In Case of Turkish Doctor, Gollum Goes on Trial
A Turkish man’s freedom may hang on a question put to a panel of “Lord of the Rings” experts: Is Gollum evil?
More significantly, was it an insult to compare Turkey’s president to the bug- eyed creature from the films based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy?
A physician, Dr. Bilgin Ciftci, is accused of sharing a meme that juxtaposes Gollum, as played by Andy Serkis (and digital effects), with Recep Tayyip Erdogan while laughing, while surprised, while eating. Insulting the president is a crime under Turkish law.
Dr. Ciftci lost his job with the Public Health Institution of Turkey after sharing the meme, and he faces a two-year prison sentence, the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman reported. A judge ordered several experts to conduct an investigation into Gollum’s moral character before the next phase of the trial begins in February.
Michael D. C. Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, said those experts will be assessing the most complicated character in the English writer’s already complex world. “I don’t think there’s any consensus that Gollum is evil,” Mr. Drout said. “He is the most tragic character in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ”
Middle Earth, the place where Gollum began his life as a creature named Sméagol, is full of complex characters and allegiances. But a gold ring, forged with a dark lord’s evil powers, has the power to rule them all. Sméagol catches a glimpse of the ring, murders for it, and possesses it for centuries until it is mislaid and found by another hobbit. Sméagol struggles to redeem himself, but his bloodthirst for the ring wins out. He accidentally destroys himself and the ring, but saves Middle Earth in the process. ( The hobbit hero Frodo gets most of the credit.)
In Tolkien’s work, Sméagol almost succeeds in overcoming his evil side, but fails. “He didn’t see him as irredeemably evil,” Mr. Drout said of Tolkien. “He saw him as someone who had been destroyed by this evil ring.”
Peter Jackson, the director of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and two screenwriters, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, said in a joint statement that the images the court will analyze are of the character Sméagol, not Gollum.
“Sméagol would never dream of wielding power over those weaker than himself,” the statement read. “He is not a bully.”
The debate might seem silly if the outcome did not involve prosecution and possible jail time.
Elijah Wood, the actor who portrayed the hobbit Frodo in the movie, perhaps offered the bluntest assessment of the situation.
“That Bilgin Ciftci faces jail time for comparing Erdogan to Gollum/ Sméagol, regardless of whether he’s good or bad, is horrifying,” Mr. Wood wrote on Twitter.