The Hobbit Cast Swaps Genders in All-Female Photoshoot

[The Funslinger]

If we were to gender swap the Hobbit using known actors, I think Maggie Smith would have made a great lady Gandalf.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That's where I'd have to disagree. I don't see any group in society as the default group for the heroic protagonist, or their love interest, or the villain, or any other typical role in a story. You said that a default straight white male is what the hero "ought" to be to us. Again, I strongly disagree. The only reason I find myself writing white, male characters is because that is what I am. In a story where race, gender, orientation and religion literally do not matter at all, (such as those in fantasy, or perhaps pure thrillers) I write the characters as white, asexual, atheist and male, only because that is the life I have led for decades, easier to understand that write about for myself (being myself) than any other demographic. In a story where none of these attributes matter, I don't see why any author of any background should change the protagonist from the default position (ie. who they are as a writer).

The only reason this default position matters at all in today's world is because an overwhelming number of popular books and films are written by men. As a result, the default position in the minds of the writers' (which again, is entirely harmless on its own) is only noticeable because the majority of them are white, male and straight. With an influx of black, gay, bisexual, female and transgender writers, this 'default' writing style for books and films would entirely cease to be any kind of problem.

If you look up the best films directed by women (the 2013 articles online are some of the most interesting) you will see that every single one of them features female protagonists, and has a majority of the cast being female as well. I would never dream of citing this lack of male protagonists from female writers as being lazy or unrepresentative - this is how writers write. All we need are more popular female writers, which luckily seems to be the rise (with J.K. Rowling setting one hell of a trend - the first self-made billionaire being a female writer shows that the sky's the limit).

Possibly...but then we don't have a control group for you, so it's hard to say.

However, you'll note Rowling decided to write about a male main character. It's been argued, and I'd tend to agree, that if she'd written Harriett Potter or whatever, it wouldn't have been so successful. Or if Harry had been gay, black, whatever.

Thank you for this entire discussion by the way. There is so much vitriol online that these are the first posts I've made on Escapist Magazine for several years. It's nice to discuss interesting and controversial issues with people that aren't going to automatically descend into frothing-at-the-mouth hatred and ignorance, but instead genuinely debate and discuss.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Women's issues are always touchy, and then when you add something popular like Tolkien that you might seem to be criticizing...

 

[CloudAtlas]

Sorry, I don't think I'm making myself clear. All I'm trying to say is that the reason behind Tolkien not having as many women in fighting roles in the novel, isn't because he is a white, middle class sexist bigot.

I don't think lowly of Tolkien, and I won't judge him as person by the same standard as I would apply to people of the present. However, I will judge his work by today's standards, and there simply is a dearth of female characters. Only one female character, Eowyn, in a 1000ish-pages novel like the LOTR that doesn't happily fit into traditional gender roles just isn't really an awful lot. And even her character arc, as you stated yourself later, has an unfortunate, and very traditional end (why couldn't she become queen of Rohan, for example?).

 

[DRTJR]

There Dwarves, where are their beards? female Dwarves in Tolken's work have beards.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

Sorry, I don't think I'm making myself clear. All I'm trying to say is that the reason behind Tolkien not having as many women in fighting roles in the novel, isn't because he is a white, middle class sexist bigot.

I don't think lowly of Tolkien, and I won't judge him as person by the same standard as I would apply to people of the present. However, I will judge his work by today's standards, and there simply is a dearth of female characters. Only one female character, Eowyn, in a 1000ish-pages novel like the LOTR that doesn't happily fit into traditional gender roles just isn't really an awful lot. And even her character arc, as you stated yourself later, has an unfortunate, and very traditional end (why couldn't she become queen of Rohan, for example?).

I'm not sure if you've read my previous long post on the Lord of the Rings; if not, scroll up and have a look because I'll just be reiterating what I've probably said above less articulately. If you remember the story of Lord of the Rings, the vast majority of it, and I mean 700+ pure pages of material, focuses on war, and strife, and death, which the main characters all have to traverse. The context that Tolkien used as indirect inspiration, WW1, (which is why the dead marshes exist, making them about a billion times more eerie) was a war fought entirely by men, who fought and died alongside each other. I don't pretend to know what it's like to be a soldier, but my granddad did fight in WW2, and he has often talked of a male camaraderie that exists between soldiers that doesn't exist in any other part of society. This is written about, and seen in a lot of of old fiction, where the male bond between two friends (like Frodo and Sam) can be seen to transcend all sexual desire, and the love between a man and a woman. Bonding with men miles away from your family and home, with the knowledge that everything you do could save their lives, even if you might never even make it back is something that will fundamentally change a person. With this in mind, it would have made no sense for Tolkien to start writing his epic with an equal load of female soldiers as male ones, or even a close amount. He had seen his friends fight and die by his side, so when he wrote the book, which is overwhelmingly about the futility and tragedy of war, he never considered gender, in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society. Women have never been forced to march in front lines and die by the millions for their country, and the families they will never see again.

I think with the current rise of equality, (especially the much anticipated right for women to fight on the front lines) it is easy to forget that some societal issues, like war, are ones that women throughout history haven't faced in the same way men have. With the same logic, I would never expect a white, straight male in 1950s America to write an equivalent of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar, detailing how misunderstood his gender is, how depressingly lonely it is to be judged because of one's genitals and how prejudice ruins the lives of men. Even though fiction can transcend any social barriers, the best and most powerful books always are written in a strong voice of the writer, who bases their books in a society that functions realistically, whether they are Sylvia Plath or Tolkien. Again, you've got to remember that the use of female characters in fantasy as warriors is a very recent development, purely because it's something that does not, and has not ever happened. In the push for equality of representation, quite rightly, women are seen more and more as fighters, which makes older books seem unfair, even though there are entirely logical and understandable reasons as to why.

That said, I agree with you. In a world as big as Middle Earth, I wanted more female characters, as well as more everything in general too! Let's hope that as the genders in society fight it out over their respective rights, expectations and responsibilities, the use of both genders in fiction becomes more representative and diverse in all aspects. Bring on an age where the race, religion, gender and orientation of a character, when not explicitly needed in the plot, truly does not matter!

 

[sumanoskae]

Nice job overall. But yeah, dwarf women do in fact have beards, and Gandalf is WAY too young.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Again, you've got to remember that the use of female characters in fantasy as warriors is a very recent development, purely because it's something that does not, and has not ever happened.

That is not true. Even if you are taking a European perspective (which is only a small part of the world), women have fought. In much smaller numbers than men, of course, but to say it has not ever happened is wrong.

in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

That is really, really, really not true.

 

[CloudAtlas]

(...) he never considered gender, in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

An enemy army marching through their lands, raping them, pillaging their homes, taking away all their food, and burning down their fields, I'd say that was a rather explicit problem of war in the lives of many women in many a society.
I can imagine few events that any man, woman or child would have dreaded more. This past you're thinking of, it doesn't exist.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

Again, you've got to remember that the use of female characters in fantasy as warriors is a very recent development, purely because it's something that does not, and has not ever happened.

That is not true. Even if you are taking a European perspective (which is only a small part of the world), women have fought. In much smaller numbers than men, of course, but to say it has not ever happened is wrong.

in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

That is really, really, really not true.

Once again, I'm writing from the point of view of Tolkien. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear. I'm not trying to underplay the role of Amazonian women, Roman dignitaries, and god knows how many other women that have had a role in combat throughout history. However, Tolkien. WW1. Millions of male soldiers died to protect their families. Why would he have any inclination to write about women dying in his book (which is, let us not forget, about war, specifically WW1) in anywhere near the same number as men? Without any agenda to push, he would have just written from experience, and is entirely justified in having done so.

As for the second statement I made, I'm sorry that it came across as explicitly as it did. Rereading it now, I would have phrased it differently. However, the point I was making still stands. Around 8,500,000 men died in the war, many of whom were young and terrified, pressured by society to risk their lives for families they might not have even had (the white feather campaign being infamous for this). The women, who were left at home, had to deal with the fallout, being sanctioned by the state to work in factories producing munitions. Some were killed in civilian bombings and during the takeover of land. All of this is so tragic that words cannot ever embody the loss the world experienced.

However, the experience of war, (the idea of having to go away from home with other men, perhaps never coming home and seeing their families again, and dying for a greater good) is something that Tolkien shared only with men, and something that all other male surviving soldiers in WW1 had only experienced with men. Many, when returning home took the trauma with them, as something like that never leaves a person. You cannot pretend that women can understand what that experience was like (not that I can) any more than I can pretend to understand what it was like for women then, or women in any other point in history. War was something in which men fought, and men died, and that was the world that Tolkien lived in, and arguably most of the world has. There are of course exceptions, but unless you've lived in them, or you are making a deliberate, conscious effort to recreate them in fiction, it is at the absolute least entirely understandable that the Lord of the Rings became what it was.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Again, you've got to remember that the use of female characters in fantasy as warriors is a very recent development, purely because it's something that does not, and has not ever happened.

That is not true. Even if you are taking a European perspective (which is only a small part of the world), women have fought. In much smaller numbers than men, of course, but to say it has not ever happened is wrong.

in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

That is really, really, really not true.

Once again, I'm writing from the point of view of Tolkien.

Er, so when you say that it's "never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society"...you mean any society while Tolkien happened to have lived in it? Cause that's really not the same thing.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

(...) he never considered gender, in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

An enemy army marching through their lands, raping them, pillaging their homes, taking away all their food, and burning down their fields, I'd say that was a rather explicit problem of war in the lives of many women in many a society.
I can imagine few events that any man, woman or child would have dreaded more. This past you're thinking of, it doesn't exist.

Thank you for taking what I said, and making it sound as though I am the biggest misogynist on the internet. (I am not, by the way. Women are lovely. Men are too.) That is not at all what I was saying. The act of fighting on the front lines, sharing camaraderie with fellow troop members, and dying miles away from home in agony in the vain hope that you have protected your family is an explicit experience of war that men have overwhelmingly been forced to deal with throughout history. This is why Tolkien didn't write in as many, (or anywhere near as many) female soldiers alongside the male ones. That is what I was explaining. I never said that women did not suffer the worst tortures and inhumanities during war. They have in the past, they are right now, and unfortunately, unless it is stopped, it will continue to happen. I only meant that I didn't consider it explicit, in the way that they weren't 'part of the war' the same way the drafted soldiers were. They were left at home while the war swept over them, which is a terrible but entirely different experience from being flown half way around the world to fight foreign soldiers in a trench.

I dare say, if Tolkien had been a French woman during WW1, having faced god knows what in his/her own home, a very different, but no less powerful, novel could have been written in LOTR's stead.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

Again, you've got to remember that the use of female characters in fantasy as warriors is a very recent development, purely because it's something that does not, and has not ever happened.

That is not true. Even if you are taking a European perspective (which is only a small part of the world), women have fought. In much smaller numbers than men, of course, but to say it has not ever happened is wrong.

in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

That is really, really, really not true.

Once again, I'm writing from the point of view of Tolkien.

Er, so when you say that it's "never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society"...you mean any society while Tolkien happened to have lived in it? Cause that's really not the same thing.

Once again, I'm punished by how poorly I convey what I'm trying to say. I don't mean that war hasn't been a problem in the lives of women at all, historically or not. What I was trying to say (and what I am continually dancing around but not expressing properly) is that the literal experience of war for soldiers, (being forcibly drafted, shipped to a foreign land, and being in terrible conditions, psychologically traumatised by what they have done, and possibly dying) which is the experience that all main characters in the Lord of the Rings experience, is an experience that a ridiculous majority of men have gone through, compared to women. I confess that I am not omniscient, but I have never in my entire life ever read or heard of women going through the process of forced state drafting, nor of being shipped around the world on the front lines to fight and die for the country's cause. If it has never happened in anything like a significant way compared to that experienced by men in history, (say, even 0.001%) then I apologise for being tragically misinformed.

 

[CloudAtlas]

(...) he never considered gender, in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

An enemy army marching through their lands, raping them, pillaging their homes, taking away all their food, and burning down their fields, I'd say that was a rather explicit problem of war in the lives of many women in many a society.
I can imagine few events that any man, woman or child would have dreaded more. This past you're thinking of, it doesn't exist.

Thank you for taking what I said, and making it sound as though I am the biggest misogynist on the internet. (I am not, by the way. Women are lovely. Men are too.) That is not at all what I was saying.

Then you should have chosen your words more carefully.

You don't have to defend Tolkien against me. I didn't say anything bad about him. I'm fully aware that he lived in a different time. But whatever his reasons for doing so might have been, that doesn't change that there simply are few female characters in his works, and that is not a positive thing.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

(...) he never considered gender, in as much as war has never historically ever been an explicit problem in the lives of women in any society.

An enemy army marching through their lands, raping them, pillaging their homes, taking away all their food, and burning down their fields, I'd say that was a rather explicit problem of war in the lives of many women in many a society.
I can imagine few events that any man, woman or child would have dreaded more. This past you're thinking of, it doesn't exist.

Thank you for taking what I said, and making it sound as though I am the biggest misogynist on the internet. (I am not, by the way. Women are lovely. Men are too.) That is not at all what I was saying.

Then you should have chosen your words more carefully.

You don't have to defend Tolkien against me. I didn't say anything bad about him. I'm fully aware that he lived in a different time. But whatever his reasons for doing so might have been, that doesn't change that there simply are few female characters in his works, and that is not a positive thing.

Unfortunately, I entirely agree with you. There are too few female character in his works - there should not only have been more, but also better development on the existing ones. Oh. I'm not sure what to do now. My only previous point was that the few female characters he has aren't terrible depictions of women, which they're not. Seeing as we both agree, I think everyone wins. An historic day on the internet!

 

[Belaam]

As we already have the throwaway line from LoTR that humans think there are no dwarven women because they don't realize that dwarven women have beards, I just go with the assumption that half of the dwarves in The Hobbit are female.

Not only is viewing it that way kinda fun, you also get a hot lesbian romance between one of the dwarves and the elf in the second film.

 

[Grumman]

As we already have the throwaway line from LoTR that humans think there are no dwarven women because they don't realize that dwarven women have beards, I just go with the assumption that half of the dwarves in The Hobbit are female.

Not only is viewing it that way kinda fun, you also get a hot lesbian romance between one of the dwarves and the elf in the second film.

No. Just no.

If Peter Jackson had replaced some of the dwarves with female dwarves and changed nothing else, I would be entirely behind that. But I'd expect him to actually do it, and not just spout some bs and handwave a lot about how the sausagefest isn't /really/ a sausagefest. I wouldn't give them beards either - Aragorn making a racist joke at the dwarves' expense isn't what I consider a credible source.

I don't hold the lack of female characters against Tolkein, but that doesn't mean I like it. But more than that, I hate that the only significant female character in the entire six movies who isn't in a love triangle is a goddamn /spider/.

 

[punipunipyo]

looks like a good way to make an anime... kinda like Gundam-girls, but this time... with the characters from The Hobbit...

 

[JonnyHG]

You don't have to defend Tolkien against me. I didn't say anything bad about him. I'm fully aware that he lived in a different time. But whatever his reasons for doing so might have been, that doesn't change that there simply are few female characters in his works, and that is not a positive thing.

I think it is a very positive thing that few female characters are in his works. The reason for this is that it represents a point on the spectrum of gender balance in storytelling. Granted, this point on the spectrum has been over-represented, but that does not mean its existence is a negative thing. To say that the gender balance of all stories similar to this one is negative removes a possibility of creativity from the spectrum. It may not be preferable to you (and you are certainly entitled to feel how you like about it) but that does not make it intrinsically negative. This is one man's art and it does not need more or less of any conceivable idea because it is a perfect representation of his thoughts.

Ideally, all points on the spectrum of gender balance in storytelling should be filled in. Unfortunately, this is not the case and hopefully this will change in the future. All points are positive because they exist. This is the beauty of creativity.

Unfortunately, I entirely agree with you. There are too few female character in his works - there should not only have been more, but also better development on the existing ones. Oh. I'm not sure what to do now. My only previous point was that the few female characters he has aren't terrible depictions of women, which they're not. Seeing as we both agree, I think everyone wins. An historic day on the internet!

Thank you for all of your posts on this topic. In my opinion you've explained it more clearly than you think you have.

 

[Denamic]

I never thought I'd say this, but I'd do Gandalf.

 

[CloudAtlas]

I think it is a very positive thing that few female characters are in his works. The reason for this is that it represents a point on the spectrum of gender balance in storytelling. Granted, this point on the spectrum has been over-represented, but that does not mean its existence is a negative thing. To say that the gender balance of all stories similar to this one is negative removes a possibility of creativity from the spectrum. It may not be preferable to you (and you are certainly entitled to feel how you like about it) but that does not make it intrinsically negative. This is one man's art and it does not need more or less of any conceivable idea because it is a perfect representation of his thoughts.

No, it's not a positive thing. Every story benefits from a diverse cast. The Fellowship has members of 5 different races, and each one has a different background, different personalities, and different wants, and those are often in conflict of each other. The same is true even more so for the rest of the cast. Gender is just one more, and important, dimension here, and a very easy one to implement on top. A story where every character is pretty much alike will have a hard time to draw the audience in.