New Project @ Abby Epplett, Historian | Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical

After much research and debate, I am debuting the first creative project to appear on Abby Epplett, Historian. While my regular posts on museums, webinars, and reviews will continue to appear on the blog, I’ll be adding new materials that tap into my other interests — art, music, literature, film — while keeping history at the forefront. Posts will orbit around a hypothetical television series tentatively called Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical. I decided to base the project on the publications of linguistics professor J.R.R. Tolkien because of its unusual duality of the original books being considered of high academic merit versus its continued popularity as lucrative intellectual property (IP) in popular culture.

A Note on IP, Copyright, and Fair Use

While I am not a lawyer, I have a significant amount of knowledge regarding copyright law, fair use, and the public domain particularly relating to museums, historical artifacts, and digital reproduction. If this piques your interest, you can read my essay on navigating copyright law that I wrote for the Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture or watch my conference presentation on the subject. Here are a few legal facts to keep in mind during the project.

IP & Copyright Holders

According to a recent article written by Louise Parnall and published on Cultural Slate, the ownership of this material is widely coveted and shared. Owners include The Tolkien Estate and the Tolkien family; HarperCollins Publishers; Embracer Group; New Line Cinema, a brand of Warner Bros. Discovery; and Amazon. If this was not confusing enough, the original books were published many years apart with most material appearing posthumously with significantly younger co-authors. To summarize an intense, well-researched comment appearing on Stack Exchange, works published in Tolkien’s lifetime are scheduled to enter the public domain in 2044, although laws extending copyright can be implemented at any time.

Transformative, Derivative Work

For this material to be considered fair use, I need to create a derivative work (something new based on something that already exists) that is transformative (significantly different than the original).In the United States, the law 17 U.S. Code § 101 lists “…musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction…” as derivative works. The transformative nature of the work is often defined not by law but through court cases. Works of art created by fans of a copyrighted work — including art, fiction, music, and memes — are typically considered transformative. Parodies, satire, and commentary can also be considered transformative, although a scathing work is more likely to draw lawsuits.

Fair Use & Education

Another route to fair use is using a work for educational purposes, my own strongest argument for use of the material. The University of Chicago has an easy-to-read article about things to keep in mind when distributing copyrighted material. Any derivative material I create will support educational material on the blog, use only a portion of the original written work, be made available for free, and is unlikely to harm the market.

What To Expect When You’re Expecting an Animated Musical

In a parallel universe where I have been hired to produce this animated musical, the program is funded through a collaboration between PBS and BBC with streaming available on Kanopy, allowing a maximum number of people to experience the show during the original airing or online, along with increasing the likelihood that the book would be respected, even if elements of the musical differ from the complicated written work with a problematic structure. (Not for the last time will you hear me comment about the structure!) The program runs for either twelve 1-hour episodes or twenty-four 30-minute episodes.

Narrative & Dialog

The Lord of the Rings trilogy drives the narrative, but flashbacks and commentary incorporate elements of other Tolkien works, including information from the appendices, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and lines from Tolkien’s letters. In the real world, I do not plan on recording large amounts of dialog outside of songs (see my paragraph on Fair Use & Education), but when it does appear, expect to hear lines taken directly from the book and said by the character who originally spoke it. If people pay to watch Shakespeare, they can certainly listen to Tolkien for free.

Music & Musicals

Characters in the musical get to be silly at times, just as they were in the book, but with the Tolkien style of silliness of acting ridiculous in front of authority figures, singing goofy songs to make your friend feel better, and falling (unhurt) out of a tree. Songs from the book receive an orchestral treatment based on the original tunes sung by Tolkien if I can find a good recording of him, new music if I cannot find a recording or feel strongly about a different melody, or music based on well-known pieces in the public domain. I have created original songs to convey information while covering the many, many times people are walking far and that is about it. (The structure, in places, is something else.)

On the blog, I will parallel songs with the history of musicals both on stage and on screen. A fun website with materials on this topic is Musical 101, so I will be referencing many of its excellent articles written by author John Kendrick. Expect references to my favorite musicals, such as Fiddler on the Roof and Hello, Dolly!, along with historically significant works like Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen opera series. This section will also include history of theater stretching back to Ancient Greece, obligatory mentions of William Shakespeare, and exploring concepts like the fourth wall and deux ex machina.

Film & Animation

While this category overlaps with musicals, especially the Disney animated variety, I want to place a special emphasis on techniques used in visual media. Since the general history of animation is a widely written topic, I will focus instead on where I borrow visuals, referencing films from The Wizard of Oz to El Norte. Additionally, I will talk about the production process, animation techniques, and the animators who invented them, including storyboards, animatics, and rotoscoping.

Literary Analysis & Pushing Back at the Narrative

One of my college majors was Honors Creative Writing & English Literature, so I will put that to use! I will explain common theoretical frameworks used to analyze literature, describe the history behind the frameworks, and then critique passages using the frameworks. If you are interested in learning more about literary theories ahead of my posts, I found a comprehensive list in this MasterClass article. The most common theories will likely be Cultural Studies, where the critic looks at a literary work within the context of the time and place it was written, and Postcolonial Theory, which challenges the dominance of traditional Western thought, or in the case of Middle Earth, the dominance of elf culture.

At times, the animated musical will use conclusions from these theories to push back at the narrative and provide textually supported alternatives to more traditional interpretation. Like all people at the top of their game, Tolkien has received plenty of criticism, and not just for the problematic structure of the books. Critics have cited issues with racism, religious overtones, support for the divine rights of kings, romanticizing the actual horror of living in Medieval Europe, and unrealistic or flat characters. When exploring these critiques, I will use comparative history to parallel the real-world places and cultures where Tolkien lived to those that he studied and those appearing in the books. I am not a Tolkien apologist, but I will acknowledge the remarkability of an upper middle-class, highly educated British family man publishing a book that promoted peace, environmentalism, love, mental health awareness, healthy masculinity, and his flavor of racial equality and female empowerment during the 1950s, even if these views do not conform with opinions of the present day.

What This Production Won’t Have

Finally, there are a few aspects that the animated musical will not have, in contrast to what appears in previous adaptations. There will be no gratuitous battle scenes and no fiery eye over Mordor; Sauron had a body (several, actually), and he will use it. Dwarves are clean, polite, and not Scottish. Gollum is neither naked nor a Black caricature. (I have seen things.) Sam can weep and curse (always implied, never written) as much as he wants. I don’t make the rules. Tolkien did.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy the upcoming project. This will be my sixth time reading through the books, and nearly twenty years since my initial reading as a fourth grader, and about twelve years from my last read as a high school student. While my understanding of the storyline was as good as any adult, I do maintain a few of my unconventional interpretations due to my age at the time of first reading, which I will allow to appear in my transformative work. If the project follows the same timeline as the in-universe writing for the Lord of the Rings section of the Red Book (more explanation on this to come!), the project should be complete in under two years. I have set no deadlines and am in no rush. I look forward to exploring this work together!