Anghraine

This isn't the post on the subject I made on Tumblr, but the longer, rantier version I drafted before that and decided against posting there. Some people wanted the full version, but I didn't want to deal with Tumblr tag hell, so I thought—hey, I'll post it at Dreamwidth and link it for the people who want to read.

Okay.

I was thinking over the omission of the scouring of the Shire from Jackson's ROTK, which is both easily understood and one of the films' worst decisions IMO in terms of LOTR's treatment of war.

And, of course, I was also thinking of how underwhelming I find film!Gondor, which is largely reduced to Minas Tirith and the fields around it (clearly not farmland in movieverse Gondor), and which even with regard to Minas Tirith is pretty underwhelming to me. I think that taking a country inspired by ancient Egypt, the Byzantine Empire, and Italy more broadly (including some explicit Gondorian analogues to places like Venice and Assisi) and making it that blah and watered-down really takes some doing.

It then struck me that while these are both things that bother me a lot, and intellectually, I believe the omission of the scouring is worse because it's more integral to the main themes and arcs, there is an important difference.

It's this: the LOTR films love the Shire.

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I can understand why people assume that my Faramir hair posts suggest that I would also be invested in Elves having long hair, but uhhhh no.

I mean, every time I get a response that's all "this post has the opposite energy as the Amazon show," it's like—um, thanks but no thanks? I care about Faramir's aesthetic so much because he's my fave character and he comes from my fave Middle-earth culture, and because it's so difficult to find depictions of either that aren't tremendously dominated by the films' bland Anglo take on them. The people going on about Elves' hair with a) dubious canon evidence and b) incessant idealization of the films are ... yeah, not ever going to be me.

I've seen people complaining that there will be fanart that looks like the ROP cast and aesthetic instead of the movies canon ... gosh I wonder what it would be like to have depictions of your fave influenced by a casting choice that doesn't remotely match canon and a generically European aesthetic that becomes nearly inescapable in fandom, along with exclusion of pertinent details of what makes them who they are. Oh, and the true abomination of short hair. I guess I'll never know!

Éowyn is very much a woman of the Rohirrim and firmly identifies herself as one, which is important and sometimes overlooked in odd ways.

But the whole idea that she’d be !!!!! at seeing anyone with Númenórean or Elvish blood is so weird to me. Like … presumably she’s seen her reflection?

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I said:


In response, theozilla asked:

Do you any thoughts on the Ralph Bakshi or Rankin/Bass adaptations?

and I replied:


(...I still haven't, actually)

I’ve already written approximately a zillion words on the LOTR movies’ treatment of Faramir and why the usual defenses are so deeply unpersuasive to me, but somehow I have more in me.

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Every time I see someone defend the monochrome casting of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit it’s just so obnoxious and irrational and, obviously, super racist.

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