Lords of their Dingalings: Men’s Rightsers outraged at Time writer for noting the lack of female characters in The Hobbit
Can you find the woman in this picture?
Uh oh! It seems that some woman is offering some opinions about Tolkien!
Over on Time.com, Ruth Davis Konigsberg has a brief personal essay reflecting on the almost complete lack of female characters in the new Hobbit film, and in Tolkien’s ouvre generally. As she notes, it’s not until about two hours in to the nearly three-hour movie that “we finally meet someone without a Y chromosome,” namely Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel — and she was added into the originally all-male story by the screenwriters. Blanchette’s is the only female name out of 37 named in the cast list – though there are a couple of unnamed female characters who make brief appearances.
“I did not read The Hobbit or the The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a child, and I have always felt a bit alienated from the fandom surrounding them,” Konigsberg observes.
Now I think I know why: Tolkien seems to have wiped women off the face of Middle-earth. I suppose it’s understandable that a story in which the primary activity seems to be chopping off each other’s body parts for no particular reason might be a little heavy on male characters — although it’s not as though Tolkien had to hew to historical accuracy when he created his fantastical world. The problem is one of biological accuracy. Tolkien’s characters defy the basics of reproduction: dwarf fathers beget dwarf sons, hobbit uncles pass rings down to hobbit nephews. If there are any mothers or daughters, aunts or nieces, they make no appearances. Trolls and orcs especially seem to rely on asexual reproduction, breeding whole male populations, which of course come in handy when amassing an army to attack the dwarves and elves.
Yes, yes, as she admits, Tolkien’s few female characters tend to be powerful. But that hardly changes the basic fact that the Hobbit, and Tolkien generally, is overloaded with dudes.
These fairly commonplace observations have, naturally, sent the orcs and the elf princesses of the Men’s Rights subreddit into an uproar. Naturally, none of them seem to have bothered to read any of Konigsberg’s brief piece before setting forth their opinions, which sometimes accuse her of ignoring things she specifically acknowledged (like that whole powerful-female-character thing), and completely miss that the bit about reproduction is, you know, a joke on Konigsberg’s part.
Here are some of my favorite idiotic comments from the “discussion.” (Click on the yellow comments to see the originals on Reddit.)
Uh, Jane Austen’s books are filled with dudes. Especially Pride and Prejudice 2: Mr. Darcy’s Revenge, which was later adapted into a buddy cop movie starring Robin Williams and Danny Glover.
EDITED TO ADD: Somehow forgot to include two of my favorite comments:
Oh, and if you were unable to find a woman in the picture above, try this one instead:
Posted on December 31, 2012, in all about the menz, antifeminism, dozens of upvotes, I am making a joke, misogyny, MRA, no girls allowed, patriarchy, reddit, straw feminists and tagged gender, lord of the rings, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit, the hobbit. Bookmark the permalink. 792 Comments.
@ Starla- not with ‘rights’ obviously, but men as a group have issues that need to be addressed. Incarceration in the United States is definitely an issue effecting men, and mainly ethnic minority men. Disproportionately African American men. Parental laws do favor the mother, mainly because the mother is often the primary care-giver. As a men’s issue, the obvious solution to that would to be to make it easier in our society for men to be the primary care giver- stop discouraging parental leave, for instance. Addressing domestic abuse directed towards men without cutting funding to services towards women (which has been the soul effect of MRA lobbying in California, btw). But they are better discussed under the mantel of issues (unless you are discussing the high rate of incarceration for racial minorities, which seems like a deliberate violation of their rights to me).
@timetravelingfool
I see where your coming from but like Ketteh said, they seem more concerned with harassing people they don’t like than actually doing something to make a change. I don’t know if the movement was originally intended for this but they’ve completely lost their focus.
Oooh, someone’s blaming the communists for the article!! What fun!!
So…slightly off-topic, but if you want a good story that focuses on a strong female character, read The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch. It’s my favourite. ” ‘Ronald: Your clothes are all pretty, your hair is really nice. You look like a nice guy, but you are a BUM’. And they didn’t get married after all”.
It’s the new year where I am. Happy New Year! I worked all night…only got hit on by one drunk at work, yay!
@ Starla- Honestly, I imagine the ‘movement’ was just a bunch of whiny woman haters who came across some academic writings of real men’s issues in their efforts to prove how rough men have it.
*women haters. They seem to hate more than one woman.
@timetravelingfool
I have no problem whatsoever imagining that.
The whole thing is so disgusting – you have “men’s righters” on Reddit who are into child porn, or rape, or harassment in general, and scream about their rights when such sites are closed. You have Elam, who says he would vote “not guilty” in any rape trial, even if he thought the man was guilty. You have the whole RegiserHer and doxxing business, which is out to get women stalked, raped or probably killed. You have men who want women denied the vote, forced out of the workplace – who want baby girls’ voiceboxes removed.
This is a mob identified as a hate movement by the SPLC. It’s as worthwhile trying to engage with them as with neoNazis or the KKK. The only good thing to be said about them is that they’re lazy, stupid internet warriors who couldn’t organise a fart in a beanbag.
What is John Travolta from Battlefield Earth doing in the center of that last picture?
Kitteh
Holy shit they ARE nuts! At least nobody takes them seriously…
@ mordsith: Contrary to popular belief orcs made little orcs like humans. Mr. Jackson is responsible for the orcs-being-made-of-sludge myth. Elves also made babies the human way (Tolkien wrote an entire essay dedicated to eleven marriage customs and sexuality) and he also confirmed by letter that dwarves make little dwarves by way of the horizontal Mumba. As for female characterisation? Tolkien believed all women want marriage and babies and every female character in Tolkien inevitably wish to win the favour of a man; women who did not obey the will and whim of men or who where victims of rape or incest die goodly and pure. Oh, the implications!
I remember getting so upset when I read the bit about removing baby girl’s voiceboxes. I mean, I hate all the rest of their vitriol as well, but that really shook me to my core. For me, to literally take away someone’s voice is almost the worst thing you can do to them. It really proves that all they want is a slave. I wish these guys glowed in the dark, so we could spot them.
@catnuck
Don’t worry, so much hate never stays secret for too long. The best we can hope for is that it doesnt explode into something tragic.
As for mensrightsers and Tolkien? Basically anything critiquing Tolkien gets this sort of bullshit. It’s such a shame that my no. 1 fandom is a haven for neck beards outside ff.net and henneth annun. D: However, it * is* funny how these dudebros pretend to be fans but can’t point out here Peter changed elements in the story. And they say we look for things to bitch about?
Because extreme gender disparities for no reason at all should be noticed, and too often, they are not.
Tolkien’s books are great, and the movies are fine. I don’t think that we need to go back and change everyone in them to women. But, we are living in a society that still struggles with sexism and racism, so when there are movies that have no women, or no people of color in them at all, and there’s no good story reason for it, then we need to point that out and acknowledge that it exists, so that people stop accepting it as normal and expected. It should be normal that there are men and women in all sorts of roles. It should be normal that there are people of color in all sorts of roles. But right now, its not. Part of the work we need to do to make that be normal is to make it so that all male casts and all white casts are NOT considered the default. And in order to do that, we need to start by pointing it out whenever it happens.
@ Kitteh- what. the. fuck. about voiceboxes?!?!?! Can you link me up?
ttf – no, sorry, I can’t. It’s something that was in a comment thread (with upvotes) I’ve seen mentioned in passing many times here, but I haven’t the foggiest what article or even what site. Someone else might remember.
@Canuck WTF Someone actually SAID that? Wha…how can…
Then again, they are a hate movement, so should I really be surprised?
@ timetravellingfool It can be found at the Something Awful website
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/spearhead-forum-misandry.php?page=7
@CarleyBlue: Thanks! I was going to link it up, but my internet is no good, and I’m trying to download an episode of Golden Girls…I think I’m fighting a losing battle.
Also, I guess I should sort of introduce myself. I’m the Canuck_with_Pluck. I’ve been lurking around this blog for about a year and a half, just recently started commenting. I love this blog. You guys are awesome.
NP, Kitteh. Carley, thank you. My god who is that royal shithead? Does he still comment?
I’m still reading the comments section- they all seem to think the author wrote that in a mouth frothing rage- I didn’t read that tone at all.
Merry New Year, everybody (in my time zone, I guess)!
happy new year, tulgey!!
Happy New Year to all you slackers who’ve only just got there! ;)
Caunuck_with_Pluck, welcome! Now I may be about to do a crappy-short-term-memory embarrassing myself thing, but have you seen Katz’s wonderful Pierre cartoons?
Happy New Year, peeps!
Welcome, Canuck_with_Pluck!
I need to second everything kitteh said about Eowyn. I hate hate HATE when she’s held up as a feminist character. She basically decides to kill herself in battle because the guy she likes doesn’t like her back. And as soon as a guy does show interest, she decides to settle down and have lots of babies. Sorry, “plant a garden”. Ick.
“Lipstick and invitations”. Ick. I was an unfemme, gawkish eight-year-old and already very aware that I was not one of the Pretty Girls, but I still thought that it was shitty.
I think I was put off by the racism in Narnia before the sexism really started getting to me, but there was more than one instance of femme stuff being shallow and unacceptable and only girls who wear trousers and have swords being acceptable, especially if they renounce their ghastly backward arranged marriages and move somewhere less swarthy, because we can combine the racism and the sexism in one big giant disaster. I didn’t get very many Arab or generally-middle-eastern characters in my books as a child, so it wasn’t much fun when what there was involved pretty much every orientalist stereotype available. The whole mess could only have been worse if the White/Green Witch-harlot-badawfulfemalething had been wearing kohl in every scene.
I always read Eowyn as discontented and not in love with Aragorn so much as the anti-stagnation he represented, but I was a small child with a slight crush on her and not much interest in marrying lost kings when I could be smiting witchkings, so possibly I am a tiny tiny bit biased.
@Morgan
I don’t see why you would lump Tolkien and G.R.R. Martin together in that regard; the latter is certainly more progressive about gender issues (which is to be expected, since he started his series in the 1990’s rather than the 1940’s).
*waves at hellkell*
Just back from my eighth viewing of the HOBBIT (I saw FELLOWSHIP 45 times before it left the theatres, but then I read LOTR 100 times between the ages of 10 and 17, documenting it in my reading journal). I quite reading Tolkien for a while (during my angry young feminist phase), but came back years later (because of Jackson’s film).
The issues of gender AND race in Tolkien’s work are well worth discussing–though one would hope people would have read them (and yes, as a number of people have said, the role of Arwen was expanded in Jackson’s film–and let’s not forget Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh were screenwriters and worked on various aspects of the film–the “auteur” theory of film all too often washes out all the multiple people who work on a film). Catbeast is right that Tolkien believed women naturally craved marriage and children. (He also thought men were inherently more prone to sin than women.)
BUT, and this seems worth mentioning: when Oxford University finally admitted women as students post WWI, the tutors (meaning professors) were told they didn’t have to work with the women if they didn’t want to–and Tolkien chose to. His field (philology, focusing on Anglo Saxon and Germanic languages) was unpopular (the “real” status was in the Classics) (and as a Catholic, he was also part of a marginalized religious group in England at the time), and he had a number of women students he taught, several he published with; the HOBBIT was published because one of his women students told one of the graduated women students who worked for a publisher about it, and she got the manuscript to Unwin and Alleyn. Some of the women who worked with him wrote glowing tributes about him for the Centennial editions of Tolkien journals (Centennial of his birth) a few years back.
Here’s a somewhat different take on the question of gender and Tolkien’s work:
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/smiesel_ladiesring_jan05.asp
Tolkien’s mother (who converted to Catholicism) died when he was twelve (he believed that her family refusing to support her after her conversion contributed to her death); he and his younger brother were made wards of her priest, and (as was NOT uncommon then) attended an all boy’s school (going on to all male university), and the all male army. He was apparently quite close to an aunt of his, but yes, he lived in an all male world. HIs view of women was also heavily influenced by his religion (Galadriel is strongly influenced by the iconography of the Virgin Mary).
Women have been pointing out the lack of women characters in Tolkien for a long time–and I’m not going to deny it (though I’ll agree with those who point out the power of the women who exist–including Varda, consort of Manwe, the top pair of the Valar–Varda is in some ways more powerful than Manwe)–Tolkien’s world is also heternormative/heterosexist–the most powerful and the best (and power is sometimes more spiritual than physical) are couples–Feanor, unrestrained by any feminine partner, sinks all his love into the Silmarils which are stolen (by Morgoth and Ungoliant working together–though not for long), and the events afterwards (Kinslaying, the Oath) are tragic.
But, as one of my favorite feminist scholars, Edith Crowe notes, when you look at when the books were published (HOBBIT in 1937, FELLOWSHIP in 1955, it wasn’t as if there were lots of feminist books around–one of the books published the same year as FoTR was Nabakov’s LOLITA). So those of us reading back in the day (I was 10 in 1965) were used to reading through that lens. (And at the time, “girls” weren’t supposed to read sf or fantasy, so I consider my love of those “boys only” genres to be proto-feminist!). Crowe also points out that some of the values Tolkien explores in his work are not dissimilar to some of the values in feminism (he is NOT a feminist of course)–i.e. the environmentalism, and the pacifism Frodo comes to, and the critique of some forms of what we now call hegemonic masculinity (Boromir’s warrior ethos that is somewhat criticized by Faramir–in the book that is).
A lot of women write in Tolkien Studies (there are a lot more women in English/literary studies than a lot of other academic fields, but there are pockets that are still pretty male-dominated). So there’s some interesting issues going on there as well–two of the three biggest names in TOlkien studies are women (Verlyn Flieger and Jane Chance), and I’m not sure there are many canonical literary studies sub-fields you can say that about (it’s mostly because Tolkien’s work, like the genre of fantasy and sf, is not considered “true” literature, of course, so presumably it doesn’t matter if the girls play in it).
The lack of graphic or overt sex in Tolkien’s world (compared to oh say Robert Heinlein’s world) stands out as well (it was criticized by contemporaries of him who thougth the lack of sex meant the work wasn’t for adults)–as does the lack of rape (there is I think one forced marriage/rape in the SILM, and the man who forces the marriage does not end well).
Now, of course, there are more women working in sf/fantasy (and quite a few of them got their start because of their love of Tolkien!), and there are more choices for all readers. I’m a huge reader of women authors myself–but I taught myself, starting in 1983 or so when I became a feminist, and spent the next five years reading nothing but women authors because all I’d been taught in school and my first two university degrees were male authors! Amazing how much shit I got from some of the men in fandom when I was doing that (when I pointed out I’d read nothing but male authors during a lot of college years, however, that was normal).
I was actually pretty pissed with what happened to Eowyn in the book back in the day (after the movie, I began to see the point of marrying Faramir, heh, though in my slash fiction, I pair Frodo with Faramir–and usually save Boromir from dying, and get him together with Eowyn….and Aragorn….in fact, I have a WIP that’s all about the foursome going on there)–but then I realized a long while ago I not only wanted to be Eowyn, I was hot for Eowyn (queering her happily for many many years before realizing it)–which is an example of what literary studies call a resistant reader–a reader who reads against the ‘grain’ of the text or the intentions of the author. I could identify (from age 10 to my early 20s) with Frodo (who is technically a male character, but who stands out, as do the rest of the hobbits, as NOT fitting hegemonic masculine gender roles, not being the warrior, not achieving the victory he did through strength of arms or having a Big Sword) and with Eowyn, and did so happily.
And yes, while TOlkien never settled on a single authoritative version of the orcs/goblins, the basic philosophy of his storyverse is that evil can corrupt, but never create–so Morgoth takes prisoners of war (elves and in some versions men as well) and corrupts them and tortures them and brainwashes them to create orcs and goblins — there was a whole shitload of wars in Middle-earth during the First and Second Age related in the Silmarillion. He also wrote a lot of philosophy/theology in later life over the issue of free will and evil and the orcs/goblins.
The Entwives pretty much left the Ents as well!
Tolkien was an orphan (his father died when Tolkien was very young–three or four?–and his mother when he was 12 as I said above). Tolkien’s stories are full of orphans (as are the folktales and other medieval texts that he was an expert in). I don’t think it’s because he hated women–but because his experience of the world is that parents die, and then, in WWI, two of his three best friends were killed.
I shall now forcibly shut myself up! I’ve taught the HOBBIT twice the past year(75th anniversary), and am now teaching a class on the film, and working on scholarship on Tolkien–and, well, it’s a big thing for me.
ANd the New Year came in while I was writing that screed above!
Happy New Year! I hope 2013 is better than 2012 (our 2012 was pretty lousy).
OK, I shall dump more stuff on you all: Eowyn! (*waves at The Omega Woman! ME TOO).
There are multiple drafts of Tolkien’s work published in the fourteen volume HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH with commentary by Christopher TOlkien. I have read them, some several times.
Eowyn: in an early version, she’s going to be ARagorn’s bride: when they come to Edoras, they see her and Theoden’s daughter (who gets no lines, and soon disappears).
Then, when Tolkien realized he wanted to bring the Elves and Men together again, he had to decide what to do with Eowyn. Aragorn and Arwen are actually first cousins–i.e. Elrond and Elros were the sons of Beren and Luthien, the first Man/Elf –and yep only female Elves give up their immortality for men!. When the problem of the disparate afterlife came up again, the Valar decided that they had to solve this issue, and gave Elrond and Elros a choice: Elf or Man. Elrond chosen the Elven side; Elros, the Men’s, and became the first King of Numenor (the island given to the Men who fought with the Elves against Morgoth). Elros’ line was long-lived (and Aragorn is descended from that)–but mortal–and although Numenor fell into corruption (prompted by Sauron), breaking the ban on mortals going to Valinor, the virtuous Elendil and his two sons (Isildur and Anarion) and others survived the disaster (think: Atlantis). Arwen was invented very late in the writing process (that’s why the backstory of ARagorn and ARwen is in an Appendix–so was Rosie Cotton, by the way!). So the ruling lines of Gondor go back to Numenor, and to Beren and Luthien.
ANyway–back to Eowyn. First he thought he’d kill her (battle)–she’s an Amazon, etc. Dies fighting.
But then Faramir came along (also very late in the process!), and that marriage occurred (and an alternate reading of her narrative arc is that she achieves a great feat on the battlefield–one no man could ever match, and one she could not surpass–and she marries a ruling noble and retires to be a co-ruler in Ithilien). A lot of feminist history has shown that women of all classes in the Middle AGes, especially the earlier periods, had more rights and choices than did women after the Renaissance got going (Joan Kelly, “Did Women Have a Renaissance,” http://www.duke.edu/web/rpc/country_and_city/women2.html, argued that the increasing power of the centralized state stripped women of previous rights).
So…it’s complicated. And some women did see, and still see, Eowyn as feminist (after years of debating what “feminist literature” might or might not mean, I’m dubious that there’s any way to define the work by the content–not after all the debates I’ve heard–and have settled on reader response being a huge part of determining what is or is not a feminist work).
Eowyn as a character has one of the more complex histories/developments in the work–and Tolkien struggled with what to do with her. And despite all the problems, she still has those great lines about a cage and what will happen to the women when the warriors lose.
::applause::
Ithiliana, that was the BEST comment!
@The Omega Woman: Are you talking about Aravis in The Horse and His Boy? The depiction of the Calormens in that book is just…. no.
*places it on the ground*
*pushes it away with a stick*
*backs away slowly*
Also, Ithiliana, those were fantastic! I would totally take your Hobbit course!
Eowyn struck me as all kinds of Nice Guy-ish, but I really liked having a lady character kill the witchking.
What a great description!
Also absent in Tolkein’s writing is humour. The Hobbit has a little, and Jackson had to add some laden jokes in LOTR and The Hobbit so Middle Earth wasn’t quite such a miserable place. That said, Tolkein was writing sixty years ago, does he really need to be taken so seriously?
I remember reading in one of my father’s numerous biographies of that gentleman that the reason Tolkien didn’t include more female characters was that he felt he knew very little about them. He’d married late and had very few female friends, so he didn’t feel competent in writing about them for fear of getting it wrong and offending them. My impression was that he stuck to Goddesses (Arwen and Galadriel), who’s internal lives he could avoid, and a single heroic, boyish female warrior, who was so like Brunhilde that Wagner and the Germanic folklorists had already done a lot of the work for him.
Mind you, in the Silmarillion you get to know Galadriel quite well and she changes a lot as she gets older. So at some point he must have started to feel more confident.
He was a child of his age, culture, class and education and I think it’s as well to bear those in mind when reading him,
I thought there was humour in Fellowship of the Ring – Bilbos’s party, and the parts where the hobbits were going through the Shire. There were glimmers of it in Legolas and Gimli, later – like when Gimli throws a fit over Merry and Pippin sitting smoking in the ruins of Isengard when he and Legolas have run and ridden all over the place trying to rescue them. Certainly the tone of the later parts of the story are much more serious, which is hardly surprising. The thing I find most annoying is the way Frodo is such a passive figure (to me). I get that it’s taking all he can do to resist the Ring, but it’s like his personality is sapped at the same time – the journey through Mordor is almost an extended road to Calvary.
Seranvali – those are very interesting points, and I would say kudos to Tolkien for not presuming about women characters, in that case!
Meh, Mr C fell asleep, he has the flu. Thus, I return! How’s 2013 looking for those on the other side of the world?
Also, I too read Eowyn as a bit Nice Girl, just didn’t have a term for it at the time.
(Cut me some slack, I was about 8 or 9.)
“Please write your epic set of novels featuring females as you would like them portrayed and leave the rest humanity that resides in reality alone. Thank you.”
This is my favorite one by far. It displays such a lack of awareness I almost wonder if it is a Poe. But look at those upvotes!
I’m a huge Tolkien fanboy. That doesn’t mean I won’t readily acknowledge the major flaws–sexism, classism, racism. You can be a fan of something that has things you don’t approve of–too many fans feel the need to insist that the things they like and their creators are perfect.
When adaptations are recreating his works with almost the exact same problems they were printed with originally? Yeah, probably.
Ithiliana is motivating me to finally finish reading The Return of the King. I’ll have to do it quick, though, since the last Wheel of Time book is coming out soon (another can of fantasy gender worms).
” (another can of fantasy gender worms)”
I want someone to draw this.
G’day from almost-over 1st January, Cassandra!
Must say the future’s looking pretty much the same around here. ::looks around:: Cats snoozing. Telly on. Me not doing the writing I am halfway through after days of procrastination. Nope, nothing very different here.
Ah, Wheel of Time. I think I got a little way into the second book and gave up. The whole bit with the women imprisoned (and was there something about metal bindings?) was so ewwww I couldn’t persist. Plus Mum had read further on and got pissed off with the whole Dragon business, and it didn’t sound like something I wanted to pursue. Just as well given how LONG that series proved!
I am just seeing a doco of a half-grown hippo who comes into a kitchen to drink tea from a bottle!
Yoyo:
She is indeed, but she had nothing to do with Heavenly Creatures. But this is an excellent excuse to recommend Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, which is the other great early 90s NZ film about women’s lives.
Eowyn= Talyor Swift.
“Can’t you see that I’m the one that understands you?
Been here all along…
Why can’t you see-ee-ee
You belong with meee-ee-ee…”
*Snerk*
I’m just reading the Silmarillion and Beren’s and Luthien’s story. I thought them falling in love was pretty tired: He falls in love with her because she’s so beautiful and has a great singing voice, oh, that’s deep, and she just randomly falls in love with him back. However, I really like the rest of their story. Luthien’s father tells Beren he can marry Luthien if he brings back one of the Silmaril’s from Morgoth’s (the Big Bad) crown. Beren tries to, gets caught and thrown into prison. Luthien wants to save him, her father imprisons her high up in a tree to stop her from saving Beren, Luthien escapes by climbing down a rope made of her own hair and eventually saves Beren with the help of a magic dog. Finally they manage to get one of the Silmarils (although Luthien is really the one doing all the work here since she’s got magic powers and Beren doesn’t). In the end of that quest she saves his life after a werewolf bit of his hand. So she really is pretty far from the traditional fairy-tale princess, whom would have the prince doing all the work and fighting all the monsters. It’s clear that she’s not just some price for Beren to claim; SHE wants to marry HIM as well, and goes to great lengths to do so. And I think the subversion of the Rapunzel tale is cool too; that rather than a prince using her hair to rescue her, she’s using her hair to escape imprisonment herself and save her prince.
Now it was some time since I read the lord of the rings, but at the time I read Eowyn as not just doing anything for Aragorn – she was also really tired of just sitting at the castle like a good princess while the guys had all the action. There’s a little speech that Gandalf makes to her in the books that’s been transferred to Worma in the movie version that indicates as much. I was fine too with her completely giving up on fighting and marrying Faramir at the end of her arch – she’d already done a truly great deed, so maybe she was simply content then.
Galadriel wasn’t in the Bilbo book, but the stuff they added comes from other of Tolkien’s writings, it wasn’t invented for the movie from scratch.
So I’m in the camp who thinks Tolkien women are pretty good characters, BUT it’s still weird that there’s so few of them, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with calling that out. Now personally I’m much more annoyed with works that have lots of women in them but where the women are all stereotypical sexist characters, than with works that simply lack women. Still, it should be pointed out. I’m a big fan of the Bechdel test as well – not because a work that fails it is automatically sexist or one that passes it is automatically feminist (that is VERY much not true), but it’s an important eye-opener. We’re so used to seeing male-centric media that we often don’t react to it, although we totally notice when media is female-centric. Therefore, it’s important to keep pointing out.
@quantumscale I didn’t see Eowyn as going into battle or fighting the Witch King as a suicide thing at all. She was well-trained, and didn’t want to feel useless, hence the going into battle. She fought the Witch King because he killed her father in front of her.
To me the main sexism problem in LOTR is the under-representation of female characters rather than their actual portrayal.
Actually, despite being woman and white I reacted more to the racism in LOTR than to the under-representation of female characters… Scary people from the South and the East support Sauron while the noble Europeans fight him.
However, apparently Tolkien made notes and letters where he discussed what happened to the blue wizards. He figured that one of them went east and another south, and they were to help people in this area who were fighting Sauron. He was going back and forth on the issue of how successful the blue wizards were in that respect. Sometimes he thought that maybe they managed to stir up anti-Sauron revolutions in the east and south, and this helped weakening Sauron and therefore playing an indirect but important part in the ultimate success. It’s a pity we don’t have such stories… they would really have made the whole thing seem less racist.
I say this and I still love Tolkien. As others have pointed out, one can love something while recognising problematic elements.
It is a shame – though again, not surprising for the time and place – that the “Southrons” are just portrayed as a sort of mass of people deceived by Sauron. It’s almost odd in the context of the books being so influenced by Tolkien’s experiences in Europe during WWI.
If that makes no sense it’s because I’m posting half asleep after finally getting a blog done! Niters, all. :)
And yes, while TOlkien never settled on a single authoritative version of the orcs/goblins, the basic philosophy of his storyverse is that evil can corrupt, but never create–so Morgoth takes prisoners of war (elves and in some versions men as well) and corrupts them and tortures them and brainwashes them to create orcs and goblins — there was a whole shitload of wars in Middle-earth during the First and Second Age related in the Silmarillion.
It’s not obvious that every individual orch or goblin has to be created this way. (And I think Tolkien once said too that there “obviously” are female orchs as well, only we never see them in the books since they don’t go into battle.) Creationism rather than evolution is true in Tolkien’s universe, that much is clear. And it seems like only Illuvatar can create new species from scratch. But even if Morgoth originally made the orchs by torturing elves, it could be the case that the orchs could then produce more orchs the old-fashioned way.
Anyway, it’s clear that elves and dwarves reproduce through sex, it’s just that the women of these species (particularly when it comes to the dwarves) don’t play any parts in the stories.
And in the movie Saruman creates the Uruk-hai through some cloning process, but if I remember correctly, in the books it’s rather suggested that he had orchs and humans mating and give birth to some kind of hybrid which was bigger and tougher than regular orchs.
H.G.T.O.W. the sequel !
I think my mother and I are going to see the hobbit tomorrow actually, my brother’s too pissed about the changes to see it *sigh* his loss. I’m kind of thrilled they put Galadriel in, my first comments on finishing the book were “Idk wtf they can cut to make this under 4 hours” and “wtf, the only women are the ones fleeing the dragon?! I want Eowyn back!”
Yeah, I love Eowyn. Someone here commented on how she won’t just sit around and hope the men defeat Sauron because of what it’d mean if they lost. Her thing for Aragorn is a bit annoying, to be sure, but she defeats the damned witchking (he seriously needed a spell copy editor, Tolkien specifically wrote one of the Big Baddies only weakness as “women doing battle”, idk why that’s so hilarious, but it is)
Itsabeast — “@quantumscale I didn’t see Eowyn as going into battle or fighting the Witch King as a suicide thing at all. She was well-trained, and didn’t want to feel useless, hence the going into battle. She fought the Witch King because he killed her father in front of her.”
He’ll, even if it was suicide, wouldn’t trying to win that battle, and dying in the process, be better than what would’ve happened if they lost? (Which, of course, probably would’ve happened if she hadn’t sent the nazgul packing)
Tangentially, my autocorrect knows Tolkien terms, it doesn’t know things like “frikken” (no not frisked damnit) but corrected Galadriel…idk if I’m impressed or concerned…guess I should’ve expected Apple employees to be LoTR fans…
From time to time, I see MRAs over on The Shithead comment about fanning out and commenting on mass media stories as a way of evangelizing others. Here’s an example in the comments section – skim down and you’ll see a few. It’s about the Indian bus rape that killed a woman. Yes, she was with a male friend and he was also beaten, stripped, and thrown out of the bus. I wish we had an update on his condition but at least he survived. I consider him a hero for trying to protect her, but the MRAs have another take on all the reportage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/18/gang-rape-of-a-girl-inside-a-bus-in-new-delhi-raises-outrage-in-india/?tid=pm_world_pop. I can only imagine a world where MRAs wrote all the news stories.
Over the years, I’ve basically learned that dealing with genre fandom is a bit of an uphill battle. I’ve never read Tolkien so all my knowledge of this stuff is limited to the Jackson movies. Even then, people seem to take this shit personally. Like if I point out all the stuff going on with race, it’s like I’m somehow accusing Tolkien of being a racist and then they, as fans, should take offense to that. I mean, there’s a scene where bearded old white dude whose name I forget inspects a nude black-skinned orc and it’s like something out of Mandingo, this is stuff that’s worth talking about.
Also throwing in my two cents, Peter Jackson writes some great women characters from time to time (Heavenly Creatures is fantastic) but King Kong is really where it’s at if you want to see him be all aware of the racial and gender implications of his work.
@ Scarlett- I can’t deal with them there- too sad. Though I feel like just posting a link to the SPLC just so anyone who read them knows what they’re dealing with.
CS Lewis was a misogynist!! I am pretty shocked- I loved his characters. Oh, and yeah, racist as all hell. That shocks me not at all. I wish someone had mentioned that when I was a kid.
and in the comments section of the hobbit thingy, apart from dozens of people telling her to shut up and such, some posters think she should be fired. For writing something they didn’t like on The Hobbit. Seriously.
Oh, and the women who feel the need to post ‘I am a woman, and I still think she’s wrong’- odd, isn’t it?
(rubs eyes) Welp, I only remember a few things from the books (reading and listening). There’s a character named Tom Bombadill? Bombadeer? who sings a ridiculous song all the time, is possibly a grizzled old man and ends up with a beautiful, useless trophy wife. Eowyn (sp?) doesn’t get the man of her dreams. Arwen (sp?) stands by her man, he eventually dies and she’s stuck in the “man world”, bitter and unwanted and ends up becoming something like a comatose rock covered in moss. Oh, yeah, and her son with her man, the heir to the kingdom, gets really upset with dad for not dying soon enough for him.
It’s called The Daily Mail.
(I’m only half joking. The Daily Mail might actually be even worse on race issues, unless we’re talking specifically about The Spearhead.)
Ooh, this was a gem:
TommyVenter
6 hours ago
White females are increasingly becoming like blacks; always whining whenever a white man, in this case the Englishman Tolkien, dares to not promote the interests of their particular group. How about this blacks and white “ladies”, write your own stories and create your own mythologies instead of expecting white males to do it for you. Tolkien wrote for himself, just like Jane Austen or JK Rowling. And if he did not write strong female characters, then so be it. Get over your pathetic politically correct, black wannabe, “i’m a poor oppressed minority ’cause of the nasty white man” nonsense!
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/31/the-hobbit-why-are-there-no-women-in-tolkiens-world/#ixzz2GjhC6WUQ
“Eowyn (sp?) doesn’t get the man of her dreams.”
I never took her as loving him, certainly not for any length of time, but more being enamored with the idea of someone not as much a lump on a log as the rest of Rohan.
And that whole bit about Arwen being alone forever after Aragorn dies was her (rather annoying) father’s prediction what would happen if she married a human — he didn’t want to accept that she’d also choose to be mortal instead of an immortal elf. Afaik she dies not long after Aragorn does.
I’ve never liked Elrond’s whole thing with trying to protect his daughter driving away the man she loves and running from the battle for middle earth. Elrond is like, the patriarchy incarnate sometimes.
“I mean, there’s a scene where bearded old white dude whose name I forget inspects a nude black-skinned orc and it’s like something out of Mandingo, this is stuff that’s worth talking about.”
That’s Saruman inspecting his new creation, the Urak-hai. Yeah, he created those, doesn’t really help the implications any >.<
I think he was going for light = good and dark = bad in the day/night sense (the long standing religious motif) but failed miserably. Doctor Who got that one right with the Vashta Nerada *shudders*
When I read the Last Battle, I thought the reason Susan wasn’t there was that she was an atheist (no longer a friend of Narnia) and that the rest was just Lewis description of a strawman atheist (vain and superficial, have lost their purpose in life)When I read the Last Battle, I thought the reason Susan wasn’t there was that she was an atheist (no longer a friend of Narnia) and that the rest was just Lewis description of a strawman atheist (vain and superficial, have lost their purpose in life). The suxuality bit could be there too, but I think Lewis means this as a consequence of atheism.
Talcaris- awesome analysis.
Regarding Tolkien. I think his lack of female characters is simply a byproduct of his character writing ability. Some male writers just don’t feel like they can write convincing females. This was also the case with H.P. Lovecraft. Great writer, but lacking in any believable female characters.
Interestingly enough, the comments below the editorial are more interesting than the column itself. A bunch of men trying hard to disprove the obvious. What’s so hard about accepting that the Hobbit doesn’t have a lot of women in it? That doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to like it.
BTW, I’m an atomic bear. Nice to meet you! I recently discovered this site and it’s awesome.
My “impressions” could so easily be wrong. In the movies, I thought that Eowyn just fell for the first guy that was not from her area and that Aragorn, while being correct about her being in love with an illusion, was still a meanie. Both Eowyn and the Hobbits were treated badly when they wanted to go fight: this is man’s work, not for silly women and Hobbits. I’d forgotten what the Elf King did to his daughter. It’s ..interesting that the comments from these guys call Elrond “feminine” when the elf fought in deadly battles. He’s an arrogant pain in the ass but certainly didn’t shy away from “manly” battles in his youth. Thanks, Argenti.