https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=98TkLOWaAJw
And so I mean I think that the especially this image of the treasure Yeah And it’s important to understand also the treasure as a heap The idea of the treasure as a heap means that it it has been brought back down to its its Potentiality you could say it that way. Hmm and so the avarice was actually the I would say the first avarice was not the avarice of the of smog the first Avarice is the avarice of the of the dwarves who wanted to gather all that is Below right and gather all the gold that is hidden all the gold that is hidden And then this dragon comes and kind of keeps it in a fallow state, right? It’s a kind of weird It’s gonna be strange for people people are gonna find a strange I use this word but it’s like a strange Sabbath or a strange Jubilee where the value of this treasure is made fallow by the fact that The the dragon is is lying down upon it and nobody can use it, right? When I talk about this idea of the dragon is kind of this chaos in a negative sense But maybe also a kind of immeasurable potential in a positive sense potential strength potential power potential rich, you know richness Riches and so that you really do see that in this story So on the one hand the dragon is preventing people from using this gold and so there’s something Seemingly evil about it and obviously smog is not represented as a benevolent creature in no met in no way, right? But we also know that if smog is killed then all hell is gonna break loose Yes, it’s a read. It would require a reordering Yeah of that whole region Means that wars coming if smog dies wars coming and everybody kind of is aware of that because all of a sudden this this land this You know, you could you could this is kind of a weird image But hopefully people will understand what I’m talking about and so you can imagine that the dragon is not is not guarding a treasure but is guarding a virgin and So while the dragon is guarding the virgin then there are no nights will fight for her right, but as soon as the dragon leaves or if you kill the dragon then you have the problem of Then then all of a sudden people might start fighting for the for the the hand of that virgin, right? Right, which you see I mean that’s a lot of stories It’s interesting like there’s no princesses that need to be rescued in Tolkien Although he references in The Hobbit When Bilbo encounters Gandalf for the first time in the book, he talks about the rescue of princesses But but of course no princess there is no princess need to be rescued in the traditional sense in Tolkien’s work but but it’s still interesting that there is this this theme of the princess who’s You know being held captive by the dragon And she needs to be rescued and and it’s it’s interesting that you would describe the gold in this way Because I mean because what does what does the princess represent in the stories? It’s always potentiality Yeah, she represents a future future family future Potentiality she’s right because she’s not married yet Yeah and and I don’t think that that does any sort of damage to the sort of agency of her as a character because it’s interesting Tolkien actually subverts that Subverts what a lot of people think of as the trope of female characters in mythology all the time They have a lot more agency than Than you usually see where you know, the princess is often in many fairy tales as a kind of trophy And she’s not really involved in the story But but Tolkien’s women are pretty critical, you know in many ways You know, I could just think of Aowyn and and Arwen and Galadriel I mean these you know when he he doesn’t have a lot of women in his stories But when he puts them there boy, they are important people, you know But but it’s interesting that the princess is kind of potentiality the prince Wants to rescue her in order to start a family with her and to create a new order. Yeah, right And and the gold is this way in the Hobbit Yeah, definitely. It’s it’s the the thing that is that is the new order Potentially. Yeah, you know, it has it holds great potential But especially in the case, you know in the case of the the princess being freed from the dragon, you know You don’t have this idea that there are many princess all trying to free the princess, you know because then if that was the story then you would imagine the problem of Once one prince is successful in freeing the princess What stops all the princess from fighting between each other to know who’s going to get the princess? And that’s the story in in smog is that’s everybody’s watching this treasure and as soon as it’s freed up then Here come the armies and it’s gonna be and this is has real life. This has real life stories and Yeah, the I lived in Congo and that’s exactly the the the tragedy of Congo right the tragedy of Congo is the richest soil in the world and Once it became once it’s opened up then all the countries around Come and use Congo as a battleground because they all want what’s in the ground. They all want the minerals And that’s why Eastern Congo is a hellscape is because everybody’s fighting for that potentiality Yeah, and that’s the way that the the land around the lonely mountain is described You know and it’s interesting that it’s described that way not because there’s been a war but because smog has kind of cleared it all Out and he just sits on it now. Yeah