[Don Feder] Film of the Year: The Return of the King

Front Page Magazine ^ | 12/31/03 | Don Feder

[Gritty]

And, fittingly, it comes in a season of hope – when mankind’s steps are illuminated by the Star of Bethlehem or the light of the menorah.

A refreshing review from Don Feder, and an interesting observation.

[Taliesan]

Lots of people confuse the artistic issue of allegory/fable with the deeper issue of worldview. Especially those who look at all "religion" superfically think that Tolkein's distate for allegory meant a distate for any worldview dominating a story -- which of course would be impossible, since "story" is nearly a synonym for worldview. The artist has to decide what is important and what is not important literally in the first sentence.

Two separate issues.

It is fundamentally and consciously a Catholic work which studiously avoids allegory for artistic reasons.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Twelve days after that memorable September night, Lewis wrote to a friend, “I have passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. My talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.”

See this post:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1048629/posts

[Taliesan]

Fascinated by the whole Lindskoog thesis. She used to have a website where she added material that is not in the books.

[aruanan]

Tolkein was an influence, among many. "...Bringing back to the...fold" is too strong.

I believe it was in Surprised by Joy that Lewis said that George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith was responsible for baptizing his imagination. He also credited his atheist Scot tutor's training his mind to ruthlessly cut through the crap with making him unable to evade the truth of God when he saw it. I don't remember the exact quote, but he said something to the effect that he was a most reluctant convert, that he was dragged into the Kingdom kicking and struggling, looking everywhere for some way out.

Okay, here's the quote:

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?

[jonno]

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[Taliesan]

Yes, yes. I think he said in MacDonald he first encountered holiness.

[rhema]

He was out of print?

Pretty much so. He'd ceased writing his regular columns for JWR and the Boston Herald.

[aruanan]

There was someone here at FR who had one of her original papers on the subject and was going to send me a copy. Somehow we never made the connection.

What amazes me is that people will completely ignore some of the most fundamental facts of the case: that Hooper was not, as he claimed, Lewis's live-in secretary/companion, that he knew him barely two weeks during a summer term in England as a graduate student helping him to get things into order after Lewis's return from hospital, that he next returned to England only after Lewis's death. All this is demonstrable. When put against Hooper's claims to the contrary, it's evident that all that followed grew from a fundamentally rotten seed of vanity and deceit. It's a pity that so many folks have been suckered. I'm happy, though, that in the more recent editions of Lewis's works, I haven't seen introductions by Hooper.

[aruanan]

Twelve days after that memorable September night, Lewis wrote to a friend, “I have passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. My talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.”

Thanks! He who says A must say B.

[BibChr]

No sir, you're three up on me in that regard.

Dan

[2nd Amendment]

I. too, would nominate this trilogy for Movie of the Millenium. I,ve read where Tolkien and his son disavow any allegorical elements to the movie. I believe all truth, all light, all justice, all honor come from God. Since I believe the God of Christianity to be the only God, then I find reassuring elements in this movie. To the extent that LOR reflects these values, it reflects the nature of God. I, for one, cannot miss the allegorical elements to the Lord of the Rings. I believe this trilogy is even more significant because of the times we live in. Right over wrong, good over evil, orthodoxy over relativism are all being debated daily in our political circles.

[BibChr]

Thanks for that link. I've often greatly enjoyed Feder. I still remember something he wrote about Everett Koop some 13 years ago, about how he seemed to have sold his soul to be well-liked here, but as a result would face a fearsome judgment in a higher Court. Gave me the chills.

Gotta love this, vintage Feder on liberalism:

I've always found it curious that an ism which was once synonymous with free inquiry and dissent should end its days like a crotchety codger, muttering to himself because there are those who dare to contradict him.

Dan

[Taliesan]

I've found her case to be convincing.

I had a private correspondence with her some years ago in which I pointed out that Barfield has to be complicit, since he is (was) the executor...but she says so little about Barfield in the books.

She was noncommittal in response.

[TigersEye]

Return of the King bump.

[aruanan]

Perhaps this is something that follows necessarily from the known facts but which cannot, like the rest, be so definitively documented. Could Barfield, by this time, just have been a dope?

On a somewhat related note, I just got a postcard advertising a talk here at the U of Chicago by James Watson (the guy who ripped off Rosalind Franklin) who is going to talk about his new book: Honest Jim. Ha ha ha. I laughed my butt off over that one. I'd really be interested to know what the relationship was between young Watson and old Maurice Wilkins, both of whom were apparently petrified by Rosalind. It was apparent that Wilkins, who was not Rosalind's boss, was feeding results from her work to Watson. As far as Watson's claim that his jaw dropped when he saw her X-ray diffraction of DNA and realized its significance, he didn't have any such reaction when he had attended one off her presentations many months earlier and she showed the same "photo" and discussed its significance in terms of a helical structure for DNA. She also scooped Watson and Crick on the idea that the backbone of the molecule was external, something that Watson had strongly protested. Honest Jim! What a joke.

[Taliesan]

I have to admit ignorance of this whole affair. I've always been taught Watson and Crick, helical structure of the DNA molecule. You mean they pilfered it?

[aruanan]

I have to admit ignorance of this whole affair. I've always been taught Watson and Crick, helical structure of the DNA molecule. You mean they pilfered it?

This account is fairly good. Watson, in his self-promoting rewrite of history The Double Helix, makes it sound as though RF had done her work to produce the micrograph over which he had his supposed burst of intuition with little clue as to its significance. This is just a flat-out misrepresentation.

Here is a portion from the piece linked to above:

Even a less acceptable alternative for Watson, although the most honest one, would have been to abandon his work on DNA completely. According to Sayre, there existed an informal agreement between Cavendish Laboratory and King's College that the DNA problem was the "property" of the King's College (Sayre 115). Neither Watson nor Crick was allowed to work on DNA (Watson 98). However, to a man as competitive and ambitious as Watson this choice was obviously out of consideration. [my emphasis]

Instead, Watson and Crick chose another path. They published their report on the molecular structure of DNA without ever acknowledging Rosalind Franklin's critical contribution to their discovery, thus stripping her of any credit that she deserved.

In his account of the discovery of DNA, The Double Helix, Watson is unethical, especially concerning Rosalind Franklin. Throughout the book he refers to her in a demeaning manner, calling her "Rosy" and "anti-helical" (implying that she completely rejected a helical structure for DNA). Calling Franklin "anti-helical" is not only inappropriate for a published work, but untrue. In mid-November of 1951 (two years before Watson and Crick discovered the double helix) Franklin gave a lecture at King's College. In the lecture, which Watson attended, she stated that DNA was probably a helix with the sugar-phosphate backbone on the outside (Gribbin 227). Watson unscientifically neglected to take notes at the lecture, and unethically neglected to mention this in The Double Helix. Instead, he discusses thinking, at the lecture, how Franklin would look if she "did something novel with her hair (Watson 45)." Also, Watson contradicts himself in the book. Although he saw no problem with using Franklin's work and giving her no credit, early in The Double Helix he discusses an incident in which Crick suspected that Bragg had used Crick's work without giving him credit. Watson implies that this would have been grossly unethical and unscientific, and concludes the incident by stating that Bragg acknowledged that the idea had occurred independently to both (Watson 37+). In these examples and countless others The Double Helix is so unethical and unscientific that Harvard University Press would not publish it, on account of the protests lodged by Crick and Wilkins (Sullivan xxvi).

[Lil'freeper]

Throughout the history of science there are example after example of scientists being rather ruthless and somewhat shady in the rush to publish and get credit. Beatrix potter first described the sybiotic relationship that is lichen- someone else took credit. Lise Meitner split the atom and didn't get credit. Debating whether Newton or Leibnitz invented calculus can be very lively, too. Those are the first three that pop to mind but there are scores of others.

[nutmeg]

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