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:
@Laura:
In that case, Hathaway has a pretty incredible waist. To clarify: I thought it was super obvious that she had a tight corset UNDER the bodysuit, to create an incredible waist like that (like, watch her when she’s straddling the bat-bike), but maybe Hathaway is just built that way.
FTR — a well fitting corset is rather comfortable, you can breathe and balance fine (hell, balance better since slouching is impossible). Stilettos certainly negate the balance though!
/random corset comment
I think she lost a lot of weight for both Catwoman and Les Mis (not that that would change her body shape, necessarily, but it may have emphasized it more). I remember an interview she did about the Batman film in which the interviewer kept trying to bring the subject back around to her diet and exercise programs until she got sick of it and asked him if he was trying lose weight and fit into a catsuit.
I know the Adam West show’s Catwoman suit and Batgirl costume had boning and lacing built into them, and it’s possible that Anne’s Catsuit has the same, since it looks a lot like the sixties one, but if it does, I haven’t heard, and it wasn’t mentioned in the film production notes.
I spend a lot of time on comic costuming forums, so I’ve heard a lot about her costume, and Bane’s, and so on. Space in my brain that could have been storing algebra or something is now devoted to remembering exactly what lipstick Heath Ledger’s Joker wore.
It’s Maybelline.
@LBT
Zot! was awesome, and so was the JLI, I’ll grant you that.
On the subject of Liefeld, I think I get what he’s about. Basically he’s a kid doodling his own superheroes, several of which are “totally original”, by which I mean they’re pretty much just heroes he finds cool which he then copies and slaps a different name on it. He just never grew out of that phase.
Also, I suspect he may be trying to be Jack Kirby, but without the talent/hard work to pull it off. For an example of what I mean, I direct you to this cover of Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, a Jack Kirby comic. Tell me if that doesn’t remind you of Liefeld.
That Wonder Woman picture is terrific.
Let’s see, the only comics I’ve read (paper, that is) since the 60s were a couple on Dracula in the mid-nineties, after Coppola’s Dracula came out.
::retires to non-comic persons’ corner::
@The Kittehs’
If you ever decide to get into them, check a library if you can. Comics are one of the more expensive things to get into. I’m lucky I dated into (like married into without the marriage) a comics collection or I would’ve never read any of them.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be buying them, for sure. Apart from the $$, I haven’t anywhere to store them.
@The Kittehs’
Sorry if that is unwanted advice, just lots of people don’t know libraries have them and I have too many librarian friends to not advertise. 🙂
No, that’s totally cool! 🙂
RE: Kittehs
Former library student here, plus a fan of comics media and someone who makes them myself. If you want any recs or if there are certain genres/tropes you enjoy, I can help! 😀
Library geeks unite! Hey, fellow library geeks, have you all read Rex Libris? Someone on here recommended it to me; I have the world’s worst memory, so I can’t remember who but THANK YOU. Lots of fun.
Yeah, I read the first volume. Enjoyed it immensely, especially since the art style is not one I can usually get into.
Owww, favorite comics? I have many. Mainly, I’m an Alan Moore girl — anything he writes. Strangely, Hollywood has a habit of mucking up his work into iffy screenplays. He has a series called Promethea — about a goddess who chooses a human vessel every decade or so. You wouldn’t believe how good it is.
Lets see, The Runaways, that’s an awesome series.
Oh! Y: The Last Man, dystopian Sci-fi by Brian K. Vaughan (Lost creator) and Pia Geurra.. Grant Morrison’s stuff is weird, but if you’re willing.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Series, and Black Orchid.
Warren Ellis is special too. Here, read this series for free online. It’s Ellis’ FreakAngels:
http://www.freakangels.com/?p=23
It’s based on the kids from Children of the Damned — like if they grew up, on the run but became intriguing young adults.
All these comics have awesome female characters.
Sandman is really good; I got Doad a giant volume of it for Christmas because he liked it so much. I also liked Runaways, about the only ensemble cast I can think of in any genre that’s not specifically aimed at girls, but has more girls than boys in it.
And yes, a lot of the comics I mentioned above can be found in libraries — except for Grant Morrison’s stuff, maybe.
Yeah, katz, love Runaways. And the girl characters are so diverse, so fun. It’s one of the best. And I didn’t mention Joss Whedon’s Buffy comic. He considers it a pure continuation of the TV series.
I love Bill Willingham’s Fables (all the fairy tale characters were chased out if their worlds into ours long ago, it has politics and strong women and war and some romance).
Seconding Y: The Last Man. All good female characters since only poor Yorick, accompanied by his monkey, is left alive. Misandry! Shakespeare! Spies! Wonderful series. If you like politics, Brian K. Vaughn’s Ex Machina is a great series about a superhero who goes into politics. Less international than Y, though.
‘Looks like you’re the only fake geek around here.”
Heh, whatever. I don’t know at all about this inane global trend of being proud of being a geek, it’s much ado about nothing really. Are birds proud of being able to fly? Are fish proud of being able to breate underwater? They just do and don’t feel the need or want to make such a fuss and muss about their own natural state. In other words, the mature adult thing I believe is just to take things for granted and not even notice them at all. This is why I personally detest any loud public expressions of “pride” things (gender, ethnicity, hobby, etc) and so-called “pride” events. I find them to be embarrasingly infantile and juvenile in the extreme. At worst, they may even turn me off something that otherwise turns me on very much (as a saying goes, “I never knew how much I hated something until everyone else started liking it”). And yes, that goes for “Male Pride” too. The only reason I even started attending conventions in the first place was purely to ogle the cosplayers. 😉
“Abnoy wins troll points for the sheer chutzpah of MISSING the Liefeldian 90s.”
Hah, who ever said I did? The ’90’s was the Golden Age of my youth (at least in that aspect). I can confidently say that I have indeed read every single Image and Image-style American-made English-language comic book that came out during the ’90’s, especially Rob Liefeld’s. Why, I even have an entire library of his creative output, excepting his work-for-hire for DC’s new 52 😛
“And dude. If you want porn, just GO GET PORN. There’s a whole Internet out there, waiting for you!”
And deprive myself of an entertainment option that’s been entertaining me since I became sentient? Never!
Complains about women ‘ruining’ comic books because he can’t perv on drawn fictional characters. Says women don’t ‘really’ like comics.
You know ANNOY, it’s very rude to attempt to impinge your fetish on the population at large.
“Are fish proud of being able to breate underwater?”
*looks up* quite possibly, mine do make quite the show about being able to breathe from the surface. Hell, the clown loaches even make noise about it!
“They just do and don’t feel the need or want to make such a fuss and muss about their own natural state. In other words, the mature adult thing I believe is just to take things for granted and not even notice them at all. This is why I personally detest any loud public expressions of “pride” things (gender, ethnicity, hobby, etc) and so-called “pride” events.”
…you do get that societies tend to have assumptions about the default state, eg that most people are straight, right? And pride events are people taking pride in something or other that’s seen as deviant, abnormal, weird, shameful?
“And deprive myself of an entertainment option that’s been entertaining me since I became sentient? Never!”
Some one needs a dictionary, and boy do I love dictionary trolls!
Developmental Psychology 101 time, babies are responsive to touch, sound, light and movement (to a certain extent, newborns do have shit-tastic vision) from birth.
Fuck, fish are sentient, but it’d be mean of me to shine a flashlight in there just to proof the point.
Abnoy’s nonsense here suggests he fails the second and third definitions of sentience. Haven’t any data for the first, but … hmm.
Fish make noise? Tell me more! I’m really enjoying getting all these snippets of info about them (or at least about clown loaches, plecs et al). 🙂
Kitteh — they click, mine are particularly fond of doing it while trying to catch food that’s floating away. The other fish in the video are cories, the striped ones look to be panda cories, the others are emerald cories I think, they look a lot like mine anyways (which, yes, means I have this happen with 20~ cories every day, better than TV!)
@Laura:
Okay, I bow to your expertise. 🙂 I should add that I’m really thin with a flat belly too, it’s just that my waist don’t bend sharply inwards from my hips if you look at me from the front or behind, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thin woman in a bikini where the waist does that… STILL, people have different builds, and I guess she just happens to look like that.
The shoes were super stupid anyway. I don’t care that the heels were actually stilettos, they would be a total obstacle to fighting, running and climbing anyway.
Actually, impractical costumes on women are one of my sexism pet peeves. When women are put in revealing clothing for no reason, that’s silly, but it doesn’t bother me that much. (Example: Seven of Nine in Star Trek Voyager. There was no reason for her to wear a catsuit rather than a uniform; they hinted when they first showed it that it had some kind of support system for her body once a lot of her exoskeleton had been removed, but later on they often showed her wearing normal clothes as well, so at the end of the day, no reason. Still, she was a scientist, and a catsuit is hardly a PROBLEM when you’re doing science. Another example: Power Girl’s boob window.) But women who wear stuff that’s totally IMPRACTICAL just to look sexy, that really grinds my gears. High heels on women who’s gonna run and fight is particularly common.
A related trope is women who are supposed to be physically strong, but are drawn or played by actors who are super thin. There’s a limit to how much of a punch you could be packing if you’re really thin. A nice exception though was Starbuck in the new Battlestar Galactica. She was supposed to be strong, and she LOOKED it.
Well, I can`t really relate to that because i`ve always been rather personally indifferent to and disinterested in the value judgements of other people, as a general rule, except of course, when it involves either security or neccessity or opportunity to yours truly. I mean, proclamations of passion in public are rather unseemly childish. Adolescents may be excused for it but a proper adult should practice what the English call the ”stiff upper lip” and be politely reserved in public. Discretion is the better part of valor after all. And is it not rude of fangirls to invade the fandoms of male-oriented series and demand they jettison that which made it so popular to male audiences in the first place? When fanboys do it in reverse, they are morally superior because they don’t try to change anything ex. MLPFIM and Bronies. *The bad vice of women always seeking to terraform men to suit them is most tedious indeed and a major reason men everywhere consider marriage the living death!
I should clarify that it’s entirely possible that Hathaway might have been wearing a corset or Spanx or some other sort of shaper underneath the catsuit. I don’t know enough about her body shape to say definitively either way. Just that if she was, I don’t think it’s come up in any interviews or the production notes.
Comic recommendations: For trades, I enjoyed Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (I don’t love it like many do, but I did like it), Greg Rucka’s Wonder Woman book The Hiketeia, any collection of Gail Simone’s runs on Wonder Woman or Birds of Prey, or the Secret Six. I also loved Arkham Asylum: A Serious Houe on Serious Earth and Arkham Asylum: Living Hell.
For monthly comics, I’m currently really enjoying Sword of Sorcery, Batgirl, Batman, and Supergirl.