The Lord of the Rings and New Zealand: Fantasy Pilgrimages, Imaginative Transnationalism and the Semiotics of the (Ir)Real Robbie B.H
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Social Semiotics, 2014 Vol. 24, No. 3, 263–282, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2013.866781 The Lord of the Rings and New Zealand: fantasy pilgrimages, imaginative transnationalism and the semiotics of the (Ir)Real Robbie B.H. Goh* Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Peter Jackson’s decision to make the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films in his native New Zealand has given the country a major boost in tourism, but this has also become the paradigm of a new imaginative transformation of landscapes. The zeal with which many tourists visit these sites has similarities to the religious pilgrimage, not only in terms of the degree of enthusiasm invoked, but also in rituals of knowledge, ardour and “spiritual” envisioning. The global fantasy industry thus fosters alternative and dualistic engagements with the land that have come to contest the cultural and physical engagement with and even access to the land, as well as exacerbating the existing racial politics, particularly in smaller and more vulnerable nations such as New Zealand. What might be called the “(ir)realist” semiotics of fantasy – with its own cultural hegemony disguised as playful dualism – becomes a notable form of global remapping, often with positive benefits, but also with dangers to local cultures and identities. Keywords: Peter Jackson; Lord of the Rings; New Zealand; fantasy pilgrimages; imaginative transnationalism; (ir)realist semiotics Lord of the Rings (LOTR): (Dis)locating tourism in New Zealand Peter Jackson’s LOTR film trilogy – The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) – based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels of the same titles, has been a phenomenal successes, both in terms of tickets and in cultural impact. Each of the three films cost about US$93 million to make, but they collectively grossed almost $3 billion in ticket sales (as of November 2011), making them among the most profitable Hollywood productions in recent times (IMDB). The Return of the King was the most successful of the three in terms of box office sales, coming second only to James Cameron’s Titanic, and collectively all three LOTR films arguably have had a much bigger global impact than Titanic or any other film (Gray 2010, 125–126). The success and influence of the franchise have not only been limited to box office sales, as significant as those have been, but extended also to DVD sales, video games, merchandising and related products. Jackson’s other adaptations of Tolkien’s work – the three films based on The Hobbit, due for release in 2012, 2013 and 2014 – have attracted considerable fan attention and are poised to be major hits as well. Some of the impact created by Jackson’s LOTR and Hobbit films is no doubt due to the novels on which they are based. Tolkien’s LOTR novels have often been regarded as the most popular novels of the twentieth century, and in some polls have been hailed *Email: [email protected] © 2013 Taylor & Francis 264 R.B.H. Goh as the greatest of the millennium (O’Hehir 2001). The fantasy market – consisting of characters and worlds depicted in novels, video games and comics that have spawned films, merchandise, cosplay and animated films and TV series – is itself a huge market, with fan interest continuing long after the release of the films or novels, and with several major international conventions held each year. One of the largest and best-known conventions, Dragon*Con, had more than 40,000 paid registrants in 2010 (Dragon*Con “History”). Of the fantasy genre – that is to say, the texts which create alternative (heterocosmic) worlds whose premise is magical (or non-rational) rather than scientific, and which heavily feature “sword and sorcery” adventure plots (Goh 2000,22–24) – the dominant and seminal influence has arguably been Tolkien. Writing in the 1930–1950s, Tolkien helped popularise many of the tropes and devices – forbidding castles and dark realms, wizards of the “light” and their wizard staffs, sorcerer-villains, rings or other objects of power, fire-breathing dragons, elves as an ethereal and yet also warrior race, dour and hardy dwarves who are skilled forgers of weapons, mythical swords, legendary warriors, grotesque and evil gnome-like creatures, and epic battles between amassed forces of good and evil – that have featured in the works of later popular writers like Robert Jordan, George R. R. Martin, Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, Michael Moorcock and many others. Director Peter Jackson thus had a considerable fan base to begin with. Star appeal (Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler and others), impressive special effects, detailed costumes and weaponry, clever cinematography which created a stunning visual beauty and epic quality in many of the scenes all were important features of the films, and elevated the LOTR films above others shot in New Zealand or with equally inspiring scenery. However, Jackson’s film settings, featuring much of New Zealand’s spectacular scenery, and utilising clever camera angles which highlighted that scenery to most spectacular effect deserve special mention. Jackson’s teams of location scouts scoured both islands of New Zealand (including by helicopter and boat) for settings that would realise Tolkien’s landscapes, spending some three years in the planning process (before actual filming of the LOTR films began), and finally constructing more than 300 sets in over 100 locations spread out throughout New Zealand (Brodie 2011, 23–27). Jackson’s locations included remote places for which new access routes had to be created when filming began and some which were only accessible by helicopter – indicative of how important location was to Jackson’s visualisation of the novels. The result of this near-obsessive attention to location is that locations also became stars of the films, attracting attention not only merely as the sites of the action but also for their own breathtaking beauty and dramatic framing. Film setting effects a profound transformation of the actual geo-physical landscape, and utilises devices such as framing, contrast, lighting (natural and artificial/modified), special effects and zoom and panorama to form part of the mise-en-scene as a whole, the entire “world of the story” (Pramaggiore and Wallis 2005, 60). This is particularly true of Jackson’s composite film scenes, which combined actual New Zealand scenery with digitally inserted features that significantly transformed the actual landscapes, while still capitalising on New Zealand’s spectacular natural features. Fantasy, more than most other narrative genres, is a distinct and powerful spatial semiotic, a narrative logic that centres on the interpellation of the reader or viewer into a compelling “other” realm (Attebery 1992, 15; Goh 2000, 21). It is this peculiar quality of fantasy that allows the LOTR franchise to inspire “a type of tourism based on the films’ Social Semiotics 265 mythical structures” which is a “simulation of fantasy” to such an extent that the very notion of a “real” geographical place recedes if not disappears (Tzanelli 2007, 23, 57–58). The impact of the LOTR films on New Zealand tourism has been massive, as can be attested to in a number of ways – from revenues (direct and knock-on) to numbers of LOTR tourists to the range of LOTR tour companies that have arisen – as other studies (Beeton 2005; Tzanelli 2007; Leotta 2011; and many of the essays in Mathijs ed. 2006) have already shown. Yet, the nature and role of the individual tour itself plays a large part in explaining the significance of the LOTR franchise to New Zealand tourism. The structure of the tour itself, with its elements of imaginative play, the journey to hidden or relatively inaccessible “special” places, the reliance on and rehearsal of shared lore (a “fellowship”, in the terminology of the first of the LOTR novels) and the physical interaction with and creative framing of those sites all foster a peculiar experience whose closest parallel might be that of the religious pilgrimage. Unlike the kind of film set tours to shows like Coronation Street that Roesch (2009, 103) describes, the LOTR tourist’s goal is not the “objective authenticity” of manifest sets, actual props used by the actors or the presence of the actors themselves. Tours for fantasy films like LOTR require a different kind of imaginative gaze and experience, one that has to constantly and actively recreate the Middle Earth world out of the real-world setting that the tourist sees. Thus what Tzanelli (2007, 23) calls “a type of tourism based on simulation of the [LOTR] films’ mythical structures” relies on an especially engaging form of tourism, not so much a visit to a recognisable film or television set-world, as the tourist’s active and imaginative insertion of himself or herself into the story, action and world of the LOTR films. The one exception to this – the only real film set LOTR tour – is the Hobbiton tour, created on the farm of the Alexander family at Matamata (in North Island, New Zealand) in 1999, after being “discovered” by Jackson’s location scouts during an aerial reconnaissance in September 1998 (Hobbiton “Official Tour Guide”). This commonplace farm has become transformed into a pilgrimage site for LOTR and Hobbit fans from around the world. From the time that tourists congregate at the tour meeting point outside the entrance to the Alexander farm, they are greeted with an increasingly realised material recreation of the LOTR world. The meeting point itself is called the “Shire’s Rest” and is replete with signage on rustic wooden posts, a weathered carved rock ostensibly depicting Frodo’s and Sam’s journey to dispose of the ring, and a café with wallpaper murals and wooden beams to evoke the supposed atmosphere of a Shire tavern (Figures 1–3).