One . . . ah . . . thing to rule them all

Lord of the Rings: part II, The Two Towers

(2002)

Sex! Du-uuuh! How can someone as sex-obsessed as I not have gotten it before that it's all about sex? I mean, I've always noticed (how could you not?) that the most menacing persistent image, Sauron's eye, is a huge pudendal cleft, but until tonight it had never dawned on me just how much of the trilogy's imagery is devoted to the one ring being teasingly caressed by a finger or by a dagger or sword or other substitute phallus. In fact, to be indelicate, more than "sex," it's all about pussy, notwithstanding that the most enduring love relationship is straight (as it were) out of Leslie Fielder's homoerotic playbook ("Come Back to the Raft, Frodo, Honey"?).

What a relief to have puzzled that out. And speaking of sex, I expect the majority of fanboy nerds fall in love with Cate Blanchett's Galadriel, with the more callow falling for Liv Tyler's Arwen. And there's nothing wrong with that pointy-eared pair, mind you--I don't want to be accused of anti-elvish prejudice--but for me, there's no competition with Miranda Otto's Eowyn. (Incidentally, apart from those three, is there a woman who gets 5 lines of dialogue in the whole freakin' trilogy?)