The first Hobbit movie

[steuard]

I saw The Hobbit a few days ago, and I enjoyed it. I started to write up some brief comments on the movie to post here, but they got a bit out of hand, so I've posted them on my Tolkien website instead. For those who are interested, have a look at my full review; comments are welcome!

Comments

[prock]

Thanks for the review, it was a great read. As a comic book reader, I find the whole "canon vs. mythos" debate to be curious. Stories are stories, and they always change in the retelling. The value in a retelling almost always trumps the loss of fidelity with the original. Modern pedanticism in the regard reaches almost comical proportions with religious evangelical literalism with respect to a "false" retelling of a thousand year old mythos.

As a parent of a three year old girl, my frustration with the male dominated narrative of Tolkien has once again reached a new peak. I only wish that Jackson had taken even more liberties in that regard.

[steuard]

Responding in reverse order, I very much sympathize with your frustration about Tolkien's neglect of female presence in his stories. (And not just because I'm the parent of an 18 month old girl! Boys need to learn that girls can be heroes, too.) I recommend hooking your daughter up with The Blue Sword and probably a bunch of other McKinley books as soon as she's ready for them, if not before. :) But maybe she'll find a way to make Tolkien work for her anyway: I went through my entire first read of The Lord of the Rings thinking that Merry was a girl.

As for the whole concept of "canon", it's an interesting question. I perpetually feel torn about it, in various ways. For example, I've gotten the impression that most Tolkien scholars who are more respected than I am don't share my fondness for the idea of (and search for) a "canonical" Middle-earth in Tolkien's writings. (I sometimes wonder if I am in fact the most respected Tolkien person who still appreciates the concept.) But the question of adherence to canon in other peoples'

[prock]

Thanks for the pointers to McKinley's books.

[ericakeithley]

I'm curious; why does Tolkien need to have more females in his stories? Is there something inherently wrong with having mostly male characters? The vibe I'm getting is that it would be nicer if Tolkien was giving women a heroine role model. Is that your main complaint? I'm a woman, and I have both sons and daughters; I don't have a problem with the lack of heroines in Tolkien, but I am interested in hearing why other people do.

[ericakeithley]

Correction: I only have one daughter. :)

[kirinn]

Not to put words in Stu and prock's mouths, but in short, yes? In a beloved work with such a large number of heroes, it would be nice to have a little more diversity both so more folks could see some who felt a little more like themselves, and so everyone is exposed more to diversity amongst exemplary people (and related species). The lack on its own doesn't make the work *bad*; it's just a more-ideal-world wish.

[steuard]

Because human brains are entirely too good at recognizing (and believing in) patterns, especially kids' brains.

I'm not an expert on this, so unfortunately I don't have a handy set of links or references to share (and much of my exposure is in the context of education, physics education in particular, which is relevant but not directly so). So I'll summarize my understanding of the issue as I see it as a parent, and I'll try to be brief, and I'll sadly have to leave you to track down formal research on the topic yourself.

Essentially, the worry with this sort of thing arises when kids (or anyone, really) are presented with a consistent message saying "people like this can do this sort of thing, people like that don't". Human beings internalize that sort of thing remarkably effectively: if practically every hero in the stories you read is male and practically every female character in those stories is merely a sidekick or an "NPC" background character (or just a sort of prize for the hero at the end!), that inevitably shapes your

[steuard]

As for my specialty: Physics as a field suffers a lot from related issues: women compose at least 50% of the students in high school physics classes and close to 50% in intro college physics, but the percentage of women who go on to declare a major in physics is radically lower. When you ask women who leave physics why they're leaving, the reasons they cite almost never seem to be gender based at all: their choices make perfect sense for who they are and what their goals are. And yet, women wind up making that decision at a far higher rate than men do. And it's clearly not that women are just less good at math and science: other closely related fields like math and chemistry used to have the same problem, but they're now much closer to 50/50 gender ratios. It's just physics that lags (and some fields of engineering, and to some extent computer science) that still lags so badly. There seems to be something weird about the culture in physics, or perhaps about how physics is seen in our culture, that makes women feel less comfortable.

[ericakeithley]

I agree that literature is a very important influence on the way people think about the world and their roles in it. And I agree that women should be encouraged to see themselves as heroines, and that they should not be discouraged from aiming high

[steuard]

I guess what I would say is that art changes us, especially good art. Some of those changes will be related to the creator's conscious intent, but many will result from the subtle and unpredictable interplay of the creator's background with the reader's. In this case, Tolkien pretty clearly didn't intend to write a story to teach lessons about gender roles at all, but my underlying concern in that regard is that his story does that anyway, implicitly.

Think about it: you've said that some has the purpose is to help women think of themselves as heroes and some does not, and I agree. But why is it that only fantasy with that explicit purpose happens to have female heroes? Why aren't fantasy novels that aren't trying to make a point about gender split 50/50 in the sex of their main characters? The fact is, "male heroes" is so strongly the default in the genre (and many other genres) that we often unthinkingly view it as the "blank slate" version of the story, so much so that any change from that is inevitably viewed as carrying a

[ericakeithley]

I agree that literature can teach things other than what the author specifically wanted the reader to learn. That's part of why it's good for kids to talk things over with a grown up

[ericakeithley]

I like your penultimate sentence in which you make the point that boys and girls should be equally able to choose to be heroes or back story folk. I personally am shy of your position because I feel that I am marginalized because I freely chose to be a back story person. I pursued my dreams, got a PhD, and landed a great job. When I decided that marrying and having children was the best course for me, I was told by many people (colleagues, family, etc.) that I was throwing it all away. I've been very happy with my decision, but it has been brought home to me that one consequence of making sure that girls know they can be heroes is that they might not feel comfortable *not* being heroes. I know that the idea is to make both choices equally acceptable, but when a woman opts to be in the back story, how can you determine whether she is just being "held down by the man" or if she truly desires it? Most people, in my experience, assume the former.

[steuard]

I'm not sure that I understand your point: what is it about your experience of feeling marginalized that leads you to disagree with my position? I can all but guarantee that if I as a man had chosen to stay home with the kids after getting my Ph.D., I'd be getting enormously more criticism and doubt from others than you are. Maybe it's not your intent, but reading your comments the impression I get is that you'd prefer for that choice to be even more difficult for folks like me as long as that made it easier for you in exchange. That may not be your intent, but if it's not I might need some help in understanding what you're really trying to say. (And if it is your intent, I kinda wish it weren't!) When a man opts to be in the back story, I think that most people assume that he must have tried to be a hero and failed, which is arguably even less pleasant than having people assume that you're there because you're oppressed.

[ericakeithley]

I had to think about both your and my comments for about 30 minutes to figure out what it was that I wrote that made you think I don't want men to have the opportunity to stay in the back story. I think I finally figured it out. Let me start by saying that I certainly have no desire to make it harder for you. The reason I'm cautious of heavily pressing the "girls can be heroes!" message is that it can easily become "girls should become heroes to prove that they are worthwhile" very easily. The first message is fine; the second is just as bad as saying that women are only worthwhile if they stay at home. People should be able to make a decision how to best serve their family without getting a load of garbage from everyone else. And that is equally true for men; I'm quite sure that you *would* get more negative attention for quitting your job to stay home, and that's not right.

[steuard]

Thanks for clarifying; that makes a lot of sense. When I read your previous comment, I just wasn't piecing it together right: it felt a bit like you were saying that you would be happier if the old stereotypes persisted, because it would make people more accepting when women chose to stay home with the kids. But that didn't fit with the rest of what you seemed to be saying, hence my confusion

[nemene]

I don't want to drag this topic out, but I think it is also important to judge Tolkien in the contexts of both what he was righting about and when he was writing. As another poster mentioned his stories are very medieval esque and clearly build on such epics. But perhaps more importantly in the context of literature being written from he lead up to WWII thru shortly after the end of WWII. Given those contexts (others may disagree), I find the character of Eowyn to be RADICALLY feminist. I am in no way saying the works are to the standards we should now expect in the handling of the female/male paradigm, but that when it was written it would have even been considered to be pushing the envelope (for popular fiction).