Are women just bored of the rings?

[barsoomcore]

Let's not kid ourselves here. The books are solidly in the camp of boy's adverture, which doesn't preclude women from liking it, but does make it less likely.

Well, I won't argue that the books have appealed more to men than women. However, how much of that is social -- to what degree have they appealed to men because women have been discouraged from investigating this kind of material?

Obviously the answer is we don't know because we're not able to conduct experiments on stuff like this -- we only have one example, and of course no counter-examples, so who knows?

All that aside, I question how much value there is in generalizations like "Women tend not to like this book." I mean, once you've made that observation, then what? It doesn't provide any predictive power -- you have no way of knowing whether or not any given woman is going to like the book or not, so what good did the generalization do?

Besides make us feel smart, of course.

The themes are guy-oriented themes (undying friendship, sacrifice, courage, honor - strip out the fantasy and you have a war story).

Now here I must take exception. The idea that friendship, sacrifice, courage and honour are themes that women don't connect with is pretty insulting when you think about it. I certainly don't for a second think you meant to be insulting, and when I read your post I didn't even recognize the problem with the statement -- it wasn't until I read Buttercup's response that I started thinking about this statement and saying to myself, "Of course friendship, sacrifice, courage and honour matter just as much to women as to men."

I think more relevant to the "more men than women" appeal of LotR are elements like swords, castles, monsters and constant descriptions of women as beautiful. Not that those things don't appeal to women, but that at least in our society, women are more likely to be considered a little oddball for demonstrating a prediliction for such things. Which could be seen as a form of discouragement.

Again, Spatula, I don't believe you were trying to make an insulting statement, and I understand the idea you were trying to get across -- which is NOT that women don't care about friendship, sacrifice, courage and honour. But I do think it's interesting to note the manner in which you put your ideas -- and again, I think it's interesting because at first I accepted it without question.

Gender roles run pretty deep.

 

[Banshee16]

Read the article, laughed at it...

Then became genuinely curious- most females I know are either geeky, intellectual, literary or a combination of the above. Thus realised that those I associate with probably aren't the best at exhibiting the trends of the "general populace"- they all love it for whatever reason.

So I began reading the thread to try to see if there did seem to be any that the female populace thought that LoTR = Yawn.

Then I realised that the populace of ENWorld, by and large, would fit into the above categorisation of "geeky, intellectual, literary or a combination of the above" (which is one of the reasons I love this place!)

SO. My question is, given that most geeky/int./lit. type females, will, for one reason or another, be a fan of the LoTR movies- what about the females who aren't one of the above? Does anyone on EnWorld have female friends with completely dissimilar interests, who might better reflect your more "standard" populace?

Though I'm guessing they'll still like it, if only because they can perv on Viggo & Orlando .

Hmmmm....well, my mother and my sister, who while bright, are not geeky. My sister's athletic...the type that spends all her time either working out, going out, kayaking, sailing, sailboarding, or climbing mountains. She's popular and very social. And not into RPGs at all. And she loves the movies. She's at RotK as we speak. Or just getting out. My mother's a scientist, but not a geek either. She's never even read a fantasy. She reads the Danielle Steele type stuff, typically. And she's really been enjoying the movies.

My girlfriend doesn't understand my enjoyment of computers, and definitely isn't a geek. Very attractive, in the fashion industry, popular, excellent social skills, outdoorsy type girl. And she loved the movies. She's tried the books and really has had difficulty getting into them. But she still loves the movies.

So, those are non-EN World type females that definitely aren't gamers, and the most immediate examples in my own life, at least..

Banshee

 

[theburningman]

A rebuttal by Stephanie Zacharek, one of the film critics for Salon.com:

"Lord of the Rings" is for boys . . .


And I happen to agree with her.

 

[Krug]

Urgh.. can't read the Salon article without subscribing..

 

[Femerus the Gnecro]

Urgh.. can't read the Salon article without subscribing..

"Lord of the Rings" is for boys ...
A New York Times critic falls for lazy gender-typing.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Stephanie Zacharek

In the latest entry in the "blue is for boys, pink is for girls" school of criticism, Caryn James, in a New York Times Arts & Leisure piece on Sunday, argues that the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- up to and including the final installment, "The Return of the King" -- is a big snooze for those of us not blessed with a Y chromosome. James says she yawned through most of the first two movies, as well as the third: "The final entry in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy reveals once more that what the chick flick is to men, this trilogy is to women -- or at least to a large secret society of us for whom the series is no more than a geek-fest, a technologically impressive but soulless endurance contest."

What's interesting about James' piece isn't that she dislikes Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies, which is any critic's prerogative. She thinks they're too rarely infused with human feeling. (She notes that she prefers the Jackson of "Heavenly Creatures," a nicely observed movie about two teenage girls who commit a murder.)

But then, why play the tired old Hollywood-marketing game of hanging a prescribed gender tag on art? Not trusting her own view of the works at hand, James has to blame the fact that she doesn't like them on her sex. It's an approach that renders serious thought about movies, and the ways we respond to them, meaningless. Why think critically, when you can just consult the imaginary focus group in your mind?
You don't have to be an advertising executive to know that soppy romances like "Under the Tuscan Sun" are marketed mainly to women, while action movies like "Bad Boys II" are sold to appeal to men. That's not to say that members of either sex can't (or don't) enjoy both types of movies. In fact, I suspect there's much more crossover than marketing specialists would like to believe.

But there's a danger to positing that certain types of movies are "for" audiences of either gender. That's how you get a world of "inclusionary" and "exclusionary" art, instead of art that cuts across gender lines (or, for that matter, racial lines) to speak to everyone. I have a male friend whose tastes typically run to horror movies, but he adores the television adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" -- it's one of those things he says he could watch anytime. And there are exactly two women in Peter Weir's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and one of them is a miniature painting in a locket. What's more, there's lots of battles and gunfire -- two more elements that you might characterize as appealing to men specifically. Yet I don't see "Master and Commander" as a "men's" movie at all. Are women somehow less well-equipped to enjoy a picture that's beautifully shot, and whose story is well told, intuitively acted and marvelously paced, just because it has a masculine aura around it? Do you need to be a man to respond to "typically masculine" notions of nobility and heroism?

The same goes for the "Lord of the Rings" series, although anyone, of course, male or female, has the right to dislike it. Criticism is a personal response informed by the writer's knowledge and experience of an art form, which does mean that in some ways, women might view a work differently from the way men do. Then again, there are plenty of moviegoers, men and women alike, who think of Nancy Meyers' movies as soulless endurance contests. Personally, I'll take giant spiders any day.

Of course, I had to register Santa Clause to vote in Colorado to get this...

-F

 

[Teflon Billy]

Are women somehow less well-equipped to enjoy a picture that's beautifully shot, and whose story is well told, intuitively acted and marvelously paced, just because it has a masculine aura around it?

Well, All I can say hereis that there is a reason we understand what people are talking about when they say "Chick Flick", and a reason that they manage to draw as much money as they do from a female demographic.

I have no figures with me, but I would lay money that Master and Commander is drawing most of its revenue from a male audience.

I'll also add that there must be some reason that they decided to remake Arwenan ass-kicking, sword-swinging Nazgul defeater rather than, say Glorfindel (a male for those unfamiliar with the books)...

It's because women--in general--don't particularly like what are classically considered to be mens movies. That is why they are considered men's movies.

The prevailing thought in film when they are short of "Female energy" (to quote Miranda Otto who plays Eowyn) is to "get some women in there" at any cost, as women don't like to watch movies without "Female energy" in them.

The author of that article came across as a snide and contemptuous geek-hater...but she was basically right. When you strip away all the Dragons and Midgets and suchlike, this is a war movie, and it's source material didn't have much in the way of female parts.

So some were made/juiced up, because that is the reality of the demographic. women won't go see a movie about men being heroic, and the fact that your Mom or Sister or whoever really likes the film doesn't change that at all.

And there is the rub. The author was speaking generally (which is what allows people to discuss large groups), and that always brings out the "not My wife/mother/girlfriend/sister" anecdotal evidence folks.

 

[Spatula]

Three. You missed a female character.

You're right, I forgot about Bombadil's girlfriend.

 

[Spatula]

Finally, Spatula, do you really believe this?
Why do you think women don't care about these things? I think they're universal.

*sigh* I didn't say guy-exclusive. Replace "guy-oriented" with "typically masculine" (in the words of the Salon.com writer) if you prefer.

EDIT: Or read Teflon Billy's post, above.

 

[Spatula]

Maybe because very few of us have NYT online subscriptions, and thus can't read the original article?

NYT registration is free. If you don't like giving out your email address, just create a temporary hotmail account to get through the registration process.

Urgh.. can't read the Salon article without subscribing..

You can get a free day pass to Salon that allows you to access just about any article on the site by watching a brief advertisement.

 

[KaCee]

Quoted from my husband, Iron Sheep
Secondly, my wife works as an environmental/liberal activist, and the women in that community, although intellectual/literary (but not geeky for the most part), have almost no interest in the movies. Some of them have seen them, but it seems that they did it more from social pressure than anything else ("Everyone else is seeing the movie, so I thought I'd go have a look"). But then the men in that community seem to have a very similar attitude about Lord of the Rings to the women, so I'm not sure that its a gender issue.

Actually, dear, the opinions where I work have been a bit more varied than that. The 64-year old woman who claims to have read the books many times but doesn’t remember anything about Frodo missing a finger has been passingly interested in the movie, mostly as you say, from social pressure to belong.

The 30-year old environmentalist who reads all kinds of literature but has not read these books hated Fellowship and gave the comment, “I wish they’d just skip all of this crap and throw the ring in the damned volcano already.” Her beef seemed to be much more with the length than anything else. She hasn’t seen the second two, to my knowledge, although her partner may drag her there because he’s deeply into it, mostly as a professional in set design here in Vegas.

The 40-something male in the office basically never reads fiction and has no interest in this or most other movies. He wasn’t even aware of the name “Frodo” when I talked about it.

Then there’s the 50-something male seeing the 30-something female. He has NO interest whatsoever, but she’s really into it and we’ve had long discussions of the various nuances of the films and the books. I won’t name their organization but let’s just say it’s a big group that does a lot of social justice/freedom of speech/etc. work, and when I told her my theory that the entire LotR thing really boils down to an anti-death-penalty message (if Gollum, the unredeemable criminal, had been put to death at any point, the entire fate of the world would have gone down the tubes), she latched onto that as a possible way to get her partner to be interested, as an anti-death-penalty activist. No word yet if she’s worked him into it.

And as for me, I am totally into these movies, loving them entirely, watching the DVDs and commentaries over and over, read the books multiple times, and actually learned to read using the Hobbit before I went to kindergarten. But then, I’m a total geek. A D&D playing, Python-quoting, computer-gaming, formerly tech reporting, webmastering geek.

So really, as quoted here…

Quoted from Banshee16
I think it's a mind set, and not gender, that might determine whether someone likes the movies.

…that’s exactly it. People come to this story as they would any other story; because they’re interested in some aspect of it.

I, as both a female and a writer with a cross-genre book, am sick to death of being told whether I ought to like something or not based on my genitals. Leave my good bits out of this! My vagina holds no bearing on the books I choose or those I leave aside. I mean, if I let my vagina choose my reading material, the covers would get all sticky, wouldn’t they?

This whole peg-the-gender-in-the-genre madness has been very much on my mind lately. I’ve been having a bugger of a time marketing my own novel because there’s kissing and love in it, so it gets called a “romance.” But if you’ve ever actually read a romance novel, you’d know this book doesn’t fit that genre at all. Romance novels are fairly formulaic (some heavily so…check out Harlequin’s submission guidelines for how strict they are)…boy meets girl, they date, they have a token fight, they make up, happy ending. It’s a plug-and-play scenario in various settings. And for people who like that, that’s great. I’m happy for them. But I HATE that predictability and sameness. My book is NOT like that at all, but because of narrow-minded genre labels, I’m getting lumped into the “fantasy-romance” genre which puts off most fantasy readers. Heck, I’m put off by the label!

I’m so sick of this notion that men don’t like to read about love. Hellooooo…last I checked, men like kissing and nookie too. Not every man is a wannabe thug. Lots of ‘em even like snuggling, believe it or not. Look at Guy Gavriel Kay’s novels…they are fantasy with romantic elements (which is what I like to call my own book), and plenty of guys read those.

This reviewer or columnist or whatever she is just doesn’t get it. She can’t whine that this is a boys’ club movie and stereotype men at the same time: that’s hypocrisy.

And there’s plenty of emotion in this book and movie. Did she miss the whole Merry and Pippin thing? Going from laughter to tears to frustration to anger and all around and back again a few times? Geez, for pity’s sake, Merry crying at the end made ME cry, and I almost never cry at this stuff. If this columnist doesn’t feel that emotion, she must have a heart of stone. And don’t give me that Sam wasn’t full of all kinds of emotions as he fought for Frodo, carried him up the mountain, etc.

If she didn’t like the movie, great. But I’ve had it with people who apply stupid concepts like gender determinism to entertainment. You like what you like, you don’t like what you don’t like, and the shape of the flesh between your legs doesn’t enter into it!

On one other side note while I’m posting…

Quoted from Elf Witch
As for Eoywn her reaction whenever she ia on scren is to hiss and when she is near Aragorn her reaction is "back off B**CH"

*shrug* You can have him. He’s okay with the dark wig and all, but I really don’t find Viggo all that hot, even though I know I’m apparently in a minority of female fans on that. Heck, in our household, these days if we notice someone lusting after someone else, we call it being “Miranda over Viggo.”

Give me Jason Carter as Marcus Cole in B5 any day…*much drooling*