"Do you hate women?"

"As for myself," said Eomer, "I have little knowledge of these deep matters; but I need it not."
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I remember when I first came across this interview Lee Pace, Evangeline Lilly, and Orlando Bloom did as a promo for The Battle of the Five Armies. It peeved me off to the point that I didn't bother watching the last Hobbit film until several years later

https://collider.com/lee-pace-evangelin ... interview/

The interview says he's asking kind of a flippant, but also serious question of if the actors could go back and as JRR Tolkien something what would it be.

Evangeline Lilly (Tauriel) being in a "sassy" mood, eventually says she would ask him "Do you hate women?" My reason for this thread isn't to get into bashing Lilly, because her further explanation it's evident she really has no idea what she's talking about. So what would be the point in that?

I want to pose a somewhat serious/not as sassy question of how is Lilly's character, Tauriel, in anyway better than having no female roles at all? I don't like a film forcing in a female character/a romance plot, just for the sake of "checking off a box."
Last edited by Boromir88 on Sat May 30, 2020 12:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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As a woman, I don't think female characters should be shoved in merely for the sake of there being a female character. You easily fall into the danger of creating a Mary Sue type character, which I think is what happened. I can understand the expansion of characters such as Arwen and Eowyn in the LOTR trilogy. They were established characters from the book, so it made sense to give them a bit more to do, to be better representative of the female population, but they weren't created out of thin air unlike the character we love to forget from TH movies.

Whether or not there are male or female characters in a book or movie doesn't matter to me. The quality of the story and characters is the deciding factor for me. While it is nice to have female representation (female superhero lineup in Endgame for example), if it takes away from the world building or character arc of others, it should have been left out.

I think I've said this in the "what's wrong with the Hobbit" thread, but if PJ was that concerned about female representation, I would much rather have seen a dwarf or two gender bent than seeing the addition of Tauriel. That would have made far more sense to me and would have better fit the spirit of the story.
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I would've preferred Dori to be the incognito name of Dis, and have a motherly relationship between her and Fili/Kili, than creating a whole new plot-important character regardless of their sex.

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Dimcairien my lore is a little rusty, from not being in use for quite a while, and so I struggle with trying to remember if something is Tolkien, or Peter Jackson invention, or a weird mish-mash of both. I think though, Tolkien (possibly Gimli) does mention that there was very little difference between the dwarven sexes and that dwarf females had beards. (I know movie-Gimli says this, and just can't remember if it's also in the books or not :smiley14: ). At least in their physical appearance I think they were quite similar.

You easily fall into the danger of creating a Mary Sue type character, which I think is what happened. I can understand the expansion of characters such as Arwen and Eowyn in the LOTR trilogy.

I think that's where I'm at. I didn't mind the expansion of Arwen's role in FOTR. That she replaced Glorfindel's part. Sure it was done a little clumsily and you get the XenArwen jokes, since it's quite different from Arwen in the books. But it was a change that made sense, because why introduce Glorfindel when he's going to not have a purpose later on?

Rivvy, I think that is the first time I've heard someone suggest Dis being incognito as Dori. That could have been interesting and might have been fun.
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I agree with @Dimcairien Luiniel that putting female characters in just to have a female character is not ideal. Tauriel was a poor character (imo), did not contribute much, and the movie would have been better off without her. I love seeing female characters in strong roles (like Dim pointed out, Endgame), but it needs to be done well and not as a "we have to have this" situation. We need characters that actually contribute something.

On a somewhat related note, I've often wondered what LOTR would have looked like if Tolkien had written it in more modern times. Would we have seen, for example, Arwen's part expanded? I feel she was an interesting character who should have received much more time in the books than she did, and very well could have had a much more pivotal role.
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Boromir88, your memory serves you correctly. This is also the case in the books, although you forced me to grab my copy of RotK to find the quote because I always enjoyed this one. In Appendix A it is told that Gimli said:

"They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, so like to dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart. This has given rise to the foolish opinion among Men that there are no dwarf-women, and that Dwarves 'grow out of stone'."

(Gimli's quote in The Two Towers movie was quite similar)

They had beards too. I'm pretty sure I remember a brief glimpse of female dwarves somewhere in The Hobbit movie. However, if PJ had transformed a couple of the main party into female dwarves, I highly doubt he would have given them beards, seeing how willing he was to shame Kili and a couple of the others with such trimmed facial hair.

But in regards to the actual topic of the OP, I wish it was a prerequisite for actors appearing in these films (and furthermore speaking about Tolkien) to actually read the original source material and do a little bit of research about the world they are entering into. But I guess that's not considered necessary when your character doesn't even exist in the book in the first place. I know The Hobbit is a story without females, but the world in which the story takes place displays immense reverence for strong, powerful, beautiful female characters. Varda, Galadriel, Luthien, Eowyn, among many others.

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Dwim wrote: But in regards to the actual topic of the OP, I wish it was a prerequisite for actors appearing in these films (and furthermore speaking about Tolkien) to actually read the original source material and do a little bit of research about the world they are entering into.
And that is why Christopher Lee was one of the best actors in the original trilogy. He truly loved LOTR and knew the great man.

As for whether or not female dwarves of Thorin’s party would have had beards, you’re probably right that their facial hair would have probably been very trimmed (if it existed) but I still think that would have resulted in a less jarring way to include women in a major role.
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I seem to recall a discussion about this one, whether or not Tolkien hated women because there are barely any in the books. First of all, we have to remember the time it was written in, females did not play big parts in books, heck there were barely any female authors. But I definitely don't think Tolkien hated women, in fact I think he thought the world of them as afterall he did have Eowyn defeat the Witch-King. To me, the character Eowyn is definite proof that he did not consider women weak and unimportant. As for Lilly, she is an airhead as she obviously hasn't read the books and I HATED that forbidden romance. Elf and dwarf, bloody hell grrrr...

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I went and watched the actual video in question, which I probably should have done before making my initial post.

Windy's comments sort of link with another disagreement I have with the particulars of what Evangeline said. She stated Tolkien started writing strongly for women in the 70's, and implied it was due to the zeitgeist of the time. I assume she thought the publication date of The Silmarillion meant Tolkien had only just created some of these female characters then. Despite the fact that The Lord of the Rings was published well before then, The Silmarillion was a work decades in the making, as we all know. I do wonder if someone has since managed to correct her, via Twitter perhaps, not that it really matters.

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Dwim wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 2:23 pm I do wonder if someone has since managed to correct her, via Twitter perhaps, not that it really matters.
Doubt it! But we totally should :P

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Dimcairien Luiniel wrote: Sat May 30, 2020 2:10 pm As for whether or not female dwarves of Thorin’s party would have had beards, you’re probably right that their facial hair would have probably been very trimmed (if it existed) but I still think that would have resulted in a less jarring way to include women in a major role.
Are you saying that Fili and Kili were Dwarvish women? I wonder if Tauriel knew? :smiley9:

Also, I'm still not over Arwen taking Glorfindel's role in FotR.
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@Lirimaer I mean, I don't think I would mind that. :smiley8: Could make for some very interesting commentary during our Hobbit bashing.

When I first watched the films (and honestly in some ways it still does) I was bothered by Arwen taking over Glorfindel's role. He's a cool character! But, as Boromir88 said, it doesn't make sense to include a (seemingly) random side character for an important bit of the story and then promptly forget about said character. For the sake of those watching the movie who have not read the books (the horror!) it makes sense to streamline what you can when it still has plausibility.
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I had not heard of this and never watched enough of the Hobbit movies (I now think maybe I only watched the first one?) to see her character on screen. But I totally agree with @Dwim that it would be really great if actors actually read the books when filming film adaptations. And @Dimcairien Luiniel, I'm with you on Christopher Lee! I think I remember someone saying in one of the Extended Edition commentaries that he had read The Lord of the Rings once a year for many, many years.
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@Dimcairien Luiniel Mhmmm. I get that, but I don't like it. :smiley12:

It's a fictional world, based on a fictional story, and my displeasure with it hasn't kept me up at night for 20 years, but selfishly I do not care about the non-readers, because it was/is still one of my favourite moments in the whole story which I looked forward to seeing portrayed in film, and to have it ruined like that was just ... disappointing. I was glad to be spoiled for the Glorfindelectomy before I went to see it, because I think I'd have burst into tears if I hadn't known. I still have no respect for movie-Arwen though, and it's not even her fault!

I feel that the people who change established female characters from book-to-screen to fit their own ideals of what society/women should be like, take serious liberties with both the author's vision and seriously underestimate their audience's comprehension skills.

Arwen was an extremely loved and protected high-born lady whose mother was attacked by orcs, and I'm supposed to buy that her Papa just lets her ride around the countryside alone when the Nazgul are abroad? There were actually a number of ways to get her into the story more, but no, we had to have the kick-ass version who mocks her own future husband when she creeps up on him. Oh :( I hate the whole section!

Still disappointed in PJ and his team for some things.
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I agree with what seems to be the consensus here. Tolkien certainly did not hate women and there were many female characters in his works - Galadriel, Eowyn, Haleth, Melian, etc.!

The addition of Tauriel irritated me because it seemed that she existed purely as a love interest and not in her own right in any way. If you want to add a female character to a male-dominated film, please give them more plot and substance than a weird love triangle (extra negative points for said love triangle involving a dwarf).

I kind of feel the same about Arwen in the books, to be honest. She was only ever really a love interest. And while I think it was kind of odd they "subbed" her in for Glorfindel, in a way, its kind of nice she actually did something besides look pretty and kiss Aragorn.

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Very cool discussion. Wow, I missed this place :smiley8:

Thank you Dwim for that quote from Gimli.

But in regards to the actual topic of the OP, I wish it was a prerequisite for actors appearing in these films (and furthermore speaking about Tolkien) to actually read the original source material and do a little bit of research about the world they are entering into.

Agreed! As Dimcairien said about Christopher Lee, I heard Viggo Mortensen was another one in the cast who cracked the whip to have the other cast members read the books. :smiley9:

As for Lilly, she is an airhead as she obviously hasn't read the books and I HATED that forbidden romance. Elf and dwarf, bloody hell grrrr...~Winddancer

I had not heard of this and never watched enough of the Hobbit movies (I now think maybe I only watched the first one?) to see her character on screen.~Tarawen

I know you welcomed me in a different thread, but *waves back in this one*. The thing is I honestly think I would have been fine with a female "captain of Thranduil's guard" character. It would work fine if done well, even though Jackson probably would have turned it into more "female elf who does more Legolas shield-sliding flips." Still it wouldn't have been completely off the rails. But after the initial introduction we quickly get someone who becomes a significant character to the story as Jackson puts in this forbidden dwarf romance and, love triangle. Legolas falls for her. Thranduil's all "psh, you lowly silvan trash can't ever be good enough for Legolas." Then Thranduil wants to forbid her love for Kili because he's a dwarf and "it's not real." To, Tauriel running around the battlefield trying to find Kili. Kili dies, she has a very poor and cheesy line "Why does it hurt soooo much?" So we can come full circle to Thranduil telling her "because it was real." *sigh* it was just a mess. I think I summed up the part fairly accurately, right Winddancer?

In Lilly's defense, I sort of recall an interview she did where she was originally told there wouldn't be any love triangle with Tauriel's character. Then Jackson pulled a rotten trick on her, lied and did the love triangle story without her knowing? If that's true, that was pretty rotten to have dumped on her and lied to like that.

Arwen was an extremely loved and protected high-born lady whose mother was attacked by orcs, and I'm supposed to buy that her Papa just lets her ride around the countryside alone when the Nazgul are abroad? There were actually a number of ways to get her into the story more, but no, we had to have the kick-ass version who mocks her own future husband when she creeps up on him.~Lirimaer

Fascinating perspective I never considered before, thank you! I think I still side with not introducing Glorfindel into the movie (even though, I agree with you on him in the books), but I see better the objections to Arwen replacing him. Good point on her character.
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As Boromir88 mentions, the real kicker to the terrible love triangle subplot in the Hobbit films is that Evangeline Lilly's one condition for taking the role of Tauriel was that her character not be placed in a love triangle, and the filmmakers promised she wouldn't be. According to Lilly's account, the love triangle was added at the studio's behest during pick-up shoots in 2012. I'm not sure how much clout Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens had to resist this--or if they were inclined to resist at all. PJ had a remarkable degree of autonomy on the LOTR films and successfully pushed back against e.g. having a recap at the start of The Two Towers, but I'm less familiar with the behind-the-scenes happenings from his second trilogy.
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Thank you Eldy, I thought I remembered seeing that. Didn't know it came down from the studios, because like you said I do recall Jackson pushing back against having Arwen at Helm's Deep for the Arwen/Aragorn/Eowyn love triangle.

I disagree with the last sentence in that article though. I do strongly think Tauriel lets her love life get in the way of her abilities as "Captain of Thranduil's guard." You could say she abandons her post/rejects her king so she can chase off after Kili and then in the 3rd film it's a complete mess of "where's Kili!?" And after Bolg kills Kili, her heart is broken. Bolg kicks Tauriel's butt and Legolas comes in to save the day. It's quite the opposite of a character who didn't let her "love life" get in the way.
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As a woman, I'm not upset that they made up a female character, but that they used her so poorly. Surely there were many other ways to introduce a female character - perhaps a woman of Lake Town (why do women have to be elves? Aside from Eowyn, I think almost all of the female speaking roles in the movies belong to elves?), but even if she is an elf, there is *so much more* you can do with the character than just a love story...

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FireroseArien thank you for the response. If you haven't seen the 3rd film there is a minor female Lake-town character that I did really like. She speaks out against the Master and Alfrid and organizes people to fight. A minor part, but I thought a better character than all of Tauriel's screen time. :)
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Boromir88 wrote: Sun May 31, 2020 2:31 am
I know you welcomed me in a different thread, but *waves back in this one*. The thing is I honestly think I would have been fine with a female "captain of Thranduil's guard" character. It would work fine if done well, even though Jackson probably would have turned it into more "female elf who does more Legolas shield-sliding flips." Still it wouldn't have been completely off the rails. But after the initial introduction we quickly get someone who becomes a significant character to the story as Jackson puts in this forbidden dwarf romance and, love triangle. Legolas falls for her. Thranduil's all "psh, you lowly silvan trash can't ever be good enough for Legolas." Then Thranduil wants to forbid her love for Kili because he's a dwarf and "it's not real." To, Tauriel running around the battlefield trying to find Kili. Kili dies, she has a very poor and cheesy line "Why does it hurt soooo much?" So we can come full circle to Thranduil telling her "because it was real." *sigh* it was just a mess. I think I summed up the part fairly accurately, right Winddancer?
Yes! But it is also the whole Romeo and Juliette side of it that bothers me. Tolkien clearly stated that elves and dwarves did not like each other (which we sort of see with Legolas and Gimli) so why change what Tolkien intended? Rude and presumptuous in my opinion. We dont need a R&J love affair to make an interesting movie.

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I actually gave a talk on women in Tolkien's legendarium at a convention a couple of years ago. Here's the summary of it (I'm too lazy to write it all out here, nor do I think this is the right place):

Tolkien very definitely did not hate women, nor did he actively hold anti-feminist views. By this I mean he did not hold views like "women should not vote" or "women should not study" when those topics were changing around him. Nor did he hold particularly feminist views. The thing is, Tolkien had very little interaction with women, especially in his early years. His mother, as you might recall, died young (of diabetes, which was then untreatable), and very much died for her faith (having converted to Catholicism, she received no help from Anglican relatives). The dead mother trope appears more than once in Tolkien's writings.
Then, Tolkien was raised by Father Morgan, a Catholic priest. He went to an all-boy school, and continued to an all-boy university and an all-boy army. He had one girlfriend, and married her fairly quickly. He loved her, but according to his biographers (Michael White, Humphrey Carpenter) he didn't really understand her. His circle of friends, colleagues and students remained male-only for much of his life.
With all this in mind, Tolkien didn't really know how to write women. Women remained something of a mystery to him. The few women in the legendarium are archetypes more than they are characters.
At the same time, every women present in the legendarium has a strong presence and an important influence on the location and situation around her. Galadriel, Eowyn, Luthien, Idril - the story is wrapped around them, and would come undone without them.

In light of this, contrary to what others have suggested, I do not think it would be right to make some of the dwarves women. The dwarves share a camaraderie that would have been very familiar to Tolkien, and would have been male-only. Even today the dynamics within a same-sex group are not the same as in a mixed group. (This coming from my personal military experience, among other things - the talk in the same-sex barracks was quite different from the talk everywhere else.) Not that a mixed group of dwarves couldn't have existed, but it wouldn't have been the same group, wouldn't have been true to the source material or to the author.
Nor would I have inserted a Tauriel to reiterate stale tropes. She adds nothing to the story, and her own story is nothing.
But if I chose to add a female figure, I would have placed a Melian-like figure at Thranduil's side. Sure it's not what happened in Tolkien's story, but it would not have been an alien element. Doriath is a source of inspiration of Mirkwood, so if I wanted to linger longer with the elves, that's what I would have used to inspire a storyline. A conflict between king and queen, with Legolas in the middle, might have shed further light on the elves, their conflict with the dwarves, even made Legolas a more complex character.
If I were to turn a male character into a woman, the only one for whom such a change would not have been a detriment would be Beorn. In fact, he was based on a woman Tolkien once met.

But do I see it as absolutely necessary for a woman to be there? Not really. Dimcairien Luiniel states it well - a story should be good. Cramming women in there isn't what makes it good. As a general trend, I do see a problem with women being absent from stories. But I cannot criticise each and every particular story for the absence of women in it. This story is not about women, that's all there is to it. If I want stories about women, I should go and write some. (More than one author whom I very much like are doing just that.)

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I think they should have left well enough alone and didn't add any extraneous characters. The story line didn't need Tauriel. She irritated me to no end. And she is by no means a feminist character. She actually reiterates stale tropes about female characters.
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Thank you for sharing that Galastel. A lot of good points and information I did not know. I agree that maybe this thread wouldn't be the right place for your talk at the convention. However if you feel so inclined to make a thread and share it I would be most interested to read more! :smiley24:

I did not think about having a Melian-type character for Thranduil. That could have been interesting. On the other hand, I wouldn't trust Jackson with writing it correctly, so maybe it's better he didn't?

Oak, that's pretty much my thoughts too.
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@Galastel, I really appreciate your points in the thread. I ended up writing my undergrad thesis on Tolkien's female characters and you've summed up a lot of what I tried to say in 60+ pages in a very concise post! :smiley9:

Even though major female characters are not plentiful, one thing I really appreciate about Tolkien's work in general is how diverse they are. All of them have different strengths and weaknesses, even if they are archetypal figures or borrow characteristics from them. None of them are mere damsels in distress. Even the non-warriors are strong. I think Éowyn is one of the best and most complex characters in LotR, and actually may mirror in some respects Tolkien's own experiences with war - in his view a brutal, nasty, and sometimes necessary thing, but not something to glory in. The big war in LotR is a distraction from the main quest, taken on by non-warriors with their own quiet strength. Éowyn and Merry succeed in killing the Witch-king in large part because they are overlooked and unaccounted for. Frodo and Sam destroy the Ring because Sauron never thinks of them until it's too late. He's focused on the big guys with the visible power. Not all of this has to do directly with sex and gender, but Tolkien is definitely a believer in the "little guy" and a quiet, peaceful, healing way of life - attributes that have been often associated with femininity. He definitely looks down on what we would today call "toxic masculinity." Characters who behave that way (e.g. Boromir, though he repents; Denethor, in some respects; Fëanor and some of his sons) are cautionary tales, not to mention Morgoth and Sauron.

(As an aside, Shelob is probably the closest we get to a pure stereotypical female villain, and she's a really interesting case as a foil to the other female characters, and she has no clear male counterpart at all. But I think that speaks more to Tolkien's religious beliefs about the purpose and function of the body than ideas about men and women, which I can expand on if anyone is curious.)

I'm meandering a bit here which TBH is just my way of doing things, but I think it comes down to how you define sexism. Some would say today that sexism is the belief that there are differences between the sexes, and Tolkien would not pass that test, I don't think - he definitely sees men and women as different. But if we define sexism as the belief that one sex (male) is better than the other (female), which was the most commonly accepted understanding until very recently, then I don't think that's true at all.

ETA: I guess since the thread title is, "Do you hate women?" in reference to Lilly's comments, I would have to say the answer is definitely "no." And add my 2 cents (pence?) that it bothers me a LOT that "strong female characters" in today's media means "a female character who acts like a very particular kind of male character," as if that were the only definition of strength.

I guess I'm feeling kinda salty today. Oops.

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@MistressofJesters I think (if I can jump in a little late here) you've summed up the issue perfectly: in an effort to appeal to a notion of equality (without actually examining issues of gender in their work) many folks (especially big studios) just like to write "strong women" as... men, who just happen to be played by women.

The "Do you hate women?" line on Lilly's part was a little sassy and a little simplistic -- although the sentiment (that LoTR has a remarkably sparse representation of women) is justified. That being said, the solution that the Hobbit movies took didn't necessarily fix that -- since it just puts in a new woman to exist mostly as a romantic interest and spur competition between two men (one of the stale tropes folks have mentioned a couple of times above).
I would actually go so far as to say that despite it feeling like more intentional and blatant "Representation", the Hobbit movies actually do worse when it comes to their female cast than the original PJ LoTR Trilogy. Tauriel is, after all, sort of just a smushed together Éowyn+Arwen (which I guess makes Fili and Legolas Aragorn and Faramir? Or Faramir and Aragorn? This metaphor does not really hold up to this much scrutiny.)
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Androthelm wrote: Sun Jun 14, 2020 3:28 pm ...The "Do you hate women?" line on Lilly's part was a little sassy and a little simplistic -- although the sentiment (that LoTR has a remarkably sparse representation of women) is justified....
I think it's true that there's sparse representation, but I don't think that the scarcity by itself tells us anything useful about Tolkien's attitudes towards women, if that makes sense. Authors do best when they write what they know, and as Galastel points out, he just didn't spend a lot of time around women, and that wasn't necessarily a conscious choice but just how things were at that time and with his particular life circumstances. As another example, Jane Austen (at least as far as I can remember) never wrote scenes featuring only male characters because she had no idea what men talked about when not in the company of women (I feel like there is a quote to this effect somewhere, but the Google-fu is not strong with me today and just keeps spitting out quotes from her fiction.)

I also know I've had the experience as a reader (or viewer) of characters who are supposed to be like me and/or have experiences like mine and the writing is just....super off. It's clear that even if researched and with technically correct details, the authenticity just isn't there. It feels distant, clinical, or pandering. It's definitely very common with bad writers but can even trip up pretty good ones who attempt to be inclusive and end up with stereotypes. To do it to an adaptation of a work amps that up in most cases, I think (and may explain why I didn't even bother finishing The Hobbit films, because to me it felt like a semi-original story that borrowed the names, settings, and a few major plot points from another story I really liked, but it just...wasn't that good.) I think that's the fate of a lot of contemporary adaptations - attempts to "update" or make them "relevant" just makes them fall flat, because they lose sight of what made those stories memorable in the first place.

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Also, I don't mean at all to dominate discussion, I'm just really excited to get to talk about something I really like talking about! I hope I'm not coming across as combative, because I don't mean to. I just have a lot of feelings. :D

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MistressofJesters wrote: Sun Jun 14, 2020 6:25 pm ...I don't think that the scarcity by itself tells us anything useful about Tolkien's attitudes towards women...
I agree! I don't think any of this is particularly useful for examining Tolkien -- just debating the merits of clumsy representation in adaptions.
MistressofJesters wrote: Sun Jun 14, 2020 6:25 pm ...As another example, Jane Austen (at least as far as I can remember) never wrote scenes featuring only male characters because she had no idea what men talked about when not in the company of women (I feel like there is a quote to this effect somewhere, but the Google-fu is not strong with me today and just keeps spitting out quotes from her fiction.)...
I've never heard this argument before but I like it a lot!
MistressofJesters wrote: Sun Jun 14, 2020 6:25 pm ...It's definitely very common with bad writers but can even trip up pretty good ones who attempt to be inclusive and end up with stereotypes. To do it to an adaptation of a work amps that up in most cases, I think (and may explain why I didn't even bother finishing The Hobbit films, because to me it felt like a semi-original story that borrowed the names, settings, and a few major plot points from another story I really liked, but it just...wasn't that good.) I think that's the fate of a lot of contemporary adaptations - attempts to "update" or make them "relevant" just makes them fall flat, because they lose sight of what made those stories memorable in the first place.
This is all also true! I think efforts to increase representation in adaption are certainly valid, where it doesn't take away from the narrative. I don't know that the total absence of women is a core element of what makes the Hobbit work, though -- so I certainly understand where they were coming from in trying to make a movie with a slightly less uniform cast. That being said, I think you (and several people in the thread above) are right -- Tauriel is clumsily done, and her presence does detract from the story.

Also: I don't think you're dominating the conversation or being hostile at all :smiley8: you have a ton of great thoughts and I love reading them!
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@MistressofJesters , go for it! I just linked the video of Evangeline Lilly for a little bit of background to the larger discussion of women in films and particularly the LOTR and Hobbit women. I didn't want it to be focused on judging Lilly's comments. I wanted to look at the bigger picture and I'm glad all the comments have focused on that. :smiley24:
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Even though perhaps everything has already been said, this is actually a really interesting topic. I think that this phenomenon can be observed a lot, especially in this day and age.
  • An example of this is clearly Rey from Star Wars, who gets her powers almost out of nowhere and becomes more powerful than even Master Yoda or any other Jedi.
  • Another example can also be seen in Star Wars, in the new Obi Wan Kenobi series. Here it is the Inquisitor Reva. She is "also" perceived as "quite annoying" and "unnecessary" by the Star Wars community and I have to admit at this point that I share their opinion :/
    *** Spoiler Alert *** ---> The Grand Inquisitor seemed much more powerful and sublime but here too, he was simply struck down by Reva, without any effort and like it was literally nothing to her.
First of all, I have to say that I don't have anything against women in general (on the contrary :heart: ) and definitely have nothing against strong women in movies/series. Regardless, I have to admit that it can definitely SEEM annoying when a woman (OR OF COURSE ALSO A MAN) is suddenly staged as overpowered, ALTHOUGH IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE IN RELATION TO THE STORYLINE and one realizes that it's done ONLY, because it's a matter of today's discussion concerning equality. I find it more than understandable and also cool that the portayal of strong female characters in movies/series can make women in real lifecan get them to identify themselves with them and even make them get more interested in ficional universes (egl. LotR or SW) :smile: :heart: . However, I think it's a shame that you have to expect and also accept a sassy response when you criticize it or just feel the need to question it.

So in summary, I'm not criticizing at all if strong women take on cool roles in movies or series but I DO CRITICIZE IT, when it's obviously done ONLY to contribute to today's gender discussion. I speak for myself here, but in fact this always has a distorting aftertaste and the question arises: What would the story be like, if we didn't have this discussion? On the other hand, we live in a time in which theratre is losing its value, in which in the past political issues were constantly discussed and staged. In this respect, it is perhaps understandable and important that especially in large film projects (e.g. Lord of the Rings or Star Wars) especially women are portrayed as crucial and strong characters today. As you can see, I'm very ambivalent about this and don't have a fundamental opinion about it but I'b able to understand both sides to a certain extent.
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So, the year is now 2023 and we've had another adaptation. I've only watched the first two episodes of it and uhh, given what I've seen and who I know is NOT appearing in it (Erendis, Tar-Ancalime, Tar-Telperien). Arguably two of the most powerful women, in terms of royalty, in the legendarium, are not in the series. Particularly Tar-Telperien, who was a very significant ruler.

The excuse (and yes, it is an excuse with the budget they have and I've seen successful adaptations of series like Romance of the Three Kingdoms) is using a compressed timeline. I argue that it's an excuse because of their budget, other successful adaptations of series like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Qin Empire TV Anthology (in which Mi Bazi, one of the most powerful leaders in Chinese history is depicted), and quite frankly one would have to be a really poor writer to not easily make people empathize with the Numenoreans through giving them limited screentime and by having them appearing in one episode in their prime, then in another person on their deathbed dying of old age. Especially when the first stage of the Rings of Power saga in the Second Age is the conflict between Sauron and the Elves (and Dwarves), not Sauron and the Numenoreans. The Numenoreans were like the Eagles of the Hobbit and LOTR in that time period for that war.

EDIT: @Galastel This is especially jarring because even with Tolkien not being very knowledgeable about women, he knew that women could be leaders at the top of the food chain. And that, just like men, they're not all bad or good, they're very different. The three Numenorean Ruling Queens are all diverse in their reigns and each have different stories and different leadership styles. A wasted opportunity for the show-runners to not demonstrate this in the TV series.

So now, I would actually echo Tilly's question, except towards some of the adapters of Tolkien's works:

"Do you hate women?"

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