Sexism - It's a Real Thing

[funhusker]

24 minutes ago, knapplc said:

LOTR features mostly men because it's an adventure tale set in a time where brawn was in greater use than brains.  Aside from super-rare characters like Brienne of Tarth (GoT), there aren't many women in sword-wielding times that could believably fight against men. 

 

In the Star Wars universe, gender is irrelevant because anyone can use the force, anyone can wield a lightsaber, anyone can pilot a ship or shoot a blaster.  We had Leia as a gun-toting protagonist, then it expanded with Jyn, Rey, and especially Hondo in TLJ. 

 

It would be less believable for the Fellowship to contain a woman.  It is entirely believable that Jyn, Rey & Hondo do the things they do. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 20, 2017 by funhusker

[zoogs]

LOTR is set in a time and place that is not real, features a lot of mini-sized characters that couldn't believably fight orcs. It's a story-telling choice and not really a conscious one (hence, I'm not trying to attack Tolkien at all here. I love his work). The genre is male dominated, and the types of characters used and stories told are a byproduct of that. ASOIAF, which overall I respect a lot less than Tolkien, features more prominent women because GRR Martin deliberately targeted this aspect of the genre. Some of the adventuring hobbits could have been women. At least one of the prominent magical Maiar, or other magical beings (giant orc-crushing trees, e.g.), could have been female. But then LOTR would have been a vehicle for challenging genre orthodoxy -- so on the one hand, I think such challenges are great. On the other, I think it's completely understandable that Tolkien was trying to tell his story the way he knew how, not trying to confront conventions in every area.

 

Modern fantasy should strive to be more inclusive, IMO, at least if it has a broad intended audience. There's just a little bit less room for "conveniently, this story has a setting where women are somewhere between invisible and irrelevant" without the question "why is that the story you're trying to tell" attached to it. And I think it does, along with other segments of pop culture, but I'm not a huge fantasy reader.

Edited December 20, 2017 by zoogs

[knapplc]

Female Maiar were heavily featured in The Silmarillion, whose literary roots predate the story that became LOTR.  Eowyn was a fantastic female character, as was Galadriel, but both aren't nearly as heavily involved in a main story arc as, say, Luthien or Melian.   But I think this is probably the most accurate reason LOTR features a heavily male-dominated cast:

 

10 minutes ago, zoogs said:

But then LOTR would have been a vehicle for challenging genre orthodoxy -- so on the one hand, I think such challenges are great. On the other, I think it's completely understandable that Tolkien was trying to tell his story the way he knew how, not trying to confront conventions in every area.

 

The times in which he wrote those stories wouldn't have allowed him to be successful if he'd have tried to challenge those conventions. 

 

I think his time in WWI also played a major factor in his character choice.  But mainly I think it's because his is a story of characters doing military things, and that means men (with the exception of Eowyn). 

 

Band of Brothers, which we just finished watching again, is also a military-themed story featuring almost exclusively men.  It doesn't suffer for it.

[zoogs]

Yup, I agree on both counts. And I thought of The Silmarillion, too. Middle Earth is my favorite world to dive into. Tolkien is a master.

 

*It's been a while since I've read these and on Eowyn, I think I would draw a distinction between book Eowyn and movie Eowyn. This provides a good critique of movie Eowyn... https://www.themarysue.com/the-story-of-eowyn/ but, there are a lot of things about the movies that are more about Hollywood than Tolkien. We did start out talking about the movies, and I'm probably in the wrong for conflating them too much. Tolkien was a WWI vet who was writing this through WWII, as you point out. 

 

Like there's this line, from the books!

 

Quote

And she calls him on it. Flat out. She tells him, “All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.”

 

(I didn't even realize there were Star Wars spoilers here, sorry. Edited:)

There's a parallel to draw with TLJ here.

Poe is one of the good guys: dashing, daring, kickass pilot and a conventional do no wrong kind of guy. When he hatches a crazy plan, it's supposed to work. Holdo's supposed to be the bad guy, not knowing to take risks, while Poe's mission saves the day at the last minute. Turns out, he was the one in the wrong and, while remaining a thorough good guy, he learns an extremely humbling lesson. That very, very easily could have been framed another way if the intention was not to subvert.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2017 by zoogs

[knapplc]

Spoiler

Holdo is the good guy version of Darth Maul. A great character that was killed too soon.  Would have liked to have seen more of both. 

 

I came into this conversation in the middle and didn't realize Movie Eowyn was more being talked about than Book Eowyn. For my part, it will only ever be about the book.  The movies were an abomination.

Edited December 22, 2017 by knapplc

[zoogs]

Sorry! TLJ spoilers below.

 

Yes, it's such a shame. Laura Dern is spectacular. And I think they were counting on Leia to be in Episode 9. 

 

Maybe we'll get to see a spinoff featuring her earlier exploits (to which Poe alluded). I'd love to see it, and as long as they're making a million of these...

Edited December 21, 2017 by zoogs

[Moiraine]

I would rather have an all male cast in a movie than a Jurassic World situation where they have an extremely successful woman in a position that requires intelligence and leadership abilities and then have that woman:

 

a) act like a complete moron

b) get involved with the male protagonist (I don't remember how far that went)

c) have 0 athletic ability.

 

a and c combined: wear freaking high heels and a skirt.

 

 

So anyway, I was fine with LotR. More eye candy for me! Plus Jackson went out of his way to make the female parts more important than they were in the books.

[knapplc]

Just now, Moiraine said:

a and c combined: wear freaking high heels and a skirt.

 

That ripped me right out of the movie. It was so absurd.

 

1 minute ago, Moiraine said:

More eye candy for me!

 

In this, of all threads, you say this.

 

Spoiler

You know I'm kidding with the "of all threads" line.

 

[Moiraine]

1 minute ago, knapplc said:

 

That ripped me right out of the movie. It was so absurd.

 

 

In this, of all threads, you say this.

 

  Hide contents

You know I'm kidding with the "of all threads" line.

 

 

 

Ohhh so I'm not allowed to do it anywhere!

[zoogs]

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

I would rather have an all male cast in a movie than a Jurassic World situation where they have an extremely successful woman in a position that requires intelligence and leadership abilities and then have that woman:

 

a) act like a complete moron

b) get involved with the male protagonist (I don't remember how far that went)

c) have 0 athletic ability.

 

a and c combined: wear freaking high heels and a skirt.

 

 

So anyway, I was fine with LotR. More eye candy for me! Plus Jackson went out of his way to make the female parts more important than they were in the books.

 

YES, I *despise* Jurassic World. Everything about how they treated both the men and women in that movie was disgraceful. I'm sure it wasn't actually for this, but I wouldn't be in the least bit shocked if it came out that Colin Treverrow was fired from IX for insisting that the finale be about how Rey realizes she was focusing too much on being a professional Jedi, and realizing she needed to fall in love with and marry <a-hole male character who ends up saving the day> instead.

[Moiraine]

Well, getting really off topic now but the thing that all of the sequels didn't get right is the characters weren't smart.

 

In Jurassic Park the idiots and jerks were the exceptions, and they were dealt with very early in the movie. The computer guy, the greedy guy who got eaten by the TRex. The one exception was John Hammond (although his intentions weren't evil).

 

All of the others were either smart or had the excuse of being kids, but even the kids stopped being idiots after the TRex scene. There was also a really strong female character I could cheer for. Things were bad for the characters because dinosaurs are dangerous. Not because of the humans screwing up over an over again.

 

In the rest of the movies there were way too many characters who were so stupid I wanted them to get eaten.

[zoogs]

That's a really good observation. Even with The Lost World it was going off the rails, but I hadn't thought of it in these terms.

 

However, both novels were pretty strong, I thought. Edge to the sequel novel, even. It's been a while, again, but I remember the girl there being a lot more central (and capable) than oops-snuck-into-the-trailer-sorry-Malcolm. Also, Sarah Harding had equal billing as any other major character in the novel but was inevitably reduced to Jeff Goldblum's erstwhile estranged, soon-to-be-reconciled love interest.

[zoogs]

One of these characters is not dressed like the others.

[knapplc]

Karen GIllan will always be Amy Pond to me.  And Amy Pond never had to dress provocatively to command the scene.

[RedDenver]

@knapplc, can you spoiler hide Holdo/The Last Jedi stuff above? Some of us haven't seen it yet.