HATE MODERN

As a mid-week update and basically for the lack of anything else good to write about (and laziness), I'm posting one of my earlier articles which was going to be the first in a series headlined "HATE MODERN" but got stuck on my forgotten geocities website. The joys of self-gratification! (This posting will also uncannily resemble those cooking programs where the chef says something in the lines of "You go on toiling on that souffle for another 3 hours but, here, I have one I made earlier".) Enjoy... I order you!! -------------------------------------------------------
I was reading the Times' daily supplement T2 the other day and the feature article in it was about people (well mainly Americans) who got together for a Lord of the Rings convention. I have to make something clear first; I love the books. I find them highly entertaining, intellectual and original. But I'd never consider dressing up as Gandalf or Aragorn or any other character from the books and pretend that I'm an elf or a hobbit. It could have been understandable if the people who does dress up in this ridiculous clothes do so in order to have a laugh. But no; instead they put on curly wigs, hobbit feet and fake beards for far higher purposes than we, ordinary folk, can ever imagine. They do so because they love the environment, the animals and all the fellow human beings. One of them blurts out the reason for her looking like an extra from the movies as this: "The elves are so pure and they care about the environment, which humans have forgotten because they are so busy with themselves". Helloooooo! Wake up and smell the coffee little confused dimwit! What use to the environment a stupid 3-day convention where people practically only eat, shit, sit on their asses and talk incessantly, can somebody answer me? Do they collect some money to save a part of a forest? Do they decide to put up a protest against a company, which poisons a river? No, they just admire each others elf ears all day and try to get laid with a hobbit for the night! So elves are not so different than us humans then, are they?

Actually, as a weird twist of fate, I kinda liked the guys who dressed up as ring wraiths more. They never talk and you can't see their faces so in my opinion, they are braver than all those pre-pubescent teenagers who think they are all elven queens. Another one of them explains why they are extremely different from the Star Trek fans: "Unlike Trekkies, we help each other out. This is our own fellowship" Yeah right! I'm sure the only thing they help each other with is with your outfits and make-ups! Actually being a Trekkie is a much much better obsession; at least you get to learn about positive sciences such as physics or astronomy instead of just 'how to make the perfect elf ears out of Playdoh'! The real pathetic thing about all these type of people who become obsessed with all the wrong things about an intellectual work lies with their own psychological problems. Another elf queen explains this: "In Middle-Earth people do things for other people. They are not doing it for fame or to impress some chick or get the money". D'oh! So when you put your wigs, beards, and hoods on, you do so to help other people? Are you sure you're not doing it to impress other people? Of course, a very simple psychological weakness lies under all these behavior. When people cannot manage to, or don't want to, be content only with being themselves, they choose to hide behind masks, costumes and ideals; the easiest way out. However, the saddest thing about this kind of behavior is that the real message and the feeling that the creator of the original work wanted to convey gets lost in the process. Is there a single character in Tolkien's books who tries to be something else other than itself? For example, is there a human who decides to be an elf at some point of the story or a dwarf who wants to live as a hobbit? NO! On the contrary, the whole story is about believing in yourself, knowing what you can do and what you can't! It's not a story about a brave boy who sets out on a wonderful adventure to become the greatest hero of all time; it's about a normal boy who finds himself in a perilous journey and in the end, after terrible ordeals, deserves to be known as a great hero. Tolkien'd be more pleased with people think and act as their characters do, not look and behave like them. I don't think for one minute that on weekends he idled his hours away by putting on a pointy hat and a fake beard instead of doing something creative.

So, I hate all the pointless, commercialized Tolkien conventions, elven queens with Mr.Spock ears and people who think they are helping the Greenpeace by attending to a stupid convention or reading a book 15 times. But I hate most the people who mock a brilliant piece of work by a lack of understanding.