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:
At the time the LOTR movies were coming out, I was all like, “Can we have some dwarves who are not Scottish, pls?” I don’t know where that trope came from, but it’s long since been a boring cliche.
Well, despite some problems I really like the movies. I’m fine with elves having pointy ears as well. In a movie, it’s nice for them to have a distinguishing feature. And I understand their reasons for changing Faramir… Philippa Boyens talked about how it wouldn’t work in a movie to cross-cut between the giant spider fight and the humans vs orch fight, it would just become too much action at once. So they wanted to postpone giant spider to movie three, but then they needed something else to create drama for Frodo and Sam in movie two. That was one reason for making Faramir the obstacle he is in the movie. The second was that they thought the ring would lose some of its threat value if there’s suddenly a human who isn’t tempted by it at all. I can sort of see that as well. In the books he just comes out as someone who’s far less easily-swayed than others, but I can see how in the movies, where there’s necessarily less background and build-up about the ring, the ring would seem less threatening than they want it to be if a person was completely unaffected by it.
In general, I accept that there might be perfectly valid reasons for changing characters and events when turning books into movies. But the Elrond/Arwen story as it’s done in the movies doesn’t work.
And yeah, the Scottish dwarf thing… doesn’t exactly bother me, but it feels unmotivated. Tolkien based the dwarves’ language more on Hebrew, from what I’ve read.
Maybe the dwarves were channelling the Pictsies …
The radfems killed the Image style of the 90’s and are trying to kill it’s revival in the DC New 52. They also killed the tradition of Booth Babes and are trying to kill sexy female cosplay like when they forced the banning of a famous female cosplayer in 2012!
Just watched the Hobbit for the second time, and yup, Sting is the only elf-sword that glows blue in the presence of goblins or orcs. It seemed to be the only sword that was stated to do so, however. I never saw Orcrist glowing blue even when Thorin was using it just before they entered Rivendell, and Gandalf walks through a batch of goblins in silhouette and Glamdring isn’t making so much as a peep.
This from Wikipedia, in a description of Narsil:
The same list describes Biter as being found by Thorin and carried by him through The Hobbit. It says it’s “the mate of Glamdring” but doesn’t say anything about it glowing blue, ever.
So it looks like Beater’s not glowing blue is to be consistent with the LOTR movies.
RE: Abnoy
Dude, you’re speaking in FAVOR of the infamous Liefeldian 90s? Now I KNOW you’re trolling. NOBODY misses the XTREEM era. It had twin clones of Hitler battling Superman for Batman’s corpse!
Also, it was TONY HARRIS freaking out about female cosplayers most recently. Go be pissed at him.
So, my rule: I will not engage with or take seriously any troll complaining about “radfems” until they tell me what they think radical feminism is, and some reasons why they consider it distinct from other branches of feminism. I don’t think it’s necessary to know much about feminism in general, or radical feminism in particular, to have a conversation here; in fact, I think demanding that sort of knowledge is a way of stifling commenters without any experience with academic feminism. But if you’re going to mention it by name, and you’re going to whine about it, you’d better fucking know what it is.
This rule also applies if you complain about those pesky 2nd wavers.
In this particular case, it would be enough to just point to a specific instance of a specific group of self-identified radical feminists doing what you’re claiming they have done. That would be enough to show that when you say “radfems,” you actually mean “radfems,” not “women I don’t like.” 9 out of 10 times you guys mean women you don’t like.
Liefeld is the one who can’t do hands who also thinks that women’s torsos are shaped like insects, right?
OH GOD i forgot all about that. The sheer XTREEM AWSUMNISS of I AM A MAN!! *pawnch* drove it from my mind.
It should not have been forgotten.
@CassandraSays: Yup. Don’t click that link if you have any sort of anatomical knowledge AT ALL, or if you don’t mind spending the rest of the day curled up in the corner at the sheer horror of it all.
Falconer why did I click that?! My gods though, makes me feel great about my hatred of drawing hands and feet if not from a real life model!
@ Falconer
Someone should tell him that he’s taking the term “wasp-waisted” a bit too literally.
I think this is my favorite fail.
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1070534/8.jpg
Why is that…furry thing’s tail coming out of the middle of its butt cheek?
*dies* that’s not ho taits Orkney!
I’m leaving that for you viewing pleasure. I was trying to say that that’s not how tails work, wow auto correct just wow.
I want to steal a phrase from Photoshop Disasters and refer to Liefeld’s entire body of work as Baroque Anatomy.
Another favorite. Check out the feet on the purple woman. Now, it’s not uncommon for someone to have one foot half a size larger than the other, but…
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1185282/Youngblood_000_Page_20-21.jpg
I’m also curious about why he finds women who appear to have snapped their spines in half at the waist so sexy. It seems to be his version of the boobs and butt pose.
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1184980/Badrock2.jpg
The nineties are to good comics what smallpox is to good health.
I’m a cosplayer and a feminist. Has the troll’s brain exploded yet?
Not how lasers work.
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1185112/Prophet2.jpg
I’m not even into comics and I want to smack this guy with my glove and challenge him to a duel, so I can only imagine how hardcore comics fans feel about him.
Is he wearing UGGs?
Broken spine pose from a different perspective. Try to picture where her butt would be in relation to her shoulders and her chest.
http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1185096/past6.jpg
I think movie!Elrond suffered from movie!Arwen being mostly as boring and inactive as book!Arwen; if Arwen had been more involved in the plot (I’ve heard there were originally plans to have her go fight at Helm’s Deep), Elrond’s objections might’ve been played as genuine and justifiable parental concern instead of creepy overbearing paternalism.
(Not that I’m totally convinced that having a more active Arwen would’ve been handled well, but I think it would’ve at least helped explain Elrond’s attitude.)