Maria Steinman: “As long as the Eye of Sauron does not look from the tower at Moscow, there is hope that everything will be fine”

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History, political science and law RSUH Maria Shteinman commented for the SOVA Center on the situation around the unsuccessful attempt install the "Eye of Sauron" in Moscow.

The promise to open the "Eye of Sauron" over Moscow is a really brilliant PR move by Svechenie. Regardless implementation of this plan, the whole country started talking about this company, not excluding clergy. The task is completed, the manager receives a bonus: awareness of the company has increased at least several times. Remains just one question: why exactly the Eye of Sauron seemed to the creatives the best advertising for the final adaptation of The Hobbit? There are three answers to this question: cynical, logical and ideological.

The cynical answer is this: apparently, the "Eye of Sauron" represents is the only non-copyrighted item from Middle-Earth Enterprises that is worth behind the film adaptation of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and which owns the rights on characters, plot and geographical names. Probably Sauron has not yet been considered by them with a marketing points of view.

The logical answer is simple. It seemed to the employees of the "Glow" that it is the Eye of Sauron that will go especially well with the Moscow City towers. Indeed, it is logical - in Mordor, the Eye also oversaw all of Middle-earth precisely from the tower. But there is a small but important detail here: in the movie "The Hobbit" Oko appears in only one episode (where Galadriel takes away from the Necromancer human form). So why exactly this art object was chosen in anticipation of premieres?

And here the ideological answer comes to the fore. Judging according to numerous demotivators on the Web (“This is not Mordor, this is Norilsk”, “And I I will go to live in Mordor”, etc.), even in the eyes of our own citizens, our country is everything more often identified with Mordor. Nothing good here, but this sad trend was caught by the guys from the Glow. And it doesn't matter if they're serious this was treated or it was an attempt at subtle trolling. The fact is important choice.

So I'll be honest: I'm not saddened by the cancellation of the installation. As long as the Eye of Sauron does not look at Moscow from the tower, there is hope that everything will be Fine.