labingi

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's birthday, all! In the great crossover 'verse in my head, Frodo is 93 today. (Bilbo has left us some time ago.) Well, partly owing to limited time, I'm going to post an essay I'd already written on The Rings of Power series to mark the day. I feel a bit bad about that; B and F deserve more revelry and less ranting for their birthday, but there it is.

The Rings of Power and Lack of… Cultural Diversity, Dialogism, Imagination…?

I'm going to use The Rings of Power (currently through ep. 3) to try to unpack my responses to some larger cultural issues. The Mary Sue's Rachel Ulatowski has a brief, pretty well-rounded overview of the reception of The Rings of Power that notes (a) most critics strongly like it, (b) vast swaths of fans hate it, (c) many seem to do so for racist/sexist reasons, (d) and Tolkien purist reasons, and (e), nonetheless, the scale of vitriol is puzzling. I want to try to unpack the puzzlement by exploring my own responses.

As a Tolkien fan, I am, indeed, experiencing a lot of anger at this show. Despite liking many parts of it, the parts I don't like feel disrespectful to Tolkien's worldbuilding and, frankly, dumb. This anger is exacerbated by a feeling of isolation. Yeah, almost all the pro critics seem to love the show (and not to know or care anything about Tolkien's works). And most of the fan vitriol does seem to be about race, which is not my problem. I think it's handling race really well; I'm pleased and impressed. I think it's handling gender really well, except for Galadriel, who, unfortunately, is the protagonist (I'll come back to that). I do certainly fall into "Tolkien purist" camp to a degree, in that I know his universe fairly well and care about it a great deal. So part of my sour grapes is annoyance at canon divergence. But I think there are deeper issues at work than "critics are racist/can't handle changes to canon." I want to explore some thoughts…

What Is an Adaption's Responsibility to the Original?
So far, The Rings of Power diverges massively from Tolkien's work, like 600% more than Jackson diverged from the books of The Lord of the Rings. For one thing, it's compression of the timeline is not a small deal. It turns something like 3500 years-ish into a few centuries (maybe 500 years?). That's almost an order of magnitude difference. In addition to making elements of the history kind of incoherent (ex. when did all the Lúthien's lineage happen and how long was the rise and fall of Númenor?), it has huge implications for character development. They're at the end of the Second Age, but Galadriel is behaving like an angry teen. She's had 3000 years of character development omitted, which is huge (more on her later).

So far, the show is also showing little sense of Tolkien's basic cosmology, which is grounded in faith in Eru/God with the Valar as regents and a strong emphasis on hierarchy and knowing your place. I understand why that wouldn't be popular today (I don't like it in many ways), but omitting most of it leaves the show (so far) with no cosmological grounding. Morgoth and Sauron are bad because they've done mean things. Is that it? Is that the sum total of the show's philosophy? I guess it could be, but it's a fundamental ethical divergence from Tolkien's conception. If they stick with this, it's about as big a change as turning Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a show about Christian values.

Does this matter?

One could argue no. Stories are constantly evolving to suit the culture they're retold in. This is inevitable and keeps stories alive. Ex. King Arthur has origins in late Roman Britain but most classic Arthurian images we have are high medieval, much later, because the stories were retold for that era. Then, Tennyson used the material to explore Victorian values, and so on. That's not wrong; that's cultural evolution.

On the other hand, here are some differences from that scenario: these works are not public domain. They're not free to anyone to explore different interpretations. They were sold for massive money to one company (to rule them all), and this will likely be the only video-based interpretation beyond fan films we have for quite a while (very possibly my lifetime). That implies to me some higher responsibility not just to do an interpretation but to do an adaptation of the text purchased, to at least have one go at telling the basic story in a different medium before radically changing the basic story. Otherwise, will we ever see the original story adapted? Not to see that is a real loss. Or to put it another way, let's have Zeffirelli before Romeo+Juliet. Or to put another way, imagine Jackson not actually adapting LotR but doing a loose take-off where maybe one Hobbit, an Elf, and a Dwarf spend five years retracing Bilbo's journey before wending their way to Mordor to destroy the Ring. That would have made many people understandably angry. And I suspect many people are angry at this show (so far) for a very similar reason.

It does also seem somewhat offensive to basic respect for people and to pluralistic social discourse to ignore (or invert) an author's values in a text broadly characterized as an adaptation, not a critique or parody. Imagine Narnia with the ideology of His Dark Materials, or Ursula Le Guin's work being reimagined to promote mono-cultural patriarchy. Imagine an adaptation of James Baldwin's works stripping out racial discourse. TRoP isn't that bad (at least as of ep. 3), but it feels on that spectrum, and that does feel disrespectful—and like it's fundamentally missing the point.

Fear of Cultural Diversity… or Something
Ulatowski says, "Some users argued that having Black Elves and Dwarves, or females being warriors, goes against how Tolkien originally imagined his universe. However, that just sounds like a feeble attempt at masking their own racism and sexism." I tend to agree with her that the race argument is flimsy, but I want to focus on what this implies about sexism in storytelling. The implication seems to be that a story must depict women as socially equal to men in order to not be sexist; i.e. replicating Tolkien's sexist world would be sexist. But it is possible to depict sexism without being sexist. House of the Dragon is doing this generally very well. It is possible to show sexism and critique it. I would bloody love to see an actual critique of the sexism of Middle-earth vs. a substantial ignoring of it.

Here are reasons I think showing the gendered bones of Tolkien's world and critiquing them would be preferable to the near egalitarianism presented so far in TRoP.

1. It would allow very thoughtful critique/exploration of the underlying philosophy of Tolkien's whole world, which is hugely based on hierarchical patriarchy, all the way up to God the Father. This could be fascinating, complex, and simultaneously progressive and (at least somewhat) respectful to Tolkien's conservative roots (and conservative fans). It could explore what's actually good about conservative values. Mind blower: there are some things. Thus, it could act against polarization in our culture.

2. Conversely, presenting egalitarianism laid over a fundamentally hierarchical, patriarchal piece of worldbuilding can readily produce either shallowness or incoherence. How do the Valar work? Does fidelity to God matter? Does obedience matter? How is adherence to these roles/hierarchies consistent with a very fluid society with lots of personal agency choices? (Maybe the show will explore some of these questions; it's hasn't yet.)

3. With Galadriel (and not the other female characters), the show is falling heavily into the trap of male-style warrior = heroic woman. So far, we're told that Galadriel matters because she is a brave military commander, athletic, and can kick ass. She has literally nothing else admirable about her except that she's pretty and remembers some facts from history. Stripped of the marshal kickassery, she would be nothing but a bratty, entitled kid often incapable of basic politeness, patience, or discernment. I think this is very sexist. (That Elendil, a mortal Man, likens this ancient Elf to his teenage kids is spot on and utterly insulting to Tolkien's character, as is the fact that a brash mortal dude in his twenties who can't keep himself out of barroom brawls has ten times her diplomacy.)

Speaking as a woman who is not a marshal hero, athletic, or able to kick anyone's ass, I'm really tired of popular culture telling me I'm worthless because I don't do those things. That's not to say Galadriel shouldn't kick ass; it fits her original character. But it shouldn't be all she is. Yes, the show's other female characters are, indeed, a good counter to this. But Galadriel is the focus and the one whose has been stripped of all her pre-existing admirable traits to rebuild a new character who is only notable for being a fighter.

She's underdeveloped in Tolkien's work, for sure, but here's some stuff we know or can infer:

By this time, she is (should be) several thousand years old with a lot of hard-won lessons about the perils of rashness and the nature of loss. (If they wanted young First Age Galadriel, I'd submit this series should have been set in the First Age.)

She is a wife and mother, which this series apparently doesn't want her to be (I hope I'm wrong and Celeborn is just off stage). Why can't a woman be a kick-ass wife and mother? Why must she be coded as 18-year-old brat? This plays into very old stereotypes that traditional female roles like wife and mother are stupid. You're "just a housewife." We really need more push-back against that, not less.

She's very, very rare as an Elvish woman who has influence on a par with the men. She's so rare Elvish culture can't even handle it. It keeps trying to sell us on things like Celeborn is the main ruler of Lothlórien, and it's perfectly obvious this isn't so, but it's like it breaks the Elvish brain to imagine it any other way. And can you imagine how astounding this woman must be to have made that kind of power move? Whereas in TRoP, she seems utterly accepted as "commander" as if it was no biggie. To me, that's kind of an affront to her accomplishments.

Lack of Dialogism/Imagination
This tendency of many shows today to develop a world that mostly mirrors 2020s left-ish identity politics leaves me angry and worried, I think, because it lacks imagination, diversity in worldbuilding, and dialogism (people with genuinely different perspectives genuinely talking, challenging each other). It's univocal and, thus, almost by definition, simplistic in its cultural critiques.

And I think this galls me, in particular, when it's done to Tolkien because his world is a masterwork, decades in the making, of a conservative Catholic ideology. It is a treasure trove of opportunity to engage mindfully with what those values mean, to let characters challenge them, more intelligently than Tolkien does. There's a very great deal I personally don't like about Tolkien's values—and much I do. That, in itself, I find fascinating and valuable. And I hate to see that opportunity for real cultural exploration squandered on trying to look blandly acceptable to 2020s pop culture tastes, which is the feel I'm getting so far.

Well, that's what I've got so far. I am curious to see how this show evolves. I really do enjoy its more original elements, and honestly it may really improve for me. I'm still hopeful and, at least, interested. And I do appreciate all the work the creative talent has put into it. In this noxious age, let me say I respect them, admire them, and wish them no harm, even though I disagree with some of their creative choices. The acting and directing are superb.