Hey folks, Harry here... OK, this isn't movie related, but I just cannot resist bringing it to your attention.
I don't know what I get more giggly over... the idea that there are tribes of people living in the mountains of Kazakhstan dressing up and living lives in the guise of Hobbits... or the mental image of Kazakhstan Militant Gestapo-esque Police Units torturing and arresting people dressed as Hobbits.
People ask how big these LORD OF THE RINGS films are going to be. Well, folks... these Mountain People of Kazakhstan only come down twice a year to Almaty, the capital of this country, to celebrate Tolkien... for some reason I think there will be a third time over the next three years. I just hope the police don't seize the film as blasphemous... I wonder, could we get the Kazakhstan police to dress as Urak Hai?
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People who dress up as hobbits have become the latest victims of a police crackdown on unconventional lifestyles in the Central Asian state of Kazakhstan.
J R R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is very popular in the
countries of the former Soviet Union, where thousands of fans
dress up and re-enact scenes from the book. But this
innocent if dotty pursuit is seen as subversive by the
notoriously brutal police in Almaty, the former capital of
Kazakhstan. It is part of a wider drive against those whom the
police suspect of enjoying "bohemian" lifestyles.
Of course, the actions of the Kazakhstan Police are repugnant to an extreme. The Water Tank Torture mentioned in the article is inhuman. But there is an absurdist bizarrity to the concept that this involves a society of people that have taken to living as Hobbits. The unusual have always been persecuted and unfortunately always will. This story just shows how absurd it can get. The key thing to take from this is to think how lucky the rest of us are that we can be the bizarre weird freakish geeks we are and not be tortured or jailed for it. (Yet.)
