A Collocation of Discursivity

So, I was disappointed by the portrayal of Eowyn in the film The Return of the King. I was surprised and delighted by Miranda Otto in The Two Towers, so it wasn't the acting. Rather, it was the complete loss of what I loved about her character in the novel.

A little to the left facing them stood she whom he had called Dernhelm. But the helm of her secrecy had fallen from her, and her bright hair, released from its bonds, gleamed with pale gold upon her shoulders. Her eyes grey as the sea were hard and fell, and yet tears were on her cheek. A sword was in her hand, and she raised her shield against the horror of her enemy's eyes.

...the face of one that goes seeking death, having no hope.

Still she did not blench: maiden of the Rohirrim, child of kings, slender but as a steel blade, fair yet terrible.

Quoted from The Return of the King, Book V chapter 6.

So, on the zee pictures:



Um, it looks like she's blenching to me.

Also, how hard is the original chronology of the fight to follow, anyway? Theoden is down, she stands between the kings, talk talk talk, she laughs and takes off her helm, the Witch-King's beast leaps into the air and then falls on her, she strikes off its head, she springs back, the Black Rider rises, cries and breaks her arm with his mace, she falls to her knees, he stoops for the kill, Merry stabs him in the back of the knee, he stumbles, she totters up and stabs him, he is destroyed and she falls on his mantle. But nooooo, Jackson has to rearrange it all: Theoden goes flying - whee! more exciting, see?, Witch-King tells it to eat away, Eowyn runs in between (so far, so good), dialogue is exchanged (but in the wrong order), beast charges (no flying), Eowyn chops off its head, the Rider rises, Eowyn blenches ferociously, the morningstar (not mace!) whirls about, is parried weakly once and then breaks her shield and arm, she falls back on the dead horse, the Nazgul grabs her by the throat and threatens her with terrible dialogue, Merry stabs him the back of the knee, Eowyn falls back again, then stands up all nice and tall and proclaims her non-man-ness, then draws back her arm for a very drama...er lame looking stroke, which takes way too long, and then her sword goes flying (not splintered!), the Witch-King implodes, she holds her arm looking rather dumb...really, why the changes? I understand that some things are necessary, but the scene is visual and exciting in the book. These things were really unnecessary.

I suppose this might be counted as not blenching, but at this point, she's supposed to be tottering, and instead we get inspirational feminist quips:



Bother. At least she looks about right, though I think the lighting in this scene is too warm. I always imagine this scene as rather cold, grey-blue, matching the despair of her mood. Oh, and lots of upward camera angles, both to show Merry's POV and to emphasize her heroism without lame dialogue additions.

Funnily enough, I was watching The Princess Bride, and I think that Buttercup in the first 30 minutes of the film is a lot better Eowyn than Eowyn in The Return of the King. Right look, right attitude, and even the same description - eyes as grey as the sea (oh, wait, she's describing Wesley. Never mind - but the wording is exactly the same;-).

So, this is how I think Eowyn should look in that scene:

Metagenre Thoughts

So, this summer, I read a lot of fantasy (mostly Terry Pratchett), and I did some reading up on the sci-fi/fantasy subculture (and I don't care if some think sci-fi is a dismissive title - I apply it happily to myself). I found that there are two major types of fantasy - "high" and "low." That got me thinking in another direction - the direction of the mystery genre. Mystery writers began writing cool, intellectual, polished stories featuring geniuses like Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Hercule Poirot. These writers wrote during the high "Golden Age of Mystery writing." They were followed stylistically by Josephine Tey and P. D. James (and possibly Laurie King). However, near the midpoint of the Golden Age, writers like Dashiel Hammett and Raymond Chandler ushered in the "hardboiled detective novel," firmly established in gritty detail, much more focused on both the drudge work of following clues, and the hard action (and often sex) rather than intellectual reasoning. Since that time, other than a few (like James and King) who remained in the Golden stream, most detective novels followed this "low" path, diverging into many tiny subgenres like the police procedural, the gumshoe/private eye, and many more.It seems to me, from the research I did, that fantasy followed a similar path: starting with the "high" writers, significantly Tolkien, Lewis' Narnia, LeGuin's Earthsea, fantasy was full of nobility, rarified speech and syntax, and world-threatening plots. However, as the genre developed, writers split off into "low" fantasy - subgenres such as the wish-fulfilling and unashamedly plagiarizing Sword and Sorcery type, the gritty, dark deconstructions such as LeGuin's follow ups to Earthsea like Tehanu, witty spoofs like Pratchett, and even some great psychological studies like Lewis' Till We Have Faces.So, I see a parallel pattern. Starting with a "norm" ("high fantasy" or "golden age mystery"), writers in these two genres began by portraying a genteel (mostly) world with characters who faced deadly threats to society/the world with grace and brilliance (moral or intellectual). Soon, however, other writers splintered away into many subgenres which were given a blanket metacatagory ("low fantasy," um, I don't think there is a overarching metacatagory for all the mystery subgenres, but the phenomenon is similar), which either merely added darker/grittier content or takes concepts in the "norm" genre and examines it from a new perspective (psychology, satire, deconstruction, lower class, etc).Perhaps an interesting topic for a paper sometime...In several years, of course. :-)

Hello!

Well, this makes my third blog (fourth if you count facebook - which I don't), but since I hope to cross post all three (or some such low number) of my thoughts on all of them, we shall see how much good signing up does.

Until I get my interests edited, here's a bit about me:

Christian
Calvinist/Reformed/philosophical compatibilist/etc.
Conservative in name and nature
English Lit/Piano major in senior undergraduate year
from Minnesota, going to school in Tennessee
Baptist, but not Southern

Fan of:
Jane Austen
C. S. Lewis
J. R. R. Tolkien
Joss Whedon
Sherlock Holmes
Orson Scott Card
Tamora Pierce
literary criticism and analysis, though with reservations about both subversive crit and criticism of complaint (or whatever Bloom called it - as absurd and pretentious as he gets, I think he's dead on in that respect. Well, that and his judgment that Poe couldn't write)

So, there me is. In all my less-than-glory.