Abby Epplett, Historian

I recently watched the documentary Primary 1960 , a cinéma vérité or direct cinema documentary created by the director team of Richard Leacock , Albert Maysles , D.A. Pennebaker , and Terence Macartney-Filgate . I first learned about this documentary while researching for my essay “Introduction to the History of Documentaries” , which I posted back in early May. Covering the Wisconsin 1960 primary race between John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey , the film takes viewers around the state to get a personal look at the two candidates. Radio and television actor Joseph Julian narrated the documentary in a raspy but soothing voice. The opening scenes introduced viewers to the two candidates. Kennedy signed autographs for city crowds, while Humphrey wore a cool hat while traveling through the countryside. Julian explained in voiceover that many candidates were dreamers, and the primaries were a “process of eliminating these dreamers to select a president.” This type of ...

This week, I return to the sacred text, not the first chapter of Part One: The Fellowship of the Ring but the end of Part Three: The Return of the King . This section has 150 pages of materials, from 341 to 491, that according to J.R.R. Tolkien did not fit within the structure of the narrative, to which I ask, “What structure, sir?” This arrangement has never been replicated, nor will it likely ever be seen again, as modern editors and publishers do not allow such unconventional formats. The information in the Appendixes and Index reads like an academic textbook yet maintains a uniquely Tolkien sense of humor. Over the next several weeks, I will cover these appendixes using comparative history, linguistics, and mythology to better understand their content.

In my second week of hiatus from texts written by J.R.R. Tolkien, I wanted to talk about documentaries, one of the most popular ways to learn about history, science, and nearly any other topic. Tolkien’s works are pseudo-historical, presented as translations of a heavily edited ancient text with a modern historical essay added to the front as a Prologue and a series of Appendixes added to the back by various authors. Additionally, characters within the book halt the narrative to describe historically and culturally significant people, places, events, and ideas using both prose and song. Today, screens have largely replaced writing, with documentaries serving the population that once read textbooks. A film adaption faithful to the text could utilize the elements of a documentary to convey its layers of world-building information. Defining the Documentary When creating a documentary, filmmakers collect artifacts in a range of media, then turn the varied experiences into a...

My tour through The Lord of the Rings enroute to creating the animated musical will take a different approach to projects created by other enthusiasts. I am interested in exploring a holistic view of the text in its historical context. For me, the societies and cultures, both real world and fantasy, in which the book was written and read has the same importance as the material in the book itself. I come from an academic background, meaning that I was in school for too long and have permanently warped my brain with professor jargon, but I will do my best to keep these essays manageable for a reader with a high school level education. With this in mind, I begin with the three-paragraph introductory essay written by Peter S. Beagle and first appearing in the 1973 edition of The Lord of the Rings: Part One, The Fellowship of the Ring , which I will call Fellowship for the remainder of this post. When Beagle penned his mini-essay, he was already a well-established fantasy aut...