So I spent the weekend at a tiny little film festival where Ethan was a panelist, and one of the other panelists used to run marketing for New Line. In his panel he talked about the challenges of marketing LotR and stated as a fact "the only people who knew those books were nerdy men in their 50s" and that no women wanted to see the film "until we showed them Legolas"
So I went up to him afterwards and said "listen, on behalf of nerdy 50 year old women, may I just say, HEY" and he gave me a condescending little laugh and said "yeah there were 7 of you" to which I replied "uh huh we have a group chat" and he *did not realize it was a joke*.
Reader, I let him live, but it was a near thing.
Grrrrr. Good on you calling him out.
Wow, Jess. Good job restraining yourself. Jeesh
My *MOTHER* is the one of my parents who read the Simarilion before I was born. She is the reason I rented the animated Hobbit on VHS *repeatedly* as a child.
Maybe it was just the authors I was in the 80s and 90s, but I had the impression that Tolkein fandom was pretty gender balanced back in the day.
When I started 10th grade, the first time I walked into the English classroom I was delighted to see a bunch of
The Lord of the Rings
posters up on the walls. The English teacher (I regret I do not remember her name -- I was only in that school for three weeks before we went back overseas), was equally delighted that someone recognized them, had actually read the books, and enjoyed talking about them with her.
My classmates thought less of me for that. I noticed, but I was past caring.
I haven't seen
The Odyssey,
but I am enjoying watching Nolan bros crashing out over Emily Wilson's review, having clearly forgotten that the thing she's famous for is explaining to men why they're wrong about
The Odyssey.