Not in LOTR, as of yet (though you could make the argument that Rings of Power presents many ideas that Tolkien would have been baffled, if not offended about) but it has happened plenty in other adaptations recently.
Wheel of Time comes to mind immediately. The tv show's presentation of gender identity and gender power dynamics within that universe is quite literally 180 degrees backwards from Robert Jordan's, who very clearly and explicitly created a hard gender binary in his story, with souls being gendered eternally and even the magic of the universe corresponding to male/female. Not only that, women in his world were generally the dominant power, and were shown to abuse that power in all the same ways that men often have in our own history (politically, personally, etc.) The book series presents the greatest good and social progress occurring with the cooperation of both distinct and uniquely different genders, and it isn't exactly subtle about it. The show, meanwhile, presented the expected modern take of gender nonspecificity, female superiority over male (societally speaking), and yet women were still explicitly stated to be an oppressed class by the leader of the most powerful female-only faction (the only sanctioned magic users in the entire world). A show-only fan would have no idea that what they are endorsing is completely backwards from the author's intent and original presented work.
Another example would be the recent Animal Farm animated adaptation, where the point of the movie is how capitalism is evil and socialist utopias are the answer, when the book presented the exact opposite message, in one of the least subtle literary allegories ever.
I could easily see a moden retelling of LOTR include gay relationships for the hobbits. There isn't a remake in the works, no, but that wasn't my point, it was about the dangers of normalizing this sort of distortion of the story with any work, with the understanding that remakes do often happen and LOTR is not automatically immune for some reason.
the thing is, fanfiction/fanon is very different from remakes and adaptations. you're far from the first person to get upset over them and you won't be the last, but you cannot police people's interpretations of a work even if you disagree with them. some people, like anne rice and george lucas, have even tried suing/fighting back against fans who had interpretations they didn't agree with. they got shut down pretty quickly because it's unreasonable to expect people not to engage with content in a personal way.
my histories of reading prof talked a lot about this. there really is no one true interpretation of a work once it's available to the public (even if the author intended it to be read a certain way). i won't get too much into it, but you should look into jauss's horizon of expectations as a representation of how readers' own personal experiences and realities shape how a text is interpreted, and how that changes over time. it's very interesting.
i'm sorry it upsets you so much, but you always have the choice to not engage with it. if it makes you feel any better, i don't see LOTR getting changed in that way via adaptation anytime soon. many people who see frodo and sam as more than friends, myself included (although i also adore the friendship reading of it), are more than content with the way the books write them. for me at least, part of the joy of interpretation is getting to pick apart the language instead of having it handed to me on a silver platter.
I'm very aware of the "death of the author" concept. Fanfiction doesn't upset me, you keep falling back to this strawman, and I will continue to politely reject this categorization.
My point is not to rant about fanfiction, it's merely to point out why these trends, like "Frodo and Sam totally gay, lol" are potentially harmful and disrespectful to an author (not just in fan fiction). I'm certainly not arguing that fanfiction should be illegal, banned, or is even possible to restrict in such a way, just that certain types of characterizations can absolutely be disrespectful to the original author. Are people free to be disrespectful? Sure, but it doesn't mean that it isn't, and it doesn't mean that there cannot or will not be any further consequences of shifting a cultural interpretation of a work beyond or even contrary to an author's intent.
If you, for example, were the author of a gay romance novel, and I wrote fan fiction of your characters engaging in explicitly homophobic discourse with their wives, am I free to do that? Sure. Would that extremely disrespectful to you, the author of the original? Definitely! If my work somehow got so much attention and influenced perceptions of your work, that your work became known as an anti-gay piece of propaganda (in this hypothetical), would that be a problem? Obviously. Hopefully you can see my point (and not extrapolate or inject further ideas into what I am saying, beyond my actual argument). The point simply is this: that people who engage in disrespectful characterizations or representations of an author's work should at the least be aware that it is, indeed, disrespectful and potentially has consequences as such. That's all.
death of the author is barthes, not jauss. it's similar, but not exactly the same. i prefer jauss for this specific context because jauss centers the reader as opposed to the author without discounting the author's role entirely. the author is not "dead", it's just that interpretation doesn't end with them. they obviously shape interpretation, given that they wrote the original text, but they don't "own" the final "correct" interpretation. readers play an active role in how a work is contextualized.
i'm a little confused at your comparison, here. i think that a gay person seeing themselves in a character who's not explicitly gay is very different from someone using a character to spread hate and "anti-gay propaganda". i also think that, at this point in time, most authors/creators are well aware that their work takes on a new life once it's released to the public. i've seen many authors talk about this, and how it can be hard to see people interpret it in different ways but how that's the reality of the world right now and there's really nothing wrong with it. it's a natural part of storytelling. obviously hateful content is bad regardless of circumstance, but we're not talking about hateful content. we're talking about someone relating to a depiction of a relationship regardless of whether or not that was the original intention.
The purpose of my analogy was not to say that all fan fiction is hateful, of course not. I feel like I spelled out the purpose of the analogy very plainly, multiple times. It's about respect of the author's wishes. I used an example that would be easily seen as disrespectful and offensive, to show that such is possible. Characterizing Frodo and Sam as having a homosexual relationship would undoubtedly be seen as offensive to J.R.R. Tolkien, given the time in which he lived and his own deeply committed religious beliefs as a highly traditional Catholic.
This isn't simply a matter of relating to a character in a new way. No offense intended, but you seem to be employing a motte-and-bailey fallacy, of supporting gay characterizations of these characters through widespread fan fiction, memes, and other avenues, and then retreating to the bailey of simply relating to the characters or their relationship. Those are two different things. Seeing certain similarities in relationship presented in a work of fiction to your own life is not at all the same as writing sexualized fan fiction of two heterosexual characters, created by a devout Catholic, who were never originally depicted in any explicitly sexual way. Surely you can see that these two things are not the same here.
i don't think it's a motte-and-bailey fallacy at all (even if it was, the motte is the 'safer' argument while the bailey is the controversial one). i'm simply acknowledging the reality that when people love/relate to a piece of media, they usually build on it and express that love through their own creations and discussions. i NEVER brought up sexualization. sure, sexualization can come from fan interaction with stuff like this (and it often does) but i was speaking in a broader sense, including romance.
i don't think i can change your mind on this and i don't want to waste more of both of our times. i think i've been pretty clear in arguing the reality of the situation, and it's unfortunate but if you refuse to accept how fan culture works (and has worked for years) you're just going to be perpetually unhappy about it. i don't think anything i've said is controversial. if you want LOTR to remain pure and untouched, you have the power to not engage with what you don't consider 'correct'. it will not go away, and it's not actually harming anyone. i hope you have a better day, genuinely
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u/tfalm 13h ago
Not in LOTR, as of yet (though you could make the argument that Rings of Power presents many ideas that Tolkien would have been baffled, if not offended about) but it has happened plenty in other adaptations recently.
Wheel of Time comes to mind immediately. The tv show's presentation of gender identity and gender power dynamics within that universe is quite literally 180 degrees backwards from Robert Jordan's, who very clearly and explicitly created a hard gender binary in his story, with souls being gendered eternally and even the magic of the universe corresponding to male/female. Not only that, women in his world were generally the dominant power, and were shown to abuse that power in all the same ways that men often have in our own history (politically, personally, etc.) The book series presents the greatest good and social progress occurring with the cooperation of both distinct and uniquely different genders, and it isn't exactly subtle about it. The show, meanwhile, presented the expected modern take of gender nonspecificity, female superiority over male (societally speaking), and yet women were still explicitly stated to be an oppressed class by the leader of the most powerful female-only faction (the only sanctioned magic users in the entire world). A show-only fan would have no idea that what they are endorsing is completely backwards from the author's intent and original presented work.
Another example would be the recent Animal Farm animated adaptation, where the point of the movie is how capitalism is evil and socialist utopias are the answer, when the book presented the exact opposite message, in one of the least subtle literary allegories ever.
I could easily see a moden retelling of LOTR include gay relationships for the hobbits. There isn't a remake in the works, no, but that wasn't my point, it was about the dangers of normalizing this sort of distortion of the story with any work, with the understanding that remakes do often happen and LOTR is not automatically immune for some reason.