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:
So then Frodo was all, hey, I totally saved the world partly because she wanted me to, and what did I get in return? Well, I got to leave with the elves and stuff but THAT BITCH NEVER EVEN KISSED ME, AFTER ALL I DID TO IMPRESS HER. I guess I must just be too nice.
@CassandraSays – YES. PRATCHETT. PRATCHETT ALL THE WAY.
Yeah, they certainly could have switched the genders of some of the characters for the movies; they also could have cast more actors of color. And I have read the series, and I can think the books are good while acknowledging that they have that problem. The books are pretty racist – the only POCs in the books are the oliphaunt-riding men from the South who end up fighting the heroes. Tolkien was an old white guy writing in the 40s; he wasn’t omniscient or immune to privilege.
oooh, slavey’s back, collecting likes and everything!
@ Cassandra- Omg, she totally did! And after Frodo went and offered her the Ring of Power and everything!!
I love love love love love Pratchett, and I love Vimes most of all. Watch books are definitely my favourite, I like how Vimes and (most of) the rest of the Watch always look out for the downtrodden people and stop the rich from oppressing them.
I think that one of the more under-rated ones is Jingo, I just really adore Nobby’s naivety totally smacking down Fred’s casual racism when Fred’s accusing Klatchians of being lazy scroungers who steal all their jobs.
Dwarf women have beards and are so simialr to dwarf men that non-dwarves can’t tell that they are women. I really wish they had randomly made some of the party female, mentioned that fact in passing and left it as a way to discourage judging books by their covers. They coulda even kept the same cast!
Oh god, I’m reading the Pratchett stuff in the thread now. Death is my favorite character, hands down (when I die, I want there to be a glass of sherry there because I remember Death feeling sad that people put it out for the Hogfather but not him). And Vetinari has made my list of fictional “husbands.”
See what happens when you offer women gifts? That’s supplicating, that is. Women don’t like that. If he’d said “I could give this to you but I won’t because you don’t deserve it” then she’d have been all over him.
Poor Frodo, why did nobody tell him about Game?
Ahahhaa, and some fake lady says: “Well, the only thing this article accomplished was to make me ashamed of being a woman, as any association with the author of it physically disgusts me.” Seriously, this is just amazing. Hey,can anyone link me up really fast to that splc article?
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/31/the-hobbit-why-are-there-no-women-in-tolkiens-world/#ixzz2GmCeWvya
Frodo shoulda negged her about whether her nails were press-ons.
hahah, he totally should have negged Galadriel. Like told her she was pretty hot… for a woman that was several eons old.
Ninja’d! Curses!!
Wait, was he staring at the wall because he was confused, or because he was so moved, or because it made him think about his own illness, or what?
@thenat – and the whole bit where Nobby was the glamorous dancer (erk in every sense!) and started getting riled about it all, not that any of it stuck. 😀
@pillowinhell – yay, me too 🙂
And yeah, “Jingo” is good. Most of the Vimes books are. The Vimes story arc and the Wyrd Sisters story arc are my favorites, although I do also like Susan.
The best feeling is when some character in Pratchett Novel A makes a reference to some person/event from Pratchett Novel B (especially one that’s totally tangential and not essential to the plot), and you realize “I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!”
(Thanks for letting me fangirl for a while on this thread)
@emilygoddess – I don’t know how long ago this was, so it could have been before his illness. There wasn’t much to go on from the context, but I had the impression it was a combination of being moved and trying to get his head around being told a character he created could have that effect.
Now I want to start a Tumblr called Yo, Galadriel. Yo, Galadriel, is that your real hair or extension? Yo, Galadrial, nice robe, it really hides your butt.
@Kittehs
Yes! The brilliant thing about Nobby/Beti was the short lesson that women are much more likely to want to be around them if you treat them like human beings, not like highly-decorative yet suspicious ornaments.
I just re-read Equal Rites and spent a good length of time saying “Granny said what?!”, it’s funny how much she develops.
When I split with my evil ex we halved the Discworld collection, so I got 6 of the books I haven’t read in at least three years for Christmas, currently re-reading Mort <3
@ Cassandra- you absolutely have to now.
Yo Galadriel, you’ve got a fine ass- most elf chicks are slender but you can really carry a bit of junk in the trunk.
Anyone noticed that evil and vile are anagrams… Steele probably hasn’t.
Ooh, I can’t help it, other great comments:
“Oh shut up. I love the Hobbit, am a woman, and wish you would just shut up. This is a great book and not deserving of your narrow-minded, yuppie, feminist literary criticism. Just who the hell cares if there are no women? Just who the hell cares (& in fact, there are women). But still. I don’t. It’s a great book! Shut up! You’re ruining the book!”
Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/31/the-hobbit-why-are-there-no-women-in-tolkiens-world/#ixzz2GmIpOyTS
I gave away most of my Discworld books when we moved house – we really did have to downsize that much. I never liked the first three, I thought they really only picked up with Mort. Couldn’t get through Colour of Magic at all.
Yeah, Granny develops hugely through the books. I think that’s mentioned in one of the reference books – how she’s a village witch in Equal Rites and the eminence grise of Lancre by the time of Lords and Ladies.
Yo, Galadriel, all I want is a single strand from your golden head, but try to get one of the ones from the less-frizzy side, okay?
Yo, Galadriel, you are truly the fairest of elves. Well, okay, at least the second-fairest.
Yo, Galadriel, you’re almost as hot as your granddaughter.
Yo, Galadriel, it has been said that the light of the Two Trees of Valinor has been snared in your tresses. You should probably brush your hair sometime so things won’t get snared there anymore.
Yo, Galadriel, nice ring. I bet you got that from some bad boy.
@Kitteh – yeah, I met Rincewind when I read “Interesting Times,” and he’s way too cynical for me. The early stories seem…hard to get into.
Hard to relate to, I mean.