Is It Hobbit Forming?

Major International Lord of the Rings research project launches today

It’s Christmas, precioussss… and it’s the season for Hobbits, Elves and Dark Lords. Amidst all the movie hype an international team of academics is on a quest to find out what on Middle Earth people actually get from viewing Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Academic researchers across 20 countries and five continents want audiences around the world to tell them about their experiences of the film.

Led by the UK team at The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, today (December 17th) will see the launch of a multi-lingual (13 languages) web questionnaire expecting to attract over 100,000 responses world wide. (www.lordoftheringsresearch.net ).

Their research is part of a major international research project using the release of the third film to investigate, for the very first time, the ways in which film fantasy plays a part in people’s lives. Each research group is monitoring the media coverage and marketing strategies that accompany the film’s release, watching the build-up of expectations in each country. Later, in-depth interviews will be carried out, to give a rich picture of why the film matters to different people.

The project’s director is Professor Martin Barker. This is the latest in a series of studies by Professor Barker, many of which have focused on audiences responses to films. Amongst them are Judge Dredd (1995), Crash (1997) and the 1999 comedy Being John Malkovich. He is currently researching responses to A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs, two notorious films from 1971 that recently have been re-released.

Other principal researchers, Ernest Mathijs and Janet Jones, have just completed international research into audience response to the hit reality TV show Big Brother.

According to Professor Barker, central to the work will be questions about how the Lord of the Rings, which is essentially a fantasy, connects with people’s lives.

“The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers have been enormous international box office successes, yet they pose some interesting questions. The story’s background and mythology are undeniably English, yet the film is set in New Zealand with financial backing from Hollywood. It has unquestionably become a celebration of New Zealand’s rugged terrain.”

“We will be asking questions about how audiences respond the mixing of English modern myth, American cultural imperialism and New Zealand’s striking physical presence. Where in all this is Middle Earth, and what does it signify to people?

And as New Line Cinema, the film’s producers, said in their promotional programme on the film, “Now The Lord of the Rings trilogy belongs to the audience.”

The project ‘Launch and Reception of Lord of the Rings III, the functions of film fantasy’, is being funded by a £40,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council.