Hobbit Hysteria

2011

We are accustomed to think of movies as part of our leisure activities rather than terrains on which political battles are enacted. However, in a highly commercialised globe that has turned image and sound into pathways to political inclusion and global recognition, films have become politicized arenas. Take movies that successfully promote global pilgrimage [7](fan tourism and other types of tourism) to filmed locales, making filmed regions and nation-states internationally famous.

Journal of Industrial Relations

This article draws on an industrial dispute over the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand in 2010 to contribute to the theorisation of the interplay between interests and identities and our understanding of mobilisation and collective identity. While industrial disputes are typically viewed as a conflict between groups with opposing material interests, this may miss the way in which both the identities of those involved and their interests are discursively constituted in articulatory processes. Specifically, we apply Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and in doing so demonstrate that the dispute was more than a conflict over working conditions, it was a hegemonic struggle to fix meaning. In making this conceptual contribution we highlight a tendency within industrial relations analysis to reify interests.

2018

2017

2020

The power of Hollywood is not only borderless but also extensive around the world. Therefore, how Hollywood operates in a local context is a matter of concern, even more if the use of its power has clear political, economic and socio-cultural consequences for the host country in terms of a modified film policy. This research explains how “Global Hollywood” operates in a local context to defend its economic interests and adds to the contemporary discussion of Hollywood influence on cultural policy. Drawing on findings derived from a review of academic literature and secondary material, policy analysis, archival research and in-depth semi-structured interviews with New Zealand filmmakers and union representatives, this article takes an institutional political economy perspective to analyse The Hobbit dispute. It illustrates the structures of power associated with global and local stakeholders and analyses the interplay of interests among public and private actors involved in the dispu...

Honegger, Thomas (2015) ""The Hobbit" and Tolkien's Mythology (2014), ed. Bradford Lee Eden," Journal of Tolkien Research: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol2/iss1/3

2007

I remember reading, as a child, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, and pausing to think about the evocative words "Middle-earth." Where was this place? Alice's Wonderland was down a rabbit hole. The Wizard's Oz was understood to be on the planet, hidden by surrounding deserts. Other "fantasy" novels seemed situated in the same mythical England that I associated with King Arthur. But Middle-earth seemed different. I pictured a whole world underground, much like our own, but where the skies, while looking blue enough to the world's inhabitants, were actually "ceilings" of an unusual sort. If the men there ever learned to fly, perhaps they could drill up through their own skies and come upon our world. But I was wrong. Middle-earth has come to us through the cinema, and it turns out that it resembles nothing so much as rural New Zealand. The New Zealand tourist bureau, through ubiquitous advertisements, is proud to assign to their nation much of the meaning of Peter Jackson's recent films. In other words, our planet has a "middle" world, a barely-touched rural paradise, steeped in medieval folklore, and it is in New Zealand. I am not a child anymore, and this brought to my mind a new question. How do the actual "middle" nations of the world feel about these movies, and about New Zealand's new identity?

Book reviews of both books, published in Tolkien Studies.

The Fisherman’s Ring of Power: Masculinity, Castration, and the Great Quest in The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, 2022

My paper which was presented at the 2022 Medieval Conference at Kalamazoo.

Fastitocalon, 2017