The Lord of the Rings is considerably shorter with just scenes passing the Bechdel Test
A gender disparity? In a classic high fantasy story? Get out of here
Film Features The Lord of the Rings
You can’t build a big, fancy fantasy castle out of only cornerstones. Well, maybe you can… seeing as how this is a “fantasy” we’re talking about here, which implies you can make whatever rules you want. But it wouldn’t be a very interesting fancy castle, now would it?
Okay, look—we’re a pop culture news site, not purveyors of fantastical allegory. What we’re trying to say with this ham-fisted metaphor is that foundational texts are great and all, but it’s important to contextualize them as a means to often support larger, more complex and diverse stories. Case in point: Both J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Peter Jackson’s pretty damn faithful adaptations. Sure, they remain compelling, grand narratives of classic Good versus Evil, but in a modern cultural landscape they remain a just a tad heavy on the testosterone…
Which is to say, all the male characters get big, beefy-boy roles while the women are largely relegated to the sidelines apart from a smattering of scenes. When women are in a scene, it’s usually only in relation to the male humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbits around them. Here, check out this handy “supercut” from Jackson’s film trilogy featuring only scenes in which two women speak to each other about something unrelated to men, aka the Bechdel Test.
“Where’s mama?”
One line of dialogue. One. Technically two if you count Eowyn’s “Shhh” that follows. That’s pretty damn sparse, even taking Tolkien’s patriarchal fantasy setting constructed during the early 20th century into consideration. And before our comments section is flooded by angry Tolkienists hellbent on dropping contrarian extended lore evidence of Middle Earth being a wondrous place of egalitarianism and universal suffrage, let us just offer a resounding, “You are still completely wrong” as a retort.
Anyway, as we said earlier, it’s all about cornerstones. LOTR is great, but it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairly. In any case, it already seems pretty certain that the upcoming Amazon Prime series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, will update Middle Earth’s gender and racial dynamics at least just a smidge, so we’ll have plenty of women and minorities utter throwaway lines like “Where’s mama?” in just a few months’ time.
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183 Comments
…it’s important to contextualize them as a means to often support larger, more complex and diverse stories. Well in that case I’d like to point out that there’s a big gay orgy scene at the end. I mean, you don’t see it, but it’s clearly implied. Gimli is just so…happy.
Gimli is just so…happy.And earlier, asked his best friend to toss him.
Still doing Bechdel test articles as if it means somethin’, huh? Neat.
It does mean something to those of interested in analyzing media, but the avclub isn’t unfortunately.
Scabs be scabbing!(Although, in fairness, I’m sure paragons of solidarity like Hughes and Tenreyro consider true proletarian brethren.)
She’s a great artist who deserves better than being used as clickbait fodder for AV Club
Yeah, Jackson REALLY should’ve created some female subplots to beef up those flicks.
Isn’t the point that these women characters are badasses in their own rights? Also:“LOTR is great, but it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairly.”The context is it’s basically a nine-hour war movie so a male-heavy cast is fair.
Wait till the scabs learn about Saving Private Ryan!!!!!
How dare this man born in the 1800s didn’t understand how to write female characters!
That’s like asking a writer born in the 90s to show solidarity with a union!!!!!
No one is saying that. It’s more “how dare we pretend like it’s fine today because he was born in the 1800s.”
How about instead of the contextual and fair critique (whatever the fuck that is), let’s just ask: does it bring joy to people?
So it fails Bechdel, but passes Kondo?
…doesn’t racism and sexism bring joy to people? I think you may want to add slightly more to your “topics worth considering” chart.
Bludgeoning your neighbor to death because they didn’t mow their lawn last week would bring joy to some people.That’s a stupid metric. I mean, people got joy using heroin to treat hysteria in the 1890s
They also made the very smart decision to remove the whole thing where after the battle, Eowyn basically says “Well, glad I got that out of my system. Now to settle down and be nothing but a housewife for the rest of my life.” It makes sense for Tolkien’s general anti-war message, but unfortunately clashes horribly with her being a far ahead of her time badass lady character.
If I just nearly died and poisoned myself killing the Witch-King of Angmar, and then had my father die in my arms, I’d be more than happy to pick up the mantle of housewife.
She became a public symbol of peacemaking – and a symbol whose courage and pragmatism were unimpeachable. It’s reflex scorn of traditional roles to give a thumbs down to her getting married and not see it as the character expresses it in plain text. If one of the greatest male warriors anyone’s ever known decided to publicly put down his arms and get married, would you disparage his choice?
A nine-hour fantasy war movie.In which, if I remember correctly, some of the combatants are ambulatory trees.
It’s understandable that such a movie has a male-heavy cast as a reflection of a cultural history of warrior tales, but it certainly isn’t necessary.
Cause it ws a book first, words and shit, but then put on screen
Exactly this. You can believe in magic, talking trees, scary wraiths, elves, dwarves, and orcs, but somehow women fighting breaks your suspension of disbelief? There’s no reason except sexism why a magical race like elves shouldn’t have women who are just as strong and warlike, if not stronger, than men. Especially because if you look at all species on earth, humans are reasonably unusual in having males that are on average bigger and stronger than females.
““LOTR is great, but it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairly.””Or when we want click cause this article adds nothing much we didn’t know already.
It’s a fantasy series. Fantasy. There’s walking trees and orcs and a dragon. It’s context is that it’s made up. If your made up world has sexual procreation but only a handful of women, then it’s a poorly designed world. Also, there are TONS of women involved in war. They weren’t always soldiers, but there were still a lot of them around, whether they were washing clothes, helping the medics, or were prostitutes, they still existed. And that’s really the point…..women barely exist in this world that people like to say is *amazing* at world building. That’s the critique…..that Tolkein was short sighted and couldn’t see past his own biases while writing. It’s fine to like it, but don’t pretend that it’s some feat of imaginative world building.
Yes, Tolkien wrote very few female characters.
Now tell us how racist HP Lovecraft is. I’m sure that will be a big shocker to lots of people.
To be fair, I wouldn’t consider Tolkien to be anti-women for his time (especially since his 3 primary female characters are all powerful in their own right). However Lovecraft’s racism is something unique even to his time period.
“However Lovecraft’s racism is something unique even to his time period.”You… font think that much of the white population was also racist at that time? Really?
No, he wasn’t a misogynist or anything (and his posthumous works had a lot more female characters, tbh). It’s just one of those things people bring up like it’s some kind of big deal.
what are you talking about??
JRR Tolkien. Try to keep up.
It should be a big deal. Let me guess you’re a man? Ask a woman, if you know any.
In regards to Lovecraft’s racism, not really. This is the Jim Crow era of lynching’s of black persons being public sport, sunset towns, and events like the Oklahoma City bombings and massacre.Lovecraft was a product of the culture of his era and environment, it doesn’t excuse his racism but it’s important to put it in context.
Oklahoma City bombing: 1995Lovecraft: 1890 – 1937
My bad, the bombing of Black Wall Street in 1921 happened in Tulsa not Oklahoma city.
Lovecraft hated other white people – not just Jews or Italians as was fashionable at the time. If you couldn’t trace your ancestry to a specific part of England, then you were inferior.If you’ve seen the show Community, Lovecraft is literally Pierce’s dad.
“However Lovecraft’s racism is something unique even to his time period” – Someone who was schooled in the deep south.
Lovecraft
hated other white people – not just Jews or Italians as was fashionable
at the time. If you couldn’t trace your ancestry to a specific part of
England, then you were inferior.If you’ve seen the show Community, Lovecraft is literally Pierce’s dad.
I think Lovecraft’s racism was pretty common for the time to a depressingly nauseating extent.
The size and popularity of the Ku Klux Klan then being a glaringly obvious example.
Lovecraft
hated other white people – not just Jews or Italians as was fashionable
at the time. If you couldn’t trace your ancestry to a specific part of
England, then you were inferior.If you’ve seen the show Community, Lovecraft is literally Pierce’s dad.
It’s not a huge revelation that LOTR is a sausage fest, but with the upcoming original work for comparison the topic is at least relevant.If we’re ever fortunate enough to get a big budget Lovecraft adaptation, I’ll happily endure a bunch of articles rehashing that tedious discussion point.
“I know this therefore everyone knows this.”Good luck with that.
This is AV Club, not your grandma’s quilting bee. Very few people aren’t going to be fully aware of these things here.
You clearly haven’t met my grandmother or her knitting circle. Facebook is beyond them, but Lovecraft they know about. I’ve seen some comments on AV Club dismissing Lovecraft’s racism as common to the time. I think people assume anything old was in line with the current social mores.
Dude, this isn’t even the AVClub anymore.
Live long and prosper!
Hey, hey, Lovecraft may be racist and sexist, but he, um… What was the third thing you said?
I know some people get turned on by tentacles, but I wouldn’t say Lovecraft’s work is particularly sexy.Ooohh wait, you said *racist*.
Yawn. Wake me up when we start discussing how the sandworms in Dune are a thinly veiled metaphor for Frank Herbert’s famously massive cock.
Clearly a vaginal symbol with the unknowability, blind drive, and devouring maw.
LOTR is great, but it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairly.- Andrew Paul“Passing or failing the test is not necessarily indicative of how well women are represented in any specific work. Rather, the test is used as an indicator for the active presence of women in the entire field of film and other fiction, and to call attention to gender inequality in fiction.”- WikipediaWhat a whiff by AV Club. It’s like the Barsanti and Hughes is spreading, except their post would’ve just ended “and there you have it, LOTR is sexist.”
It’s still very useful to see it presented so starkly. There’s a lot of “oh, well” about this stuff, as if just knowing about it is all the reckoning you think we have to do.Like, should we be showing these movies to kids at family gatherings every Christmas? Should we continue to describe the novels as masterpieces without so much as an asterisk? Let’s celebrate it for what it is, but maybe we can move it and other franchises to the side a bit more. So much of our culture consists of old culture, so it doesn’t matter if the next mainstream fantasy IP does better. That’s not enough.For example: I’m a huge Star Trek fan, and I prefer the 90’s era shows to the new Trek that’s being made today, but I frequently make clear that the fact that even the female-led Voyager only had a 1/3 female cast, and rarely had more than one woman writer on staff, is an embarrassment that we should be talking about.
For the record, the Bechdel test requires that both characters be named, so I don’t think even this one line qualifies (unless the little girl was named somewhere and I missed it).
That is a misconception. The women don’t have to be named characters. And most films still fail. As someone else said, it’s useful to discuss the aggregate rather than the specific.
Hmm, looks like the “named” part isn’t always present – I was going based on bechdeltest.com, which does include it, but it wasn’t part of the original version. Though, looking into it, the little girl is apparently named Freda, though I don’t know if it was ever mentioned in dialogue, so it’s a moot point.But yeah, the Bechdel Test should never be “this movie is bad because it fails it”, but rather “look at this simple test and now look at how many movies fail it, especially compared to the same test but with men”.
The “named” requirement is because lots of movies would squeak by based on the murmurs of background extras, 3-second scenes with a waitress, or those opening scenes of Law and Order where two unnamed people banter for 6 seconds before finding a body.Essentially, it’s meant to catch exactly this kind of scene.
The comic it comes from didn’t intend to spawn the “Test,” so I think it’s reasonable to adjust the technical qualifications to property capture the actual spirit of it.
>LOTR is great, butJ.R.R. should’ve consulted AV Club for writing tips.
I don’t think the Bechdal test is the end all be all of how well women characters are represented. It’s a good indicator, but not the only one. For instance, there is also the Mako Mori test, which I would say LOTR passes.
The Bechdel Test was always more useful in the aggregate than as a critique of individual works, which is the opposite of how it’s usually deployed. It’s possible to make a good movie about just men, or just women, so often it’s easy enough to defend any given film. It’s only really damning when you realize that most movies don’t pass the Bechdel test, but 19/20 would pass an inverted version. Of the ten best picture nominees last year, one has a female lead, and three maybe have an argument for co-lead status. So that’s 2.5 woman-led films, and 7.5 male-led ones.
Furthermore, while I don’t have a photographic memory or anything, I’m only confident that 3-4 of them pass the test in more than a fleeting way, but every single one of them passes a reverse version.
“I don’t think the Bechdal [sic] test is the end all be all of how well women characters are represented.”Since that’s not how it was intended to be used, I’m curious as to why you think that was how it was supposed to be used.
Because of how the article presented it, obviously.
………Are you familiar with the term “Context Clues”?
It might not have been intended to be used in such a way, but if we’re being totally fair and brutally honest it often is. Especially in online discourse, which specialises in taking fairly complex ideas and beating them down into the bluntest, most superficial way of attacking someone else’s arguments / tastes / character.
So you’re saying OP is a lazy idiot? Works for me.
If you like.
it often is If we’re actually being fair and brutally honest, it is often said to be used that way by people reacting to its use. But when people use it, it’s always as a shorthand to highlight larger issues, or as an entry point to a broader topic or discussion. You know, like how all discourse works.
For example, Lord of the Rings technically passes the test! Yet people are complaining about how its strict ruleset is being used as a crude weapon against the film.If anything, it highlights how the test is a useful lens into how a work treats women as a subject, not a “final-word” binary judgement.
That is how people use it.
Since that’s not how it was intended to be used, I’m curious as to why you think that was how it was supposed to be used.
Furthermore, no one has ever actually used it that way.
Because of articles like this one?
But the Mako Mori test is a no win scenario. It’s a test of character.
Kinda like the Kobi, Ash and Maru test?
At some point, the people started putting more weight on the Bechdel test than it was meant to carry. It’s a brilliant device that underscores a broad truth about how male-centric Hollywood entertainment is – but it’s not a way to judge if a movie’s gender dynamics are good or not. Heck, the LOTR movie above would technically PASS the Bechdel test based on that two-second scene.
Yes, thank you. And the pic of Galadriel underscores the limits of the Bechdel test hilariously! she’s obviously a strong female character but her film is being dissed, so she’s pissed! Oops, wrong test!
Yes, thank you. And the pic of Galadriel underscores the limits of the Bechdel test hilariously! she’s obviously a strong female character but her film is being dissed, so she’s pissed! Oops, wrong test!
The Mako Mori Test is the one where a female character in a movie has, like… an “arc” of some kind, for the male main character to watch but not otherwise affect anything, right?
Wat an amazingly dumb article.“it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairly.”Yes. And the context is that it’s basically a long story about wars/battles, written at a time when females were not allowed to fight in the army, inspired by a past where females likewise were not allowed to engage in battle.
I have to admit, when I saw the headline of this, I groaned out loud. Like, duh… And “who cares!”But I definitely laughed at the actual video.
That smash cut to the credits is some excellent comic timing.
Same. If anything, the article ruins how funny the video is, by over-thinking it.
The simultaneously scolding and pre-emptively defensive tone doesn’t exactly do the article many favours either.
Yeah. And characters not speaking to other characters isn’t that strange. A cut of Legolas speaking directly to the hobbits would also be about 5 seconds long. The characters just kinda stayed in their lanes.
How do you know which characters are women? Are you a biologist?
Egg on your face it he is, right?
Especially with Gimli. It’s stated that non-Dwarves often can’t tell their males from their females as they both have beards and deep voices.
The character Cheery Littlebottom in Discworld is a cool exploration of this concept.
In the books , not the abomination that was The Watch TV show btw, which completely missed the point.
The show missed the point about lots of things – what jackass decided to give Carrot anything less than full eagle-scout chipperness? – but it did have the excellent addition of imps sketching their iconographs as Ankh-Morpork’s CCTV analogue. (Though given that the City Watch starts off as an understaffed joke, who was feeding the imps, or reviewing the iconographs?)
Oh yeah, I couldn’t even bring myself to try that show after seeing the trailer.
The masculine perspective in LotR is pretty all-encompassing, it’s true. Peter Jackson even expanded Arwen’s role considerably, and she’s barely in it. She, Galadriel, and Éowyn are the only women with any particular agency or significance (unless you count Shelob.) It’s honestly pretty glaring given the immense scope of the setting.But I don’t think the issue is that they never talk to each other, I think the issue is that Éowyn is the only one with her own arc, that doesn’t serve a man’s, and even that is centered around how she *isn’t* a man. Arwen is a badass who mostly frets about her husband. Galadriel is powerful but inert, there to provide exposition but not much else. It’s fantasy fiction written 80 years ago by a nerdy British man, so considered representation wasn’t really on the table, I don’t think.I feel like the Bechdel test isn’t always useful, though. I’m pretty sure Silence of the Lambs or Alien barely pass (Clarice shares scenes with women, but mostly discussing men.) Pacific Rim and Gravity both fail. But I’d describe all of these movies as having strong female leads with goals unrelated to men or men’s approval.
Yeah, people forget Shelob. She’s a girlboss!
They even considered for a while having Arwen join the Battle of Helm’s Deep due to concern over how to keep audience interest in her and Aragorn’s romance when they would be spending the whole movie separated. And fun fact: you know that shot of Eowyn looking disappointed at Legolas returning Arwen’s necklace to Aragorn? That was shot with the intention of her seeing him romantically greeting Arwen in person before the plotline was dropped, so in case you needed more Aragorn/Legolas shipping material…
The fantasy novel “Jurgen”, published in 1919, is a sexist horror. Jurgen travels throughout Middle Earth, and the plot concerns how many women he sleeps with.
In other words, Tolkien was better than many of his precursors.
I’d never heard of this book, but it looks like it bears a closer resemblance to The Erotic Adventures of Hercules than it does to Lord of the Rings.
It is a comedy, as the full title shows: Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice
I’m pretty sure that Alien is the basis for the Bechdel Test. That is to say, the original comic it “appears” in the character chooses the movie Alien precisely because it meets the objective.
That’s what most people misinterpret about the “test” – it was a joke comic about setting the bar so incredibly low for female representation in terms of merely having women exist in stories enough to talk to each other about something other than a man – and yet soooo many movies fail. It’s not about quality, especially not to measure feminism in any meaningful way. It’s about quantity.
It’s important to remember that the Bechdel test is a test for judging a film’s feminist qualities, not the test, and that a failure of the Bechdel test does not a misogynistic movie make.
That being said, Lord of the Rings fails several other tests, but I would argue it doesn’t make it a misogynistic movie, just not a greatly feminist film, insofar as a ‘feminist’ movie can be described as one with prominent, dynamic roles for women.
Now, The Hobbit adaptations? Those movies hate women. I am no Evangeline Lilly fan, but I always feel for her when she spoke in that interview about how she took the role on the understanding that she wasn’t going to just be reduced to some love interest, and then she stared off into the middle distance, unbearably sad.
(Honestly, making some of the dwarves women would have been the easiest thing in the world, and all the howls from the die-hard purists would have made no particular differences given that the alternative was apparently shoe-horning in a sexy lady elf to be part of a love triangle between a pretty-boy dwarf and a gay elf who wasn’t even in the story originally. You don’t even have to drop the beards!)
I would argue it doesn’t make it a misogynistic movie, just not a greatly feminist film
I think we need to start getting comfortable with the idea that films we love, great films with lots of virtues, are also in fact misongynistic.
I always thought the Bechdel Test worked better as a numbers game. When looking at any one film you can often find justification for it not passing, but if you were to look for it over all the films coming out in a particular year and find only, say, 50% pass (not a real figure) that’s indicative of an issue with the industry.
At least with SotL the men they’re discussing are part of their work. Granted it’s like one scene, but I think it passes.
I’m pretty sure Silence of the Lambs or Alien barely pass
That’s exactly why the test is still so valuable. Movies with women lead characters are still hugely male-dominated and male-centered.The Bechtel Test tells us, via a very simple metric, that you don’t have to be a sexist to be sexist, and you don’t get any points for putting one woman in your movie, no matter how big her role is.Just because it doesn’t cover all edge cases (Gravity unfairly fails because the cast is so small, which I’d call that an exception that proves the rule) doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly not an extremely useful metric in a majority of cases.
And the fact that so many movies fail, and way more than seems logical, tells us a lot about our culture, not about any flaws of the test.
The Bechdel test is almost never useful.
If LOTR had mostly women characters, the Fellowship (Ladyship?) would never have made it to Mt. Doom…because they would have gotten lost!You know, on account of not being good with directions. Women be shopping, etc.
And they’d be constantly crashing the eagles!
crashing the eag-? Oh snap, I get it! LOL
Unlike all the other doofuses in the fellowship who just forgot about the eagles, at least they would’ve thought to use them
And they’d have spent half the movie just trying on clothes for the quest!
“I can’t wear mithril, it makes me look fat.”
But they, unlike Frodo and Sam, would’ve asked for directions.
Frodo asks The Fellowship for directions. Then he asks Gollum for directions.
There would have been less breakfasts though.
More brunch.
They would have accessorized that ring better before casting it into Mount Doom.
Do they shave their hairy feet? Wanna look good travelling!
Women do be shopping, though.
They would have constantly been complaining about how men made the problem that the women have to fix.
Is this thread the Futurama writer’s room because yikes
MAYBE IT IS
They would have dumped the ring into Mt. Doom and lived in veritable peace for all time. The End.
You’ve obviously never had a long term girlfriend otherwise you’d know that not even a bad sense of direction can stop a woman from getting that ring.
Article pitch: What if I made the same point as a 40-second Youtube video, only longer, and in a way that made every reader wish for death?
Go on…..
This article and video fail to acknowledge that Frodo and Sam are lesbians.
I enjoy the repeated self-insertions from the white, cishet, scab who wrote this…and the amusing misconception that this would drive a response that didn’t consist of “No shit, scab.”
Gee, could it be because Tolkien’s writing on LOTR was deeply informed by his WW1 experiences?
I thought it was … interesting that Jackson chose to cut out the line where Eowyn calls out Aragorn (and her world’s) sexism: “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.” Jackson flattened the human characters quite a bit, and this was an example of that.Tolkien didn’t write a lot of women, but I think the ones he did write were often pretty interesting.I think what really reveals his unconscious bias was that he nominally wrote the elves to be egalitarian, but then STILL created a sausage-fest in The Silmarillion. He could imagine a world with gender equality, but couldn’t execute it.
I was hesitantly, HESITANTLY, scrolling my way down the article preparing for some serious doomscrolling, and was pleasantly surprised at the response. People fully aware that yes many of the things that LotR is flawed for is not deliberate but a product of a white british man living post WWI with a very different view of society, and how much of it is not a hostility against gender but rather someone who just wasn’t thinking rnough about women to give them any parts. I appreciate that people are acknowledging it and also able to talk about this without going at each other’s throats. Thanks for minimizing the doomscrolling, readers!
Mount Doom scrolling.
Man, this fucking web site.
“Peter Jackson’s pretty damn faithful adaptations”Huh? That was never the case. They were loose, full of invented stuff, etc etc. Where is this bullshit coming from lately that these were faithful? Is it a reaction to the Amazon show?
Exactly there was so much Jackson invented:
1) Pipe weed being a narcotic and/or cannabis. Yes, he didn’t technically invent that misinterpretation, but Tolkien himself stressed to the dismay of his hippie fans that it was tobacco (Tolkien was an avid tobacco pipe smoker himself).2) Gimli being a comic relief character (and one with a Scottish accent at that). Dwarves were meant to be an proud ancient people akin to the Jews (and in fact Tolkien’s Dwarvish language was based on Hebrew).3) While the movies still don’t have a lot of female characters, they have more (and they have more lines) than in the books where only Eowyn got any character development.4) Elves didn’t surf/snowboard using their shields in the books.And I’m sure a lot more, but these were the ones that immediately come to mind.
Gimli has one funny moment in the books (where he eats too many lembas) and they gave it to the hobbits!
He excised full scenes and characters (Tom Bombadil, Barrow Wights, Imrahil, etc.), made substantial plot changes (the elves arriving at Helm’s Deep, Sam and Frodo being at Osgiliath), and some cosmetic changes (Saruman remains “Saruman the White” and not “Saruman of Many Colors”). He changes some characterization (Aragorn is conflicted about his role as heir to Gondor, rather than confident as in the books; Faramir is conflicted about the Ring and considers bringing it to Denethor, rather than being completely immune to temptation as in the books).
The whole crew has also noted that every revision they did to the scripts ended up making them closer to the original books, and the movies probably would have ended up with even fewer changes if they hadn’t hit their deadline.
Dwarves were meant to be an proud ancient people akin to the Jews
Yeah, maybe turning Gimli into a comic foil was the better option there.
Ah yes, the highly scientific and accurate Bechdel test, created by…a cartoonist making a punchline about other women she wants to bang. Very good.
Glorfindel’s part was literally replaced with Arwen. I know this article was only written for clicks but c’mon
The Bechdel test can be a useful indicator but was created to look at representation in all movies and broader trends. If a movie fails the Bechdel test, it doesn’t mean its bad and sexist. There can be movies that center around male stories. Focusing on a story about men is not inherently sexist. There can also be movies that depict what its like to be a woman in a male dominated field/world that may not pass the Bechdel test. Eowyn’s story includes wanting to protect her people as a soldier but dealing with a society where that wasnt socially acceptable because she was a woman. Those kinds of stories matter too and even in a fantasy novel/movie can be relatable for women being told they cant do something that they know they are capable of. A failure of the Bechdel test does not automatically prove the movie is sexist. The point of the tool is to look at how rare it is in film that womens stories are centered and about something other than men but there are numerous reasons why an individual movie would fail outside of it being sexist. The creator of the Bechdel test will tell you that as well. I am not saying LOTR or Tolkien are perfect. Im just tired of this tool being misused for clicks and engagement……as I fall into its trap to write this comment thus boosting engagement…
Nice summary. So the Bechdel test is something like BMI, not necessarily diagnostic of the individual but useful for the population.
Who cares?
https://www.theonion.com/man-always-gets-little-rush-out-of-telling-people-john-1819578998
Very old book is conservative,Jesus fucking christ what a story!
The thing is, when an author decide to write a book, he or she wants to tell a story. Often one that resonate with them and is personal to them. They have an intention in mind, and it’s what give birth to wonderful, deeply immersive stories.Tolkien wanted to exorcise his demons and share his tales of comradery pertaining his experience in the world War, along with the friendship he felt for his group of literature enthusiasts before and after the war. His goal was never to create some deep change into the world, just to share a story with those the story would resonate with. And isn’t it what you should expect from a story? That it immerse you and allow you to be free, for a moment, from real life concerns? If you build a story starting with : Okay, I need to have at least 3 minorities, 2 of witch must be female so that they can also be LGBT friendly together, and this character has to be trans, maybe I can also put him in a wheelchair to check another box… That is not how you create a deep story. The author has to care for his or her characters, to want to breath life into them, so that the reader will love them too. Not just make them fit specific roles just to appease a current or future trend. The concept that fantasy books should be rewarded based on how much they further the cause of inclusivity rather than on talents and storytelling and mastery and characterization and psychology and the amount of excitement and deep feelings these story can carry, is inherently flawed, because only a good story with subtle hints toward inclusivity will have a positive impact. Propaganda usually just alienate the reader, by taking him out of the story.
I would bet 90% of movies would be 1 minute or shorter if you edited them down to the Bechdel test passing moments. Considering the amount of movies that don’t pass the Bechdel Test at all, LOTR is probably in the top 50% even with only one line.
There are solutions to what some call an issue with films being “heavy on the testosterone”Get a female author to write an epic fantasy novel, with female leads. Then sell millions of copies of the book. At the same time, women create a movie studio staffed largely by women, and then hire a female director to put it all together on the silver screen. I’m sure this comes off as misogynistic, hard to put thoughts on to virtual paper and keep the intent sometimes. My point is this, it’s a regular occurance to hate on movies for having too many white guys in it. But look at where they are coming from! I’m not saying that I’m anti-diversity, i believe in quite the opposite actually, but you have no right to be upset with white males taking a book written by a white male and producing a movie staring a bunch of white males. Being human, I’m far from perfect, and I’ll admit, sometimes I also think things that are unreasonable. When I hear a feminist listing all the ways that females are at a disadvantage in society, I often think to myself, “yeah, but what about the plethora of advantages you ladies enjoy?” But I don’t write articles about those feelings, or go on public rants (generally, although I guess I am right now so I guess I’m a liar…) because I get it. That is their point of view and, although it drives me crazy sometimes, they are entitled to write and produce content that is based on who they are, they don’t have to pander to the likes of me just so I don’t get my little feelings hurt. It’s their choice, just as it was others choice to make LOTR with strong, male heroes, and anyone who doesn’t like it can simply not watch.
Now do Saving Private Ryan!
Trouble coming up with decent content today, huh? Gender equality in story telling is a worthwhile goal. However, criticising a story told by an Englishman in the early 20th century, inspired by his experiences in the trenches of WWI, for being “a tad heavy on the testosterone” is just plain intellectual laziness. Do better
Juvenile.
but it can only truly be great if we’re allowed to critique it contextually and fairlyOk – the context is that Tolkien was an English professor who focused on medieval poetry and epics, and so LOTR was written in the style of a medieval romantic epic. That means it is primarily focused on men’s heroic journeys and the platonic love between men, and where women are involved at all it is primarily as objects of chaste love for said heroic men. That’s the context. Of course you can write about the inherent sexism of Tolkien’s work and the literary tradition it draws on, which is itself intertwined with the violent patriarchy that has dictated European cultural norms for the most of the past several thousand years. But that’s different, and I’d say a bit more contextual and fair, than just saying “LOTR doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, lol.”
LOTR was written in the style of a
medieval romantic epic. That means it is primarily focused on men’s heroic journeys and the platonic love between men, and where women are involved at all it is primarily as objects of chaste love for said heroic men. That’s the context.
Um, yes, that context is valuable, but it doesn’t excuses it from fair critique. What that says to me is that Tolkien had a limited imagination and chose to emulate something that was long outdated even in his time.
“Tolkien had a limited imagination” is not a fair critique! Come on. The guy invented epic fantasy as a genre of literature. He was low key one of the most influential fiction authors of the 20th century. I think it’s fine to take a critical lens to his treatment of gender and gender relations in LOTR, but I think doing so with intellectual honesty means engaging with the background he was coming from, the social scene he shared his writing with, and the traditions he was drawing from in creating high fantasy. Getting on a high horse to sneer “do better” at a guy who has been dead for almost 50 years is not literary criticism or gender theory though.
“Tolkien had a limited imagination” is not a fair critique! And yet… The guy invented epic fantasy as a genre of literature. He was low key one of the most influential fiction authors of the 20th century. True. I think it’s fine to take a critical lens to his treatment of gender and gender relations in LOTR Then why are you grousing at me? Seems like you don’t think that’s fine.
Getting on a high horse to sneer “do better” at a guy who has been dead for almost 50 years Seems like I’m asking other people to do better, actually.
Tad heavy on the testosterone? So was the original Star Wars trilogy. Tell me, how were the newer films when they “fixed” that? Honestly, write a good story and don’t worry about how many inclusivity boxes are checked.
Many have mentioned that the Bechdel Test works best viewed as an aggregate rather than picking on specific movies, but this article actually takes it a step further and focuses on specific SCENES. I’m actually surprised to find that any of the LOTR movies pass the test at all, given the context of the narrative.
Needs more elf tits.There. I said what everyone wanted to say.
I read an interesting article on LOTR the other day (sorry can’t remember the source), that talked about how the male protagonists in the series were great examples of positive masculinity. Aragorn is shown as caring and displays emotions freely. Close friendships and love are represented among the men as normal and beneficial. I am a huge LOTR fan and a feminist so it did always bum me out that there weren’t more women in the story, but I also understand the context in which it was written. In hindsight, the way the men are portrayed explain a lot about why I became a fan in the first place, reading the books as teen girl in the 90s. This video did make me literally laugh out loud though.
Hell, there were a good ten years or so when joking about Frodo and Sam being gay was a guaranteed crowd pleaser.
Hey look at this, a positive progressive take on the movie, this doesn’t belong here on The AV Club!
Thank you! My very feminist daughter grew up with the books and movies and was even happy to learn Tolkien was a Rugby player like she is.
Apply the Bechdel test to Beowulf or the Iliad and you’d end up with a blank sheet of paper. Rightly or wrongly, Tolkien drew his inspiration from classic mythological texts that were the product of very patriarchal cultures. For all its flaws, his work is perfect in its way. I’d rather have patriarchal Tolkien plus other authors who take a different approach than to force everyone into the same mold.
Each person gets to make the decision if they should read it or not. Obviously, based on the books and movies unprecented success the public doesn’t have the same concerns as you. Should all the millions of female LoTR fans feel like they’ve betrayed their own by enjoying it?
If you want stories that have high female respresentation – feel free to write your own timeless classic.
I will read this article, as I did, but will not take it seriously for anything published or screened before the year 2015.
And the award for the most ignorant and pointless article I’ve read this week goes to this. The arrogance to imply Tolkiens masterpiece can be improved and then to state that no matter what response you get from Tolkien experts, ‘’They are still wrong.’’ Laughable. The man served in the trenches and build an entire fantasy world based around languages and mythology. There’s nothing wrong with his work as it is. It’s timeless. Go read or watch something else to get your necessary fixes and stop pushing to change cherished works. Thanks for the chuckle though.
I’m sorry, did someone put in a LOTR DVD expecting a feminist triumph?
I thought if any footage from a movie passed the Bechdel test, the movie passed the Bechdel test. If you’re looking for 100% Bechdel, you’re going to have a very chatty movie where not much happens.
The Bechdel test isn’t filtering out anything, it’s a test run across an entire film. Are there scenes that pass? It passes the Bechdel test.In the mean time.“Okay, look—we’re a pop culture news site,” excuse you?Not in a long, long, long, long time has the AV Club been a fucking pop culture news site. AV Club has become little else than a “scoring dumb points on stupid people,” “let’s all get offended!” and “well, this is true and if you don’t like it, you’re wrong” group blog.Don’t like it? Let me just offer a resounding, “You are still completely wrong” as a retort. See how that’s just insulting and a little demeaning?That’s sorta what you guys do now.It wasn’t always this way, but it seems like you all are real, real interested in “winning” and “being right,” rather than actually offering perspectives on pop culture. You’re interested in examining it through a tiny, small-minded mirror and if things aren’t exactly as you all think they should be, they’re wrong.
Seems like low-hanging fruit to bother applying this test to this film series. If the results shock you, never read The Hobbit. You’ll have a stroke.
Eowyn, Galadriel, and Arwen are all incredibly powerful characters in their own right so it’s kinda weird to throw shade at the films if only to at the end of the article express tentative excitement for the Amazon series purely on representation basis alone. The show will be diverse in front of and behind the camera to be sure which is welcome but people are already bracing themselves to use that fact in of itself to excuse the many many deviations from the lore and questionable decisions made creatively. As a poc fan of Tolkien and high fantasy in general, it gets tiresome to see my ethnicity used as a gimmick and sales pitch.
I mean I was scratching my head for any scenes where 2 women talk at all even without the man limiter so good on this person for remembering “where’s mama”
Wait, you mean to say that when you limit nearly 10 hours of film using precise requirements, the time goes way down?! This is like being amazed that the entire run time of Sex in the City is cut to just a few minutes when looking only for scenes where not more than 2 people are on screen, they directly mention a color, and then have to sneeze at some point in the same scene. Point being: your desperate attempt to defame a long dead author because he didn’t pass your arbitrary “test” is silly. Academics have coined a term for it: “presentism”. It means framing past people and events through the ever exhausting and pedantic “current year” zeitgeist. Aka: I have run out of first world problems to whine about today, so now, I must foist the past into the present day scales of social justice to find something or someone new to be butthurt about.
I cannot believe that Tolkien did not write stories that exactly matched the sensibility and expectations of society 100 years into the future, what ever was wrong with him, he should have know better. How dare he write stories based on hundreds of years old mythology that he thought up while going to a boys boarding school and in the trenches of WW1. Sarcasm of course but it is ok to have old things even if they are not what we would want created today. Remember if you go after people because they were not up to you version of perfection, in 30 years people will be coming for you because you were not perfect 30 years ago.
Ah yes, the Bechdel Test. The metric that tells us that Das Boot and The Great Escape are misogynistic garbage that should be shunned at all costs and that Spicy Pizza Shop Girls is the pinnacle of female empowerment cinema.
Where does Allison say that, exactly? Point out the part about shunning. Or stop making shit up.
The answer is easy – Tolkien isn’t for you if you are bothered by this. Move along, there are plenty of franchises with lots of extra soy added. Go consume that. Tolkien is White European patriarchy oriented, and if you remove that, it isn’t Tolkien anymore, it is some sanitized woke interpretation that will always stand in Tolkien’s shadow, just like Disney Star Wars doesn’t have the allure that the *worst* Lucas films had. Be angry. We will akways own Skywalker, Mad Max, Rick Deckard, The Hulk and Frodo, no natter how you rewrite their histories.
2013 called, they want their article back.
This world was built by men. Women build babies.
Wait, I thought writers were only supposed to write from their own lived experience — i.e. as a man — otherwise it’s appropriation?
This is the worst written article I’ve ever seen. That’s not even accounting for the content inside the article. This has to be a hate bait. A shitpost to get publicity. No way this is real.
May I actually may a request, instead of people saying we should modenize works, why not just actually not ruin someone else’s work and make your own story with your beliefs or do you already know that whatever you make will be terrible and awful and would rather use something good in hopes that because it is good your message can be put into it in hopes that its popularity will carry on your messageYou people are pathetic and you be ashamed on yourself, I do wish I could actually report this article for being insulting and down right wrong, you have no right to change someone else’s work just because you frankly suck to much to make your own work
May I actually may a request, instead of people saying we should modenize works, why not just actually not ruin someone else’s work and make your own story with your beliefs or do you already know that whatever you make will be terrible and awful and would rather use something good in hopes that because it is good your message can be put into it in hopes that its popularity will carry on your messageYou people are pathetic and you be ashamed on yourself, I do wish I could actually report this article for being insulting and down right wrong, you have no right to change someone else’s work just because you frankly suck to much to make your own workThis video perfectly explains you people and why you are the problem with the world
The Bechdel Test is meme feminist criticism, a joke. Leave it in 2012 with the other Tumblr stuff. Tolkien was influenced by old epic tales, so he basically reinvented those feminine archetypes with characters like Eowyn and Galadriel. Can’t expect a 68 year old book series to be woke by today’s standards.
That they fired long time and respected Tolken Scholar Tom Shippey and replaced him with an activist tells you all you need to know. They are more then willing to prioritize their woke agenda over telling good timeless stories. Ten years from now people will look back and cringe.