Middle-earth Meets New Zealand: Authenticity and Location in the Making of The Lord of the Rings

Middle-earth Meets New Zealand: Authenticity and Location in the Making of The Lord of theRings*

Deborah Jones and Karen SmithVictoria University of Wellington

abstract In focusing on the making of a specific cultural project, The Lord of theRings (LOTR) film trilogy, this paper draws out the tensions between two sometimesdivergent strands of authenticity: creative authenticity and national authenticity. Thisstudy is located in New Zealand, a small post-colonial country which was the locationfor LOTR and home to its key film-makers. The case is based on a discourse analysisof published texts on LOTR and New Zealand’s film and tourism industries,exploring the paradoxical concept of ‘fabricating authenticity’ (Peterson, 1997) andits importance to cultural industries. In reviewing the media discourse of the LOTRproject we ask: how are creative and national authenticity constructed? Creativeauthenticity refers to the claims of artistic integrity and merit that are made for thefilm. National authenticity is predicated on the idea of a national identity. In terms ofLOTR, national authenticity is based on claiming the trilogy as a local ‘New Zealand’product. We highlight the theme of ‘location’ by linking LOTR with a nationaltourism campaign which has been developed side-by-side with the film project,forging connections between the Middle-earth of the LOTR trilogy, and the NewZealand of the present. We argue that LOTR has both shaped, and been shaped by,ideas of national identity, and that the success of LOTR as a flagship of the ‘new’creative industries is central to emerging visions of nationhood.

NEW ZEALAND AS MIDDLE-EARTH

In the week before Christmas 2001 the city of Wellington, New Zealand was tem-porarily re-named ‘Middle-earth’. This name honoured the premiere of The Fel-

lowship of the Ring, the first of the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings (LOTR[1]), directedby New Zealander and Wellingtonian Peter Jackson and written, produced andfilmed in New Zealand. ‘Middle-earth’ is the fantasy world in which the LOTR

Journal of Management Studies 42:5 July 20050022-2380

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ,UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Address for reprints: Deborah Jones, Victoria Management School, Victoria University of Wellington,PO Box 600, Wellington 6001, New Zealand ([email protected]).

story is located, originating from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings book trilogy.This re-naming expressed the joy, pride and confidence that many Wellingtoniansand New Zealanders felt for the local film industry, and powerfully expressed theirrecognition for the importance of the industry regionally, nationally and interna-tionally. As one commentator put it:

You might have been forgiven at times for imagining that the world’s largest oilreserve had just been discovered under Wellington, so extravagant were someof the claims made about ‘putting us on the map’. (MacDonald, 2002, p. 5)

This study is located in New Zealand, a small post-colonial nation at a definingmoment in the history of its film industry. The LOTR project has become the posterchild for a new kind of New Zealand national identity, one which draws on tra-ditional narratives of low-key but unique national ingenuity, while reworking themin terms of an emerging narrative of creative entrepreneurship. At the same time,LOTR has been central to debates over whether there is a ‘genuinely’ local filmindustry, as opposed to a world-class service facility for Hollywood movies. In acase study of the making and selling of the LOTR trilogy, we identify two key typesof authenticity – creative authenticity, and national authenticity – and trace thetensions between them. In reviewing the rhetorics surrounding the LOTR projectwe ask: how are national and creative authenticity constructed?

We begin by exploring the paradoxical concept of ‘fabricating authenticity’(Peterson, 1997, 2005) and its importance to cultural industries. Richard Peter-son’s use of this paradoxical phrase draws attention to the contradictions between‘fabrication’ and ‘authenticity’ in cultural production, and creates a frame foranalysing the production of various types of authenticity in cultural industries( Jones et al., 2005). Peterson highlights the deliberate manufacture of spurious‘traditions’ in order to appeal to consumers of cultural products. He emphasizesthat authenticity is ‘continuously negotiated in an ongoing interplay’ betweenindustry stakeholders (p. 6). We draw on discourse theory to theorize this nego-tiation process in which the ‘authentic’ can never be established as either true or false ( Jacobson and Jacques, 1997). Instead, ‘authenticity’ is itself a cultural category, established or contested in rhetorical moves.

Our categories of ‘creative’ and ‘national’ authenticity are based on the con-cepts of ‘creativity’ and ‘national identity’. We locate these concepts within a frameof discourse theory, and relate this frame to our methodology. Drawing on Peter-son’s typology of ‘authenticities’, we analyse how various claims to cultural andnational authenticity are made. In setting out the substance of our case study, weoutline the place of LOTR in the New Zealand film industry, and director PeterJackson’s iconic status as a creative entrepreneur. We then present our interpreta-tions of ‘creative’ and ‘national’ authenticity as they are constructed in media texts.

924 D. Jones and K. Smith

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

THEORIZING NATIONAL AND CREATIVE AUTHENTICITIES

This section introduces Richard Peterson’s use of the phrase ‘fabricating authen-ticity’ (1997), and explains what we share of his approach, as well as how we varyit. Peterson proposes that in cultural industries the success of a given culturalproduct, and its acceptance by its audiences, often depends on the appearance ofauthenticity. He emphasizes that this semblance of ‘authenticity’ is often not infact natural, but is created in specific organizational practices (Peterson, 1997;Peterson and Anand, 2004). These practices include rhetorical claims which linkbroader cultural notions of authenticity to particular cultural forms. For instance,in Peterson’s study (1997) of ‘fabricating authenticity’ in the country music indus-try in the USA, he argues that establishing cultural authenticity in country musicartists and performances has been central to its survival. Peterson focuses on thedeliberate strategies used by powerful actors in the industry to legitimize varioustypes of authenticity. He demonstrates that seemingly authentic ‘traditions’ fea-tured in the country music industry were not part of the historical legacy ofcountry music history, but were more recently invented. He shows how their legiti-mation as ‘authentic’ was based on existing cultural themes of place, identity andhistory. Peterson’s work evokes historical and anthropological studies of ‘the inven-tion of tradition’ in popular culture generally, where attempts to ‘establish conti-nuity with a suitable historic past’ are based on ‘largely fictitious’ historicalconnections (Hobsbawm, 1983, p. 1). The effects of such inventions are to estab-lish or stabilize cultural identities; to legitimate institutions; and to socialize peoplein particular contexts (p. 9). In his country music industry case study Peterson(1997) relates ‘the invention of tradition’ to a specific example of cultural pro-duction, developing a typology of authenticities which shows how the variouslegitimizing and identity-creation effects of ‘inventing tradition’ work. He links twoarguments: that convincing accounts of cultural authenticity are central to thesuccess of specific cultural industries; and that industry actors create such accountsfor commercial purposes (see also Peterson and Anand, 2004).

We engage in this paper with the concept of ‘fabricating authenticity’ by takinga common interest in questioning how identities come to be created and legiti-mated in creative industry processes. We draw on broader theories of identity creation based on discourse theory. In recent years ‘Organizational DiscourseAnalysis’ (ODA) has taken up a wide range of approaches to theorizing discoursein the study of organizations (for a review see Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000). Wetake an approach influenced by the work of Michel Foucault (Prichard et al., 2004),and our focus is on showing how creative and national identities shape and areshaped by creative industry discourses – in our case, in the film industry. Unlikethe work of Peterson (1997) or Hobsbawm (1983), we are not concerned withwhether industry actors deliberately invent various claims to authenticity for com-mercial gain.

Middle-earth Meets New Zealand 925


The film industry has recently attracted the attention of organizationalresearchers who see it as emblematic of the ‘new’ project-based industries, orga-nized as distributed – and often remote – networks of knowledge and creativitybased teams and individuals (Arthur et al., 1995; De Fillippi and Arthur, 1998;Faulkner and Anderson, 1987; Palmer et al., 2001). Ironically, many of these qual-ities are typical of traditional culture-based industries, a paradox that is expressedby Jones and De Fillippi (1996) in citing the film title, Back to the Future. Hollywoodhas long dominated global markets, although, as Hesmondhalgh (2002, p. 189)points out, ‘it is important to realize that the vast majority of the films madearound the world are not American’. While the concern of many countries outsideAmerica to tell their own cultural stories on film has been long-running, theincreasing prominence of creative industries in economic development policies hasgiven new urgency and importance to the negotiation of the relationship betweenHollywood and smaller local industries. Our case study is concerned with a land-mark in this relationship.

We draw on the paradox of ‘fabricating authenticity’ to discuss the making ofa specific cultural project – the LOTR film trilogy. The context is the film indus-try of New Zealand, where LOTR was written and made, and which is the homeof the director and most of the film-makers. We argue that the concept of ‘loca-tion’ is central to the ways that authenticity is fabricated in the film-making process.‘Location’ has double uses here: as the term used to describe the background forfilm-making ‘on location’; and to trace the socially constructed boundaries fornational identity. We highlight the theme of location by including a nationaltourism campaign which has been developed side-by-side with the film project.

We analyse the making and promotion of the LOTR trilogy in terms of the ten-sions between two strands of authenticity: creative authenticity, and nationalauthenticity. Creative authenticity refers to the claims of artistic integrity and meritthat are made for the film. In making and promoting LOTR, creative authenticityis established centrally by assertions that the ‘spirit’ of the films ‘rings true’ to theoriginal J. R. R. Tolkien novels on which they are based (Kirkland, 2001), andbeyond them to the Anglo-Saxon myths of culture, location and historical lineagewhich the books assert. National authenticity is predicated on the idea of a nationalidentity. In terms of LOTR, national authenticity is based on claiming the trilogyas a local ‘New Zealand’ product, a unique expression of the legacy of nationalidentity, as well as an opportunity to leverage that identity for social and economicdevelopment.

In focusing on a ‘national’ film industry, and on its relationship to ideas ofnational identity, we do not assume a single stable idea of ‘nation’, an idea whichhas increasingly come under critical scrutiny by writers describing ‘nation’ as adiscursive construction (Wodak et al., 1999); as a narrative ‘produced in the articu-lation of cultural differences’ (Bhaba, 1994, p. 1; see also 1990); and in terms of



an ‘imagined political community’ developing from specific modern western his-torical conditions (Anderson, 1983, p. 7). We take the position that films ‘do notsimply represent or express the stable features of a national culture, but are them-selves one of the loci of debates about a nation’s governing principles, goals, her-itage and history’ (Hjort and MacKenzie, 2000, p. 4). These debates acknowledgethe power of film as a medium of popular culture, and address the ways that filmsrepresent, or fail to represent, aspects of national identity – in terms of the waysthe film itself is read (how is national identity represented?) and in terms of accessto film-making (who is powerful, who is excluded?). In New Zealand, for instance,critics have argued that women (Shepard, 2000) and Mäori (Barclay, 1990) havetraditionally been excluded or marginalized in the film industry, so that the limitedversions of ‘New Zealanders’ on film have perpetuated such exclusions (Dennisand Bieringa, 1996). In a post-colonial nation such as New Zealand, creating asense of authentic national identity has itself been regarded as problematic, espe-cially for the Pakeha (settler) culture (Belich, 2001; King, 2003). National cinemais seen as in itself part of the solution to this problem: ‘We are growing, slowly, asa nation to identify who we are and NZ film is the ideal medium’ (National FilmArchive, 2003). In this context, stakes are high for constructions of the nationalNew Zealand or ‘Kiwi’[2] identity of film projects, and claims of national identityare central to film industry politics and government cultural and economic devel-opment policies for the cultural industries.

Our case study is based on LOTR as a national cultural project, and we treat itas a constellation of cultural industry activities with a film project as its core. Theidea that this project has a tsunami of spin-offs is characteristic, not just of theintense and disparate merchandising increasingly associated with many big Hol-lywood movies, but also of the major impact of LOTR specifically on the NewZealand economy and popular culture. Tourism intensification is seen as the mostsignificant spin-off, and tourism campaigns linked to LOTR demonstrate hownational identity as established in the LOTR project lends authenticity to tourismrhetoric, and is itself reinforced by tourism rhetoric.

METHOD AND CORPUS

Our case study is based on the reception of the LOTR project in New Zealand upto August 2003. At this stage the first two films in the trilogy had been released,and it was clear that they would be a massive success. The film-making was largelycomplete, and a scoping report for the government on the ‘lasting effects of The

Lord of the Rings’ had been completed in 2002, arguing that: ‘[LOTR] will leave aunique “footprint” for New Zealand when its production is over’ (NZIER, 2002,p. v). In designing our analysis we decided to focus on the central contradictionbetween ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Middle-earth’. We found it interesting that a film



project based on an explicitly English text, and financed by Hollywood, was seenas exemplary of the emerging New Zealand national imaginary. We use theconcept of ‘fabricating authenticity’ as a heuristic device in considering hownational and creative authenticity were constructed, and tensions between Middle-earth and New Zealand were resolved.

Discourse analyst Norman Fairclough (1992, p. 227) uses the linguistic conceptof a ‘corpus’ to describe a series of discourse samples selected for discourse ana-lytic research. He advocates a focus on ‘moments of crisis’ which problematize dis-cursive practice, spotlighting points of change or power struggles (p. 230). Herewe similarly focus on points of tension and conflict between various accounts ofLOTR in terms of national and creative authenticity. Our corpus was based onthree main datasets: coverage of the film-making and promotional process; gov-ernment documents; and tourism industry sources. First we carried out a searchof local print media databases for all mentions of the LOTR trilogy from 2001.These included film industry and business media as well as daily newspapers. Someinternational coverage of LOTR over the period was also collected, where therewere explicit references to the New Zealand qualities of the films or film-makers.The focus here was internet-based reviews of the first two films (e.g. Kirkland,2001). Another part of the corpus was comprised of LOTR promotional materialavailable in New Zealand. Central are the various authorized ‘making of ’ booksand videos, either produced or authorized by New Line Productions, the Holly-wood production company that funded and owns the rights to LOTR: the book onThe Lord of the Rings: The making of the movie trilogy (Sibley, 2002); Brodie’s Location

Guidebook (2002); the official videos, Quest For The Ring (New Line Productions,2001); Return to Middle Earth (New Line Television, 2002); and Beyond the Movie: The

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (National Geographic, 2001). We choseto use video material that was screened on local channels rather than the exten-sive DVD footage. We also draw on some key local and international websites –as well as the official LOTR website (New Line Productions, 2003), fan sites andTolkien websites. At key points, such as the movie premieres, we collected localtelevision news coverage. Secondly, key government documents mentioning LOTR

were collected, including key political speeches. These covered the film industryas an aspect of economic and social policy, as well as policy statements producedby specific film industry bodies. Finally, for the tourism project, we collected textsproduced by the Ministry of Tourism and Tourism New Zealand, including web-sites, media releases, market research reports and the tourism newsletter. Mater-ial produced by tourism businesses offering LOTR-themed products was alsoincluded.

In approaching the corpus we looked for references to ‘authenticity’ and relatedconcepts of creativity and national identity. We found Peterson’s (1997) typologyof authenticities useful in identifying claims to creative and national authenticityand the ways that they were legitimated in the LOTR corpus.



THE CASE STUDY

Filmed simultaneously and released over three years, the LOTR trilogy timescale,and the scope for leverage that it offered to New Zealand, is in many ways unprece-dented. The ambitious scope of national hopes for spin-offs from the LOTR trilogyand the local film industry, and the official commitment to these possibilities, iscrystallized in statements made by the Prime Minister Helen Clark, also the Min-ister for Arts, Culture and Heritage:

Set against the spectacular and diverse New Zealand landscape, The Lord of the

Rings trilogy has the potential to be a major tourist promotion and investmenttool for years to come, by highlighting the country’s natural beauty and the creative talents of its people across a wide range of knowledge-based industries.(Clark, 2001a)

The New Zealand government launched funding packages to promote and assesspositive spin-offs from the trilogy. Specific spin-off opportunities hoped for includea cornucopia of benefits: promoting New Zealand as a film location and invest-ment in film industry infrastructure; the promotion of New Zealand-made films;media technology innovation; tourism promotion; attracting New Zealand talentto return home; profiling of New Zealand globally, particularly talent, creativityand innovation profiling, through the media and through other appropriate means(Clark, 2001b).

The New Zealand Film Industry

Describing a ‘New Zealand film industry’ means engaging with a complex field ofactivity with no obvious national or even industrial boundaries, and with difficul-ties in definition and in the availability of data (NZIER, 2002, 2003; PinflicksCommunications and NZIER, 2003; SPT, 2003). What is clear is that there hasbeen a slow growth in feature films produced in New Zealand – from five in1940–72 to 120 in 1973–2000 (Belich, 2001). Investment in feature films was$NZ308m in the year ended March 2001, covering the early period of LOTR film-making (NZIER, 2002). The small size of the local industry means that it is rarefor any company to work specifically in feature film production. The film indus-try is strongly related to other cultural industries, and to technology industrieswhich provide the range of traditional technical and new digital technologies nowbeing used in film production. The special effects work of Weta Digital has beenespecially crucial to the success of the LOTR trilogy. In this case study, we map the‘New Zealand film industry’ loosely and take a specific interest in the porosity ofits borders with tourism. The perceived importance of the film industry to NewZealand resides in what is seen as its enabling effect in building capability across



a range of related industries: as well as tourism and digital technologies (softwareand interactive media including gaming), government agencies point to screen pro-duction more broadly (television, advertising), visual and performing arts, designincluding fashion, other cultural industries such as the museum sector (NZTE2003–2004; Office of the Prime Minister, 2002). Regional clustering to foster thiskind of horizontal leveraging is actively encouraged by local and national gov-ernment (Clark, 2003). It is also hard to define a ‘New Zealand’ film project, asfilmmakers from New Zealand typically move to projects overseas, then backagain, and international filmmakers come here to be part of specific projects suchas LOTR. Until the LOTR project however, the very small local industry meant thatmovement was primarily from New Zealand to larger film industry centres overseas.

The LOTR trilogy has created new Hollywood–New Zealand relationships.Local journalist Tom Scott claims that: ‘Peter Jackson has changed the rules aboutfilmmaking so profoundly. Most budding film directors bugger off to Hollywood:Peter made Hollywood bugger off to him’ (Larson, 2002, p. 55). Peter Jackson’scomments in 1995 that: ‘we don’t have a feature film industry here’ (Campbell,1995, p. 20) seem far removed from the dynamic and growing film sector that iscapturing attention both locally and internationally through the LOTR trilogy.However questions still remain about whether the local industry is effectivelyfunded and sustainable, and whether movies produced in Hollywood and filmedhere can be seen as part of a ‘New Zealand’ film industry. ‘Hollywood’ tends tosignify the international film industry, and there are strong arguments that the eco-nomic power of the US film industry determines all but the smallest film projectsinternationally (De Fillippi and Arthur, 1998; Phelan and Lewin, 1999). Strategicanalysis of the film industry in the management literature has tended to focusaround the Hollywood studios, where management structures and business cultures are more easily related to the ‘firm’ level of the competitive capability literature (e.g. Bowden and Johnson, 2001; Miller and Shamsie, 1996, 2001;Pomerleau, 1997). Debates within New Zealand film industry over the relation-ship with Hollywood tend to centre around the value to New Zealand of beingused as a film location by Hollywood (and other overseas productions); the drainof local film talent to the USA; and the effects of Hollywood financing on the eco-nomic and cultural outcomes of local film projects.

Jeffcut and Pratt (2002, p. 227) point to the brokering role of government poli-cies in ‘branding’ the cultural industries as the ‘creative industries’, signalling ‘acontemporary policy focus on a sector that is engaged in producing novel culturalproducts’. In New Zealand, government has played a key role as mediator,manager and funder of both ‘creative’ and ‘economic’ imperatives in the local filmindustry, which has a higher profile in national economic development than everbefore. Creative industries fight with traditional areas of science and technologyto be recognized as part of national development strategies based on a ‘knowledge



economy’: recognizing that creative industries have received very little governmentfunding in comparison with industries such as agriculture and manufacturing, andthat the particular needs for research and development in the creative industriesare not well understood, a new R&D strategy for the creative industries is cur-rently being developed (FRST, 2003).

There are fierce debates within the industry about the value of selling NewZealand as ‘Studio New Zealand’ – a film location for overseas productions – asopposed to focusing on making films based on local stories. Film NZ, NewZealand’s international film office, argues that there is only positive synergy to becreated between the development of New Zealand as a location and the localindustry, ‘positioning New Zealand as a whole creative environment, making it theequivalent of a studio’ (Film New Zealand, 2001, p. 12). Since the 1980s therehave been local fears about the effect of international filmmaking on the localindustry, and this comment (Reid, 1986, p. 16) is typical of statements still circu-lating today in debates on LOTR:

The fear persists in much of the New Zealand industry that productions withsome offshore backing can soak up the available local private investment, createunrealistically high wage-rates and costs of services, and kill off any whollyindigenous venture. In the process, the argument goes, a distinctively NewZealand national identity in film is stifled. New Zealand becomes merely a‘cheap backlot’ for Hollywood – what Spain once was to the American andEuropean film industries.

In a review of research on ‘the organization and management of creative indus-tries’, Jeffcut and Pratt propose that it has been characterized by ‘essentializingdualisms’ ( Jeffcut and Pratt, 2002, p. 227), above all between the concept of ‘crea-tive/cultural/artistic’ on the one hand, and ‘economic/business/industry’ on theother. Such ‘essentializing dualisms’ are evident in New Zealand debates on thevalue and significance of the LOTR project. With LOTR, and a series of interna-tionally successful films like Rain, Stickmen, and Whale Rider, the New Zealand filmindustry is experiencing increasing commercial success. Some commentators alsolook at industry success in cultural terms, and argue that the recent emphasis on‘economic rather than creative imperatives’ (Dennis and Bieringa, 1996, p. 8) hasunduly shifted attention away from the cultural value of local filmmaking. It is alsoargued that that the incorporation of characteristic indigenous elements withinfilms – as in Whale Rider – is an effective commercial strategy which constitutes a unique advantage for the New Zealand industry through a unique ‘product’.Investment from the government-funded New Zealand Film Commission is basedpartly on cultural considerations, including support for the funding of NewZealand stories, and the employment of local film-makers. A presentation by RuthHarley, CEO of the New Zealand Film Commission, provides a classic example



of how strategic and cultural approaches are interwoven in policy discussions offilm industry issues (Harley, 2002):

Cultural industries such as film and television, fashion, multi-media, music andtourism are transforming New Zealand’s economy. Our commercial interestsare indissolubly linked with our cultural interests . . . Cultural industries arebased on national identity. National identity is key to creating a unique posi-tioning for our goods and services. Take film for example. It creates culture,builds identity and markets that identity to the world. Film is important not justas a potent advertising medium for New Zealand; not just as a way of creatingand personifying our country as a brand in all its diversity; not just as a highgrowth, high margin knowledge based business. It is all of these, but it is alsoas a statement to ourselves. It is a central ingredient in constructing our iden-tity for ourselves, as a lever to help New Zealanders get the confidence and bold-ness to foot it aggressively on the international stages.

Here Harley firmly rejects a disjunction between ‘business’ and ‘art’, and she pre-sents ‘culture’ as not only a ‘good’ in itself, not only as the basis for an industry,but as a driver for a more confident nation and therefore a stronger economy, andas a ‘brand’ for New Zealand which will enhance tourism and other internationalactivities. These are big claims, and they form the context for the debates overwhether, and how, LOTR is ‘a statement to ourselves’ as well as ‘personifying ourcountry as a brand in all its diversity’.

Peter Jackson as ‘Ring-leader’

Many analysts of the film industry see the LOTR story as an exemplary narrativeof economic progress and creative entrepreneurship:

It is a story that needs to be told in detail so others may follow and reinvent itfor themselves. The story of Peter Jackson and his colleagues is a reflection ofwhat an individual can generate, whilst becoming an inspiration to young NewZealanders that art and the creative industries offer exciting employment oppor-tunities, creative satisfaction and substantial financial returns to the personnelinvolved but also to the economy. (O’Leary and Frater, 2001, p. 7)

LOTR director Peter Jackson’s face appeared on the cover of the leading local busi-ness magazine with the challenge: ‘Ring-leader: Peter Jackson’s doing his bit forNew Zealand. What can you do?’ (Unlimited, 2002). Here creativity and businessskills are seen as intertwined in one person. Jackson is an icon of the new creativeindustries, where the ‘dualisms’ of ‘art’ and ‘commerce’ are reconciled in a newkind of creative identity (Prichard, 2002). He is not only auteur, but entrepreneur.



And more – his patriotism is emblematic of the nation-building potential of crea-tive industries development. In the context of the local film industry, the value andimportance of Peter Jackson to the national narrative rest on his links to NewZealand: his explicit commitment to the country, embodied in his decision to makeLOTR in his home town. Media coverage shows him as exemplifying not only acreative voice and entrepreneurial spirit, but as exemplifying these qualities in adistinctively New Zealand way.

Central to the claims for the authentic ‘Kiwi’ nature of LOTR is the authenticKiwi nature of its director: ‘He’s the Sir Edmund Hilary of NZ filmmaking,forging a humble career move in the foothills of Wellington, then taking it to thehighest peaks of Middle Earth’ (Donald, 2002, p. 114). Eschewing the traditionalpath of talented New Zealander filmmakers to Hollywood, Jackson has made itclear that he wants to stay based in his hometown of Wellington, declaring that,rather than go there, he will ‘bring Hollywood to New Zealand’ (Sampson, 2002,p. 105). Despite directing one of the biggest ever Hollywood projects, Jackson isseen as not having ‘gone Hollywood’. According to one writer: ‘Peter Jackson,although he is now extremely rich and famous internationally, still gets a lot ofrespect from the New Zealand public because he is still the idealized Kiwi guy. Hewears shorts and jandals and doesn’t flaunt his wealth’ (Kiwi Hobbit, 2002). Hispersonality is seen to exemplify a certain ‘Kiwiness’ – the image of the man whocan face all challenges with a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude. This Kiwi approach isextended to the attitudes of the local film crews: ‘Pitching in! Getting the job done!That’s the New Zealand way!’ (Sibley, 2002, p. 37). The image of Jackson’s crea-tivity, entrepreneurship, patriotism and ‘Kiwi’ character represents in an intenseform the themes of creative and national authenticity. We now draw these out inmore detail.

Creative Authenticity

LOTR is a film made within the fantasy film genre, albeit a fantasy film that ‘takesitself seriously’ (Germain, 2002). With no pretense to realism, and celebrated forits innovative special effects, the film’s creative authenticity resides in its believablefantasy world. The trilogy is unusual among films in the way that it very specifi-cally refers repeatedly to the ‘invented tradition’ of the original Tolkien novels,and to the historical past which is claimed to lie behind it. Scholars of writing on‘tradition’ and authenticity in popular culture have argued that the ‘traditional’and the ‘new’ are not fixed or essential states, that ‘tradition’ is always ‘an inter-pretive process’, and that the traditional and the new are not ‘fixed and mutuallyexclusive states’ (Handler and Linnekin, 1984, p. 273). The rhetorical claims togenealogical links with a cultural past flow through to the LOTR-linked tourismmaterial in terms of the discussion of authenticity in cultural tourism, as we willshow below. The LOTR trilogy is linked back to Tolkien’s original writings, and to



the spirit of Tolkien’s work: ‘It is the spirit that is important, isn’t it?’ asks Jackson(Kirkland, 2001). This is what Peterson calls ‘believability’ – ‘credible in currentcontext’ (1997, p. 208). In a wonderful sleight of words, Jackson argues: ‘If youare totally faithful to [the book of] The Lord of the Rings, it will not be a good film.You can’t be faithful if the word “faithful” means copying everything verbatim’(Kirkland, 2001). As Peterson points out, the question of who authenticates a givencultural product is crucial, and the fans of fantasy and of Tolkien’s work werealready well-established communities before Jackson ever decided to make the film.Producers New Line eventually decided to work closely with fan groups, andJackson, and many of the cast and crew, are portrayed as a long-standing fans;Jackson recounts reading Tolkien at age 18 and seeing New Zealand as Middle-earth (Brodie, 2002, p. 6). Tolkien himself was a scholar, and the ‘making of ’ mate-rial also invokes scholarly authenticity in its constant referencing to the ‘research’carried out for the trilogy. The National Geographic video Beyond the Movie (2001)is one example that connects Tolkien’s work with Anglo-Saxon myths and theircultural residues in northern European cultures, giving the world of LOTR a kindof historicity. Jackson himself describes Middle-earth as ‘for me . . . more likehistory than fantasy’ (Brodie, 2002, p. 6). The historical links that New Zealandhas with Britain, and ‘beyond’ Britain to an Anglo-Saxon cultural imaginary givesa kind of cultural plausibility to the choice of New Zealand as Middle-earth. Butthere is again a tension here: New Zealand has moved far enough away from iden-tifying with Britain that Tolkien’s narrative is not accepted as a ‘New Zealand story’in cultural terms. In this particular sense, it is more difficult to argue that the LOTR

trilogy are truly ‘New Zealand’ films – in comparison, for instance, with a localfilm such as Whale Rider based on an indigenous novel and indigenous stories. Thisis a debate we will return to below.

Jackson claims ‘another level of authenticity’ in ‘actually the thing we wantedto be most authentic about . . . to make the world of Middle-earth as authentic aspossible’. Here, authenticity is defined by the claim that ‘everything in the film isexactly as Tolkien described it in the book’ (Brodie, 2002). The authenticity of theartefacts was central to this faithfulness to Tolkien’s world, and the film’s promo-tional material, including a travelling exhibition (Te Papa, 2001), exhaustivelyextols and details these: swords and armour, costumes, jewellery, sets, even theElvish dialogue. Weta Workshop, the associated special effects workshop, wonOscars for its work, and miniatures of the film’s characters, made by Weta, havebeen merchandized as ‘authentic’ versions of the characters in all their authenticcostumed detail – what Peterson calls ‘authentic reproduction’ (1997, p. 208). Thebelievability of a real, re-created, world is based on a combination of exhaustivelyresearched ‘historical’ details – into medieval weaponry and the techniques formaking and finishing it for instance – and twenty-first century high-technologyspecial effects – specially designed software, the latest digital imaging and even thecreation of a digital ‘character’. But special effects give way to ‘real’ sets and



costume details where these are seen as lending a more authentic experience tothe actors and thus, ultimately, to the viewers. The city of Edoras, it is explained,could have been created by special effects. Instead it was created as a physical setin exhausting winter conditions in remote valley. Eight months of work resultedin eight days of filming, after which the set was taken down (Sibley, 2002). Cine-matographer Andrew Lesnie argues: ‘It’s such a glorious location – I’m sure theactors gave a performance they would never have given on a stage’ (New LineTelevision, 2002).

The authentic experience of the actors is another theme that is repeatedlyinvoked in the promotional material, with a special emphasis on how the experi-ence of the actors in the making of the films paralleled the themes of the films:they were ‘a formidable quest to complete’ (New Line Productions, 2001). ActorSean Astin tells us that ‘I don’t think there was a single day when anybody involvedwith the process doubted for a second that we were part of something special’(New Line Television, 2002). The actors are described as ‘giving up two years oftheir life’, and the cast and crew as having ‘signed on for their own multi-yearadventure’ (New Line Television, 2002). Like the film’s characters, they experiencehardships of harsh weather, isolation, exhaustion – the ‘hidden benefits’ of whichwere to give them ‘a strong sense of reality of the character’s journey throughMiddle-earth’, according to Jackson (Brodie, 2002, p. 7). There are frequent ref-erences to ‘an amazing kind of parallel experience between the stories . . . and theshooting of the movie’ (New Line Television, 2002), and even the relationshipbetween the film’s characters, the ‘deep bonds of loyalty and friendship’, were mirrored as the cast is described as becoming ‘family’ to each other (New Line Productions, 2001).

Claims to creative authenticity are made, in Peterson’s typology, in terms ofbelievability, of historicized ‘authentic reproduction’, and through the ‘true’ and‘sincere’ commitments of the filmmakers to the ‘spirit’ of Tolkien’s book main-tained not only in the script and the settings, but in the experiences of the actorsthemselves, represented as ‘their own life-changing journey’ (New Line Television,2002). The film’s claims to authenticity have been successful in pleasing the fansof Tolkien, of fantasy and science fiction, and in rising above its genre to draw inmass audiences. Critic John Downie argues that the ‘sheer joy in inventiveness’shown in the film’s ‘technical wizardry’ not only authenticates the ‘vivid anddetailed sense of a civilization that has vanished from human view’, but alsodemonstrates that ‘nothing is plainly impossible; rules are there to be broken;human creativity is boundless; and Kiwi nationhood is high-staked on its outcome’(Downie, 2003, p. 3). Clearly LOTR is not a distinctly ‘New Zealand story’ – butin spite of this the film has been claimed as an authentic New Zealand culturalproduct which is emblematic of both actual and possible economic and culturaldevelopment. As Downie indicates above, the success of New Zealand filmmak-ers in producing LOTR is seen as exemplifying the ‘Kiwi ingenuity’ that many New



Zealanders claim as a national trait (Brocklesby et al., 2001), elevated to a highlevel of creativity combined with technological break-throughs. Writ large, theseare the skills and passions required if New Zealand is to be known for, in the wordsof the Prime Minister when launching the LOTR ‘spinoffs’ funding (Clark, 2001b):‘the creative talents of its people across a wide range of knowledge-based industries’.

National Authenticity

In discussing Peter Jackson and the film’s creative authenticity above, we haveargued that claims of patriotism, and of distinctively Kiwi ingenuity and creativ-ity, have linked creative authenticity to national identity. We now turn to thetourism campaign to elaborate the relationship between Middle-earth and NewZealand.

The New Zealand government (Clark, 2001a) identified tourism promotion asa key opportunity created by the films, boosting the profile and awareness of NewZealand as a destination, and potentially attracting visitors motivated by the films.Tourism is seen as vital to the economy of New Zealand, directly and indirectlycontributing almost 10% of New Zealand’s GDP and supporting one in ten jobs(Ministry of Tourism, 2003). Films are re-occurring events, with DVD/videolaunches, television airing and other spin-offs providing opportunities for repeatedviewing that reinforce connections between a film and its location as a tourist destination (Tooke and Baker, 1996). The task of creating and exploiting this NewZealand/Middle-earth connection has been driven by Tourism New Zealand, thenational tourist promotion board, and supplemented by the media, New Line, andentrepreneurial activities by individual tourism enterprises. The linkages areobvious from the outset of a visit to Tourism NZ’s website (Tourism NZ, 2003c),which directs the visitor to The Home of Middle Earth website (Tourism NZ, 2003a)and into an interactive discovery of the ‘country behind’ LOTR:

New Zealand’s diverse and sometimes extreme landscapes made it the one placein the world that could bring Tolkien’s epic masterpiece to life. Discover theamazing real-life locations behind the films, and learn about the unique expe-riences of the cast and crew.

Immediately following four awards for The Fellowship of the Rings at the 2002 Oscars,print media advertisements in the United States promoted New Zealand as ‘bestsupporting country in a motion picture’. Tourism NZ promote LOTR as part ofthe acclaimed 100% Pure New Zealand global marketing campaign, which attemptsto embody the uniqueness of the destination to potential visitors; for example:‘New Zealand is an island full of drama and discovery. The land is young, mysti-



cal, tempestuous and refreshing. It is a land of spiritual places and a place to feelfree’ (Tourism NZ, 2003b, p. 4).

Riley et al. (1998) identify ‘icons’ within films which attract viewers to a loca-tion as visitors; these can be linked to the film’s symbolic content, a single event,a favourite performer, a location’s physical features, or a storyline theme; ‘icons,abstract or tangible, become the focal point for visitation and the associated loca-tion is tangible evidence of the icon’ (p. 924). The LOTR films give iconic statusto the New Zealand landscape, while the reinforcement of the association betweendestination New Zealand and LOTR’s Middle-earth further legitimates the film asan authentic New Zealand project. There is established debate concerning authen-ticity in tourism, largely focusing on culture and heritage, and on representationsof the past. Timothy and Boyd (2003) identify two key strands: the first is thetourists’ search for authentic places and experiences, although how authenticity isdefined, and the extent to which tourists recognize or care if the experience isstaged, is strongly contested. McKercher and Du Cros (2002) argue that whilst cultural tourists want what they are happy to believe to be authentic, they do notnecessarily want reality. As with country music, authenticity can be fabricated intourism industry processes, and to the consumer ‘authenticity [is] not synonymouswith historical accuracy’ (Peterson, 1997, p. 5). The second strand in the debateis the argument that the ‘realities’ that are presented in tourism are often distor-tions of the past (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). One type of distorted past is inventedor imaginary places, ‘for tourists will travel in search of the original even where itnever existed’ (p. 245).

LOTR’s Middle-earth is an invented, imagined world, although parallels havebeen drawn between the novels and the English landscapes from Tolkien’s life thatmay have provided inspiration for his mythical landscape (Varlow, 1996). Tourismtexts, including promotional tools produced by Tourism New Zealand, guidebooks(e.g. Brodie, 2002) and the messages produced by tourism entrepreneurs, use crea-tive representatives, particularly Peter Jackson, to articulate and add credibility to claims that New Zealand landscapes are authentic to Tolkien’s vision. Theseare mirrored by the film promotion: for example, in the Quest for the Ring videoPeter Jackson claims that New Zealand offers a dramatic landscape steeped inmythology. In his words:

New Zealand is ideally suited to bringing LOTR to the screen because Tolkienwrote the book as a mystic prehistory. It was supposed to take place in a Europethat existed in a dark age that we’ve long since forgotten. (New Line Produc-tions, 2001)

Implied here is the idea that New Zealand is somehow ‘before’ Europe: in thecolonial gaze it is still (175 years after British colonization) empty, primitive,



untouched. As historian James Belich points out, the old idea that ‘nature only,not culture’ is the mark of New Zealand (Belich, 2001, p. 453) lingers powerfullyin tourism rhetoric, regardless of the ‘cultural upsurge which has marked NewZealand’s reforged postcolonial confidence in the validity of its own culture,including the local film industry’ (p. 542).

No geographic location can ever be a Middle-earth – it does not exist. However,Jackson and key stakeholders within the film and New Zealand,[3] claim the rightto declare New Zealand the authentic location of Middle-earth. Endorsementsfrom key actors and tourism texts further reinforce the authenticity of NewZealand as Middle-earth:

Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins): ‘Every element of Middle-earth is contained inNew Zealand. It’s absolutely perfect. I’ve never seen a country in which thereare so many different geographical landscapes . . .’. (National Geographic,2001)

Ian McKellen (Gandalf): ‘Middle-earth is a real place and it’s New Zealand’.(New Line Productions, 2001)

The connection between New Zealand and Middle-earth has been further legiti-mized by the its reiteration in outlets such as National Geographic and a varietyof international media, as well as in New Line’s international coverage. Howeverit is not the job of New Line, but that of New Zealand tourism agencies, to makethe connection between the location on screen and the tourist destination. In theirstudy Scoping the Lasting Effects of LOTR, the NZIER (2002, p. 30) ask ‘how preciselycan film audiences identify the location of particular scenery?’. Strict filmingguidelines mean that almost all 150 locations were returned to their original statefollowing filming. Natural landscapes were enhanced and manipulated by digitalcomputer technology and special effects by Weta Digital and Weta Workshop. Thispresents particular problems, as articulated by George Hickton, Chief Executiveof Tourism NZ:

It is difficult to do [make the connection] when tourists can’t walk in and lookat a film set. And how do we make sure that when people come out of the moviethey know what country it’s shot in? (Tourism NZ, 2002, p. 6)

There is a potential tension between presenting New Zealand as an authenticMiddle-earth, as seen in the films, and a lack of tangible evidence to support thisat locations (Carl, 2004).

Tourism entrepreneurs have been quick to respond to the opportunities offeredby the films, and have developed their product ranges to include LOTR-themedpackages and attractions. Tourism providers use terms such as ‘real’, ‘authentic’



and ‘genuine’ in their promotional literature in response to their perception thattourists seek authentic experiences (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). LOTR tour opera-tors and attractions stress special access to location sites, the status of their guidesas fans, whose claims to authenticity are further enhanced by their personal involve-ment in the filming process, as extras or as suppliers, for example transporting thecast and daily rushes (see Javins, 2003). In their promotion of the films, New LineProductions (2001, 2003) highlighted the filming locations, identifying filming sitesand showing the cast enjoying aspects of New Zealand, such as adventure tourismactivities in Queenstown. Air New Zealand themed two LOTR airplanes as thecentrepiece of a global promotional campaign as the ‘Airline to Middle-earth’.Tourism promotion has been developed alongside the film project and the twohave mutually reinforced the cultural authenticity of the association. Awareness of New Zealand as a destination has been increased, even if this has not yet translated into huge rises in visitor numbers[4] (NFO New Zealand,2003).

DISCUSSION

What happens when Middle-earth meets New Zealand? We have explored the dis-sonance and convergences between these two ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson,1983) via Peterson’s (1997) concept of ‘fabricating authenticity’. By highlighting‘location’ as a key issue in the New Zealand film industry, we have set out to showthat national identity is more than a backdrop to cultural industry processes. WhilePeterson’s work alludes to regional themes in establishing authenticity, we havemade these centre stage. We have also made the theoretical connection betweenthe fabrication of identities – creative and national – and the discourse of the newcreative industries, where the binary of ‘art’ and ‘commerce’ is being re-constel-lated. In the case of New Zealand, there has been a determined campaign by government to embed the new creative entrepreneurialism. By comparison withMoeran’s study (2005 issue), the goal has been not to trade off traditional culturalstereotypes, but rather to use the success of LOTR to affirm a re-worked nationalidentity. In our focus on national identity we have taken a bigger frame than Peter-son’s, whose work emphasizes an industry-based commercial agenda as the drivingforce in ‘fabricating authenticity’. In our case government and industry agendasconverge at various points, enabling local spin-offs from the LOTR project thatbenefit the local economy. Beyond this, there is a hoped-for contribution tostrengthening New Zealand’s national identity: the success of this campaignremains to be established in the wake of the completed LOTR.

We have approached the concept of ‘authenticity’ in terms of a series of rhetori-cal claims which are legitimized by established cultural discourses, while at thesame time re-working them. In this issue, contributors range across a continuumin their treatment of authenticity, from a concern with ‘genuine’ authenticity to a



primary concern with the processes by which various claims to authenticity areproduced. At one end, Svejenova (2005) affirms a ‘true’, authentic calling in thelife of a creative individual. In what we could see as the centre, some contributorsplay off genuine authenticity (cultural and historical) against a false appearance ofauthenticity which is manufactured in order to satisfy commercial ends. Delmestriet al. (2005) compare ‘manufactured’ and ‘genuine innovative’ forms of authen-ticity in the Italian film industry; Guthey and Jackson (2005) compare ‘genuineauthenticity’ and its lack in CEO portraits; and Beverland (2005) compares ‘real’and ‘imagined’ in wine industry marketing. Glynn and Lounsbury (2005) identifycultural authenticity with the aesthetic, and distinguish it from ‘market logics’. Atthe other end of the continuum we would place Moeran’s (2005) paper and ourown, in that both are more concerned with authenticity as cultural product, as aquestion of interpretation rather than truth or falsity. We also differ from Peter-son (2005) and many of the other contributors who focus on an industry-basedcommercial agenda as the driving force in ‘fabricating authenticity’. In drawingon Foucauldian discourse theory, and on the cultural studies literature which takesan interpretive approach to identity formation, we see the question of authentic-ity in cultural industries as more complex than the rational agendas of industryactors. We would argue that these actors and their agendas are not pre-given real-ties, but are themselves the products of the discursive formations of ‘art’ and ‘busi-ness’ that meet in the ‘creative’ or ‘cultural’ industries, and that it would bevaluable to inquire further into how these two categories are created, maintainedand challenged in industry processes.

In our case study of the LOTR project we have focused on the categories ofnational and creative authenticity, and on two key tensions in their construction.The first is the tension between Hollywood and the possibility of a local film indus-try, based on local stories and/or local profits. This tension persists in film indus-try debates. Jackson and his supporters have been able to effectively lobbygovernment to support recent new film subsidies which are designed to make itmore attractive for Hollywood productions to come to New Zealand – whether ornot New Zealand directors are involved. They argue that ‘domestic [New Zealand]Hollywood productions provide a fertile training ground, make the industry anattractive career area and stop emerging filmmakers heading to Tinseltown . . .[rather than] making life more difficult for New Zealand films – in the long runthey will help’ (Hurrah for Hollywood, 1999, p. 5.) Other economic commenta-tors remain sceptical. While Jackson has very overtly lobbied for tax incentives forlarge film productions on commercial grounds, some advisors believe that the gov-ernment will lose money and won’t attract any productions that would not cometo New Zealand anyway ‘on the basis of its scenery, skills mix, and exchange rate’(Espiner, 2003). In the local film industry, many are also unconvinced, arguing that‘national cinema is essentially a cultural institution’ unsuited to developmentmodels for Hollywood scale productions (NZ Film Commission, 2003), and that



the new proposals encourage international productions ‘telling other people’sstories instead of our own’: New Zealand needs domestic financing of local films‘if we are serious about telling our own stories’ (Wakefield, 2003, p. 17). But eventhe critics of the new policies encouraging international film-making see LOTR as‘an enormous catalyst in the way everyone thinks about’ the local film industry:‘What Peter’s done is create a confidence among people that anything’s possible.And he’s taken the government along on that ride, because they’ve clearly saidthat anything’s possible’ (Welch, 2003, p. 23).

The second key tension is between the ‘new’ creative New Zealand, a sophisti-cated skilful nation with its own culture and ability to produce world beating film-making and special effects; and, on the other hand, New Zealand as a pure andpre-historical place where an imaginary Middle-earth (and by implication anymovie world) can be placed, a 100 per cent pure destination that tourists will wantto visit. Government policy initiatives have staked a great deal on being able toreconcile these tensions, and we argue that the rhetoric of the film-making processhas been effective in bringing convergence to these seemingly disparate and attimes opposing strands.

Hobsbawm (1983) has proposed that authenticities constructed in culturalprocesses have the effect of establishing or stabilize cultural identities. In this casestudy we see how a particular cultural project, and its promotion by industry andgovernment, has legitimized a changing sense of national identity, regardless ofthe fact that the story it tells is in no way a local one. The financial and culturalsuccess of the film depended on the creative authenticity established in the linksbetween the Tolkien story and the film. Once this success was established, it wasappropriated as emblematic of the creativity and entrepreneurship of NewZealanders. Narratives of future economic and cultural viability of the countryare linked to the patriotism of creative entrepreneurs such as Peter Jackson, whomake a commitment to build a local industry. The cultural industries have a par-ticular importance among other industry groups as agents of economic, social andcultural change (Hesmondhalgh, 2002; Jones et al., 2005), and we have traced thechanging relationships between national identity and a local film industry. LOTR

is a cultural project whose international success is grounded in its success in estab-lishing its claims to creative authenticity, a believability derived from high-techspecial effects as well as faithfulness to the ‘spirit’ of an iconic text and its mythi-cal world. Many in New Zealand see LOTR as a ‘statement to ourselves . . . acentral ingredient in constructing our identity for ourselves, as a lever to help NewZealanders get the confidence and boldness to foot it aggressively on the interna-tional stages’, in Harleys’ words (Harley, 2002). A crucial challenge for researcherswill be to trace the ‘economy of identity’ (Prichard, 2002, p. 274) constructed inthe new cultural industries, and to consider whether the seductive prospects of‘creative satisfaction and substantial financial returns’ (O’Leary and Frater, 2001,p. 7) are delivered.



NOTES

*We thank Narasimhan Anand for his careful guidance in developing this paper, and the other editorsand anonymous reviewers for their stimulating questions.[1] Although TLOTR (The Lord of the Rings) is a more accurate abbreviation, we have used LOTR to

avoid repeating ‘The’ as in ‘The Lord of the Rings’.[2] A commonly used word for New Zealand identity based on an iconic native bird.[3] Partners with Film New Zealand (2003) in the promotion of New Zealand as ‘The Home of

Middle-earth’ are New Line Cinema, Film New Zealand, Tourism New Zealand, the NewZealand Film Commission, Creative New Zealand, Investment New Zealand, Trade NewZealand, and the New Zealand Music Industry Commission.

[4] International visitor arrivals to New Zealand have increased since the LOTR films: from 1.79million arrivals in 2000 to 2.10 million in 2003 (TRCNZ, 2004). However, it is difficult to accu-rately measure the impact of LOTR on tourist arrivals due to the range of other factors influ-encing tourism trends (e.g. global political situation, SARS, changes in airline capacities). A 2003survey of international tourists to New Zealand found that whilst LOTR was ‘the main reason’for the visit of only 0.3% of respondents, 9% said it was ‘one reason but not the main reason’and two-thirds of all respondents who were aware of the films said that watching the moviesand/or through the publicity meant they were ‘more motivated’ (69%) or ‘more likely’ (65%) tovisit New Zealand as a result (NFO New Zealand, 2003).

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Middle-earth Meets New Zealand: Authenticity and Location in the Making of The Lord of the Rings

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