It's worth fighting for

We live in a culture of apathy and irony. It’s in the absurdist memes of social media and the way we talk about enjoying ‘trash’ TV and ‘cringe’ music, or the political landscape of Trumpism and a climate collapse we opt to ignore. Through detaching ourselves and smoothing out our less palatable edges, we create a bubble that feels safe. Rather than engaging, rather than trying something and potentially falling short, we’d rather not try at all. Stay aloof, and no one can ever accuse you of not being cool. Stay disengaged, and no one can accuse you of being a buzzkill. More often than not, irony is simply a way to use self-awareness as a shield against embarrassment, and in a world of smartphones and social media it's not hard to see why we're all more conscious of ourselves than ever. In that kind of world, sincerity becomes scary.

One of the biggest cultural events of recent years is the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its epic multi-year storytelling saga. At its best it has built to some genuinely impactful crescendoes, but at its worst it’s antithetical to everything that makes art worthwhile: created by committee, designed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, and fundamentally focused on profit before anything else. Not to mention continuing even after it had reached a natural conclusion. But I think the worst thing about its lasting legacy is its reliance on irony.

The high points that the MCU did manage to execute well only worked because the writing took the story seriously long enough for the moment to land. At almost every other turn the films went out of their way to undermine the sentiment, or wink at the audience, as if to say we know this is silly, we know this is cringe, we’re sorry to put you through this. From Achilles to Robin Hood, the heroes of historical legend have always been said to reflect the values of the societies they came from. If that’s still the case today, then it’s telling that Tony Stark is sarcastic, flippant, and ridiculously wealthy.

This is the culture that today’s youth are inheriting. Not only are they judged for engaging with technology that they didn’t create, but they’ve been born into a world of boomer and millennial nostalgia, inundated with legacy sequels and reboots, biopics about aging musicians, and franchises spreading themselves thin like butter over too much bread. This isn’t to say that great art isn’t being made – far from it. There’s probably more interesting art accessible now than ever. But the dominant culture remains one of reminiscence. Implicitly, we are telling kids that there’s nothing left to look forward to. You already missed all the good stuff. Sorry.

Don’t get me wrong, irony is a powerful storytelling device. It can subvert norms, undermine power, draw attention to hypocrises. In everyday conversation it can be used for comedy, but also to broadcast our self-awareness, a way to acknowledge when we’re playing into cultural stereotypes. But it can also create a separation between us and the reality of the moment. It can be a means through which we detach ourselves from the emotions we know we should be feeling. Through irony, we give ourselves permission not to process the things that should probably be reckoned with. Its overuse speaks to a culture of apathy. One in which being cool means being disinterested, and being liked means never pushing back.

I’m not saying there aren’t nuances to artistic expression, that there aren’t times that a knowing look or sly gesture will suffice as a way of communicating or connecting with someone, but I am saying that we cannot indefinitely shut ourselves off from our feelings. We need to start being sincere. We need to start telling people what we feel. Placing a hand on our friend’s shoulder, hugging them, thanking them for their friendship. To build a society in which this is normal, we need our stories to care. I truly believe that fantasy can be at the forefront of this.

There’s no doubt that the success of The Lord of the Rings films is in part responsible for the rise of the MCU. Hollywood took note when Peter Jackson and his team proved that you could set out to make multiple films, rather than making sequels as an afterthought, and see a considerable return on investment. But what strikes me when I watch The Lord of the Rings now is just how earnest it is. It has comedic moments and quips, and certain characters are greatly lessened by their treatment as comic relief, but the story as a whole is relentlessly emotive, and unashamedly so.

Fantasy has always been particularly susceptible to parody. For many, the only way to do fantasy is to also do comedy, as in The Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, A Knight’s Tale, and the recent Dungeons and Dragons movie. I love each of these movies, but there’s a reason they’ll never cut as deep as The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s creation is wholly earnest. His characters care about their world, their friendships are deep and loving, their romances resolute, their convictions clear and unwavering. And to Jackson’s credit this comes across in the films. I have no doubt that having two women on the core writing team, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, was crucial to this, though the camera is also keen to draw attention to tender yet aromantic physical touch.

Tolkien would no doubt balk at the idea of any story not being taken seriously, especially by its own creator(s). This is a man who treated Middle-earth’s invented languages as real, who fleshed out its histories and genealogies because he knew that a sense of depth was vital to the believability of the tale. In his essay-lecture On Fairy-stories he gave a key rule for fairy stories: “There is one proviso: if there is any satire present in the tale, one thing must not be made fun of, the magic itself. That must in that story be taken seriously, neither laughed at nor explained away.”

We treat apathy as cool, as the best way to be in the world because it creates the least bother for others, but in The Lord of the Rings no one wants to be the hobbit who doesn’t go on the adventure, and is thus powerless when the Scouring of the Shire occurs. Paying attention to the world is cool. Taking an interest is cool. Hoping and striving for the best is cool. This isn’t about toxic positivity, but about caring, and caring is hard. Caring requires suffering and heartache. It means not looking away when the world is cruel. It means staking your heart on something knowing that it might not work out.

In this way at least, The Lord of the Rings reflects a world I want to live in. Earnest, compassionate, caring. Full of firm friendships, loyalty, and nobility of character rather than rank. As much as I worry about the state of The Lord of the Rings as a franchise now that there's an abundance of landfill-fodder merch and seemingly no end to the spin offs and prequel films we're gonna get, I think the lasting popularity of Tolkien's world speaks to something that we all see in it. Not just the lore masters and book nerds, but also the more casual fans who nevertheless regularly tell me just how much they love the films.

If we want to rebuild our culture and give something worthwhile to the youth of today, we need earnestness, we need love, we need stories that care. Art requires you to be sincere, to be okay with failure, to be open with your emotions. Progress requires you to take notice, to be loud, and on occasion to be annoying. Doing anything worthwhile means risking something. Coolness isn’t just a cage – it’s boring. It’s hesitating before you take a creative risk. It’s doing nothing when you see injustice. It’s waiting around to die and maybe cracking a joke or two in the meantime.

When the core writing team for The Lord of the Rings films were crafting the dramatic finale of The Two Towers, they’d given themselves quite a difficult task – by taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath, a place they never visit in the books, an entirely new conclusion to this leg of their story was needed. It’s here that one of the film’s most beloved quotes arises via Sam’s impassioned speech to Frodo. The speech pulls from lines in the book, lifted from the Stairs of Cirith Ungol to Osgiliath, but ultimately concludes with a new line invented for the film: “there’s some good in this world, Mr Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

I adore this line. On the DVD commentary the writers say they were worried it'd be too cheesy, but they kept it, and I'm glad they did, because they earn a line like that by making a film so full of genuine and sincere emotion. Sure, if I said it to my friends in the pub I’d expect a few rolled eyes, but it’s unabashedly heartfelt and hopeful, and crucially, it’s true. There is some good in this world, and it is worth fighting for. If reading that makes you cringe, then that's on you. I’m not sorry.