Bearing the ring: the audience and consumers of The Lord of the Rings

"I will examine who the contemporary film industries target as well as how they relate to the creation and maintenance of fan communities, who are either familiar with the original text from which the films are adapted or are initially attracted to the films and then cross over to the texts, resulting in even larger fan bases. These communities are essential in insuring a film studio that there are very active audiences that will pay for a ticket in order to judge for themselves how successful the adaptation is. In the process, these fan communities simultaneously become responsible for the creation of mythologies while also taking pleasure in experiencing them, pitting their allegiances towards the mythopoetic against the logic of commodification. A logical case study to use in this compendium is The Lord of the Rings, an assemblage of multiple products and texts adapted from a narrative trilogy written by J.R.R. Tolkien. Since its publication, it has achieved a cultural iconic status within a culture that embraces the gray zone, appealing to audiences in search of a cerebral comic book to those who seek comfort in a reinforcement of the good versus evil trope."--Page 5.