"You can say what you like, Gaffer, but Bag End's a queer place, and its folk are queerer."
~ The Fellowship of The Ring.

'Frodo settled deep into the brown fern and went to sleep. Sam looked at him. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful...He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmered, "I love him"
~ The Two Towers.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS - A GAY DECONSTRUCTION.

Poor little pretty-boy Frodo Baggins. The Black riders want his ring. So does the camp goblin Gollum. Not to mention evil wizard Saruman, and the Dark Lord Sauron (surely an S&M afficiando). Is The Lord of The Rings a classic of mythopoeic fiction or just gay porn?

Actually, it's a love story. Frodo, a three-and-a-half-foot 'hobbit', is told by his sorcerer friend Gandalf that the magic ring bequeathed him by his guardian Bilbo is in fact Sauron's One Ring of Power and must be destroyed. Frodo agrees to journey from Bag End to the land of Mordor to cast the Ring into a volcano. But Frodo is not alone in his deadly quest; his beloved servant Sam Gamgee goes with him.

Sam's affection knows no bounds. He rescues his master from orcs and other assorted nasties; when Frodo collapses at the foot of Mount Doom, Sam even carries him up (he ain't heavy, he's my halfling). There's hugging, there's kissing, there are declarations of love. Often they sleep "together, hand in hand". Sam would clearly have Frodo as the lord of HIS ring any day.

Along for the journey is the all-male Fellowship of The Ring, a kind of Village People of fairytale archetypes, bringing together hobbits, elves, dwarves and men, under the leadership of Gandalf (Portrayed in the movies somewhat aptly by Sir Ian McKellen). It's not long before the Fellowship start pairing off too: hobbits Pippin and Merry, and Gimli the dwarf, a pint-sized bear, with Legolas, the effeminate elf.

Other gay characters in the trilogy include Frodo's old bachelor guardian Bilbo (or should that be Dildo?) - who discovered the magic pull of the Ring on an earlier adventure but kept it secret from his ultra-conservative neighbours - and Gandalf's nemesis Saruman, with his grovelling gimpy offsider Grimer Wormtongue (the name says it all really).

For Tolkien, the rune-engraved Ring symbolises the corrupting influence of power. But it is just as clearly with repressed homosexuality. An obvious anal metaphor, the Ring tempts people to put their 'finger' in it, even thought they know they mustn't. Its immediate effect is to endow you with special powers of perception ('Gaydar' perhaps?) and turn you invisible (enabling you to 'pass' unnoticed). Long-term exposure turns you into an obsequious, lisping monster like Gollum - prone to hanging around in dark places and gurgling 'precious' lasciviously.

On some unconscious, homophobic level, Tolkien feels that to give into the Ring is to give into that taboo practise of English public school boys (which the hobbits' short stature seems to imply). The "War of The Ring" is nothing less than an epic struggle with homosexual urges and desires, and we havent even touched upon that firey, powerful all-seeing eye that sits atop Mount Doom - surely the angriest looking Vagina you ever did see.

At the end of the third book, having dumped the evil Ring into the Crack of Doom (!), Frodo invites Sam to move in with him. Alas, Sam's youthful infatuation has passed, and he opts for marriage to a hobbit girl named Rosie Cotton. Frodo has no choice but to leave Middle-Earth with the fairies - sorry, elves - departing for a place with the telltale name The Grey Havens.

Thus ends the old homosexual order of monsters and magic, replaced by the dull hetrodoxy of humans. It's a shame: Frodo and Sam made for the cutest couple this side of Narnia.

You gotta love those hairy feet.


*Irony Alert Edit*
[This message was edited Tue Mar 9 3:44:16 2004 by bananacologne]

Did you write this yourself?

1)
2) That the study of friendship has been turned into something twisted, by looking at it through the filter of an out of proportion 'part' of the human experience; sex.

2 years ago, when LOTR - "The Fellowship....." came out, I was telling everybody that this movie was full of gay antics and Frodo & Sam are gay. People were insulted and pointing their finger to their foreheads, now finally people see!

It's a bit of a stretch though...

i could give less than a shit about the movies and the books one way or the other... ...

LOL. Great work. I just saw The return of the King last week. As we walked out I told my friends, "Wow! Those hobbits were a bunch of homos, huh?" All crying over each other and professing undying love. And the overall scope -- there were like 3 women in the course of the whole story. Yeah, right....

I always said that The Fox and the Hound could have a very queer reading. It's quite easy to see. But then again, you can read anything into anything if you so desire...

bananacologne said:

you know what they say about guys with big hairy feet!

IAmTheTouch said:

bananacologne said:

that's what they make these for...

Where's rdhull when you need him.

You know, I saw this movie with my friends - a gay couple, and we agreed that the ending with Sam marrying some girl came right out of left field and seemed quite unnecessary. We saw it as a "paste-on" in case anyone had gotten the "wrong idea" about the depths of Sam and Frodo's relationship.

No wonder Frodo left at the end. With Sam deserting him for some silly girl, what else was there for him to do?

After I saw Return of the King, I was walking out of the theatre with my boyfriend, and we were jabberin' about the film, and which characters we liked. He said he thought Gimli was a tad overdone - kind of JarJar Binks-esque - and I disagreed.

"I think he's hilaaaaarious!" I chirped. "And anyway," I turned to him, "I LOOOOOVE stout men!!!!" -- but he had walked ahead and so I actually said that to some wife of a farmer who I was unwittingly now walking with.

I ducked and ran, man. Ducked and motherfuckin' RAN.

Now I just like saying "I LOVE STOUT MEN" in shockingly inappropriate situations. Nah, not really. But I say it a lot to my boyfriend.

theblueangel said:

i always thought the hobbitses-humpin'-on-the-bed in one of the last scenes was a bit over the top.

I think its truly sad that our society has become so jaded that anytime two men profess love for one another they are declared "gay". Tolkein came from a very different time, with a very different view on how men were suppossed to show affection for one another. Men were allowed to have close friendships, even tell each other that they love one another. Sam and Frodo do love one another, but on a level that is hard for our straight/gay obsessed culture to comprehend. Two men can love one another, and it doesn't have to be repressed homosexuality. The problem has become that straight men are stigmatized and declared to be "closet" if they show this level of friendship for one another. Ultimately, is it really relevant to the story one way or another?


The charge that the ring is an "anal" metaphor is pretty ridiculous. The Ring symbolises those things that people covet: wealth, power, fame etc. The effect of these is seen most clearly in Gollum, who still craves it even though it has physically and mentally destroyed him (heck, you could read into it that its a metaphor for heroin if you really wanted to). Now, if Tolkien were trying to convey that Sam and Frodo were repressed lovers, why would he depict the "anal metaphor" in a negative light? Why would these two men who love each other be trying to destroy it (and why would they continue to show this love for one another after the ring is vanquished)? Also, the eye of Sauron is a "vagina"? Huh? Then how does this connect to the Ring, Sauron's source of power? How can Sauron represent the vagina, which would be a metaphor for heterosexuality, and then have the ring represent the anus? This is a major hole in this theory, to say the least (no pun intended).

The Fellowship is ultimately a group of men who band together to fight an evil. This is a classic myth archetype. Tolkien, no doubt influenced by the men going off to fight World War II, conveys the bond that these men form when faced with overwhelming odds. These men become spiritual brothers, and the love for one another trancends that of friendship. This is not uncommon among men who are fighting side by side in a war. Indeed, it is almost a necessary survival tactic. Ultimately, men can love one another deeply, and still have no desire to shag one another. Reading this into the LOTR Trilogy is really misguided to say the least.

Now, if you wanna see a flick with a couple of repressed homosexual characters, check out "The Lion King". Timon and Pumba are queerer than a three dollar bill!

JediMaster said:

Not really. I've seen TV specials about Lord of the Rings every time one of the movies came out that presented the notion that Lord of the Rings are really about Tolkien's experiences in World War Whichever. I saw a documentary on TV once about how soldiers during both World Wars engaged in an unusual amount of homosexual activity because of the extremely intimate bonds formed on the battlefields. Then the survivors went home after the wars and got married. Just like Sam did.