The Scandalous Sincerity of Lord of the Rings
the imperative to write earnestly in an irony-poisoned world
I come from a Lord of the Rings family. Some of my earliest memories of the cinema are going with my parents to see the theatrical release of each film when I was in elementary school. They’re long movies for a little kid, but luckily they’re some of the most engrossing films ever made, and I adored going to the movies for any reason (the soundscapes in the velvet darkness! The fizz of soda in my mouth! The portal to new worlds opening before me on the big screen!) so we all had a good time. As soon as they films became available to own, we were a boxed set extended edition household.
My mother had read the series cover to cover while operating a customer service phone at Home Depot (it’s hard to imagine a job like that now, a blessedly dull part-time human-operated gig that brings in enough income to help support a growing family) and she had a bottomless knowledge of Middle Earth facts to share. My father, who has always loved wordplay and beautiful, stirring speeches, would quote the films’ rallying cries and monologues of hope to me all the time. My younger brother and I would pretend to defend Helms Deep in the yard with sticks for swords. And since we moved so often growing up, I have many memories of packing up houses while the DVDs played in the background, all of us pausing occasionally to watch our favorite scenes before going back to wrapping plates in paper towels.
They’re excellent films. Even if you don’t like high fantasy, even if calvary battles and elf maidens and lords of darkness make you roll your eyes, you can’t look me in the face and tell me they aren’t one of the jewels in the crown of cinema.
What’s Scarier Than Sincerity?
So why are so people into these films? What makes them stand head and shoulders above so many other fantasy blockbusters?
The argument I’d like to make is that Lord of the Rings stands exceptional and speaks to viewers on a soul-deep level (talk to someone who is REALLY into Lord of the Rings and tell me there isn’t an element of religious reverence there) because its sincerity. Not the whimsy, or the gentle camaraderie between friends, or the world-building, or the dozen models of valiant and compassionate masculinity on display, or the attention to creative detail virtually unseen in filmmaking since, or even the overwhelming belief in the muck and blood of the trenches that goodness will prevail. These are all exceptional and evergreen elements, about which essay upon essay has been written. But why is no one talking about the sincerity?
Every character in The Lord of the Rings interacts with the world they occupy with a sincerity I fear the modern mind cannot fathom. This is demonstrated in the tenderness, yes, in the forehead kisses and hope in darkness and in the brother-in-arms bonds, but also in the grief and rage, in the keening at family gravesides, in the anger expressed at moral cowardice, in the utter existential despair like living death. There is levity, certainly. Characters make jokes to one another the same way you make jokes to a dear companion or annoying coworker but the jokes are not there at the expense of the film’s sincerity.
They are not inside jokes with the audiences, they are not pressure release valves for how embarrassed the filmmaker obviously is about coming off as twee or overly somber, they are not winks and nudges. No fourth wall is broken, no meta commentary is made.
Art Imitates Life…Jk Unless?
Think of the last time you were really and truly sincere. The last time you shared your heart with someone without laughing it off or pretending to be blase or asking for what you desire with that built-in disavowal of “hahah jk…unless?” When was the last time you could stand your ground while looking someone in the eyes, while refusing to make fun of yourself or perform disaffection? When was the last time you were able to share your thoughts without falling back on meme-speak, or sarcasm, or on that killer of hearts, irony.
Irony is great in small doses, like vinegar in a recipe. But use too much and the whole dish becomes so bitter its completely inedible. And I fear we’ve all been overdosing on irony for some time now. I fear it’s numbing us to our longings, our creaturely needs for connection, our ache for justice, our spiritual sentiments, our ability to make good art that actually has something to say and is brave enough to say it plainly.
If any of us had to live even a day with the level of earnest candor on display in Lord of the Rings, it would terrify us.
A Day May Come When The Courage Of Man Fails, But This Is Not That Day
I have a dozen theories as to why we’re so scared of sincerity, many of which have been echoed by every cultural commentator for the last decade (we’re always on that damn phone, tech companies have microwaved our brains in dopamine slot machines and sold off rights to everything down to our faces and fingerprints and most private secrets, sex and love and therefore desire and intimacy are in a crisis, the oceans are dying, politicians have sacrificed everything up to and including their own souls on the altar of capital) but I’m not interested in doing a post-mortem on sincerity. I’m interested in resuscitating it, even if I have to stitch it back together myself Frankenstein-style.
I would argue artists have the most responsibility to be sincere, not because making art is within itself a net-honorable high-virtue act of material resistance (sff bluesky, not a peep out of you), and not because art is only effective and worthwhile if it is sincere (bitter, ironic, tongue in cheek, meta art is sometimes just what the doctor ordered), but because sincerity is in short supply these days. So if you ache to just be honest for once and not bury what you have to say under layers of disavowal, please listen to that ache.
Because if we don’t resurrect sincerity, we will cede the realm of sincerity to arch-right reactionaries who believe they have a monopoly on a world rich in meaning, for honor among women and men, for religious ritual and spiritual sentiment, for beauty, for the concept of family, for the wholesome desire to create a safe, warm home where everyone you love is welcome and fed. And I, for one, refuse to cede them any of that. Lord of the Rings isn’t just for the trad caths or the conservative family values crowd or those who want to “retvn” to whatever bastardized fantasy of the past makes them feel strong. It’s for anyone with a courageous heart and a soul in love with the world, broken and smoldering though it is.
Sincerity matters, beloved. The foundation of moving the needle on anything at all, from a marriage to a mutual aid group to an entire nation, is honesty. Sometimes, we’ve gotta suck it up and be sincere. How can we possibly expect to save the world if we cannot even, when the occasion calls for it, be earnest about what is worth saving?
The death of sincerity is having serious deleterious effect on us. In the same way sexual desires, when repressed and not integrated into our lives in a healthy, moderate way, corrode in our unconscious mind and drive us towards controlling, manipulating, and punishing others, the desire for freedom, for safety, for agency, and for community can rot inside us too. Even if we don’t get all we desire, even if we don’t live quite long enough to see balance restored to the world in the way we so deeply long for, at least we will have been honest. And at least, in being honest, we will find our ways deeper into the hearts of each other, and into all the ways we can better care for each other right here, right now, right in the shadow of Mount Doom.
This is my plea to you, here at the end of the world: be sincere.
Tip Your Bartenders
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As always, be safe and well until we two meet again.
-S
Absolutely fabulous! I think of the tenderness and intention of aragorns forehead kiss daily.
Last year, I started rewatching Fellowship, and about 30 minutes in, I stopped and couldn’t pick it up again, even though I also grew up in a LOTR family, so I have watched it many times now. I was, for some reason, feeling a little uncomfortable and bored, and when I looked back at that experience, I felt really ashamed and confused because I truly love those movies and I was excited to watch since I hadn’t watched any of them in years, and I knew that this was most likely a result of my dopamine-obsessed brain not allowing me to watch something without subway surfers playing right next to it. That experience and a lot of the events politically, socially, and personally that have occurred in the last year have made me start reflecting on who I am and what is just a defense or reaction to how exhausting life as it exists now, and that has made me realize how small I have made myself to protect myself from being “too much” or “cringe/embarrassing”, and I think seeing the characters and the world of LOTR be so much of the opposite, it is big, loud, unapologetically sincere and emotional, made that shell of myself so uncomfortable because I felt like I could never have that again. But I can, and I will keep trying until I feel like myself. So with that being said, thank you for writing this, and keep being you!