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Is Gollum good or bad?


Seiche

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A Turkish court overseeing the case of a doctor accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled that a committee of experts should assess whether the fictional Lord of the Rings character Gollum is good or bad.

Bilgin Ciftci faces up to two years in prison for allegedly insulting a state official by juxtaposing pictures of Gollum and Erdogan on social media.

Lawyer Hicran Danisman told the AP Wednesday that she was forced to argue in court this week that "Gollum is not a bad character" because she got "nowhere" with a defense case based on freedom of expression.

Danisman said that prompted the judge to rule that a committee, including psychologists and movie experts, should provide an assessment of Gollum's character.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/12/02/world/europe/ap-eu-turkey-erdogan-gollum.html

 

Interesting to me that they mention movie experts and not literature experts.  Regardless, let's hear your best case for and against. 

 

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I think he's a bad person, and was one even before he got the Ring. Frodo, Sam, and Bilbo didn't start murdering people for the Ring when they got it, and Bilbo didn't use the Ring to go around doing all kinds of nasty mischief the way Smeagol did after he got the Ring.

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Whatever he is, Gollum is a very tragic figure.

Agree with this and it leads me to want to make an argument on his behalf, but I have trouble doing so.  Maybe this lawyer's best bet is a finding that Gollum is a popular or even sympathetic character, rather than hoping for a finding that he is 'good'.

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Interesting to me that they mention movie experts and not literature experts.  Regardless, let's hear your best case for and against. 

In this article it specifies the profession of all 5 experts: two are academicians.

I hope the guy wins and Turkey changes its ridiculous law. 

But aside from that, it would be funny if a win for the accused based on the analysis of the Gollum character by this committee, results in Gollum becoming some kind of nationally honored figure, thanks to his comparison to Erdogan.

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I think he's a bad person, and was one even before he got the Ring.

Yep. Though he does at least try to be good at times, and as far as I recall we don't know of him doing anything wrong before the ring shows up, and it's entirely possible he would never have killed anyone without its influence. At best, he was a weak-willed person compared to Bilbo and Frodo. Perhaps even an ordinary person, with the heroes of the story being exceptional in their resistance to the ring.

 

Interesting to me that they mention movie experts and not literature experts.

Presumably the pictures in question were from the movies, rather than illustrations from the books.

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Yeah, it's pretty made clear that regardless of his original character, he was nevertheless extremely weak-willed and thus easily corrupted by the Ring. Some of his fragmented memories about his mother and his and his brother's relationship with her make me suspect that even child abuse may have been involved.

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He's an addict. Does that make him bad? If current thinking applies, he was an addict before the Ring came into his life, so it is not necessarily the case that his pre-ring behaviour was free from addict behaviour and motivations. Some addicts do some crazy stuff to feed their addiction, or because they are high. So if the Ring is the ultimate drug then Smeagol killing to get the ring is consistent with the behaviour of an addict.

He done a lot of bad things, but is he a bad person?

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I honestly don't know if you're trolling or not at this point. Poe's Law strikes again.

Of *course* he's trolling you.

To answer the question - Gollum has committed some awful deeds. You have to be careful about labelling him a fundamentally awful person though, since a major point of his character is that anyone can seek redemption. In the end, he (not Frodo) saved Middle-earth. 

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Gollum's bad. You could argue that it was the Ring that made him bad, but there's certainly no good left in him now.

I can't believe this argument is going to decide if a man is going to person though, or that you can be sent to prison for insulting a state official in Turkey.

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