Frodo Lives!
"Frodo Lives!" was a popular counterculture slogan in the 1960s and 1970s, referring to the character Frodo Baggins from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. The term was used frequently in graffiti, buttons, bumper-stickers, t-shirts, and other materials. It was commonly associated with the hippie movement. Other examples of use include a Frodo Lives album released by Smash Records and merchandising items for the New Line Cinema The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The phrase was also displayed during the activation of a computer virus in the early 1990s, in which the text 'Frodo Lives!' was displayed in large letters with a moving border.
| “ | Hippies who may be pushing thirty wear buttons that read "Frodo Lives" and decorate their pads with maps of Middle Earth... | ” |
The term first became popular because of an increase in the availability and number of readers of the novel (which, up until that point, had been subject to rather mixed reviews) following release of the Ballantine Books paperback edition.[2] While no longer as pervasive as it once was, the term continues to appear regularly in newspaper articles and popular culture related to Tolkien's stories.[3][4][5]
The term was often related to a mistaken belief that Frodo's journey into the West at the end of Tolkien's novel meant that he would live forever. In fact, Tolkien maintained that Frodo would still die, and travelled West only for healing.[6] Another meaning ascribed to the term, especially in later usage, is that Tolkien's work remains alive and popular.
Others say that the phrase refers to the drama of the Third Age itself and those harrowing days of The War of The Ring. The only hope of the free peoples of Middle-earth lay with Frodo. But that was a slim hope and Frodo's whereabouts and fate were unknown - even on the dawn of battle. To say that Frodo Lives is to show faith that all is not lost and some slim small hope will yet win out over the forces of Shadow that threaten to engulf us.
[edit] References
- ^ Roszak, Theodore (1995). The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. University of California Press. pp. 40. ISBN 0520201221.
- ^ Carpenter, Humphrey (1977), Tolkien: A Biography, New York: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-04-928037-6
- ^ Kempley, Rita (2001-12-19). "Frodo Lives! A Spirited 'Lord of the Rings'". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62431-2001Dec18. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
- ^ Harvard Gazette: ARTS
- ^ The Bastards Have Landed! The Official Peter Jackson Fanclub
- ^ Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-31555-7
