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Cinema, Sexuality, Mechanical Reproduction

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Tolkien and Alterity

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

Although Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings​ show a degree of male intimacy seldom seen in Hollywood blockbusters, the films also seek to forestall queer possibilities—not only by expanding the limited heterosexual elements of Tolkien’s plot, but also by shifting the focus of non-normative sexuality from object-choice to reproduction. The films both foreground the figure of the child as a sentimentalized confirmation of heterosexual love and introduce the threat of unnatural reproduction. This inhuman generation functions as a displaced site of queer sexuality which implicates the cinematic mechanism, named by Walter Benjamin as a form of “mechanical reproduction,” in the very perversity it seeks to forestall.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

    Valerie Rohy

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  1. Valerie Rohy
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Arts and Sciences, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, USA

    Christopher Vaccaro

  2. Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, New Jersey, USA

    Yvette Kisor

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Rohy, V. (2017). Cinema, Sexuality, Mechanical Reproduction. In: Vaccaro, C., Kisor, Y. (eds) Tolkien and Alterity. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61018-4_6

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