The Experience and Timing of Media
My group of friends had a tradition for every February called “Eat Like Hobbits”. Basically, our one friend would invite us all to her home, and she would have the excuse to cook several meals over the course of a day (which she loves doing), all the while the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy play in the background. Well, we would watch it, but we are also chatting and just be glad January was over. We would have a good time, eat, well, like a hobbit, and embrace our nerdy selves.
So, I will confess one thing: The Lord of the Rings are not in my top five or top ten films of all time. But I have a lot of respect for the trilogy, and the amount of craft that went into every detail. And I do like them to a point. I treasure them as part of my introduction to western fantasy, as they were released around the same time as Champions of Norrath and I was coming to identify the DnD culture a lot more. The timing of the films coincided with the experience of discovering a favorite genre. And with the Hobbit day, it became a part of our shared experience.
As a fan of older media, like Robert E. Howard’s Conan books, I have been thinking a lot of the experience around the consumption of media. This involves more than the strict text of a given work. For instance, I started reading through Howard’s work via the volumes offered by Del Rey. It came in three volumes, the first of which I remember picking up after I graduated High School and in the ours before I saw X-Men 3. The volumes would follow me through our trip to Chatham, NY that year, into college and the smell of those old class buildings. They are synonymous with my experience in Rutgers and beyond.
The scents around us as we turned the page, the friends we would bring it up with, the chapter we try to squeeze in before class starts. These are all included with the actual consumption of the tale and make up our experience. We do not live in a bubble. The video games we play will either be affected by the outside world, or will be part of our relief from it. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was played after a particularly rough time (and winter) of my life and it became part of spring. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon came out during 8th grade, a particularly joyful year of my life. And, of course, the ending of Majora’s Mask hit hard when I was a lonely kid outside of my household.
Going back to Conan, those were my own experiences, sure. But that was not the original context that the stories came out in. Those were published by Weird Tales back in the 1930s, usually one (or maybe even just a chapter) at any given publication. And these were published along side other authors, including HP Lovecraft. These would be on low quality paper (hence the “pulp” in pulp fiction), at 10 cents at a magazine stand. These would not be pre collected in a higher quality volume in a clean and orderly book store.
This was likely picked up by someone on their way to work, either to the local factory or grocery store. These were in the 1930s, so the Great Depression was either affecting the reader directly or at least seeing the damage it has caused. I imagine someone going “At least I got my Howard and Lovecraft for the month!” as they see another store close. Perhaps, like in Grapes of Wrath, copies were likely carried by migrant workers trying to make ends meet. “The Phoenix on the Sword”, “The Scarlet Citadel”, “Hour of the Dragon” and “People of the Black Circle” were just as much part of the life of a migrant worker as their tools, factories, current events and crops. Perhaps they held onto these copies and looked back on them with a mix of nostalgia and strain.
And the rabbit hole does not end there. I wonder what actors they were thinking of when they thought of Conan at the time. A mix of the movies from the 80s and artwork have long since codified Conan’s overall look and feel, but much of that was decades later. What music accompanied their reading in their heads? Did they find a friend or fellow worker and think “Oh, that could be Conan!” Did they try writing the Howard? Or at least to the publication house? And this isn’t even mentioning the human rights advocacies, protests and bloodshed at this era. Before Conan’s overall look was codified, did readers conjure a Conan of different races, imposing their own preferences?
My point is that the whole experience of reading Conan when it first came out will be eternally lost to me. I will likely never find some of the original volumes, which are either preserved in a museum or just dissolved into nothing. And even if I did, I will not know the desperation and attitudes of the time, or the actors of the time, what counted for “fantasy music” at the time, if that was even a concept.
But that does not invalidate my experience. The Experience that I bring up is always going to be unique to each of us. One 1930s reader is going to have a different experience from another 1930s reader, even if they are coworkers of similar backgrounds. I do not say this out of jealousy or some foolish self deprecating of our generation. This is more to illustrate why we love media, why we are nostaligic and why we more than enjoy, but cherish, our favorite works. The tricky thing is it is impossible to recreate. That version of you ended at the end of the experience. We have memories, but we have lost access to it at the same time.
It is also one of several reasons why I have disdain for any claim of “Best X of all time”. Like much about the entertainment we consume, this is going to be subjective, and unique to every consumer. Awards try to find an objective truth, but they can’t dictate on a personal, subjective level. Bad timing and harsh experiences can also explain why we bounce off of works that we, in theory, “should” enjoy. I imagineThe Last of Us Part II would have been better received by audiences in a year that wasn’t 2020. These Experiences put the text to light. You never consume media without it. Despite everyone trying to talk me into it, I’m just not in the right mindset to go through Final Fantasy VII Remake or the new God of War games. They are something I currently do not want, and when I spend my entertainment hours on something I do not wish to do, I’m constantly looking forward to the thing I do wish to do.
The last “Eat Like Hobbits” we had before the pandemic was February of 2020, before the pandemic started. A lot changed since. Several people moved and found new homes. Job situations changed. But finally, in this year 2023, we got the invite we were waiting for. Our friend got her cooking going and we watched through the whole trilogy. This time, my wife and I watched through the whole thing, a first for herself. It was wonderful to have everyone over, but the trilogy changed in light of the pandemic.
First, there is what it meant: After three long years, we were able to do this again. Covid has not completely gone away, but something special had returned to us. Secondly, the scene where Frodo can no longer see home, but the fiery eye, really hit home. Leaving the house in 2020 could mean bringing back a deadly virus that has claimed over a million lives in this country alone and had filled hospitals to bursting. There was no escaping it, just the constant fiery watch of this disease and no catharsis or friends in person to comfort us. We were all trapped in our own personal Mordor, away from the lives we once had and the people we love.
And, thirdly, I am completely unashamed to admit that I thought of my own wedding last year during Aragorn’s Coronation (yeah, yeah, fuck off). But it is part of the experience I was going through. Our wedding was planned for 2021, but was postpone until late summer of 2022 for several reasons. Unfortunately, the pandemic was part of the drama leading up to it. But when all was said and done, everyone was there, hail and hardy, after three years of pain. My wife and I sat through the pains of moving, pandemics and grief together, and finally, FINALLY, we would have this day, Our day. It was not just a wedding, but also victory in its own way. All of that and everything that led to our wedding went into my recent viewing of Aragorn’s Coronation.
And let’s be honest, you should feel like a king on your wedding day.
We do not live in vacuums. It’s our real life that gives the fiction we consume meaning. As fantastical as a story or setting is, it is still a reflection of what we are. “All works are political” or so I’ve heard the phrase. We carry not only our preferences and likes, but also our life into everything we consume and create. Fiction makes little sense otherwise.
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