Terry Pratchett argues somewhere that art is a mode of experiment; someone goes somewhere in imagination and honestly tries an imaginative experiment to explore the consequences of imaginary acts. This can be non-ideological in that the artist genuinely allows what happens in their imagination to happen without deliberate control. OR it can be ideological propaganda in which the predetermined good guys win without much of a hitch and everyone opposing them is evil and ultimately doomed… this latter probably usually happens when the person is fearful of being wrong. It unfortunately is the world view of monotheism – nothing can challenge God or ‘his’ chosen.
Both ways involve a world view, which they are reinforcing or challenging.
Both ways can be art, one is useful and one is propaganda. However, the distinction is vague as propaganda can be worthwhile (think of 1984) or simply implausible or destructive (ie Atlas Shrugged), but in either case propaganda can be influential, and is likely to be more influential than experimental art because it lets people keep the same opinions as they have already (or reinforces them). While Lord of the Rings is more like propaganda, it veers closer to experiment than either of the other two – especially in the moment (which I may not be remembering correctly) in which Tolkien allows a few orcs to tell their story about persecuting elves…. There was an opening there that he refused to follow – probably because of his monotheism – for the good guys to be good, the others had to be completely evil.
