Post by Canuovea on Sept 4, 2022 18:21:16 GMT
In response to:
I'm gonna do what's called a hot take.
It's not that you can't "woke'ify" Middle Earth, it's that, well, why would anyone bother?
All in all, it's rather clear to me that there was no place for marginalized people in Tolkien's rural conservative catholic pseudo-mythical-England. The source can only be haphazardly papered over with modernization attempts.
It's not surprising to me that companies are trying to make bank on recognizable brand. But I'll never understand marginalized people who would even want to have representation there.
Fantasy can do so much better than Tolkien.
It's not that you can't "woke'ify" Middle Earth, it's that, well, why would anyone bother?
All in all, it's rather clear to me that there was no place for marginalized people in Tolkien's rural conservative catholic pseudo-mythical-England. The source can only be haphazardly papered over with modernization attempts.
It's not surprising to me that companies are trying to make bank on recognizable brand. But I'll never understand marginalized people who would even want to have representation there.
Fantasy can do so much better than Tolkien.
Oh boy. That's certainly a hot take. And I apologize, but this set me off and I'm... uh... well... I don't want this to come across as me being actually angry with you, I just really disagree. So I wrote an essay. Feel free to ignore.
Tolkien is better suited to an update and modern theming than a lot of fantasy is. Why? It already has marginalized people, and it already has ideas very applicable to modern theming in place. Certainly, Tolkien was more progressive than Narnia-man, and he kept getting more progressive as time went on.
If you want to play with ideas of gender, the Dwarves could easily do so considering Dwarf men and women look and sound practically identical. This whole time, Gimli could have been a woman and you'd not actually have much to go against that. Yes, it's Gimli son of Gloin, but there could be any number of reasons for that, including the notoriously secretive (not fucking Scottish stereotype) Dwarf nature. Quite likely that they wouldn't care to have to explain such things as pronouns to people, and so just slapping "he/him" on Gimli would fit their tendencies.
In terms of women, you do have Eowyn (and Luthien, if someone could actually bring themselves to adapt a female character in fantasy with actual agency despite people trying to take if from her constantly... but that's Silmarillion stuff, and it's pretty fucking radical). However, Tolkien expressed quite some annoyance about his failure to make Arwen a character in her own right. He, himself, would have liked to see that done better. This is one area that I think the Jackson films actually improved on the original (even if poor old Glorfindel got left out), and though I don't think they handled Arwen particularly well overall, it was an improvement.
What about race and white purity bullshit? Well... first off, Tolkien is fairly clear that the decline of the lifespan of Gondorian humans had nothing to do with bloodline. They even fought a huge civil war over it, and the Nazis lost that civil war, and the decline did not speed up. But that's the Appendices, right? That's not in the book... except there is stuff like that in the book. Gondor's ruling class, you know, the super white Numenorean ubermensches that people assume they are, are actually a bunch of fucking idiots. As a whole, they began to care less for the people or even their families, and hyper focused on lineage and the names of their ancestors. This is one of the things that led to Gondor's decline in power; these white upper class assholes thought they and their history was so great that they neglected the things that actually mattered. I swear, it reads like a critique of the The Lord of the Rings some people imagine is real. The book itself explicitly states that the future splendor of Gondor does not lie in Minas Tirith and the Numenorean heritage the upper class brought with them, but rather in the vitality of those in the provinces who are not of "Numenorean stock", and who do the actual work. These folks are "swarthy", which could mean anything from Italian in complexion to black... so that could be updated a bit. And yes, this means Jackson's Gondor was way whiter than it should have been.
And those people of the Provinces? They are descendants of those the Numenoreans horribly and viciously enslaved, colonized, and murdered. That's right, we've got colonialization theming, woo! What's more, the colonizers are framed as in the wrong, as the villains, for doing what they did. Fancy that. The Numenorean legacy is deliberately shaded grey. Best part is? They did that shit without Sauron lifting a finger. Sauron only went to Numenor AFTER they'd started enslaving people and acting like murderous colonizers. It's also no accident that the Numenorean hero of the story is the one who comes from the "declined" branch of the family who all ended up as a bunch of hobos in the wilderness, and who, despite being hobos, did their best to protect the people who remained. What does Gondor give us? Boromir. FUCKING Boromir. Oh sure, we get Faramir too... but Faramir is neglected and treated like trash while his idiot brother is the golden child. Aragorn's ascension to kingship also marks a swift kick in the nads to the toxic culture that produced and exalted someone like Boromir while neglecting someone like Faramir.
And oh boy, is Boromir a study in toxic masculinity while Faramir is literally the opposite. There is a lot of toxic masculinity in Gondor's history, actually, and it is, again, all framed as bad.
Gosh, what am I fucking missing? Oh right. Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Now this is interesting. Poor bastard is definitely an example of the "Noble Savage" trope at work, but him and his people are also treated as explicitly good and also having been explicitly mistreated by the Rohirrim. Despite that, they are perfectly willing to help against a more serious threat and leverage that help on the condition that the Druedain not be hunted for sport like animals anymore... you know, if you thought Tolkien was uncritical of his proto-Anglos on horses. This is something that could use an update, definitely, but also needs to be kept.
Oh. LGBTQ+ folks. Well, Tolkien was friends with an openly gay man, and has more than a little gay subtext in works beyond LotRs. Now, he was never super explicit about it, but this is a man who read the myths and knew what was going on there. There is one case where a dude chases another dude through the forest pricking him in on the ass with a sword. I mean. Yes. Tolkien knew what he was doing. There was likely something between Turin and Beleg too... Some other potential stuff in the history... and no, I don't think Sam was romantically attracted to Frodo. Or at least, not intentionally written that way. Gimli and Legolas, though... if Gimli isn't actually secretly a woman... aaaaah, like, yeah. You can say "They're just friends", but that's what historians have done all the time with gay folks, and it feels the same here. They have a honeymoon where they go exploring places with and for the other, and Legolas just straight up takes Gimli to the Undying Lands with him because Legolas didn't want to live without Gimli. This should probably not be possible, but it happens. Never once before has it been suggested that being just good friends with an Elf gets you a ticket to Valinor, even if you are a Dwarf. Now, fucking an Elf... kind of yes, actually. It's more or less what happened to Tuor (in that, he actually counted as an Elf despite starting off as a full on human). So... gaaaaaay? Possibly! Also, asexuality abounds, with both Gandalf and Sauron being asexual despite Jackson's bullshit attempts to do something with Gandalf and Galadriel. And no, just because they're both Ainur doesn't mean they're asexual. There are a lot of very sex having Ainur.
The environmentalism goes without saying.
So what have we been through? Feminism... Colonialism... Racism... Nazis... LGBTQ+... Problematic Power Structures... whatever, there is so much more... The point is, Tolkien's work contains quite a number of themes that could be made more explicit with an update, or even should have been more explicit already. The best part is, so much of it even says some of the right stuff already. Nazis bad. Colonialism bad. Diversity good. There is a lot of "Diversity good", actually, when I think about it. Not only that, but Tolkien exalts these things into mythic status, something that gritty realism just doesn't manage, as much as GRRM might like it to. Don't get me wrong, Martin isn't a bad writer, but he isn't Tolkien, and the two shouldn't be compared.
In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest people deliberately misread a lot of Tolkien's stuff to deliberately prop up their worldview, and yes, I know, you think I'm doing the same. I am, a little, though less than one might assume. The idea that Tolkien glorified monarchism and bloodlines and (white) heritage is at least as much a misreading as saying that Gimli could have been a woman or gay. And I think to say:
Is similarly a tad overselling the situation. There is space, and good room for more to be made.
But I can't suggest you should like Tolkien, and I can't say you're totally wrong on the basic ideas you put forth with that statement, despite all my examples.
However, modern fantasy isn't necessarily much better, either. Philip Pullman once made the statement that Tolkien was afraid of femininity, by which he means a woman using sex, sex appeal, manipulation, and lies to get what she wants. This is also not entirely correct regarding Tolkien, but I also don't think the author of the His Dark Materials series is making a very good modern counterpoint to Tolkien, eh?
No modern (fantasy) author can or has written something of the stature Tolkien wrote (with perhaps the exception of Le Guin), and to give that up to become the domain of assholes is a shame.
We need other shit in fantasy, some not-Eurocentric shit especially. There is so much more that can be done, but I don't think that we should toss Tolkien's work aside when it still fits well, and could easily fit better. Not to mention, it casts a long shadow. It is like Mount Fuji in Japanese landscape paintings: it's either there in the background, or the foreground, or if it is missing it is deliberately missing. I would like that shadow to be interpreted in a better light, because then everyone benefits. Except the assholes.
Also. Boo! Peter Jackson! Boo!
Sorry for rant.
Tolkien is better suited to an update and modern theming than a lot of fantasy is. Why? It already has marginalized people, and it already has ideas very applicable to modern theming in place. Certainly, Tolkien was more progressive than Narnia-man, and he kept getting more progressive as time went on.
If you want to play with ideas of gender, the Dwarves could easily do so considering Dwarf men and women look and sound practically identical. This whole time, Gimli could have been a woman and you'd not actually have much to go against that. Yes, it's Gimli son of Gloin, but there could be any number of reasons for that, including the notoriously secretive (not fucking Scottish stereotype) Dwarf nature. Quite likely that they wouldn't care to have to explain such things as pronouns to people, and so just slapping "he/him" on Gimli would fit their tendencies.
In terms of women, you do have Eowyn (and Luthien, if someone could actually bring themselves to adapt a female character in fantasy with actual agency despite people trying to take if from her constantly... but that's Silmarillion stuff, and it's pretty fucking radical). However, Tolkien expressed quite some annoyance about his failure to make Arwen a character in her own right. He, himself, would have liked to see that done better. This is one area that I think the Jackson films actually improved on the original (even if poor old Glorfindel got left out), and though I don't think they handled Arwen particularly well overall, it was an improvement.
What about race and white purity bullshit? Well... first off, Tolkien is fairly clear that the decline of the lifespan of Gondorian humans had nothing to do with bloodline. They even fought a huge civil war over it, and the Nazis lost that civil war, and the decline did not speed up. But that's the Appendices, right? That's not in the book... except there is stuff like that in the book. Gondor's ruling class, you know, the super white Numenorean ubermensches that people assume they are, are actually a bunch of fucking idiots. As a whole, they began to care less for the people or even their families, and hyper focused on lineage and the names of their ancestors. This is one of the things that led to Gondor's decline in power; these white upper class assholes thought they and their history was so great that they neglected the things that actually mattered. I swear, it reads like a critique of the The Lord of the Rings some people imagine is real. The book itself explicitly states that the future splendor of Gondor does not lie in Minas Tirith and the Numenorean heritage the upper class brought with them, but rather in the vitality of those in the provinces who are not of "Numenorean stock", and who do the actual work. These folks are "swarthy", which could mean anything from Italian in complexion to black... so that could be updated a bit. And yes, this means Jackson's Gondor was way whiter than it should have been.
And those people of the Provinces? They are descendants of those the Numenoreans horribly and viciously enslaved, colonized, and murdered. That's right, we've got colonialization theming, woo! What's more, the colonizers are framed as in the wrong, as the villains, for doing what they did. Fancy that. The Numenorean legacy is deliberately shaded grey. Best part is? They did that shit without Sauron lifting a finger. Sauron only went to Numenor AFTER they'd started enslaving people and acting like murderous colonizers. It's also no accident that the Numenorean hero of the story is the one who comes from the "declined" branch of the family who all ended up as a bunch of hobos in the wilderness, and who, despite being hobos, did their best to protect the people who remained. What does Gondor give us? Boromir. FUCKING Boromir. Oh sure, we get Faramir too... but Faramir is neglected and treated like trash while his idiot brother is the golden child. Aragorn's ascension to kingship also marks a swift kick in the nads to the toxic culture that produced and exalted someone like Boromir while neglecting someone like Faramir.
And oh boy, is Boromir a study in toxic masculinity while Faramir is literally the opposite. There is a lot of toxic masculinity in Gondor's history, actually, and it is, again, all framed as bad.
Gosh, what am I fucking missing? Oh right. Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Now this is interesting. Poor bastard is definitely an example of the "Noble Savage" trope at work, but him and his people are also treated as explicitly good and also having been explicitly mistreated by the Rohirrim. Despite that, they are perfectly willing to help against a more serious threat and leverage that help on the condition that the Druedain not be hunted for sport like animals anymore... you know, if you thought Tolkien was uncritical of his proto-Anglos on horses. This is something that could use an update, definitely, but also needs to be kept.
Oh. LGBTQ+ folks. Well, Tolkien was friends with an openly gay man, and has more than a little gay subtext in works beyond LotRs. Now, he was never super explicit about it, but this is a man who read the myths and knew what was going on there. There is one case where a dude chases another dude through the forest pricking him in on the ass with a sword. I mean. Yes. Tolkien knew what he was doing. There was likely something between Turin and Beleg too... Some other potential stuff in the history... and no, I don't think Sam was romantically attracted to Frodo. Or at least, not intentionally written that way. Gimli and Legolas, though... if Gimli isn't actually secretly a woman... aaaaah, like, yeah. You can say "They're just friends", but that's what historians have done all the time with gay folks, and it feels the same here. They have a honeymoon where they go exploring places with and for the other, and Legolas just straight up takes Gimli to the Undying Lands with him because Legolas didn't want to live without Gimli. This should probably not be possible, but it happens. Never once before has it been suggested that being just good friends with an Elf gets you a ticket to Valinor, even if you are a Dwarf. Now, fucking an Elf... kind of yes, actually. It's more or less what happened to Tuor (in that, he actually counted as an Elf despite starting off as a full on human). So... gaaaaaay? Possibly! Also, asexuality abounds, with both Gandalf and Sauron being asexual despite Jackson's bullshit attempts to do something with Gandalf and Galadriel. And no, just because they're both Ainur doesn't mean they're asexual. There are a lot of very sex having Ainur.
The environmentalism goes without saying.
So what have we been through? Feminism... Colonialism... Racism... Nazis... LGBTQ+... Problematic Power Structures... whatever, there is so much more... The point is, Tolkien's work contains quite a number of themes that could be made more explicit with an update, or even should have been more explicit already. The best part is, so much of it even says some of the right stuff already. Nazis bad. Colonialism bad. Diversity good. There is a lot of "Diversity good", actually, when I think about it. Not only that, but Tolkien exalts these things into mythic status, something that gritty realism just doesn't manage, as much as GRRM might like it to. Don't get me wrong, Martin isn't a bad writer, but he isn't Tolkien, and the two shouldn't be compared.
In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest people deliberately misread a lot of Tolkien's stuff to deliberately prop up their worldview, and yes, I know, you think I'm doing the same. I am, a little, though less than one might assume. The idea that Tolkien glorified monarchism and bloodlines and (white) heritage is at least as much a misreading as saying that Gimli could have been a woman or gay. And I think to say:
there was no place for marginalized people in Tolkien's rural conservative catholic pseudo-mythical-England
Is similarly a tad overselling the situation. There is space, and good room for more to be made.
But I can't suggest you should like Tolkien, and I can't say you're totally wrong on the basic ideas you put forth with that statement, despite all my examples.
However, modern fantasy isn't necessarily much better, either. Philip Pullman once made the statement that Tolkien was afraid of femininity, by which he means a woman using sex, sex appeal, manipulation, and lies to get what she wants. This is also not entirely correct regarding Tolkien, but I also don't think the author of the His Dark Materials series is making a very good modern counterpoint to Tolkien, eh?
No modern (fantasy) author can or has written something of the stature Tolkien wrote (with perhaps the exception of Le Guin), and to give that up to become the domain of assholes is a shame.
We need other shit in fantasy, some not-Eurocentric shit especially. There is so much more that can be done, but I don't think that we should toss Tolkien's work aside when it still fits well, and could easily fit better. Not to mention, it casts a long shadow. It is like Mount Fuji in Japanese landscape paintings: it's either there in the background, or the foreground, or if it is missing it is deliberately missing. I would like that shadow to be interpreted in a better light, because then everyone benefits. Except the assholes.
Also. Boo! Peter Jackson! Boo!
Sorry for rant.
