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:
Adams wrote Dirk Gently? I managed about two pages of one of those and tossed it. I’m not into reading books about main characters I loathe. “Manipulative creepy fucker” is pretty much the opinion I’d formed of Gently in that short time. Not amusing and not someone I’d waste my time on in fiction or in real life.
Playing belated catch-up on this thread – everyone’s been online while I’ve been watching Sleepers. 🙂
Not so much a hum as a scratching sound, like a cat clawing at something it knows it’s not supposed to just so you’ll go chase it.
Valid point, so let me treat him as I do the cat when she does that. I actually just emailed that mess to my not-an-ex with a note to enjoy zir word salad breakfast, because dude, the otaku comments at least managed to follow a (completely pointless) line of argument. This mess? Well…
*takes that parental scolding tone* This is completely unacceptable behavior!
Argenti – like a mechanical mosquito. Or a record with a scratch in it.
Ithiliana – good thing I didn’t post that line from Hogfather about the sound of children playing right after reading Howard’s comment. You beat me to it by a long time!
Little Britain – watched a few episodes, didn’t care for it. I liked David Walliams in Ted and Alice (anyone see that? Dawn French and Stephen Tompkinson in a romance between an alien and an earthling. In the Lake District).
Python, yeah, I adored it as a teenager, and some sketches I still love. I found the Parrot Sketch and the Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook worked much better as they filmed them for And Now For Something Completely Different than in the series. They seem to be performed more tightly. Plus of course Parrot segues into the Lumberjack Song (OMG I’m now seeing Michael Palin playing Pierre). The Fish Slapping Dance, well, can’t go wrong with that. 🙂
Pecunium – re only being able to watch a couple of eps at a time; I got like that with the whole series of Fawlty Towers. Watched it with glee the first couple of times it was on and then just couldn’t stand it any more. Some of it is really laboured, too, now, and some of the humour (as with Python) is a bit side-eye after thirty-plus years. Same with Dave Allen; I loved his show as a kid and there are some bits that are still hilarious, but some of it is a bit off.
I don’t suppose any USians here knows the Goon Show? There wouldn’t have been a Python without them, they are the ones who were really seminal in absurd English humour. (Fellow Aussies might know it, it still gets airtime after some sixty years.)
What we need is a water pistol that can send virtual squirts along the intertubes, and emerge as real water to make trolls’ computers go FZZZZBANGFLASHBOOM.
I wonder if he knows about One Billion Rising yet. I fully expect all the usual suspects to shit bricks next month.
@Kitten:
I liked the first Dirk Gently merely because of the way all of the seemingly disconnected plot threads (and they seemed REALLY disconnected; a monk meditating on an alien planet, a sofa that got stuck in a staircase and can’t possibly be dislodged) eventually were tied up neatly at the end, just as Dirk had insisted through out the book that they would turn out to be because QUANTUM MECHANICS.
The second Dirk Gently, pretty crappy. Merely the tired old pop culture trope “all gods exist as long as people believe in them” trotted out all over again.
Abnoy: “When she wants to be included/treated like a human being”
Your side goes on and on about it all the time, but what does it even mean?
Our side? So you admit to not thinking women ought to be treated as equals, with all the rights of any other human being.
Ok, now that the easy shot is taken (easy because it’s true, but you so rarely admit it), it means just that. Treated like a human being. Your next comment makes it plain you aren’t quite clear on the concept.
Don’t you realize that the reason why human males sexually “objectify” human females is precisely because they recognize them as fellow beings of the opposite gender?
Nope, that’s not what it means. I see women as fellow beings. Their gender is irrelevant to the equation. When someone sees a woman as… let me see, I think their is another post which has something about this:
That’s not seeing them as women. It’s seeing them as objects (hence, “objectification”). You lot go on, and on (and on, and on, and on, and on, and on) about this. Intentionally screwing it up (that, or you are too stupid to learn, because everytime you try this, some [often more than one] explains it to you, and then you ignore it and try to argue for this inanity again).
Do I look at women I don’t know, and think, “Damn, she’s hot!”? Yes, I do.
Sometimes I even wonder how much fun it would be to have sex with her. Sometimes I even try to see if she want’s to have sex with me.
None of that (not one single portion of it) is objectifiying her.
I have a chair. It’s a nice chair. I don’t care how it feels (ok, I do care that it feels nice under my ass, being anti-misandry, and all). If it gets less than pleasant, or I change my mind, or someone gets me a new chair I like better, I’ll get rid of it.
It’s a wooden chair. I might burn it. Maybe break it into pieces and make it into something else. Perhaps I’ll put it on the curb with a sign, “free to a good home” and forget about it.
I don’t ask the chair if it minds before I do any of these things. That’s because the chair is an object.
Looking at someone is fine. Thinking someone is sexy, is fine. Not giving a damn what they think, is not fine.
You, with your whiny-ass, titty-baby complaint that, “The wimmenz is rooning my fun!!!!!!!!” are denying them agency. You are telling them what they feel/want/believe don’t mean shit, because you are a man, and this is “for men only”.
That’s fucked up. It’s a form of, if not objectification, infantilisation. It’s bullshit.
Do you want human males to lose sexual interest in human females altogether?
Are you that fucking stupid? (wait, don’t answer that… it’s better not to know, and to pretend you are just engaging in political posturing).
Read all the stuff I said above. I’m a human male. I have a strong interest in women, a sexual interest. I do, however, see them as more than a warm place to bury my cock. If they want to read SF, or be, “Gamers” or work as riveters, or design airplanes, or be soldiers, or any other damn thing, that’s fine with me.
Will that change my life? Sure. Some of being in a combat zone would have been easier with only one sex. But that’s not the way it is (and it’s not the way it ought to be, because it doesn’t need to be) so the men, and the women, came to a modus vivendi
You, and your ilk, don’t want that. You want women to be in the background, until you need a sandwich, or a blowjob, or your nappy-changed. Fuck that shit.
Oh, I know, your side wants human males to have a sex drive, but only the way your side, likes it i.e. “gentleman”, but then how come the ladies reject the “nice guys” for the “bad boys”, at least until they hit the wall and/or their biological starts ticking it’s countdown, whichever comes first (i.e. women wise up only when they’re washed up).
More bullshit. Tell me what makes for a, “bad boy”.
I’ll bet that most of those definitions… I meet.
What males who say that really mean is, “the hot chicks I want to bang go for other dudes.” Then when (as most relationships do) they break up, and she’s feeling bad, you preen that, “it would have been different if she’d been willing to fuck me”.
Of course, if she leaves such a male, he’s all, “Damn c*nt was just a lying whore! No woman is ever faithful!”
There are bad boys. They are often, at best, borderline rapists (at worst they are serial rapists), who take advantage of shitbirds like you, and Meller, providing social cover, and prey on vulnerable women. When they do, you laugh, and say, “she wasn’t raped, it’s buyer’s remorse, because she fucked a ‘bad boy, instead of a nice guy.”
Which is you still treating women like objects: Only valuable when not bothering you (by liking things you like, and expecting to be treated decently), or putting out.
*leads standing ovation for Pecunium brilliantly and comprehensively taking down the Abnoy bullshit*
So you’re saying that it’s the goddess-given right of womym to violently rock the boat just necuase they feel like it while men should just shut up even if the resulting motion is making us throw up already? Hah, that’s so classic mangina. I bet you’d make a perfect henpecked pussywhipped husband of “yes dear” variety. I bet you’d even sleep on the. couch too. No wonder why Western men are now going on marriage strike. Freedom of opinion for you but not me, eh? Typical liberal! And you apparently live in a hippy commune, no? Well good for you but not all of us are lucky enough to reside in a place so full of brotherly (and sisterly, wouldn’t want to be sexist, oh no, that would be the worst) love that anybody is already valuable to everybody else just for merely existing. Hot damn, whoever said there’s no such thing as a free lunch must never have gone to your place, right?
Dammit, Abnoy, when I told you to “cry moar” I didn’t mean it literally
RE: Abnoy
So you’re saying that it’s the goddess-given right of womym to violently rock the boat just necuase they feel like it while men should just shut up even if the resulting motion is making us throw up already?
What does this metaphor even MEAN?
Oh wait, it means you’re an asshole. Never mind, do carry on.
Also, seriously Abnoy, I’m GAY. Where do *I* fit in your paradigm? I want to know, because you seem extremely attractive, and I want to know what I can do to accept you as a member of my gender.
RE: emilygoddess
He doesn’t require encouragement. He’s intrinsically motivated.
Abnoy: You mad bro?
Because I don’t see any argument, just you making yourself feel better by imagining how hurt I must be by your fantastic ideas about my life.
Well good for you but not all of us are lucky enough to reside in a place so full of brotherly (and sisterly, wouldn’t want to be sexist, oh no, that would be the worst) love that anybody is already valuable to everybody else just for merely existing.
Then it sucks to be you.
Then again, I sing for my supper. I’m semi-retired, have a day job, do some landscape maintenance for my HA, spin, sell photographs, teach knife skills, cook, and find time to slap down fools on the internet and upset them so much all they can do is resort to ad hominem
It’s a busy life, but I get by.
LOL LOL Abnoy’s done a complete dummy-spit!
Poor little fellow, all upset because he doesn’t own women. Diddums.
::joins standing ovation for pecunium::
I love how this is supposed to be an insult or a dig of some kind. “Yeah, well, your life is full of people you love and who love you, and you’re probably generous and caring to boot! So there!”
Yeah, sucks to be Abnoy in bizarro land.
Hey, Abnoy, make up your alleged mind. Do you get off on hating other people or are you just pissed off that not everyone is as miserable as you are? Everything you write says you have just enough grasp of the idea of people liking and loving each other to know that you’re incapable of it. Your words REEK of envy of happy, loving people. I’d feel sorry for you if that didn’t translate into hating women.
RE: emilygoddess
I know, right? I mean, I feel like maybe Abnoy thinks we’re LYING or delusional or something, like everybody believes nobody has innate worth. If so… well, I don’t think Abnoy believes the shit he spouts, because HE MISSES THE LIEFELDIAN 90s, but if he did, I’d actually feel sorry for him. I mean, what a horrible world that would be!
Feminists completely ignore the fact that sex is natural.
LBT – he comes out of it as a lousy little shit whether he believes what he says or is just spouting it in a feeble attempt to annoy people.
Heheh come to think of it, he and his fellow trolls remind me of that classic bit of toilet wall poetry – “here I sit, broken hearted/ I tried to shit but only farted.”
Pretty well sums up their efforts.
It took a while, but Abnoy’s devolved into a hot, blubbering mess. LOL.
Which is about the most interesting thing he’s ever done! 😀
RE: Merv
What are you on about? I’m a feminist, and I have happy natural sex all the time. (Unless you believe gayness is unnatural, in which case I have happy unnatural sex all the time.)
Merv: sex is natural. The MRA rape directive, not so much.
“And you apparently live in a hippy commune, no?”
Pecunium, you don’t right? Cuz I can sew!
“Feminists completely ignore the fact that sex is natural.”
Wait, we do? That was what was up with the rounds of condolences over various breakups the other night? You were all actually thrilled?!