Pipe-weed Shall Pass: an Intermedial Study of Tobacco in 'The Lord of the Rings' by J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson's film adaptation
Résumé
“Your love of the halflings’ leaf has slowed your mind” Saruman claims to Gandalf in Peter Jackson's adaptation of 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. Yet, such judgement was not originally present in J. R. R. Tolkien's work. The first book being published in 1954, some readers even found resonance with the current drug culture. The mentioned herb is a drug indeed, as stated in the prologue “Concerning Pipe-weed”. A detailed description of its origins and locations is provided, and inscribed on Christopher Tolkien's maps: "But all accounts agree that Tobold Hornblower of Longbottom in the Southfarthing first grew the true pipe-weed in his gardens in the days of Isengrim the Second, about the year 1070 of Shire-reckoning. The best home-grown still comes from that district (...)." The narrator clearly associates pipe-weed with nicotine, “an organic compound that is the principal alkaloid of tobacco”. As a nitrogenous organic compound, alkaloids have “marked physiological effects” on consumers, such as dopaminergic effect on central nervous system pathways: it releases dopamine, a chemical messenger involved in reward and motivation for instance, and causes a form of addiction. Yet, at the time of publication, the now well-known dangers of smoking were not fully comprehended. Tobacco is thus used as a key element impacting altogether the structure (cf prologue "Concerning Pipe-weed"), plot (pipe-weed being a key to understand 'The Scouring of the Shire', a chapter deleted from the film adaptation) and characterisation (we seek to demonstrate in this talk that Meriadoc Brandybuck wrote 'The Herblore of the Shire' for Théoden). In the end, J. R. R. Tolkien and the hobbits were not drug addicts, but hedonists, in a book that, we believe, relies on "the willing suspension of pessimism".