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:
BIgMomma: OH OH OH! Diane Duane’s YOUNG WIZARD series.
I’ve made several of my friends “coolest godmother” or “coolest aunt” evah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards
If she’s already (or soon to be) reading at the teen level…
Do you have an iProduct of some sort? YALSA* has an app: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/products/teenbookfinder
You can also see some of their “Best” lists of recent fiction here (but you need to fill out a short form, grrr, why do they do that): http://www.ala.org/yalsa/books/nonmembers
More here: http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/bbya#previous
Of course, my standard response is “Go to the Library.” At least in the US, they love doing reader recommendations.
*Young Adult Library Services Association
p.s. For everyone, lots of free older SF titles here:
http://archive.org/details/sciencefiction
@BigMomma
I really enjoyed the Uglies books. They are probably at about smart 9 y.o. level. Lots of strong women in those books (protagonist, best friend, villain, etc.), decent (subtle) politics, and the fourth book is awesome on YouTube/social media. It does do the “everyone is brown in the future” thing, but otherwise, I think they are pretty spot-on for social justice issues.
@BigMomma
I don’t know if this would work for your family, but my mom read to my sister and I until middle school. That meant we got adult, not necessarily age appropriate books, in a setting where we could deal with the content as it came up. I was 10 or 11 when we did The Good Earth and I really enjoyed it. You could also swap and have your daughter read to you if that would work. Just an idea for dealing with her skill surpassing her age (if that makes sense).
BigMomma, has your daughter read any of Tamora Pierce’s books? she was one of my favourites when I was about your daughter’s age. They’re good fantasy with fantastic female characters, I’d recommend starting with The Song Of The Lioness series.
I also really loved/still love the Anne Of Green Gables series, maybe your daughter might?
my username isn’t showing up as KittySnide, which is me, I’m not socking, honest!
When I was 11, my school librarian gave me The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles when I requested thicker books. I haven’t reread it since, though, so grain of salt.
KittySnide – WordPress has an evil habit of changing usernames. Does it to me all the time.
Cool name, btw. I can just see a cat sneering when I think of it. 😀
I hate how Tolkien gets excused for not writing women characters because he felt he didn’t understand them,
Bah, is it now the obligation and/or responsibility of any artist, in this case a White Male, to pander to any audience, in this case, females in general? You should even be thankful at least he was honestly humble about his artistic limitations as a fiction writer, because if he had written more female characters who wouldn’t have “rung true” as “real-life women”, you would be complaining that his female characters would be either “stereotypical” or “fake”. That’s what always irked me about Western Liberals, especially American Feminists. They’re such lazy whiners, when it comes to things like this. If you feel that an author’s work is not “diverse” enough for you, then just either find something else or make your own. If you’re not the target audience, well, that’s just too bad, but that’s your problem. It’s not the responsibility nor obligation of artists to cater to an audience. If you want, get your Big Daddy Government to do so, since you pay taxes after all. Or maybe you think men should have to do so, just because “women!” Don’t forget, you feminists killed chivalry, so don’t go crying now that men refuse to feed your ego and buy into your spoiled princess entitlement mentality. Furthermore, this is yet another example of the disgusting sexist double-standard that men can’t ever have male-only establishments, oh no, that would be a crime against humanity, they have to always let women in. And yet, hypocritically, they also demand the right to have female-only establishments as “safe spaces” and whatnot.
“Hey, anyone got some good suggestions for my 9yr old daughter.”
Off the top of my head…
http://www.amazon.com/Little-Fur-1-Legend-Begins/dp/B003D7JW38/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357179456&sr=1-1&keywords=Little+Fur
and other works by the author.
http://www.amazon.com/Isobelle-Carmody/e/B000AP9HRW/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
@Abnoy
Fuck off with your “pandering” bullshit.
Abnot, get stuffed. No one’s saying they wanna dig Tolkein up and make him re-write the damn book, but you MRAs and other retrograde morons are sure acting like it. It’s a valid criticism.
Bigmomma, both my kids liked The Secret Country by Pamela Dean (and their tastes in general did not then, and do not now, mesh). There are two sequels, also both good.
I both love it and feel the need to point out (courtesy of my middle eastern Christian father) that middle eastern shepherds lead their sheep. Sheep which look a lot more like goats than you’d think, which also made the whole separating-sheep-from-goats thing make more sense.
“It’s a valid criticism.”
And who can say what even makes any criticism “valid” in the first place? I suppose you’re entitled to your opinion, but it’s also my prerogative to counter-criticize your whiny whining whininess. You’re not even the target audience of the books nor the author!
Abnoy: So…. anyone who has written anything is exempt from criticism if they are dead? I am so glad to hear the MRM will now stop bitching about Valerie Solanas, Cynthia McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Margaret Sanger, and Susan B. Anthony.
And where did I ever say that? But yes, if you’re not the target audience, you really shouldn’t complain about not liking it because it’s not even meant for your consumption in the first place. Of course, if the work is inciting it’s target audience to do something that would affect you negatively, then of course, you have the right to get involved, but I fail to see how the LOTR negatively affects females at all. Or is the collective ego of Western Womanhood that insecure and unconfident that it has to viciously attack anything and everything that it instantly deems even the slightest bit remotely threatening to it’s pathetically frail and fragile self-esteem? Though to be fair, Western Manhood is practically the same in it’s own way. If indeed that is the case, then how miserable you Westerners have become! Hahaha, Tolkien was right, the flame of the West is going, going, gone… No wonder why, what with the modern culture of victimhood propagated by your own MSM…
And where did I ever say that?
That would be the implicit conclusion to be drawn from this: That’s what always irked me about Western Liberals, especially American Feminists. They’re such lazy whiners, when it comes to things like this.
But yes, if you’re not the target audience, you really shouldn’t complain about not liking it because it’s not even meant for your consumption in the first place.
Who says women weren’t in the target audience?
Hi all of you, thanks for the suggestions! Haven’t got back to you earlier as we were all off watching Wreck It Ralph.
@cloudiah, our local library is teeny, literally 4 shelves of YA lit, some of which we have donated when we’ve had doubles of books. However, I’ve been tipped off to a great one an hour away which has virtually a whole floor for YA. It’s just finding time to get there what with poxy work and all (everything shuts at the weekend where we live!)
@some gal, yeah I do still read to her and do use it as a way to introduce harder lit. She is very independent though and isn’t consistently content to let me read to her. So it’s a bit erratic. Maybe it would appeal for her to read to me…
And also cloudiah, I meant to say that I’ve steered clear of iproducts and I’m an Android gal. I sometimes regret that decision!
Hey ABNOY? Do you get that not targeting women means cutting your potential audience in half? This isn’t like targeting to adults here or something.
Jeez, is Abnoy trying to get a head start on Most Boring Troll/ Biggest Whiner of 2013?
“Who says women weren’t in the target audience?”
Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that MOST of the main characters are male? And too, the lack of an obvious character for what was then in that milieu, the average female reader, to identify with (as opposed to say, Harry Potter, where it’s obvious from the start Hermione Granger is there for the female reader to identify with/JK Rowling’s idealized self-insertion in the story), with the exception of that single shieldmaiden, who even now, is not exactly representative of the (numerical) majority of women…
“Hey ABNOY? Do you get that not targeting women means cutting your potential audience in half? This isn’t like targeting to adults here or something.”
And this should concern me how, exactly? I’m not an investor nor a stockholder/shareholder in the movie’s revenues, am I now? I’m just an individual member of the audience, and whether a work appeals to anybody else is not my concern. All I care about, as a general rule, when I watch a movie is whether I liked it or not, since I spent my time and cash on it. That said, on general principle, I have always hated the “princess entitlement complex” too many feminists hypocritically have, which is why I’m even bothering to comment on someone else’s review. Normally, I’d be, like, yeah, whatever. “Oh, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, but we can’t make stories starring women on our own, so you men should make them for us.” Yeah, right, not!
“Jeez, is Abnoy trying to get a head start on Most Boring Troll/ Biggest Whiner of 2013?”
Hah, as I noticed the regulars around here sure do get bored when one of their enemy actually makes such sense that not even they can ignore it. It’s like how the general audience only accepts gay men (this is one of those times I can sympathize with them) in a major starring role is if they fit the “camp queer” stereotype.
BigMomma, I’m also an android gal! I hope you can make it to the larger library because libraries = socialism so all is good. XD
OMG OMG we’ve been infiltrated by sexbots!