A modest proposal for the conversion of the South Island of New Zealand into a park themed upon The Lord of the Rings
Andrew Tait suggests a novel solution to the South Island Question, with a proposal to alleviate our economic woes while celebrating the true heights of kiwi achievement and culture. April 2022.
Dear Ms Ardern and Mr Luxon,
I would like to propose the conversion of the South Island of New Zealand into a theme park based upon the films of Sir Peter Jackson, KCBE, of the “Lord of the Rings”, the great history of Middle Earth.
I am not unaware of the challenges and hardships such a proposal entails but, like the fellowship of the Ring, I have faith in the boldness of our leaders and the obdurate determination of our Hobbit-like folk here in New Zealand.
Your immediate reaction, understandably, is likely to be one of disbelief. To convert the South Island into Middle Earth on the face of it is a physical impossibility - not only (you would imagine) is Middle Earth many times greater than the South Island but, damningly, north is north and south is south: are we proposing turning the world upside down?
To answer the first, and lesser, objection: surprisingly enough the Middle Island of New Zealand is actually larger (by some 4000 hectares in modern measurements once converted from the calculations of travel time). We forget too often how massive our land mass is in comparison to the old world. Admittedly, our island is narrower but this is far from an insurmountable problem.
The polar orientation of the entire planet, which allows for a frigid north and balmy south is a like problem, or is it? Why not simply relabel our compasses? Let Bluff be Inverness and Marlborough Marseille. This apparently unbreakable knot is easily undone.
The chief advantages
Although I am sure your honourable selves spurn gold for its own sake, prudent stewardship is the watchword of both your regimes. It is on this head that our proposal best distinguishes itself.
The South Island of New Zealand is but sparsely settled and most of its contribution to our exchequer is derived from agriculture and tourism, with a notable exception too, of electricity. The first and the third will continue unabated but the second will swell to a river of gold.
Theme parks are plentiful around the world but they are also plastic and all too often underpinned neither by natural beauty nor deep ideas. Our Middle Earth will have both - and will through its vast scope and dedication to the vision of Tolkien and Jackson bring the age of magic back to this weary world of men (and other genders).
From the moment a tourist - nay, better, an adventurer, a traveller, a wanderer, a pilgrim - sets foot on this enchanted isle they will live, breathe and dream of Middle Earth.
Yes! It will require vast changes to erase all signs of the 21st century technology - milking sheds must be clad in wattle and daub, wire fences will give way again to gorse hedges and barges and riverboats will take the loads currently carried on trucks and trains.
Yes! It will be difficult but without great difficulty there can be no great rewards. And these rewards will be enormous. Against an age of globalisation, relentless population flows willy nilly across the world, wars and refugees, redundancies and new technologies the eternal verity and certainty of Tolkien’s moral clarity is the greatest argument in our age for a return to law and order. The windblown, careworn, rootless and ragged cosmopolitan finds in the Shire peace and healing. What wouldn’t you pay to bathe even briefly in such a balm?
Students new qualified, their lives mortgaged to meet the needs of the modern labour market would happily trade a decade of debt to live one bright season of adventure. Salarymen and women would fight tooth and nail for the chance to escape the office, toxic with electrosmog, social media and endlessly evolving identity politics, to breathe the clean air of Rivendell and Rohan. Phalanxes of Chinese tourists, intrigued by our Western culture would be given a glimpse not into what is, to be frank, a poor colonial imitation of England, but the mystical heart of the West’s true mythology, distilled and revealed by Tolkien and Jackson, our own Gandalf and Saruman. With a wrinkled wizard or grizzled ranger to guide them and Tolkien’s immortal words to inspire them, tourists from every corner of the earth would shiver in awe at a world of wonder reborn!
But the true genius of Jackson, true to Tolkien, is the magnificent scope his imagination has made for recognising and rewarding the towering talents of the truly extraordinary.
For while the average New Zealander most resembles the simple hobbit, Tolkien’s world is not a dull democracy. CEOs and HNWIs will revel in a society that welcomes, honours and exults in inequality - because who are the heroes, warriors of wide renown and kings of old such as Thorin Oakenshield but glorious eagles of inequality who soar far above the lives of simpler folk. They do not demean Middle Earth, they are its ornament, its justification and its purpose.
New Zealand is now ready to recognise this new reality - our unquestioning adulation of Sir Peter Jackson (the title does not do him justice) and other auteurs like Jane Campion has, if we can permit ourselves a brief moment of honesty, more to do with their elephantine success overseas than any old-fashioned appraisal of the inherent artistic merit of their magic formula - plodding plots glued together with SFX and scenery. Sir Peter is knighted by the Queen. He is friends with Presidents and movie stars and most importantly he is the wealthiest entertainer in all of the millenia our species has existed! And he’s from New Zealand!
Labour and National stand ready to recognise him - and recognise him we must, for the intellectual property rights, the great store of value he has single-handedly created can only be purchased, I would suggest, at the cost of fundamental constitutional changes.
What these might be I leave to you, as the acknowledged experts in the laws of the land, but Arch-Duke of Gondor (formerlyknownasChristchurch) would not be too much - the lands and incomes devolving of course upon his heirs in perpetuity.
Who could rule Rivendell? Who better to hold Imladris, the last homely house, than Sir John Key, who proved by the love he inspired the readiness of New Zealanders to embrace the new world order. And where is Rivendell? Why, Queenstown of course. Yesterday that region was ruled by Muldoon, a goblin king if ever there was, with his delight in “ wheels and engines and explosions” drilling away at the land with his hordes of Ministry of Works engineers and excavators and for what? Electricity and other such devices that serve only to ease the lives of lesser folk. His day is done and now is the age of Elrond’s close brother - Sir John Key. He has the wise and witty eyes of the ever-young elves. When he does grow old - may that day be long delayed! - we will be consoled by his music-loving son Maximillian and his artistic daughter Stephania.
Further east (remember we have turned the map upside down) Lothlorien arises. There dwell in dappled dells a folk more wild and free - the Or-tel-quessir, or forest elves. I do not think I need to spell out who best could rule this realm, a true Galadriel, surpassing nearly all others in beauty, knowledge, and power, with her consort Celeborn and daughter Niamh. Through the forests of Fiordland your court can ride, free from the prying eyes of journalists. With your green cousins you can hunt down such trolls and orcs as trouble the primal woods.
In fine, such is the outline of this modest proposal. I cannot delve into the details - the complex reclassification of our many intermingled strains into the pure and distinct races of Tolkien’s world - the Roharrim, tall, blonde, and blue-eyed, their men large, husky, and handsome, their women particularly beautiful; the brown-skinned men of Near Harad and the black skinned race known as "half-trolls" out of Far Harad - and this is before we even start assigning roles to the non-human races - the elves, hobbits, trolls, orcs and goblins (though I am sure you too will have acquaintances who readily spring to mind. Nor is this the place to explore the renaissance of the languages of Middle Earth but I will note that only one language - Hebrew - has been successfully resurrected in the modern world and the means by which that was done - compulsory military service for all. Hebrew was reborn in the barracks and on the frontlines of Israel’s innumerable wars against its neighbours.
Stern measures may be needed. There will be some who are recalcitrant, no doubt - conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers and others of that motley minority. But we cannot doubt that the great love our country has for Sir Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings will carry the day.
I’m sure you will agree this is a very fine proposal, that I am very fond of, though only quite a little one in a wide world after all. Now hand me the tobacco jar.