#galadriel is actually in awe of all of her mutuals and thinks they are the coolest people ever yes this is true as well i said so

[galadrielspeaks]

i love the fact that my url makes people perceive my posts as if it’s actually galadriel saying them like yes galadriel is speaking on tumblr dot com about how much she loves gimli 24/7 this is accurate this is canonical

[elerrinacrownedwithstars]

Galadriel in the Rings of Power, part 3: Women's stories don't matter

This post continues my analysis of Galadriel as she is portrayed in the Amazon series The Rings of Power - and why I think it is so very bad. Part 1 focused on the the portrayal of her being a warrior, and the many problems it creates for her character and possibly even for LOTR, whereas part 2 argued that what is supposed to be war trauma is actually just an awful personality.

Part 1 x Part 2

This post will examine the rather misogynistic implications of the show's changes to Galadriel's story.

I will post my arguments in a few different posts, because that should make the whole much more readable. I will use the tags #anti rop and #anti rings of power for the benefit of those who may want to filter my posts.

If you like Amazon Rings of Power, I have no issue with that; I only take issue with how a character I've loved for over a decade is portrayed in this show.

3. By erasing Melian and Celebrían from Galadriel's story, the show undermines meaningful relationships between women and implies that women's stories are not worth telling unless their occupation fits masculine ideals. 

Common criticism of Tolkien is the lack of female characters in his legendarium (although there are many very compelling female characters in The Silmarillion, including Galadriel). But Amazon has actually one-upped him in this by erasing meaningful relationships Galadriel has with her mentor and her daughter. As stated in part 1 of this series, Melian's absence from Galadriel's life creates problems for The Lord of the Rings because without Melian, she doesn't have the experience and skills she needs to have in order to help the Fellowship (and ultimately contribute to the success of the quest to destroy the Ring). Needless to say, it's problematic to undermine skills, art and crafts that are specifically linked to feminine sphere, especially when this is done so that a character fits masculine ideals.

All ROP!Galadriel's relationships are with and about men: her dead (but living in Valinor) brother, her grudging subordinates, some kind of friendship between her and Elrond although there seems to be a lack of mutual respect, the manipulative and ultimately very detrimental nonsense with Halbrand/Sauron, and Gil-galad who appears to view her as a problem to be solved, not an asset. She has no female friends and her relationship with Míriel is ambivalent at best. (Can you imagine the interactions Galadriel might have had with Dísa, though? It's a tantalising thought. It could have also been used as a way to establish why Galadriel is so respectful of Gimli.)

As stated before, at this point of her story, Galadriel should be married and mother to a grown daughter. There is some variation about the timeline, thanks to Tolkien's shifting ideas about Galadriel's history, but it is safe to say that her marriage to Celeborn and Celebrían's birth took place in the early centuries of the Second Age. In part 1, I also argued that in the show's timeline, the time she would have had with Celeborn would not have been enough to marry, especially if he was actually lost in the wars of the First Age. I find it very poor writing that the show fixates on the few lines about Galadriel's athletic feats, but then ignores Tolkien's fairly clear writing on how Elves did not marry or have children when they were preoccupied with war.

Be that as it may, ROP does allow Galadriel to be married (however briefly), but not a parent. The absence of Celebrían leads me to believe that she is born at some later time during the show - and the cynic in me is convinced that the show will use motherhood as a solution to Galadriel's issues, enabling her transformation into the powerful Elven queen - as if becoming a mother is a fulfillment of woman's story, not a part of it. But even if children are supposedly a woman's higher calling, masculine traits and occupations are still more important and more compelling. Hence the part of Galadriel's story that involves motherhood is delayed to a much later time, so that she may run around Middle-earth, swinging a sword and pursuing a revenge fantasy (which, of course, ultimately fails, at least in the sense that she does not get to personally bring down Sauron). 

If you ask me, it's a particularly bad move to change a woman's story so that she is presented as an action hero and her womanhood and parenthood are a resolution of her life, not the intrinsic part of it. 

4. ROP!Galadriel's motives and agenda are not about herself, but about men. 

In The Silmarillion, it is shown that Galadriel is proud and ambitious, and wants to rule her own realm in Middle-earth. She wants to try her skills outside the safety of Valinor and build something of her own. After the War of Wrath, she refuses the pardon of Valar and remains in Middle-earth, because she is still proud: she believes that if she returns to the Blessed Lands, it would be as a shamed Exile who does not even have the permission to dwell in Aman proper but in Tol Eressëa. However, in Middle-earth she is still mighty and powerful, respected by both Elves and Men. She still wants to be an active participant in the events of Middle-earth and shape the course of the future. Her ambition and pride are not yet spent: she won't take "the second best" in the Undying Lands, when she can still stand at the top of the food chain in Middle-earth. 

There is also the version that Galadriel is actively banned from returning to Valinor as a leader of the rebellion. Later on Tolkien's thinking of her story changes further and Galadriel's desire to sail for Middle-earth is unrelated to the unrest of Noldor and she is not presented as a rebel leader. This late version, I think, is not as compelling and does contradict The Lord of the Rings. FOTR appears to derive from the version where there's a ban against Galadriel's return into the West, where she now yearns to go back after millenia of exile. But when she rejects the Ring and the temptation of becoming a terrible dark queen in her own right, she "passes the test", she will diminish and go into the West. In other words, she finally rejects her own pride and ambition. Moreover, this refusal and the crucial help she gives to the Fellowship are said to be the reason she is allowed to sail in the end of ROTK. 

All the same, no matter what version by Tolkien you look at, in canon Galadriel is the mistress of her own fate and her ambitions, and her flaws and her overcoming them are her own. Galadriel's story is about Galadriel. 

It has been extensively argued and shown in other posts criticising the show how Galadriel's agency is thrown out of the window so that all she does in ROP is obsess about men - to the point where her big moment in FOTR and the refusal of the Ring (supposedly, the reason she is granted leave to return to Valinor) is not about her own pride and ambition, but about Sauron. So I won't go into that in this post. But I will say this much: in LOTR, it is  made clear that the victory over Sauron is still a defeat for the Elves. Much that was magical and wondrous will pass with him and the time for the Dominion of Men begins. Lothlórien will fade away. In helping the Fellowship of the Ring Galadriel essentially sacrifices her own ambition and influence over the matter and fates of Arda. But with ROP's portrayal, this aspect of Galadriel's fight against Sauron is lost.

Furthermore, it is apparently because of her that Sauron resumes to his evil ways. The show changes Galadriel  from being one of Sauron's chief enemies and her opposing him even when he was still seemingly fair and helpful, to the situation where she cannot recognise him for what he is and is responsible for his return - and for the hundreds of thousands of deaths and uncountable suffering that will result from it. 

I expect I don't need to explain why this is bad.

It is also very unclear to me what she expected to do once she found Sauron. Fights between Elves and Maiar in the form of Balrogs are notoriously fatal, and Sauron must be even stronger than a Balrog, considering he is Morgoth's first lieutenant. Is ROP!Galadriel trying to go down in a blaze of (vain)glory? As the final scene of the first season between her and Sauron shows, she is and always was hopelessly outmatched and she doesn't seem to have any plan except to just stab him. Are you telling me that she spent a millenia hunting for him without any idea about his abilities and how to respond to them, and how to bring him down?

&&&&&&&

What I gather from all this is that for ROP, and for the people who created the show, women's stories, friendship between women, and women's ambitions don't matter. Or, it was thought that the only way Galadriel would be interesting to the TV audience is as an action hero. This could also be because the creative team responsible for ROP simply can't write a good script.

Surely, it's nice to see women in diverse roles, being warriors and protectors and guardians. But it's also important to see how these roles tie to masculine ideals, and that if you discard a woman's already existing story so that she can fulfill this particular role, then your take is not particularly empowering anymore.