Chomsky: And now the terrible Orcs invade Balin's tomb. Let's be clear about a few things here. The Orcs are fighting a war of self-defense against the invading Fellowship. They basically busted in on the Orcs' place here. It's fairly clear that the Orcs are hiding there because if they go outside they have every reason to believe that they will be massacred by Gandalf.
Zinn: The Orcs certainly don't seem to be very good fighters, do they? If they're such a terrible, evil, warlike culture —
Chomsky: They can't kill even one of these little Hobbits who just received their swords only a few days ago. One would think that if the Orcs were as bad as the corrupt Man-Elf coalition says, they would be a lot better at fighting. It lends credence to the farming hypothesis — that they were trying to scrabble out a meager existence in the land in Mordor.
Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky's "unused" audio commentary for The Fellowship of the Rings
Also: Anne Coulter's "unused" commentary for Aliens
1 Comments:
Well I think it's ok to satirise people especially when the characterisation isn't done exceptionally well, there are levels: They are using a marxist idiom to examine a much-loved work of epic fantasy, THAT's funny.
If you take a step back and realise there is a bunch of people who believe this is what Chomsky and Zinn think, then the much worse for them. It is less what the theorists say, more the social issues they clarify -- help the reader to understand more fully.
Neither party in the commentary resembles either theorist, which makes the piece pretty camp.
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