Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky critiquing the Lord of the Rings movies

[Johny Cee]

Got bounced to this link while looking for something else.  Amusing.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html

Chomsky: But we will address that later. Here we have Pippin and Merry stealing a bunch of fireworks and setting them off. This might be closer to the true heart of the Hobbits.

Zinn: You mean the Hobbits' natural inclination?

Chomsky: I think the Hobbits are criminals, essentially

[Stephen Zepp]

Got bounced to this link while looking for something else.  Amusing.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html

Chomsky: But we will address that later. Here we have Pippin and Merry stealing a bunch of fireworks and setting them off. This might be closer to the true heart of the Hobbits.

Zinn: You mean the Hobbits' natural inclination?

Chomsky: I think the Hobbits are criminals, essentially

Duh--they weren't the best race for playing a thief in D&D for nothing!

[Johny Cee]

Zinn: Right. "What does the eye command, my lord?" This is what the Orcs ask Saruman. In other words, what does the palantir say? Clearly the Orcs know a lot more about the people of Rohan and Gondor than the people of Rohan and Gondor have ever cared to know about them. They're curious beings.

Chomsky: Naturally, it's in Rohan/Gondor's interest to keep the Orcs obscured, to make everything as restricted and dehumanizing as possible. It's always the first step toward genocide. And is this — is there anything less than genocide being advocated in this film?

Zinn: I don't think so.

[Stephen Zepp]

I will admit that was funny as hell, heheh.

[Trippy]

Duh--they weren't the best race for playing a thief in D&D for nothing!

Except for climbing walls -- they sucked at that.

[Trippy]

Zinn: A perfect example of what you're talking about is right here, when Strider attacks the Black Riders, "saving" Frodo from them.

Chomsky: Think of it from the Black Riders' perspective. No doubt they arrived at Weathertop thinking, "Can we ask a few questions? We'd like to talk to you."

[taolurker]

1. There were no Hobbits in D&D... They were Halflings, and Hobbits were exclusive to Middle Earth another pen and paper type game. Essentially the same, but different nomenclature.

2. I am guessing that in order to conduct this dicussion, both needed to partake of some Hobbit-like pipe smoking.

Chomsky: And here comes Bilbo Baggins. Now, this is, to my mind, where the story begins to reveal its deeper truths. In the books we learn that Saruman was spying on Gandalf for years. And he wondered why Gandalf was traveling so incessantly to the Shire. As Tolkien later establishes, the Shire's surfeit of pipe-weed is one of the major reasons for Gandalf's continued visits.

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?

[stu]

I like the part where Zinn refers to Aragorn as a "drug lord." I'm not too big on Lord of the Rings, but their take certainly makes it more interesting to me.

[Trippy]

1. There were no Hobbits in D&D... They were Halflings, and Hobbits were exclusive to Middle Earth another pen and paper type game. Essentially the same, but different nomenclature.

There were Hobbits in (A)D&D until the Tolkien estate made TSR change it (but they allowed TSR to use Halfling).

[Stephen Zepp]

And it's important to note that "Hobbit" was what they called themselves, Halfling was actually the "world" name for the race :P

[taolurker]

1. There were no Hobbits in D&D... They were Halflings, and Hobbits were exclusive to Middle Earth another pen and paper type game. Essentially the same, but different nomenclature.

There were Hobbits in (A)D&D until the Tolkien estate made TSR change it (but they allowed TSR to use Halfling).

So, yes, there are no hobbits in D&D.

[Trippy]

Edit: NM

[stray]

This thread had potential to be funny.

[Yegolev]

Jeez.  It started off so well.

[murdoc]

This thread had potential to be funny.

I still think it's funny that Taolurker felt he needed to explain to everyone about hobbits and halflings and D&D. That could very well be the new definition of nerdrage.

"HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST HOBBITS WERE IN D&D, THEY WERE HALFLINGS!. You don't become a thief of 25 seasons you if you can't understand the fundamental differences between halflings and hobbits!

[Murgos]

I think it's funny that some of you think that Chomsky and Zinn actually wrote that.

[Sauced]

Hadn't seen this in years, thanks for the archaeological find.

[stu]

 

I have no idea who they are.

[Paelos]

I have no idea who they are.

I looked them up. Basically they are liberal anti-war, anti-government professors. Chomsky is also a huge linguistics theorist and grammarian. It sparked my memory that I read some of Chomsky's stuff in a college course, but they both seem like Major Buzzkillington.

[Phildo]

Zinn is also a noted socialist.  Had to read some of his writing in high school.

[lamaros]

Chomsky is not also a huge linguistics theorist. He is primarily a huge linguistics theorist.

I think it's funny that some of you think that Chomsky and Zinn actually wrote that.

It wouldn't be funny so much as deeply worrying. And that's without going to the site and.. well.. seeing the authors listed.

U N U S E D
A U D I O   C O M M E N T A R Y
B Y   H O W A R D   Z I N N
A N D   N O A M   C H O M S K Y ,
R E C O R D E D
S U M M E R   2 0 0 2 ,
F O R   T H E   F E L L O W S H I P
O F   T H E   R I N G
( P L A T I N U M   S E R I E S
E X T E N D E D   E D I T I O N )   D V D ,
P A R T   O N E .

BY JEFF ALEXANDER AND TOM BISSELL

I found it enjoyable and hadn't seen it before.

[NowhereMan]

I enjoyed it, though read anything else on the site and it becomes apparent it ain't 100% factual (it includes someone apologizing to Iceland for his dictatorial rule featuring such acts as forbidding them to use the letter T.)

And yeah, Chomsky made his name as a Linguist with his whole theory of Universal grammar, etc. I took a course last year and am studying this year under a professor who is a huge Neo-chomskian language philosopher who ties it into bio-linguistics and even metaphysics. I get to hear a lot about Chomsky.

[Trippy]

Chomsky is not also a huge linguistics theorist. He is primarily a huge linguistics theorist.

He's better known to the general public for books like Manufacturing Consent.

[lamaros]

Chomsky is not also a huge linguistics theorist. He is primarily a huge linguistics theorist.

He's better known to the general public for books like Manufacturing Consent.

He's pretty much the only linguistics academic who's name I know off the top of my head, while I can think of many left wing authors, so I order him the other way around.

Plus it doesn't hurt to inform people that despite what one might think of his politics he is hugely influential in a role they might not know much about.

[Phildo]

You  might want to check out Bertrand Russel or Wittgenstein.  It's been a few years since my last philosophy course, but I remember them dealing a lot with the nature of language.  And I'm pretty sure Leibniz may have written something on the topic as well.

[voodoolily]

Zinn wrote The People's History of the United States, a great book. McSweeney's is famous for A Hilarious Essay by A Famous Person, totally not written by that person.

[lamaros]

You  might want to check out Bertrand Russel or Wittgenstein.  It's been a few years since my last philosophy course, but I remember them dealing a lot with the nature of language.  And I'm pretty sure Leibniz may have written something on the topic as well.

They come under Philosophy first, not linguistics. (Current Philosophy Major).

[schild]

I want to see Chomsky and Carlin get into a slapping match at the library.

[Phildo]

I was under the impression that particular branches of philosophy deal very much in linguistics.  Or was it the nature of language?  Fuck if I can remember, that was at least two years ago.

[NowhereMan]

Russell and Wittgenstein deal far more with the nature of language and questions such as what is meaning. Russell does a lot of the more classic stuff such as the what names are and other concepts important to logic. Quine and Skinner are also quite well known (Both behaviourists who believe language is entirely learned through our exposure to it as a complex input/output thing). Chomsky goes more in for theories of how we actually use language in general rather than specific philosophical problems (though he does quite a bit of that too).

Those philosophers are certainly more traditional for language and up until last year was what the course was about. Last year I rocked up for the first lecture which was on Descartes and ideas of language as a feature of human creativity and mindedness. It's certainly a very different approach and certainly interesting seeing somewhat more mainstream ideas get attacked. He also focused a lot on language as a product of evolution and what the great evolutionary difference is between us and other animals that allows our language faculty to exist and what purpose language serves.

[stray]

I used to read a lot of philosophical literature, but ironically, Wittgenstein was and is the hardest to understand.

I did, however, understand him enough that I gave up thinking about philosophy, religion...pretty much the whole shebang.. That talking about is, for the most part, complete fucking nonsense. For that I'm grateful.

[Yegolev]

Nope.  Still not funny.

[NowhereMan]

Sorry for messing up ur thred.

[Yegolev]

It was pretty unfunny by the time you got here, so don't worry about it.

[schild]

Zinn: The Orcs have no resources. They're desperate.

Chomsky: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.

Zinn: Desperate to compete with the economic powerhouses of Rohan and Gondor.

i lolled