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:
Your Medusa gravatar disappeared for quite a while here, then came back the other day.
Maybe she was busy. 🙂
I never got into Pern, but I had a very similar problem with the Sword of Truth series. I read the first one, liked it a lot, then found out the author is an Ayn Rand fan. NOOOOOOOOOOO! And then I braced myself and read the rest of the damn series, because that’s how I roll. But a great deal of the enjoyment was gone, once I started…noticing stuff.
On the subject of books that you had to pull away from: Piers Anthony. He owned proto-me’s geeky soul from the ages of eight to thirteen, and now… they’re so damned CREEPY. (And some of them are just INEPT. I’m MSTing one of the later Xanth novels, and when you can excise fucking three of the first five chapters without affecting the read, you’re in some heap of trouble.)
I read a few of the Xanth ones years ago, too. Go into them from reading Night Mare. Yeah, not ones I’d want to re-read now.
I stuck with McCaffrey for a while for the sake of the dragons, but oh la wie what a misogynist crapfest with zero character development. Same thing Sword of Truth. First one was not too horrible. Iffy but not horrible, and then it just went on and on and on with the same story written over and over and over with zero character development. Argh!
I watched Bane of the Batman last night and hated it too.
Well, I suppose the creators of the stuff you delete and destroy don’t really mind as long as they get the royalties from your legal purchases, even if happens to be indirectly secondhanded, so I guess it’s all good in the end…
Anyway, I can really relate to all the people who avoid and annul the stuff that they used to agree to and appreciate but now they abhor and which appals them. I can’t enjoy American media, especially in comics and cartoons and computer games, as much as I did in the time of my youth (which was not too long ago, all things considered) because of all the “females: perfect, (straight) men: worst” misandric radfeminazi subtext which has slowly but surely take over ever-more stuff over the past couple of decades*…
*which to proverbially beat the dead beast-of-burden even further, happened in many cases, I guess, because the very worst species of fangirls co-opted formerly fanboy-pleasing franchises instead of making their own. As a result, farewell fanservice and goodbye gratuity tsk tsk tsk. Luckily, there’s still all the stuff Made-In-Japan (and even Korea and China, to a certain extent), who fortunately for me remain more or less resistant to overseas cultural imperialism and foreign moral crusaders…
Yes ABNOY, you hate the US, we get it. Try not to lame feminism for our cultural imperialism though ok? The imperialism came first, and feminists generally favor letting other ultras figure out their own shit (you’ll note that most of the commenters here are American, UK/Commonwealth or EU)
Batman et all are just so “females: perfect, (straight) men: worst”! I’ll grant ou that Square makes excellent games though.
Sorry if I just fucked up the UK versus Commonwealth thing!
It’s odd seeing the guy from Being Human looking all normal mixed in with all those freakish looking characters. I still want to see the hobbit regardless and will always love LOTR.
As I said earlier, I’m re-reading Silmarillion, and I just came upon a bit which is sort of… radical? It’s about the fall of Numenor. Numenor was this civilisation that was way more advanced than all the other human societies on Earth. Back when they were good, they’d sometimes travel around and just altruistically share their knowledge with other people. However, when they started to go evil, they became imperialistic, and became “conquerers rather than teachers”. They’d exploit more “primitive” peoples and take the resources of their lands. They eventually turned to worshipping Melkor (Satan in Tolkien’s universe) because Sauron told them that Melkor would create more and more lands for them to conquer – he basically promised them an everlasting imperialism.
Eventually they set out to conquer Valinor (sort of like Paradise, although in the old days in Tolkien’s universe you could physically travel there by boat) because they wanted immortality, and were then punished by God who sank their entire country in the ocean.
Anyway, I was a bit surprised on the imperialism=evil thing, although when you think about it it is a sort of running theme in a lot of his stuff.
Finally caught up with this thread. Very frustrating! My girlfriend and I saw The Hobbit last week. She wanted to know why the Elves called Gandalf ‘Mithrandir’ and I was so pleased with myself that I knew the answer! Yeah! Imma hardcore Tolkien fan!
Then I come here and it turns out everyone knows, like, twenty times more than I do. Like I say, very frustrating!
(PS – you people are awesome!)
Dvarghundspossen – I always found the chapter on the rise and fall of Numenor the most interesting of the Silmarillion. Possibly it reminded me of the idea of Charn in The Magician’s Nephew, which I’d read as a kid and really liked. I wasn’t greatly taken with the story of Aldarion and Erendis, though. But the whole rise of the civilisation, then gradual corruption and fall – yeah, it appealed more than the First Age parts.
That’s something I think people overlook when talking about Elrond not wanting Arwen to give up her immortality by marrying Aragorn: he’d already lost his twin brother Elros that way, at the beginning of the Second Age. He’d had some six thousand-plus years of that, plus the separation from his wife (though at least he would see her again). He can hardly be blamed for his reaction, I think.
I still think Hugo Weaving was a totally ewwww choice for him. Elrond was the son of the most beautiful being to walk Middle-Earth, Dior, the son of Luthien and Beren. He was the father of Arwen, whose beauty recalled that of Luthien. I am sorry but Hugo Weaving just does not cut it!
/rant
Whoops, grandson of Dior, not son. Dior’s daughter Elwing was Elrond and Elros’s mother.
Kitteh, so glad someone else agrees on the casting of Elrond – completely ewwww. Ironically, I’d always thought they should have cast Richard Armitage (Thorin).
Anyone else massively bugged that in the film of The Hobbit, when they’re all fighting the goblins, neither Orcrist nor Glamdring glowed blue? /pedantry
Kitten, good points about Elrond. (Btw, didn’t someone way earlier in the thread claim that Arwen and Aragorn were first cousins? No, they were not, and first cousins marrying were forbidden by both elves and men. But Aragorn’s distant ancestor was Arwen’s first cousin.) And I agree by the casting of Hugo Weaving. Plus he’s unexplicably old-looking. You could explain that if he had been ageing human-style before he was given the choice to become an immortal elf, but people who’ve only seen the movies must be really perplexed as to why he’s the only elf with wrinkles.
Husband also complains that in the movies, Elrond behave way too much like Steve Martin’s character in “father of the bride” – like, he’s not just trying to convince Arwen that marrying a human would be a terrible idea, he’s totally patronising her (and lies to her as well – “Arwen, the deadline for leaving Middle Earth is totally coming up, the last ship is about to sail NOW”, and then WAAAAAY later we see several characters leaving on ships for Valinor). That’s just weird considering how old they both are.
MY PEOPLE! MY PEOPLE! I HAVE FOUND MY HOME!
:: jumps onto thread, rolls around in glee ::
I think my favorite bit was when someone tried to mansplain Tolkien to Ithiliana.
Abnoy: *which to proverbially beat the dead beast-of-burden even further, happened in many cases, I guess, because the very worst species of fangirls co-opted formerly fanboy-pleasing franchises instead of making their own.
Oh NOES! The girls like boy stuff, and that ruins it.
Misogynist much? Yep.
Stupid much? Yep.
Shooting yourself in the foot? Yep.
I can’t help but wonder what Abnoy is reading that I’m missing. I mean, superhero comics? Sausage fest, yo. Superman’s straight, as is Batman, and they’re pretty high up there. (Hal Jordan’s a dumbass, but that has nothing to do with him being straight and EVERYTHING to do with him being Hal Jordan.) Wildcat is badass. Booster Gold is full of unexpected depths. The Blue Beetle is clever and funny or adorable and resourceful (depending on which you were raised on).
And sci-fi? I mean, jesus. You have all the straight men you want. (Though then again, Spider Robinson loves him his pan folk, but I don’t see why this should bother you.)
While Japan is responsible for yaoi, men fucking for the titillation of a girl audience. Seriously, what am I missing here?
That Bisho men are hot? Idk what else you could be missing (besides ABNOY’s brain, not sure where that is)
@LBT
Compare and contrast these two statements by Abnoy, only one paragraph apart (emphasis mine):
So, to Abnoy, women not being overtly objectified and sexualized is “misandric radfeminazi subtext”.
The emphasis was meant to be on As a result, farewell fanservice and goodbye gratuity tsk tsk tsk., but it didn’t work, probably because of the blockquote (damn things, even when you get them right they find a way to mess with you).
Yay, I’m not the only person who looks at Weaving as Elrond and goes ewww!
I read Wiki’s summary of how the film changed his character, and had him lying to Arwen as you mentioned, Dvarghundsspossen – really annoying. Jackson seems to have a thing for making good characters dubious, if that and his treatment of Faramir (one of my other favourites) are anything to go by. Not to mention crap makeup … Mr Receding Hairline Elrond who looks like a hippie Spock and Mr Suddenly Blondish Faramir. And the cliche of elves with pointed ears. Fuckfuckfuckfuck. I never wanted to see the film and now I’m really, really glad I didn’t.
I was displeased with the Elrond character in the film. It was as though they took a person I knew for most of my life who maintained and welcomed people of all sorts to the “Last Homely House” and turned him into a stranger.
In the additional footage in the extended version they congratulated themselves on how the fans did not object to the outrageous crap they did to the characters in order to tell their story instead of Tolkiens. HAH! Enormous mendacious disembodied anus.
::head explodes with wrath::