Hot Dwarfs? Yawn. And this is my problem because?

[This post is also intentionally vague in places.]

Here, courtesy of their facebook feed, is the latest bit from TORn about the projected hotness of the dwarfs. (Dwarves? WordPress spellcheck likes dwarfs.) In what is mostly an extensive comment on Kili (Aidan Turner), the author mentions that The Hobbit fans are on edge waiting to see how Thorin looks, and mentions that what we’ve seen so far suggests that he is “suspiciously hot.”

Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

My main reaction to the photo above is that Thorin looks suspiciously short.

Now, I’m not opposed to hot. This blog spends more than its fair share of time discussing / analyzing the sources of the Armitage flame. I was really disappointed in this piece, though, which seemed to do nothing but try to fan the dying flames of a discussion that was already framed in unhelpful ways in the first place. I don’t think there’s any way not to be shallow when discussing this question, so flinging around charges of shallowness seemed beside the point. Now, maybe if you’re a diehard female Tolkien fan and you have to put up with what reads to me like the clear misogynism of a socially inept, immature, and hopefully tiny segment of diehard male Tolkien fans — you know who you are — who unfortunately probably completely fulfill the probably over-generalized social stereotypes about male adolescent fantasy / sci-fi fans, the picture of Aidan Turner reads a bit like “Peter Jackson finally did something for me.” I’ve taken women’s studies, dude, I get that in patriarchal societies, some women sign on for whatever benefits they can get from the existing pattern, even if that means they profit from the spoils of a mirror sexism rather than grasping the opportunity to change the paradigm.

But really? This is all fatiguing. Suspicions of the talents of beautiful people for the mere fact that they are beautiful are just as offensive as both mean-spirited and offhanded attacks on the less beautiful for their failure to be beautiful. This whole discussion screams insecurity about appearance even more than it does shallowness. As Frenz notes: is the worst criticism they have that he’s good-looking and has enthusiastic female fans? (Question: is there any really successful male actor who lacks enthusiastic female fans? Would there have been any way to circumvent this problem other than hiring complete unknowns? Shouldn’t we want them to hire the best actor? As opposed to the ugliest? You know, it’s not like John Rhys-Davies is all that hard on the eyes, either.)

What I don’t get is: why don’t people just change the discussion about Armitage?

I know there’s no shortage of Tolkien fans, so maybe it doesn’t matter to many of them that this sort of discourse is a huge turn-off to people who might like to discuss Tolkien but don’t care to be hazed in order to do it. If I am going to invest in this particular fandom (which I’m not, because I have developed an allergy to the sort of insecurities discussed above), then I want to meet a fan who has something interesting to discuss beyond whether or not it is acceptable for an actor who is handsome according to the twenty-first-century standard to play a challenging role. This question was settled for me a long time ago, and the answer is nowhere near as hard as some people want to make it: if the director casts him, he can play the role. If Tolkien fans — or to be fair, a tiny segment of them — want to continue talking about this, let them.

But let’s us talk about some interesting things; let’s create our own new world in which aesthetics are one piece of a performance that in turn is an element of a much wider landscape. I want to know things like: what is the standard for a good performance in this context? How do actors who’ve played the role of Thorin in other settings frame the tasks they’re challenged with? Read this interesting post by mulubinba on the voices of past Thorins. Helpful and informative also her other blog, here. How does Tolkien’s medievalism and its relationship to actual medieval history influence the director’s and the actor’s choices in this setting, which is so heavily conditioned by the need to market such an expensive film effectively? What are the potential dramatic and interpretive choices involved in playing Thorin, and how might Armitage choose to come to terms with them? What was Tolkien’s original aesthetic vision or dynamic, in what specific ways has Peter Jackson realized that background, and how much room is available for actors like Armitage to innovate here?

Those would be interesting questions. And the discussions might avoid both shallowness and reverse sexism but also — what is more — all of our personal insecurities about our beauty and its value, or lack thereof.

~ by Servetus on July 13, 2011.