The Iron Dream vs the Fascists of Middle Earth

In Spring 2002 I read The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad. Amazing piece of work, just astonishing. Written at four levels: a roaring Slan-like 50s-style pulp SF yarn; the fantastical ravings of a troubled German expatriate; an accurate history of the rise of the Third Reich; and a burning indictment of Tolkien. It forever changed The Lord of the Rings for me. When I saw the Fellowship of the Ring movie later that year all I could think of was the blatant Freudian subtext, and the fascist text itself. I kept flopping between the two modes of analysis, leaving little room for anything so mundane as actually liking the movie or identifying with the characters. The whole Freudian withholding orgasm/not using the ring child/Hobbit business was surprisingly literal, what with the elf/mom actually begging for it and Gandalf prematurely "shooting off" his fireworks and little childlike Frodo "accidentally" putting his digit into the magic hole with scary adult consequences, and the hideous mutinated products of doing "it" wrong. Look what constantly playing with "it" did to Gollum! Then there's the council---any non-evil person would indeed yearn to be ruled by that bunch of hung-up bearded hereditary ding dongs.

NOTES

 $ an --dict /usr/share/dict/british-english-small --length 2 saruman
 arm anus
 ram anus
 mr sauna