Lament for the Elves

[Imladris]

I don't understand the thinking of elves these days. They've been turned into a pack of effeminate men who care only for hair oil and shampoo. Look at the pics of Legolas crying for his shampoo. I do realize that there were jokes between Viggo and Orlando, but I beg you to notice that Legolas does have a smudged face at the end of FotR. I also beg you to notice that Legolas fights with a bow, while Viggo fights with a sword. The logical conclusion is that Legolas is clean because he does not come in contact with the blood, thus he cannot become dirty.

As some of you know, I own a game in the Shire about Balin leading the dwarves into Moria. On the way, they had a run in with the elves. I suddenly became aware of this dreadful problem by the insults exchanged:

Girly-elf boy

Hair-preening nancy-boy

Lassie

So my question is this: why are elves viewed this way. Were they this way? Is it because in my RPG it's dwarves vs elves. If so, would the dwarves call the elves these names, or any insults along these lines? When I read the books, I definitely did not get the impression that elves cared for hair shampoo. Am I over-reacting?

Cheers,
Imladris.

PS. If any of you who are in my game view these quotes and recognize them as your own, please do not be offended. It is nothing against you. I'm just merely curious. Also, I did do a search and there were no plausible results. Although with a forum this big, I'm sure it's all the trick of having the right key word...

[Evisse the Blue]

I am not familiar with the RPG forum all that much so I don't know your game - however, I clearly understand what you're getting at. And I think it is mostly because of the movie portrayal of Elves, they do favour that sort of comments. I don't think anyone thought about Elves as prissy before Fotr came out. Tolkien always portrayed his Elves as strong warriors, majestic and not epheminate, like, I'm afraid, they appear in the movies. This is not movie bashing, it's just stating a fact.

[Firefoot]

Yes, I'd say it came about because of the movies. In the books I cannot imagine Dwarves using these kinds of insults. Also, here is an excerpt from BoLT 2 about what Tolkien thought about this stuff (always been one of my favorites because it is so against the movie portrayal )

Long afterwards my father would write, in wrathful comment on a 'pretty' or 'ladylike' pictorial rendering of Legolas:
He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of the Fellowship.

It would seem, being that Tolkien died before the movies came out, that this "ladylike" idea of Elves has been around for a long time, though JRRT never meant for them to be seen this way.

[Imladris]

But doesn't that quote you mentioned, Firefoot describe movie-Legolas? The elves were Fairfolk -- they were fair, not rugged. Granted, Legolas would probably have looked better if they had gone with black hair, but let's face it, he doesn't act effeminate. Elrond definately did not look/act effeminate. Haldir did not look/act effeminate.

[Bêthberry]

Dear Imladris,

I wish to make a comment here on behalf of the mods of all the RPG fora, but I am sure my words do not preclude comments from Pio, Child, Mith and others.

All games at the Barrow Downs must be true to the spirit of Tolkien and not merely a general form of fantasy or Middle Age scenario. It is true that as gamers move from The Shire to Rohan to Gondor, there are greater expectations for understanding Tolkien's Middle earth and greater scope for interpreting his work. In fact, the Golden Hall for Rohan explicitly states the expectation that gamers will know the books and not merely Peter Jackson's movies.

That said, if you as the Game Founder are uncomfortable with aspects of the posts in your game, I would think you could contact your gamers via PM and explain your thoughts, asking them to reconsider their phrasing.

I do this regularly as I moderate games and The White Horse in Rohan and I know that Pio and Child also help new gamers understand Middle earth in The Shire.

Of course, I think your thread is about more than just our games here; it is, as I see it, related to issues of how books are read and interpreted. In literary theory, this is referred to as the cultural dissemination of books (which is akin to but different from literary criticism).

There are wide-ranging ways in which we come to know texts. Some authors are part of the cultural furniture with which we furnish and decorate our houses of the imagination. People can refer to and understand authors' characters, stories and events even before reading the primary texts themselves. Or, indeed, they can read other authors' interpretations of their books before reading the 'original'. We can know "Wuthering Heights According to Spike Milligan" and Jane Urquhart's Changing Heaven before we ever read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights itself. We can know Henry James' take on 'Jane Eyre' in The Turn of the Screw before we read Charlotte Brontë's novel. We can know Francois Truffaut's Two English Girls before we know the Brontës. And then there is Jules and Jim. I know students whose first exposure to Wuthering Heights was from a Second City TV sketch, a wordless skit using semaphor.

This does not, of course, mean that books exist only in this process of cultural referral. But it is one way in which our understanding of books is filtered through this cultural static.

And, of course, another way to look at this question is to ask why Peter Jackson portrayed the elves as he did.

[Imladris]

So, Bethberry, are you saying that the way we view stories is affected by culture? Of course, people would also have different images of the things Tolkien described.

As for the games -- I was in no way implying that you held poor games. If I had thought about it like I do now I would have asked them to edit it. As it is, this just struck me a few days ago and those were written a few months ago. *shrugs* I didnt think it was that big a deal to go and ask them to edit. It was merely an example that was more serious than pictures of Legolas shouting for his shampoo in the Middle-earth Mirth section.