridgeshire), and by the same general processes of old. The people creating Stilton may change, but the techniques and ingredients remain the same. What if such a technique were allowable for art? What if the Tolkien family could petition the government for a kind of PDO for their work, and set up an institution for licensed organisation of authors trusted to continue their work? There would have to be further rules. To prevent it becoming a cash cow, those running such an organisation couldn't take money for the works made by their organisation approved writers. The purpose of these institutions would be to maintain the integrity of their work, rather than be an eternal estate, after all. But much like a university has scholars, the Tower of Tolkien could give membership to approved writers who could expand Tolkien's vision. With this system, we get approved creators continuing the legacy of these works, creating further folklore. Perhaps even fanfiction works could be greenlit in such a system, bringing them in to the canon if their work was deemed talented and faithful enough. Like the Stilton, if the work is grown from the same fertile field of imagination, it can be called part of Middle Earth instead of the extremes of 'Tolkien only' and 'tragedy of the commons' which we have flipped from in but a year. Things that are valuable because of their strong flavour and character must be maintained, lest they fall into disrepair. English republicanism died with Cromwell, in part because he couldn't birth a tradition to maintain it after his rule. And neither can Tolkien fifty years after his death prevent this dam of sewage bursting in his name. The only way to maintain a garden for generation is not only to have each subsequent generation tend to the garden, but also to wall the garden off from the local farmer's cattle! The maintenance of such a wall is difficult, as Disney well know; but if what you are protecting is valuable, it must be protected at all costs. Of course such a legislative conception of IP is a pipe-dream, but as it stands the system is awfully silly. It's strange we're a culture which protects the integrity of cheese far better than the integrity of our greatest works of fiction. I struggle to decide whether that reflects well or poorly upon us.