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This may be hard to explain to somebody seeped in certain type of culture, but for other people the themes are grating and obvious to see. What did Galadriel do? As with all feminism Galadriel is perfect example of what if gender swapped would be seen as "toxic masculinity" only written badly. She is bitchy, disrespectful and overall pain in the ass. She constantly mansplains to everybody her point, like the "you have not seen what I have seen" to Elrond, a character who was literally out there fighting Morgoth. She is always angry and her solution to problems is either violence, or angry demands to speak to management to do her bidding. Her scene with Regent Murielle was one long cringe pissing contest. She is for some reason instantly liked by important characters like Elrond, Gil-Galad or Elendil for no reason despite her acting like a bitch - in case of Elendil even threatening him with dagger for which he conveniently shows her Numenorian secrets in their library or whatnot.
But there are other stupid and self-serving cameos in the show so far. One of the "original characters" showrunners invented was Elendil's sister (I won't bother looking her name), in their own words to "introduce some feminine energy into the family" or some such. And her main cameo in the show was bragging that they accepted her to the university or something like that. It is so on the nose and stupid beyond belief, but I guess for some people it is absolutely normal writing.
Thanks for elaborating.
That sounds absolutely abysmal, and definitely crosses the bar for blue-tribe pandering.
Even if we take out what I am being forced to conclude is indeed "Woman always right, Man always wrong" writing, the rest of it just dumps all over the character.
Take the scene in the audience hall of Númenor when she is speaking with Tar-Míriel. She recites a list of her titles, which should mean that she knows how to behave - both politically and as a matter of courtesy - when speaking to someone in that context. She should be diplomatic, she should be polite, she should behave like a civilised person. But instead she demands passage back to Middle-earth and manages to get everyone's back up with the way she does it. When it falls to the ragged guy pulled off a raft in the middle of the ocean to be emollient and diplomatic, then that's bad writing. It may be supposed to hint that Halbrand is not what he claims to be, that he too has had the training of a noble line, but it only works because Galadriel is so arrogant, rude, and flat-out stupid.
The writing is just poor all round. Fake profound statements that are idiotic (nobody is going to stop mocking the "do you know what the difference between a stone and a ship is?" speech) and too much jumping forward without explaining. If you know the lore, you know why Galadriel says "my family started this", but if you're a casual viewer who just tuned in to watch some fantasy TV and you maybe watched the movies years back, you have no idea what that is about, because the only mention of family you have seen so far is her brother, who was killed by Sauron. So how did they 'start this'? Did Finrod (and we don't even get his name mentioned) start this? What happened?
No time to explain who the Faithful are and why would they be considered traitors, but we got plenty of time for a slo-mo horsey ride!
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To be fair, I think a lot of fandom was primed by what is nowadays standard "fanbaiting" to look for "woke" stuff in the show. And it is there for sure, but it is overshadowed by bad writing, bad pacing and overall bad direction even. For instance there is a scene where a human woman meets black elf (they have supposed "forbidden romance" but with no chemistry) talking about attack by orcs on her village (where she decapitated an orc, slamming it on table in tavern proving the veracity of the threat). And when they get there to asses the situation the woman shows no emotion - she does not call out for potential survivors of her family or friends, she does not cry or anything like that. She just kind of goes around as if she was hardened mercenary surveilling yet another site of a massacre she got accustomed to.
What happens next is that all the elven garrison jump into a hole from which orcs came only to be promptly captured - and BTW by this point everybody knows that orcs are there. And then they make a plan - let one of them escape to alert nearby garrisons of potential threat. Because it did not occur to anybody to send a messenger back before jumping to fight orcs in a pit in the first place.
The reason why I am talking about all of this is that I think this is not a coincidence. It is not the fact that the show itself breaks suspension of disbelief by inserting some modern blue tribe/woke aesthetics into the programming. I think that the whole cast, directors, producers and above all else the writers are just sheltered blue tribe brats with no relevant life experience, seeped in their respective bubbles thinking that creating fanfictions where they insert their fantasies as well as their aesthetics is the pinnacle of fine art. It is kind of narcissist, it breaks the 4th wall where you can clearly see what characters the writers love or hate in their own life, there is no separation or thinking outside of the box. I think they seriously believe this and the result is what we see.
I think that this whole culture elevates incompetent writers and other professionals. And I am not even that opposed, for instance I quite liked the professionalism in Everything Everywhere All At Once - which had diverse cast and also some woke messaging, but it at least made sense (although ending was kind of cringe).
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