rewatching LOTR while more woke

[kanzeon_2040]

"the world of Middle-earth is one of male dominance and patriarchal societies, in which women are scarcely present"It wasn't that long ago, but when I first watched these movies I didn't think, "Wait, NOBODY in this Fellowship of the Ring presents as female

Comments

[matrixmann]

Tolkien lived in a different time episode, he tried to process his experiences made with WWI (no women playing a big role in that, except at home) - and then, at the beginning of the millennium, nobody racked his brain about needing to make movies politically correct or insert zeitgeist political wishes into them even against their literary prototype.

And you know what? It's good this way. It's relaxing.

This modern fashion of inserting wishful thinking about social politics into movies, although the reality looks and will continue to look different than that, the only impression it leaves behind to the viewer is uptight. Like carrying a stick up one's ass around all the time, and it's not for the pleasure, it only hurts.

[kanzeon_2040]

I didn't feel uptight while watching and thinking about the social politics. Instead I felt like I was realizing how much more I bought into white supremacy and patriarchy just 20 years ago, despite feeling at the time like I was pretty radical.

For me, part of the enjoyment of literature, film, or history, is the critique. In this case, partly a self-critique -- why didn't I notice these things earlier in my life?

[matrixmann]

I feel like this is stiff and uptight.
Just as a comparison: Does someone critisize how horribly sexist Elvis Presley had been marketed by his management/record firm? Does someone complain about how he had been officially equipped with the image of a womanizer, his only goal to turn the heads of teenage girls and young women and getting them into buying everything his face was on?
(And he had even been presented as that against his own will, btw.)
Strangely nobody picks popular stories like that to search for these patterns, even if they speak it loudly.

I think this says a lot about this new "awareness".

[gonzo21]

The book is terribly terribly racist, yes. All these awful dark evil black skinned creatures threatening the good wholesome white way of life in the Shire.

And the Riders of Rohan are awfully awfully close to being KKK analogues in the book. The bit where Eomer has ridden off with his knights to hunt the black skins that have infested the Mark and need to be chased out?

I mean I loev the movies, but I did wish they'd done something more with actors of colour. Jackson didn't cast a single non-white character. Which... Peter Jackson doesn't haev a good record on race. At least they tried with the women.