Hobbes and Rousseau at the Movies: The Lord of the Rings and The Lord of the Flies

Carrying on from last post...

In this debate about the goodness of either human nature or culture, it is often fun to see the debate between Hobbes and Rousseau play out in the popular media. To illustrate this debate in my classes, I often compare and contrast two "Lord of the _____" movies. (I could compare the two books, but students seem to go for movies.)

The Lord of the Flies, based on William Golding's famous novel of the same name, has been made into a movie a few times (but it's never been a blockbuster). In a 1990 version the tagline of the movie was "No parents. No teachers. No rules... No mercy."

If you recall the book, and as can be surmised from the cheesy tagline, The Lord of the Flies would get a big thumbs up from Hobbes. Recall, Hobbes believed that "natural" man was a beast. Only civilization, well, "civilizes" us. And The Lord of the Flies dramatizes that idea. Boys from an English boarding school are marooned without adults on an island. Given that the English boarding school is often used as a great example of oppression and rigidity, the release of these boys into a island paradise should have resulted in Eden. Or so Rousseau would have predicted.


But Golding's vision is more Hobbesian. For without the adults, the boarding school, and the manners of civilized England (Tea, anyone?), the boys do not frolic in the surf of a blissful paradise. Rather, well, the following happens: "No parents. No teachers. No rules... No mercy." The boys regress back to savagery and superstition.

Contrast The Lord of the Flies with The Lord of the Rings, the masterpiece of J.R.R. Tolkien (and made into the blockbuster movies by Peter Jackson). If The Lord of the Flies is Hobbesian, than the The Lord of the Rings is Rousseauian. In the The Lord of the Rings the heroes are pastoral people called Hobbits. Furthermore, the "good" and the "wise" in the The Lord of the Rings are peoples in touch with nature or custodians of nature: Elves, Ents, Tom Bombadil, the Rangers, Eagles, organic wizards like Gandalf.

The evil people in The Lord of the Rings are the "technological" and those opposed to nature. Deep in the bowels of Mordor there are breeding experiments creating new "species" like orcs. Further, The orcs and trolls never show any respect for nature. Finally, both Mordor and Saruman are frequently displayed as gouging the earth to create war technology. The perfect example of this in the book and movie The Two Towers, is when Saruman cuts down all the trees to fuel the fires of his war machine.

Thus, the The Lord of the Rings is a Rousseauian vision: A natural, pastoral, village-based, and agricultural existence is good. Technology is bad and destructive. It is an expansive force that would destroy our Eden.

So, for today's movie reviews:

The Lord of the Flies
Hobbes: Thumbs Up!
Rousseau: Thumbs Down!

The Lord of the Rings
Hobbes: Thumbs Down!
Rousseau: Thumbs Up!

On a final note, generally speaking, Hollywood tends to make Rousseauian movies in that Rousseau was a granddaddy of the Romantic Movement with its similar emphasis on nature and pastoral existence. Artists tend to be more Romantic, thus movies generally go in this direction. But, it is not just a pastoral bent. Take the movie of the year, Crash. Crash is a Rousseauian movie in theme. Crash opens with and then reflects on how city life is making us all strangers. So much so, we need to "crash" to have any contact with each other. That sentiment is right out of Rousseau. Hobbes would have disagreed with Crash. Modern city life is hardly ideal, but it is a remarkable modern achievement to get such diversity living, in the main, harmoniously. Race is still a terrible problem in American cities, but look at the ethnic violence around the world in places where centralized authority has collapsed, it's The Lord of the Flies.

So, to bring this show to a close, thanks for joining our film critics today, Hobbes and Rousseau!

We'll see you at the movies!