Avatar-bashing

It's up to us how fantastic our lives can be.

(originally published on Psychologytoday.com, on January 14, 2010

A couple of stories have been bouncing around the Internet this past week about the dangers of the movie Avatar. And a fellow psychologytoday.com blogger Elana Premack Sandler, has also weighed in on the topic in a post called "Avatar Blues."

The buzz is for good reason: The place where pop culture, the media and psychology intersect is fascinating, and ripe for investigation.

The hubbub began with this story on CNN.com, "Audiences experience 'Avatar' blues," about how some avid Avatar fans are so enthralled by the movie's lush landscapes of Pandora, the imaginary world where the movie takes place, and the nature-loving ethos of the Na'vi race, that their own lives pale in comparison. Go off the deep end  --- i.e. suicidal thoughts --- and this is a disturbing phenomenon, to be sure.

The other story is how various groups --- right-wing Christian, Catholics, Republicans, Liberals, the military --- have all found something in Avatar to complain about. It's racist, it's sexist, it bad-mouths the military, it's anti-American and anti-capitalist, it promotes turning ecology into a religion (the latter being a pretty old complaint: hasn't the church been worried about nature worship since the days of Druids?). Some of these arguments are summarized in this article "Avatar under attack from Vatican, U.S. military, liberals."

The whole reality-fantasy divide is one we all must be careful not to fall into. Anything can be taken too far. Sex, drugs, gambling, pornography, eating, shopping --- all of these activities, when taken to the extreme, can be dangerous and blot out the self. No one, in their right mind, should use any one experience, like a movie, to find meaning and attribute so much meaning to it that it looms large to the exclusion of other influences. We all need balanced lives. 

The fear about Avatar is, in the end, I think unfounded, but it's understandable. It stems from this perennial worry that any pop culture phenomenon could overhwlem our senses, our good judgement, and cause some careful balance in the universe to veer wildly one way or the other.

In this case, Avatar --- on its way to becoming the most popular movie of all time, in terms of box office, eclipsing Titanic --- has become the latest fear magnet. Some think it's so powerful a vision, so able to shape public opinion or show the public some potentially radical and mind-altering way of life, that it threatens to usurp the power of traditional institutions which usually have the job of making meaning and creating structure in our society --- for example, political parties, the military, religion, to name a few. Or in the case of our so-called Avatar addicts, the fear is how a single experience like a movie can warp a mind into thinking "real life" is hardly worth our effort.

In other words, no way are we going to let an immoral, money-mongering individual like James Cameron, the movie's director, wield all this power to mold the public consciousness.

But remember: we've seen these alarmist concerns before. The minute something new hits these shores --- the telephone, comic books, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, the Internet, video games, drugs, heavy metal music --- we get all worried about brains being rotted and souls being seduced by Satan and the end of civilization as we know it.

But of course we carry on. We always have. Only to be sucked in, become fearful of, the next faddish flavor of the month.

That said, whenever a single event like Avatar commands so much air space, it's not a bad time to reflect, take stock, and wonder if perhaps we are talking our entertainments too seriously. I like very much what movie critic Ty Burr said in an Avatar commentary in the Boston Globe. He wrote in response to a comment from a reader who felt his life was "normal" and "unsatisfying" compared to the fantasies of Avatar. In Burr's words, "Who said our lives had to be normal or unsatisfying ...? Why not transform it into something that satisfies you, not the bottom line of an entertainment corporation?... Why not take off the glasses and have a look around? It’s real 3-D out there and it’s amazing."

In other words, it's up to us how fantastic our lives can be.

“Geek” Is No Longer a Four-Letter Word

(originally posted on Tor.com,  FRIDAY JANUARY 15, 2010 01:22PM EST)

ETHAN GILSDORF

Here’s the truth: No matter how hard you try to suppress some jagged part of your past, it invariably comes screaming back. Especially when you label that subterranean aspect of your previous life “unfinished business” and sweep it under the rug.

Such was the case with my Dungeons and Dragons obsession. The last time I played was senior year in high school, 25 years ago. I thought I had put my gamer days behind me. But what I had simply done was quit playing. My desire to inhabit some fantasy world remained, haunted me throughout my adulthood, and kept beckoning me with its crooked, wiggling finger.

I had played D&D, that oft-maligned fantasy role-playing game, for six hours every Friday night (not to mention the hours I spent scheming and dreaming my next D&D adventure), from the summer before my eighth-grade year until my last year of high school. Week after week, for five years straight, I sat at a table of pimply-faced boys, surrounded by bags of cheese doodles, bottles of Mountain Dew, and mounds of polyhedral dice. In and around those mundane trappings of 20th-century rural New Hampshire life, my D&D gang and I conjured a more fantastic reality, one filled with magic swords, blistering fireballs, and heroic leaps from castle parapets onto the backs of giant rats, goblins, and umber hulks.

Yes, I was introverted and anxious. Many players were. Yes, I had a troubled childhood (briefly: my mother suffered a brain aneurysm when she 38 and I was 12; she survived, but was a massively changed woman). Not so with all of us players did. But D&D was always a great time, and sometimes I think it saved me.

I gave up D&D when I saw college as a chance to remake myself as social and beer-swilling. Fantasy was kids’ play, I said to myself, and my relationship to fantasy felt like a hindrance to becoming the “me” I fantasized about becoming. I forgot the game, and I thought it forgot me.

But then, just shy of my 40th birthday, that old friend returned. By “friend,” I mean “unexpected guest.” I mean, erstwhile “addiction.” By which I mean—and this is what I felt that day I discovered the musty box of D&D rulebooks in my parents’ basement—“Oh, old nemesis. You have come back into my life.”

I got sucked into “the hobby” in the late 1970s, back when D&D was merely a fad—misunderstood, marginalized, and (amusingly) a scourge to Satan-fearing evangelists. Nowadays, our relationship to fantasy has changed. The latest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, ruled the box office all last summer (along with other science fiction, fantasy, and comic-book hero tales like District 9 and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra). Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies have made writers like Tolkien safe for the entire family. Adult men and women buy Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and not just for their children. Average office workers arrange Star Wars and Halo action figures on their computer monitors. Online worlds like Second Life have made role-playing second nature, and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) like World of Warcraft (WoW) are now more or less OK worlds to fall into.

Wearing our +3 Eyeglasses of Exceptional Hindsight, we can see that D&D and other fantasy pop-culture phenoms begat a whole sub-industry of Tolkien-esque fantasy entertainments: book series, swords-and-sorcery movies, quarter-devouring video games, home computer online games, and fandom-driven fantasy conventions. Being a fantasy freak is acceptable. “Geek” is no longer a four-letter word.

And it seems to me, the past year of 2009 was particularly a big year for geekdom, both for me personally and for the culture. I graduated high school 25 years ago. D&D celebrated its 35th anniversary. The Warcraft universe and franchise was launched 15 years ago, and the game WoW appeared five years ago. And the second of the two D&D co-founders, Dave Arneson, died (E. Gary Gygax, the other, passed away in 2008).

Discovering that old box of D&D maps, dice, and notebooks sparked the quest that became my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. I had complex reasons why imaginary worlds had lured me, and why I still heard their siren song. I suspected the same of others. Hence, my world-girdling journey and the dozens of fantasy and gaming fans we meet in Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. I wanted to hear, in their own words, how they had integrated fantasy experiences into their adult lives. I wanted to find out how the worlds of fantasy in all their incarnations had morphed and expanded. And I wanted to find out how much I had morphed and expanded. I hoped I had.

On my quest, I learned the mind works in circuitous ways. Yes, I had put D&D aside, but it was not yet done with me. And, above all, this: the past may be stored in a box, but it does not forget us.

The film's visual design alone echoes what game developers have achieved in creating believable digital worlds. Devoted gamers already accept that pixels are as palpable as a Hollywood set. Increasingly, as more directors marry actual and digital performances and landscapes, the look and feel of the pixel will also feel real to the average moviegoer.

Both games and movies must be believed to work their magic. Seen in 3-D, "Avatar'' feels immersive --- more so than most films --- and provides the same high excitement, danger, and adventure of a game. It might be the most "game-like'' movie yet.

But no movie, no matter how richly textured, offers the same immersion as a video game. An RPG or first-person shooter (FPS) isn't passive escapism. Players are participants, choosing their own adventures, telling their own stories, and tapping into that pick-up-your-battle-ax-and-kill mentality that still courses in 21st-century veins. The rush that paraplegic Jake Sully feels in his Na'vi skin is the same World of Warcraft players sense, controlling the actions of level-60 night elf hunters.

Role-playing lets players safely try out aspects of their personalities --- heroic and dark, extroverted and flirtatious --- that they can't explore in "real life.'' Gamers get to trash-talk, boast, and celebrate their victories. RPGs also provide accomplishment and belonging, and in some cases rites of passage and codes of honor. Movie audiences can talk back to the screen, but that's about as far as the interactivity goes at your local cineplex.

Avatar --- like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars --- also exists as a tie-in Xbox 360, PlayStation, and Wii video game experience. Why? The savvy franchise holders want to make money. But they also want to sate movie viewers' thirsts to explore Pandora themselves.

Avatar takes this gamer dream a step further. It doesn't stop at the vicarious heroics or gloss-over this desire to be the hero. The wish to transcend the limitations of the self, the idea that hovers at the edge of gaming culture, is utterly explicit in the plot. The movie's very title speaks to the desire to be uber-powerful; an avatar, literally, is the manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth.

Indeed, who doesn't want to be superhero-shaped (if not blue-skinned); better, faster, and more instinctual; lithe and running low to the ground one moment, jumping from vine to fantastic vine the next; riding six-legged horses and flying pterodactyl-like beasts.

Of course, we can't do these things. And the "real life" of living in the jungles of Pandora would be a slog. The reality of that fantasy life would be brutal. We'd be dead in a second, eaten by some jaguar-Trex hybrid or poisoned by a cute looking lemur dart frog. We'd never actually survive on Pandora --- or if we did, we'd have to be willing live with half of our children never making it to adulthood. As 21st century humans, we would never make it without modern technology that, of course, is an irony of the film: Cameron had to use a arsenal of whiz-bang gadgets and digital effects to craft his tree-hugging, environmental message.

The point is not we all should become Luddites. But there's a reason why that tribal, Stone Age way of life seems superficially attractive. The alluring fantasy life presented by Avatar would not be feasible in "real life." Yet it remains attractive because it IS fantasy --- unobtainable as Unobtanium. We can pretend, make believe, project ourselves in our imaginations. We can escape there for a couple hours, knowing that our warm beds and fast food await back home.

Still, sitting in the multiplex, 3D glasses draped on our faces, we're asked to role-play a little, to fantasize like Sully about how we were meant to live, hunting the forest, enacting meaningful rituals, taking charge of our destinies. Forget our selves as post-industrial, post-blue collar office workers stuck in our civilized ways. For, like Sully, we are effectively paralyzed as well, chained to our desks and DSL lines, far from Eden, far from nature, far from the magical thinking of yore. We yearn to break free. If only in our minds.

It's a similar dream offered by Tolkien's Middle-earth --- to be peaceful, nature-bonded hobbits, quietly growing crops, smoking pipes, drinking ale and laughing. An alluring fantasy life to be sure. And one perhaps worth fighting for, and to defend from the marauding hordes of orcs or bulldozers.

But here's another irony. Sully says he feels more alive as his avatar, while his real self lies supine on a bed, stuck in a trance state. "Everything is backwards now,'' he says, "like out there is the true world and in here is the dream.'' The self is split, and it haunts him.

As role-playing games cross new frontiers and become more integrated into our leisure lives, and as movies become more like games (and vice-versa), the question becomes: When is it time to hit the pause button?

World of Warcrack players, not to mention mere Facebookers, beware your various selves aren't spread too thinly across cyberspace.

Box office conquered, Avatar also proves the culture has shifted. Part role-playing game come true and part special effects masterpiece, its hybrid gamer-geek pedigree is as glaring as the blue skin of Na'vi race director James Cameron has brought to life. Cameron's movie --- alongside the rise of Harry Potter, the return of Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and the obsession with online games like World of Warcraft --- shows that fantasy is no longer a shunned or exotic side dish. The genre has become the main dish.

And what is that transformation all about? I think that classic geek dream --- "if I were only not me" --- has leaked now into the general culture. Even the jocks want to be someone else. Fantasies about transcending the self ain't just for 98-pound weaklings anymore.

And there's this twist: we spend so much time in front of our computers, chained there in effect, that we are like much like the paralyzed protagonist of Avatar, Jake Sully, who finds joy and transcendence through his athletic, virtual Na'vi feline body let lose on the jungle planet Pandora, where the movie's action takes place. Sully feels so unleashed, so uninhibited, that his real life pales in comparison. In Sully's words: "Everything is backwards now, like out there is the true world and in here is the dream."

More than one critic --- and James Cameron himself --- has already compared Avatar to movies like Dances With Wolves and its ilk (Lawrence of Arabia; Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now). It's a classic clash of civilizations or of cultures premise: jaded Western military man crosses to the other side, discovers something untainted and wholesome in a tribal culture, falls for the hot local gal, and thereby completes his "going native" conversion by switching sides and eventually leading the natives to fight their oppressors – his old self.

Sully's journey may be the well-worn hero's journey, but with a new chapter. His journey is not just about saving the day. It's about becoming one with nature, returning to state of Eden, tapping into a wholeness with the world as Mother Nature, God or the deity of your choice meant it to be. To be re-aquainted with our primal selves.

For who doesn't want to be better, faster, stronger (like the Six Million Dollar Man), leaping through the forest and bounding across the jungle canopy, hunting some beasts and conquering others? To be one with mystical forces of healing, the "one-ness" of the living, breathing, interconnected mass of greenness that is the earth? And to be able to do cool stuff like fly dragons and kill the nasties?

The irony here is that it took Cameron a gazillion dollars, 12 years and some very amazing, so-called "cutting-edge" gadgets--- computers, 3D cameras, digital draftsmanship --- to bring us this fantasy tale of how technology threatens the new world, Pandora; how it has wrecked humanity; and how it keeps us from being that lean, mean, agile, fighting machine-nature boy/girl.

Our true selves.

I wrote earlier about my personal relationship to fantasy and gaming, and the reasons for writing my book Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. I wanted to expand on those ideas here.

To recap: I was a high school gaming geek. I played Dungeons & Dragons religiously. I was not on the football team. My varsity letters might as well have been "D&D."

Years passed, and I forgot about my gaming days. But I noticed the culture had changed. Suddenly, in the 21st century, all the geeky pursuits of my youth --- video games, science fiction and collecting action figures --- had gone mainstream. So I asked myself one primal question: did our culture's obsession with Harry Potter, Xbox, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Magic: the Gathering and World of Warcraft mean we had become a nation of escapists? Were we all unable to deal with the real world?

As it turns out, no. But to find out, I embarked on a nonlinear, noncontiguous odyssey of self-reflection, cultural analysis, and free mead. The journey became my book.

I crisscrossed the country, the world, and other worlds, from my home in Somerville, Massachusetts, to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin; from France to New Zealand; from Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. I asked gaming and fantasy geeks how they found balance between their escapist urges and the kingdom of adulthood. I questioned Tolkien scholars and medievalists. I spoke to grown men who built hobbit holes and learned to speak Elvish, and to grown women who played Warcraft and EverQuest. Old, young, male, female, able-bodied and disabled—I wanted to hear, in their own words, what lured them in, and for what reasons, whether healthy, unhealthy, or in between.

I needed to put myself face-to-face with these escapist pursuits. Before, as a kid, my Dungeons & Dragons obsession was a haphazard consequence, a symptom of being lost and a solution to my familytrauma. But I had adopted D&D and fantasy accidentally. This time, I would get lost on purpose. I wouldn’t be escaping again; I would be excavating. Examining the unexamined in an effort to find out what fantasy meant to me, to all of us.

I hung out with Harry Potter tribute bands, attended fan conventions and gaming tournaments, camped with 12,000 medieval reenactors for a week,  learned to sword fight, and battled online goblins and trolls. I went on pilgrimages to Tolkien's hometown of Oxford, England, and I trekked across New Zealand in search of the filming locations for the Lord of the Rings movies.  At a live action role-playing game, I dressed as a pacifist monk for a weekend. I became Ethor, Ethorian, and Ethor-An3. I sewed my own tunic. I even played Dungeons & Dragons again for the first time in 25 years. 

I met hundreds of gamers and geeks on my quest and listened to their stories. Their reasons for embracing fantasy and gaming were diverse, surprising and in many cases, touching. It wasn't mindless escapism that lured them to swords-and-scorcery realms. Games taught social skills,leadership, and strategy; they inspired creativity and storytelling. They provided rites of passage, accomplishment and belonging, even belief systems. They let people safely try out aspects of their personalities --- often dark, evil sides, or extroverted or flirtatious --- they could not or would not flex in "real life." The games connected folks to magical thinking, to nature, to a primal, pick-up-your-battle-ax and kill mentalities long suppressed by so-called society. For the disabled who ventured online into realms liek World of Warcraft, games and fantasy provided transcendence from pain and prejudice, and a venue where they'd be judged not based on their appearance, but how they played the game. As one woman told me, bound to her walker and crutches, “I can’t run through the grass barefoot anymore. It’s something I cannot do. But my avatar can.”

In short, all the stories helped debunk the stereotypes that gamers and geeks were simply anti-social escapists who lived in their parents' basements and had no "real" lives. And, by meeting all these articulate, tolerant and confident folks who still gamed after all these years, I was finally able to face my inner geek.

That's the happy ending of my story. Because, after all, we're a storytelling people. And if nothing else, fantasy and gaming lets us be the hero of a story -- not to simply absorb and consume but to participate, to tell and be part of our own heroic narrative. 

That thread to our heroic lives has been largely lost. The minutiae of our modern, mundane troubles --- politics, race, jobs, communication, relationships, family --- are a bore and a chore and wear us down. Dissatisfied with ATMs and speed limits, mediated experiences and the suburban blah-scape, who wouldn’t prefer trying his or her luck with a broad- sword against a horde of orcs rather than paying the Visa bill or looking for parking? 

Which explains why people read Tolkien and J.K. Rowling and play role-playing games. Why? The books and games give us hope in hopeless times. Fantasy is a genre people can read and retreat to and gather strength to face the real world. Fantasy keeps the spirit alive and kicking --- and inspires us to confront our real-world problems.

Indeed, when you read heroic stories like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, or watch the movies (and even play the games), you sense that if a mere hobbit can withstand evil, why not you? If the little guy can enter Mordor and destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, then perhaps we can take on our own problems, no matter how real or imaginary they may seem.

As for me, my problem was that I was 40 and still in love with fantasy. But I've changed. I finally embraced my inner geek.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms

Perhaps no other time of year is as highly anticipated, and secretly dreaded, as that festive family time known collectively as "the holidays." The clash of fake gaiety and togetherness around Thanksgiving time plus Christmas's unrealistic expectations of "perfection" can lead to a train wreck of emotions.

We cope the best we can. Both poles of our Jekyll-Hyde personalities can be released. Sometimes we slip behind familiar masks. We might play comforting, non-confrontational roles, or perhaps hide out in the kitchen behind a tower of dirty dishes. For example, I noticed how in recent years around family gatherings I had become "the entertainer." My job: make 'em laugh.

To see if this holiday ailment afflicted more than just myself, recently I polled my friends and select family members. I had them write descriptions of their annual performances, each titled "The Holiday Role I Play." (I'd also like to hear from you: what role do you play?). 

Reported anonymously, here are some of the responses (edited for length) that I received:

• I am considered the queen of Christmas.

• When I go home for the holidays I am "The Good Sport." No matter what game I am asked to play, song I am asked to sing, I never complain. There is time to get even later.

• I am "The Pretender" and enter into all they're doing and willingly going along. At some level, I know they know this.

• Characterize me as "The Bartender." Everyone's glass is full -- which permits me to fill my own glass in the doing.

• At mom's house I am "The Organizer." Everything must run on schedule, all the dishes at the proper temperature, the gifts opened in descending order of seniority. My husband is "The Clean-up Guy." When all the gals are sipping their Bailey's, he is quietly at the sink washing and drying.

• I think I am "The Son Who Needs To Be Spoiled." Whenever I come home for the holidays, my mom wants to spoil her "lost son" as much as possible.

• I play three roles. With the immediate family, I am "The Reminder of The Love Before." Mom sees my father in my face and usually loses her mind. The second role I play is "The Project" -- everyone is eager to see me 50 and relatively finished. Finally, I am "The Outsider." My family is a bunch of heartening, Midwestern hicks, barely anyone finishing college, lots of alcoholics, teenage drug addicts and runaways who try to commit suicide. To have become the quiet one who got out of Fort Wayne, Ind., without babies or a husband, is always unsettling.

• I can tell you right off my role would be "The Moderator." Such choice therapeutic phrases such as "what I hear you saying is ..." and "what I think she is trying to express is ..." are commonly uttered by me. I try to avoid using language like "shame spiral" and "co-dependent." (Note: variations on this theme were the most common roles cited -- "The Referee," "The Sounding Board," "The Therapist," "The Link Repairer," "The Peacemaker.")

• I play "The Honored Guest," graciously bestowing my presence and allowing myself to be treated as such.

• I know the pitfalls of family gatherings (a dirge-like, morose collection of individuals, shoveling down holiday food to the strains of Johnny Mathis and searching for an appropriate escape) and do my best to avoid/dilute them.

• My role: "I Am My Sister's Keeper." We share thousands of tiny glances throughout one holiday evening that speak volumes in the moment, and signify volumes to be spoken much later. Separately, we can hardly win any battles, but together, on Christmas, we are an unstoppable army of two.

• I am the one trying to shed a little factual light on my family's highly distorted, historically rewritten views. I used to be the family clown. I don't think the two are that different -- just components of the same role.

• In my house I take the role of "The Conversationalist." Frequently this involves many different conversations, held in a constant blur of moving from living room to kitchen and back again, trying to not alight on the couch and be sucked into the brain numbing drone of TV. The talk goes a little like this: Cooking, a little politics and sports with Dad; sports with younger brother; current events and education with step-mom. Don't alienate anyone, make sure you include all the guests, remember to include significant others. Above all else avoid the deadly seven-minute dead air. Silence isn't golden. Perhaps we will find out how far we have traveled from each other over the year.

• As a child I was "The Anointed Christmas Infant," responsible for displays of wonder. As a young adult my role shifted to being the one responsible for the continuation of our handed-down traditions of perfection -- "Mid-Winter Monarch" and "Kitchen Queen" -- she who secures the boundaries, mediates the squabbles and is provider of plenty. Now, in exile and older, I have become "The Contented Ghost of Christmas Past."

• My son is unable to type so I will attempt to respond for him. His role is to experience and share pure unadulterated joy during the holidays. He jumps with excitement when putting out a plate of cookies, eight carrots and a glass of milk for Santa. He brings meaning to the holidays. Ask him this question in another five years and I am sure you'll get an answer more like what you were expecting.

• I have no idea what my role is. I think maybe I'm the guy who makes screaming faces in the bathroom mirror and then comes out all smiley.

And you probably could add to these your own cast of characters you find yourself playing. Feel free to comment below and let us know what roles you slip into around the holidays.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the new travel memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.

The next radio show for TheOneRing.net is set for this Sunday, December 6th at 2PM Eastern. Our guests include author Ethan Gilsdorf (‘Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks’) and professional blogger Jenna Busch (JoBlo, Huffington Post, SCI FI Wire, AOL’s Popeater, Newsarama, IGN, UGO, Forces of Geek). We will also be talking about all the latest Hobbit news and other items featured on TheOneRing.net.

We’ll be taking questions from listeners via chat, email, text and the old fashioned phone! Visit our BlogTalk Radio page to listen in!

TheOneRing.net brings fans the latest news on the beloved figures involved in the making of the wildly popular Lord of the Rings movies as well as the newest information available on upcoming productions, Tolkien-centered events, new publications, and fan gatherings.