First off, yes, this is creepy, and some jokester might want to ask what Sinead O’Connor was doing in a Lord of the Rings video, which I couldn’t help but laugh at, but since the song was performed by her years ago one would easily make that connection. But the creep factor is easy to note since Gollum is such an unnerving character anyway given that he allowed himself to become the wretched creature he was after taking possession of the one ring, thereby sealing his fate after murdering Deagol, his friend, to obtain it. That kind of makes it easy to think that deep down, Smeagol was something of a bad person to begin with since the ring tended to bring out the worst in a person, it didn’t necessarily make people bad. Like it or not, every person that’s ever been born or created has at least two sides to them since, as it’s understood, every person has a capacity for good and evil, and can be influenced in a number of ways that will allow them to lean one way or the other. It feels that Smeagol might not have been as good of a person deep down as people would want to think, but had something dark within him that the ring picked up on.
This also goes to show that Smeagol wasn’t exactly the strongest character when it came to his mental state, since the ring worked him over so well that his actions managed to get him banished to the mountain caves, where he slowly but surely went mad as the ring continued to eat away at his mind. It’s fair to point out that Isildur fell prey to the ring long before Smeagol as well since the mental fortitude needed to simply deny the ring isn’t exactly bound to one race. Isildur had the chance to defeat Sauron and didn’t take it, proving that he valued power over everything. But what’s kind of surprising, even though it was a nice twist that Tolkien put into the story, is that the people who could have had the biggest desire for power, the hobbits, had the easiest time dealing with the ring since neither Bilbo nor Frodo was overly affected at first, since they both weathered the ring’s evil for quite a while before feeling the effects. In fact, Bilbo went years without feeling the ill effects of the ring, while Frodo started to feel the effects the closer they drew to Mordor, and it’s easy to state that he was feeling it before. But others, such as Boromir and Aragorn, had different reactions to it.
Boromir was no doubt driven by his need to protect his homeland and saw the ring as a weapon. Unfortunately, as he would eventually come to realize, the ring was a grand trick played on Middle Earth, since it couldn’t be controlled, successfully at least, by anyone but the person that created it. Aragorn was tempted, as was Boromir, but in the end, while Boromir did attack Frodo to start with, both men resisted the pull and sought to protect the ring-bearer instead of giving in and taking the ring for themselves. Even Galadriel was tempted, but she backed down and realized the peril that the ring would bring, as did Gandalf, who refused the ring outright since he knew too well what it would do in the hands of anyone else. One could almost hear Sauron laughing as the weakest individual in Middle Earth had to carry around one of the deadliest weapons ever created, while those of such great power and skill refused to relieve him of the burden. Gollum was all about retrieving the ring, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the betterment of Middle Earth. In fact, one could say that Middle Earth wasn’t his concern at all since if he’d had the ring and still been able to catch fish and kill goblins and orcs he might have been just as happy until he withered away and the ring was picked up by someone else.
But getting back to the video finally, it is kind of a creepy way to present Nothing Compares 2 U since Gollum is one of the most disturbing characters in LOTR largely because he’s also one of the most mentally weak individuals in the story. He showed obsession when he went after Sam and Frodo, not courage or cunning since to be fair, this is how the character was designed, to be the nastiest rat in the heap and to somehow still be necessary since it was his obsession that ended up destroying the ring and taking him out in the process. Sometimes the self-defeating nature of evil is actually useful since it ends up working out for those that are opposed to it.
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