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:
I think to really enjoy Adams you have to take a rather dim view of humanity, which I don’t.
Neverwhere felt pantomime-ish to me, but I have that issue with a lot of stuff written for a YA audience. I quite liked Good Omens, but not as much as the stuff Pratchett writes by himself.
“Labored adolescent humor” – what a perfect way to describe Adams.
I frequently take a dim view of humanity, but I don’t find a book full of it particularly entertaining. Pratchett works for me because he has compassion as well as cynicism and his brand of silliness appeals. He also has characters I really like (Death, Vimes and so on), which Neverwhere certainly didn’t. There’s only so much of the naive-bordering-on-idiotic hero I can take.
I’m not into YA stuff either. I read The Amazing Maurice, and that’s only because it’s about a cat. My LA girlfriend’s Griffin’s Daughter trilogy is set to be recast as YA, but I read it in the original version.
Funny thing, I found out the other night my osteopath is into YA fantasy-sf and is writing her own. 🙂
Also HHGG was originally a BBC radio series before it was a book series; that’s why there’s a significant dropoff in both quality and overall coherence from the third book onwards (the books not based on the radio show) and also why some parts of it (Vogon poetry, the description of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe) sound so much like monologues: They were openers or stingers for different episodes.
So a lot of the bits that I really do think are hilarious are just one-off jokes more suited to a radio format, while the story, such as it is, is just holding them together.
I just read Wintersmith and liked it, but I think that may be because Pratchett doesn’t do the pantomime tone.
@Katz: I enjoyed Spiderman 1 and 2 both, but I thought the love story with MJ in 2 was ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. I CANNOT get why everyone’s all “oh the love story’s so sweet”. I mean, Peter keep being late for dates, so MJ gets pissed off and break up – get it. And then she MARRIES another guy just because she’s pissed off with Peter! Hello! The world doesn’t work that way! Sure, people break up with their partner because they’re pissed off. Sure, people can start dating other people not because they’re actually attracted to said other people, but more because they’re pissed off with the ex. But no one goes off to suddenly MARRY someone else, just because zie’s pissed off with the ex. THAT’S NOT HOW THINGS WORK.
Okay, done ranting.
Regarding Adams I think his first books are mostly very funny although uneven, while the later ones are pretty bad. But he can’t be compared to Pratchett, since Adams is all about throwing out one joke after the other, where Pratchett combines jokes with more substantive stories and characters you care about. Adams is good in his own way, but he doesn’t even attempt to do anything but throwing jokes around (at least in the first books, in the later and worse books he does try to get serious time to time, like Arthur’s love story and child, and totally fails).
“Why can’t a woman be more like a man”?
Oh, HH, trust me, as a son of the XX century, you wouldn’t really want them to! They keep all of the screechy, irrational, petty, and manipulative features you complained about being (Victorian) women, but they then go out an infest mens’ workplaces and clubs, get involved in academia, journalism, and politics, and otherwise pretend to be men, WHILE REMAINING WOMEN!
“Being more like a man” gives you–and other good men–the worst of both worlds! believe me, by the time those horrid harraidan hags are through with us, before the year 2000, we men were wishing for “the good old days”!
Galadriel and Arwyn were such delicate flowers.
And Lobelia Took was so mild-mannered.
And you are so full of shit.
You apologist for killing women, and abusing them, and laughing at them when they suffer.
1: You excuse, and laud, domestic abuse:
2: You think a woman getting cancer is good, and it makes you happy.
3: You blame women, straight up, for the things done to them.
4: You think a woman being killed by her stalker ex, “brought it on herself” (combined with 1 and 3 [above] you seem to think she actually wants to be killed).
You are a sick fuck. I am too polite to share with the rest of the company what I truly think of you, so the condemnations of your own mouth will have to suffice.
I see the Gods of Blockquote hate Meller too. Normally so many in one places is an invitation to the nesting mess of “blockquote fail”.
Moore… I can’t abide him. I like The Watchmen, when it came out, but I wasn’t as informed on torture as I am now. That he is so fond of using it as a transformative event… bugs the fuck out of me.
I like some of Adams, but not all. I was 13, or so, when Hitchhikers came out, and I liked it. I wasn’t quite so thrilled with Restaurant. Dirk Gently never worked for me. I liked his non-fic a lot.
Abnoy: Yes, tomboys (what the Japanese call “bokkuko”) have always been a favorite of mine as a red-blooded guy desires a gal who can really understand him and who he can relate to
Unless she remembers she is also a woman, and being treated like shit in the fandoms you inhabit, and which, for all they are problematic, she also enjoys.
When she wants to be included/treated like a human being, you get all upset about her “invading/ruining” your little wankfest.
Finally, as the poem goes, only a god can make a tree, so a god I’d be
I like a well-shaped bonsai.
@Pecunium: Re: torture: I can see why it bothers you. I still liked V for Vendetta the comic book, but was really bothered by the movie where V is presented as some kind of good guy despite torturing Eve.
I HATE how torture is so accepted in pop culture overall as a means of getting information. Everyone always tells the truth when the hero tortures them, and the hero never tortures an innocent by mistake.
@DKM: Your ignorance of Tolkien’s work is as huge as your ignorance of anything else.
“Females” that kickass in Tolkien’s Middle-earth in various ways include Varda, Ungoliant, Galadriel, Shelob, Eowyn, Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Luthien!
http://www.sporcle.com/games/onlyamemory1/me_women
http://www.stjohns-chs.org/english/JRRTolkien/SILMARILLION/SILMARILLION.html
Not all protagonists, and not all warriors, but a shitload more than Happy Housewives, you boogerhead you.
And don’t think I’m ever going to let you forget what you said about my graduate student:
The movie version of V for Vendetta is so, so, so much more black-and-white than the graphic novel, so I wouldn’t discount Moore on its account.
In fact it doesn’t seem fair to discount Moore because you dislike any of his movie adaptations, since Moore himself famously dislikes all of them.
p.s. Tolkien’s fiction would never have been published had it not been for TWO women who were his students at Oxford.
We need a name for Abnoy, like we had for Bloody Stupid Martin. Maybe Sad Bastard Evangelion would work.
Ninja’d by Pecunum!
However, it cannot be said too often.
On a happier note: I tried Adams, couldn’t stand him. I read some Gaiman (because I liked good omens and everybody was all OMG but was MEH about him). I adore Pratchett with a mad burning passion.
Different strokes….
Oops, sorry Pecunium!
Cold fingers, bad typing.
I think my issue with Adams is partly that his stuff reads like a string of jokes only loosely held together by a weak plot. It feels like someone took a sketch comedy show aimed at teens and tried to make it into a novel.
Also I think whether or not you like him may have to do with how your sense of humor works. To me his stuff has that sort of look at how clever I am everyone else is so pathetic feel that I just don’t care for, like the more obviously punching-down bits of Little Britain.
(For people who’re familiar with Brit comedy shows maybe a good contrast would be between Little Britain and Monty Python. The former feels very toffs mocking the working class to me, the latter also has class jokes but aimed in pretty much all directions.)
@CassandraSays
My boyfriend and I read the Hitchhikers books aloud to each other and enjoyed them, but I wonder if the reading aloud actually helped a lot because of the stand-up nature.
re Moore: I’ve not seen any of his movie adaptations; only read his graphics, and seen interviews.
He doesn’t work for me.
re Monty Python: I suffer (often) from the sense that the joke is belabored. Cut the bits by 30 seconds or so (at least) and most of them are much funnier.
The Hungarian segment is a perfect example. It peaked at the part where Palin borrows the book and gets slugged.
The Bobby ran for far too long, and the denoument was just a long recap of the set-up.
Stand-up nature if reading jokes aloud that would work well with the sktletch comedy nature of the books. (In case I wasn’t clear)
I think those books would work much better read aloud, actually. Another issue with them is that it feels like part of the characterization is missing, probably because if they were being read aloud the person reading would add all kinds of thing via tone, inflection, etc.
*sketch
(I shouldn’t try to pick up the phone and keep typing.)