Hobbits and the Filipino

I'M not surprised that 11 Oscars were given to the last of "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy last Sunday. There's more to the awards than the cinematic effects; we're talking here about a story that has become the 20th-century equivalent of folk epics, one that emerges from and belongs to the global village.

I do worry that people might lose sight of how the trilogy came about, so I did some research and brought together some of the stories behind "The Lord of the Rings," assorted trivia (and the not so trivial) that might interest Filipinos.

To understand the trilogy, we'd have to focus on the hobbit, which is a word now found in English dictionaries but which was actually coined by J. R. R. Tolkien (pronounced Tol-keen). One of Tolkien's biographers, David Doughan, has this amusing story of how the hobbit came about, one to which teachers like myself can relate. "One day," Doughan writes, "when he [Tolkien] was engaged in the soul-destroying task of marking examination papers, he discovered that one candidate had left one page of an answer-book blank. On this page, moved by who knows what anarchic daemon, he wrote: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.'"

Tolkien eventually wrote a novel with the title (you guessed it) "The Hobbit," published in 1938. Later, he resurrected the hobbits, transforming them into central characters in his trilogy. The first two parts of "The Lord of the Rings" were published in 1954, exactly 50 years ago. So important is that book that the British Post Office released 10 stamps last week to commemorate the event, showing illustrations by Tolkien from the original book.

The trilogy attained cult status during the flower-power era, the late 1960s, in the United States and Europe, as young people tried to carve out a counter-culture. The hobbit was particularly appealing: small human-like creatures, timid but sociable and generally trying to avoid conflict.

The hobbit reached the Philippines by way of an American who opened a coffee shop in the early 1970s on Mabini Street in Manila, just a stone's throw away from the Malate Church, with "little people" hired as waiters and waitresses and a wall painting inside showing a scene from "The Lord of the Rings," with of course hobbits leading the way.

Hobbit House became a favorite watering hole for the local counter-culture habitués, with folk singers like Freddie Aguilar performing a repertoire that included protest songs. Hobbit House is still on Mabini, and some of the folk singers from the 1970s still perform, including Aguilar, who, I read, collapsed on the stage while performing just last week.

The release of "The Lord of the Rings" films over the last two years, and the awards the trilogy has been reaping, has revived interest in Tolkien's work. I've had occasional comments from friends about how relevant the film is to the Philippine situation, especially around the theme of power.

I think there's potential in using the film for classroom discussions to talk about current events to introduce issues around morality and ethics. All kinds of books and articles have been written about the trilogy, with everyone trying to claim Tolkien as their own, from Catholic theologians (Tolkien was himself Catholic) to American neoconservatives. For example, actor John Rhys-Davies, who played the dwarf Gimli, has been a favorite among pro-Iraq war advocates because of a speech where he claimed that Tolkien's message was that one had to rise up to the challenges of defending civilization or risk losing it. It's this kind of argument that George W. Bush would love.

Others point out that Tolkien, who had seen the horrors of World War I as a soldier, had more pacifist sentiments. In fact, Tolkien's appeal to the counter-culture activists of the 1960s and 1970s came from the way he wrote about power. As exemplified by the ring, power is alluring, and everyone will try to justify that they need the power to do good and transform the world. In the end though, having the ring-as with power-is corrupting. This is exemplified by Gollum, the pathetic creature who once owned the ring and lost it, and spends all his time vacillating in permanent schizophrenia, recognizing power's dangers and yet craving it. I don't want to give the ending to the trilogy except to say it is this dismal creature's scheming and counter-scheming, who will play a decisive role in the end.

Note that the hero in "The Lord of the Rings" is not some tall dashing knight; instead, it is a hobbit, little Frodo, who is suddenly thrust with the responsibility of the ring. If he had his ifs, he would have been happier staying home with his idyllic hobbit existence, but given the task of bringing the ring to a place where it can be destroyed, he is now vulnerable, tempted by the power of the ring.

I can see many of us, as Filipinos, identifying with the hobbit, yearning for a simple life, but often forced into situations not of our own making, deployed to work overseas, or ending up in some government snake pit. And when we do access power, there is always the temptation of becoming its slave, clinging on and refusing to let go, with the excuse that we need that power to do good.

Perhaps our lack of good candidates in elections comes from our being so hobbit-like -- decent women and men reluctant to enter politics because, all too often through our history, we have seen how the ring of power engulfs and consumes even the best of people.

Comments to miguel@pinoykasi.net