Frolijah as beautiful boy: a Literature paper, kind of.
I've been reading Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae, and have gotten far enough to be familiarized with her description of the recurring theme in Western art, the "beautiful boy." I can't help thinking of Frodo when reading these accounts, specifically Frodo as brought to life by Elijah Wood, for we need to have a visual in front of us in order to talk about the Western eye-oriented art form that Paglia is so enamored of. Tolkien's Frodo, though naturally he provided the inspiration for film-Frodo, is, let's face it, probably a plainer creature, despite being "fairer than most" and having his own special glow.
My pseudo-scholarly discussion on Frodo as Paglia's beautiful boy thus commences...
Illustrations to get us started:
Separated at birth? Frodo and St. Sebastian, another famous beautiful boy of the art world:
The "beautiful boy" is probably best personified by Adonis of Greek mythology, the mortal lad so attractive that even Aphrodite fell in love with him. He, like most beautiful boys, was killed tragically at a young age, and left a good-looking corpse. Throughout the film version of LOTR, we are constantly getting premonitions that sweet, innocent, lovely Frodo is being sent to an untimely death. "The quest will claim his life," Galadriel warns; and indeed, in the bittersweet end, though he lives, he lives in pain, and leaves this Middle-earth for a better place where his beauty, if it is anything like the love of the Elves, will be "ever green." In my view, this is close enough to a dying-young scenario to count him among the ranks of beautiful boys of Western art.
But judge for yourselves. Paglia introduces the beautiful boy with this passage:
The beautiful boy is an androgyne, luminously masculine and feminine. He has male muscle structure but a dewy girlishness. In Greece he inhabited the world of hard masculine action. His body was on view... All eyes were on him. (110)
From this description we could just as well be talking about Legolas as portrayed by Orlando Bloom. However...
The Greek boy, like the Christian saint, was a martyr, victim of nature's tyranny. (114)
Legolas is no martyr. We never worry about him. We don't need to - he's immortal. Frodo, however, is constantly the suffering saint, brave but piteously small, carrying the weight of the world on a chain around his neck.
The beautiful boy, suspended in time, is physicality without physiology. He does not eat, drink, or reproduce. ...The beautiful boy as angel floats above the turmoil of nature. (117)
Frodo can barely eat on the quest, is starving and dehydrated by the time he reaches Mt. Doom, and never has offspring even after returning home. Of course, he would like to eat and drink - he's a hobbit, after all - and it is only circumstance and stress that forbid it, so this part only sort of fits. But as for floating above the turmoil of nature, I'm sure you, too, instantly thought of that rescue scene where Frodo is borne away by eagles, barely conscious as he soars above the cascading lava.
When the beautiful boy leaves the realm of contemplation for the realm of action, the result is chaos and crime. (122)
Yes, that's pretty much the plot of LOTR right there. Frodo leaves his comfortable library in the Shire for the unfamiliar realm of action; and, oh, the chaos he undergoes in consequence.
Now, this part doesn't fit so well...
The beautiful boy dreams but neither thinks nor feels. His eyes fix on nothing. ...The beautiful boy is cruel in his indifference, remoteness, and serene self-containment. (118)
Frodo is not like Thomas Mann's Tadzio, from Death in Venice; he does not sit about luxuriating in the sun and breaking hearts without noticing. (Though maybe he did, in the Shire, before the quest. Certainly some fanfic writers have suggested that.) All evidence in booklore and movieverse indicates that he does think, and feel, and care about his friends. However, once the Ring takes hold, I'm sure the worried Sam would agree that Frodo sometimes does seem cruelly remote, his eyes fixing on nothing - though "serene" is not how any of us would describe him at such times.
The beautiful boy has flowing or richly textured hyacinthine hair, the only luxuriance in this chastity. (118)
Check! This is a film full of richly-textured masculine long hair, of course, and Frodo's is no exception. The way the curls whip around his face in the wind in so many scenes is a thing of beauty straight out of Renaissance art.
The beautiful boy is without motive force or deed; hence he is not a hero. ...The beautiful boy is the product of chance or destiny, a sport thrown up by the universe. (118)
Frodo is a hero, but he's often called an "unlikely" hero, for, indeed, it is chance that throws him into the role. Or perhaps it is destiny, as Gandalf would have us believe. ("Bilbo was meant to find the Ring," he tells Frodo in the film, "which means that you also were meant to have it.") In any case, Frodo is not the typical hero; the above passage applies much better to him than it does to Aragorn.
Light makes beautiful boys incandescent. Divinity swoops down to ennoble them, like the eagle falling upon Ganymede, who is kidnapped to Olympus...(118-120)
Hello; eagles! Does this look like anyone you know? (Link goes to Gabbiani's painting of Ganymede and the eagle.) As to light making our boys incandescent, we need only ask Sam again, in the favorite passage of all hobbit-slashers:
(From Tolkien's The Two Towers...)
Sam looked at him. The early daylight was only just creeping down into the shadows under the trees, but he saw his master's face very clearly, and his hands, too, lying at rest on the ground beside him. He was reminded suddenly of Frodo as he had lain, asleep in the house of Elrond, after his deadly wound. Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: 'I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.' (Book 4, Chapter 4, "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit")
This scene, alas, was not in the film. But the incandescence of Elijah Wood's startling blue eyes dominates every scene he's in, which makes up for it.
[Edited to add this paragraph...] Book-Frodo was not a beautiful boy, in the archetypal sense. In the book, Frodo is fifty years old at the time of the quest - though a young fifty, as hobbits age slower than some, and the Ring keeps him youthful. Still, there is very little dwelling on his beauty or its effect on anyone else, aside from the above passage. His is basically a hero journey, with many Christ-like qualities, and more than a little Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (as we might now diagnose it) drawn from Tolkien's WWI experiences. But in casting a waiflike 19-year-old, who happens to have the profile of Michelangelo's David (see below) and eyes that seem otherwordly and ethereal while still being teen-dream material, and directing him through the motions of Frodo's swoons and saintlike suffering, the filmmakers have introduced several qualities of the beautiful boy into the persona of our unlikely hero. I imagine this was unintentional on their part, but the effect, to me, is a striking and interesting one. I say it works, and does not detract from Tolkien, though I know some viewers still detest this casting choice.
I'm not done with Paglia's book yet, but I've been itching to know what she would say about Lord of the Rings and its beautiful boys - primarily as a film, since she's especially fond of cinema as an art form. I haven't seen her comment on it anywhere so far, though. Let me know if you hear from her on the topic.
My pseudo-scholarly discussion on Frodo as Paglia's beautiful boy thus commences...
Illustrations to get us started:
Separated at birth? Frodo and St. Sebastian, another famous beautiful boy of the art world:
The "beautiful boy" is probably best personified by Adonis of Greek mythology, the mortal lad so attractive that even Aphrodite fell in love with him. He, like most beautiful boys, was killed tragically at a young age, and left a good-looking corpse. Throughout the film version of LOTR, we are constantly getting premonitions that sweet, innocent, lovely Frodo is being sent to an untimely death. "The quest will claim his life," Galadriel warns; and indeed, in the bittersweet end, though he lives, he lives in pain, and leaves this Middle-earth for a better place where his beauty, if it is anything like the love of the Elves, will be "ever green." In my view, this is close enough to a dying-young scenario to count him among the ranks of beautiful boys of Western art.
But judge for yourselves. Paglia introduces the beautiful boy with this passage:
The beautiful boy is an androgyne, luminously masculine and feminine. He has male muscle structure but a dewy girlishness. In Greece he inhabited the world of hard masculine action. His body was on view... All eyes were on him. (110)
From this description we could just as well be talking about Legolas as portrayed by Orlando Bloom. However...
The Greek boy, like the Christian saint, was a martyr, victim of nature's tyranny. (114)
Legolas is no martyr. We never worry about him. We don't need to - he's immortal. Frodo, however, is constantly the suffering saint, brave but piteously small, carrying the weight of the world on a chain around his neck.
The beautiful boy, suspended in time, is physicality without physiology. He does not eat, drink, or reproduce. ...The beautiful boy as angel floats above the turmoil of nature. (117)
Frodo can barely eat on the quest, is starving and dehydrated by the time he reaches Mt. Doom, and never has offspring even after returning home. Of course, he would like to eat and drink - he's a hobbit, after all - and it is only circumstance and stress that forbid it, so this part only sort of fits. But as for floating above the turmoil of nature, I'm sure you, too, instantly thought of that rescue scene where Frodo is borne away by eagles, barely conscious as he soars above the cascading lava.
When the beautiful boy leaves the realm of contemplation for the realm of action, the result is chaos and crime. (122)
Yes, that's pretty much the plot of LOTR right there. Frodo leaves his comfortable library in the Shire for the unfamiliar realm of action; and, oh, the chaos he undergoes in consequence.
Now, this part doesn't fit so well...
The beautiful boy dreams but neither thinks nor feels. His eyes fix on nothing. ...The beautiful boy is cruel in his indifference, remoteness, and serene self-containment. (118)
Frodo is not like Thomas Mann's Tadzio, from Death in Venice; he does not sit about luxuriating in the sun and breaking hearts without noticing. (Though maybe he did, in the Shire, before the quest. Certainly some fanfic writers have suggested that.) All evidence in booklore and movieverse indicates that he does think, and feel, and care about his friends. However, once the Ring takes hold, I'm sure the worried Sam would agree that Frodo sometimes does seem cruelly remote, his eyes fixing on nothing - though "serene" is not how any of us would describe him at such times.
The beautiful boy has flowing or richly textured hyacinthine hair, the only luxuriance in this chastity. (118)
Check! This is a film full of richly-textured masculine long hair, of course, and Frodo's is no exception. The way the curls whip around his face in the wind in so many scenes is a thing of beauty straight out of Renaissance art.
The beautiful boy is without motive force or deed; hence he is not a hero. ...The beautiful boy is the product of chance or destiny, a sport thrown up by the universe. (118)
Frodo is a hero, but he's often called an "unlikely" hero, for, indeed, it is chance that throws him into the role. Or perhaps it is destiny, as Gandalf would have us believe. ("Bilbo was meant to find the Ring," he tells Frodo in the film, "which means that you also were meant to have it.") In any case, Frodo is not the typical hero; the above passage applies much better to him than it does to Aragorn.
Light makes beautiful boys incandescent. Divinity swoops down to ennoble them, like the eagle falling upon Ganymede, who is kidnapped to Olympus...(118-120)
Hello; eagles! Does this look like anyone you know? (Link goes to Gabbiani's painting of Ganymede and the eagle.) As to light making our boys incandescent, we need only ask Sam again, in the favorite passage of all hobbit-slashers:
(From Tolkien's The Two Towers...)
Sam looked at him. The early daylight was only just creeping down into the shadows under the trees, but he saw his master's face very clearly, and his hands, too, lying at rest on the ground beside him. He was reminded suddenly of Frodo as he had lain, asleep in the house of Elrond, after his deadly wound. Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo's face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiselling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: 'I love him. He's like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.' (Book 4, Chapter 4, "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit")
This scene, alas, was not in the film. But the incandescence of Elijah Wood's startling blue eyes dominates every scene he's in, which makes up for it.
[Edited to add this paragraph...] Book-Frodo was not a beautiful boy, in the archetypal sense. In the book, Frodo is fifty years old at the time of the quest - though a young fifty, as hobbits age slower than some, and the Ring keeps him youthful. Still, there is very little dwelling on his beauty or its effect on anyone else, aside from the above passage. His is basically a hero journey, with many Christ-like qualities, and more than a little Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (as we might now diagnose it) drawn from Tolkien's WWI experiences. But in casting a waiflike 19-year-old, who happens to have the profile of Michelangelo's David (see below) and eyes that seem otherwordly and ethereal while still being teen-dream material, and directing him through the motions of Frodo's swoons and saintlike suffering, the filmmakers have introduced several qualities of the beautiful boy into the persona of our unlikely hero. I imagine this was unintentional on their part, but the effect, to me, is a striking and interesting one. I say it works, and does not detract from Tolkien, though I know some viewers still detest this casting choice.
I'm not done with Paglia's book yet, but I've been itching to know what she would say about Lord of the Rings and its beautiful boys - primarily as a film, since she's especially fond of cinema as an art form. I haven't seen her comment on it anywhere so far, though. Let me know if you hear from her on the topic.