# Does anyone else think Gollum/Sméagol is cute?



## Licky Linguist (Nov 14, 2020)

The eyes are sooo big...


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Nov 14, 2020)

I don't know if "cute" is the word that springs to my mind, but since you mentioned it, I now recall how large the eyes on some of the other characters -- especially the hobbits -- appeared, when I saw the films in a theater, so much so that I wondered at the time if they'd been "enhanced" through CGI somehow. Does anyone know?

BTW, Licky, if you want to see one of our biggest Gollum-defenders, find some old posts by YayGollum!


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## 1stvermont (Nov 14, 2020)

I knew a lady who had a tattoo of Gollum and she said it was her favorite character. Not sure even she thought he was cute, maybe.


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## Olorgando (Nov 14, 2020)

Licky Linguist said:


> The eyes are sooo big...


Erm ... yes, but that's *all* that may fit into the "baby schema" (German "_Kindchenschema"_) first proposed by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz back in 1949. The rest of him is practically Exhibit A of the opposite ...

And as to the blue eyes (as my own are), they are also ambivalent as portrayed in films (and in a "temperature scheme" of colors - or whatever the experts call it - blue is the coldest color). Think of Alain Delon, Rutger Hauer, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda (at least once), who played roles in which the "ice-cold blue eyes" were a fairly major part of the characterization.

On the other hand, Sauron does not appear to be blue-eyed, not even with PJ ... 🤓


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## Licky Linguist (Nov 14, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> I don't know if "cute" is the word that springs to my mind, but since you mentioned it, I now recall how large the eyes on some of the other characters -- especially the hobbits -- appeared, when I saw the films in a theater, so much so that I wondered at the time if they'd been "enhanced" through CGI somehow. Does anyone know?
> 
> BTW, Licky, if you want to see one of our biggest Gollum-defenders, find some old posts by YayGollum!


Yeah... I'll find YayGollum XD

I wonder if they drew the costume or made a person wear a costume...


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Nov 14, 2020)

Sauron's -- or at least one of them -- were "yellow as a cat's".


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## Licky Linguist (Nov 14, 2020)

Olorgando said:


> Erm ... yes, but that's *all* that may fit into the "baby schema" (German "_Kindchenschema"_) first proposed by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz back in 1949. The rest of him is practically Exhibit A of the opposite ...
> 
> And as to the blue eyes (as my own are), they are also ambivalent as portrayed in films (and in a "temperature scheme" of colors - or whatever the experts call it - blue is the coldest color). Think of Alain Delon, Rutger Hauer, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda (at least once), who played roles in which the "ice-cold blue eyes" were a fairly major part of the characterization.
> 
> On the other hand, Sauron does not appear to be blue-eyed, not even with PJ ... 🤓


Yup, the teeth *are* creepy.

Sauron doesn't seem cute even to me 😁


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## Rivendell_librarian (Nov 14, 2020)

Of course if Smeagol and Deagol had never found the Ring things would have likely turned out differently for them, and Middle Earth!


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## Alice (Nov 14, 2020)

Well not exactly cute
In that picture he looks like me when looking at my bookshelves

I dunno if it counts as "cute"


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## Licky Linguist (Nov 15, 2020)

Alice Alice said:


> Well not exactly cute
> In that picture he looks like me when looking at my bookshelves


😂 I hope you don't have the teeth tho...


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## Olorgando (Nov 15, 2020)

Alice Alice said:


> Well not exactly cute
> In that picture he looks like me when looking at my bookshelves


You mean the eyes ... 😃
I suppose more of us would have similar eyes when looking at our bookshelves.


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## Licky Linguist (Nov 15, 2020)

Olorgando said:


> You mean the eyes ... 😃
> I suppose more of us would have similar eyes when looking at our bookshelves.


Or at Kindle 😛


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Nov 15, 2020)

Licky Linguist said:


> 😂 I hope you don't have the teeth tho...


Nope. Nice regular ones, as you can see in her pic on the Book Covers thread. 😁 



Olorgando said:


> I suppose more of us would have similar eyes when looking at our bookshelves.


Unfortunately, at my age, when trying to actually _read _the books, mine look more like this:


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## Licky Linguist (Nov 15, 2020)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Nope. Nice regular ones, as you can see in her pic on the Book Covers thread. 😁
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, at my age, when trying to actually _read _the books, mine look more like this:
> View attachment 8501


That looks a bit like me in bright sunlight 😛


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## Shadow (Feb 11, 2021)

There’s a childlike innocence about Gollum that I find endearing. 


Rivendell_librarian said:


> Of course if Smeagol and Deagol had never found the Ring things would have likely turned out differently for them, and Middle Earth!


By killing Deagol, Sméagol saved him. Ironic but true.


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## Olorgando (Feb 11, 2021)

Shadow said:


> By killing Deagol, Sméagol saved him. Ironic but true.


In the "fate worse than death" train of thought, certainly. But Déagol's Gollum would have been somewhat different from Sméagol's.


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## Shadow (Feb 11, 2021)

Deagol wouldn't have been a exact copy of what happened to Smeagol. But once an individual came into contact with the ring it was going to impact their life in some way, unless you're Tom. I'd rather not see it at all, so its power of addiction couldn't enter my mind. But neither could un-see what they had seen. Once they had, their lives were never going to be the same in any case.


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## Olorgando (Feb 12, 2021)

Well, JRRT does make a point, in chapter II "The Shadow of the Past" of Book One in "Fellowship", in having Gandalf point out to Frodo that Bilbo had taken so little hurt from the evil of the One Ring by beginning his ownership of the Ring with pity, in not killing Gollum when Gollum was at his mercy. That is the total opposite of how Sméagol came to own it. We can probably suppose that Sméagol's evil nature gave the One Ring much more to work on than it found in Bilbo.
Of course there are other differences. Bilbo had held the Ring for "only" 60 years when he gave it (with difficulty) to Frodo. Sméagol had held it for 478 years. Then the clan Sméagol and Déagol belonged to, dwelling on the Anduin River, must have been seriously more rustic than the Shire Hobbits, who had been settled in the Shire for over 850 years at the time of the finding of the One Ring.

So I'd speculate that on a Gollum-to-Bilbo continuum, the Déagol-Gollum would not have sunk as low as Sméagol-Gollum did, but probably would still have been closer to that end than to the much more civilized Bilbo. Material for a fanfic, methinks.


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