{"id":646,"date":"2015-01-06T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T17:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/?p=646"},"modified":"2016-07-11T12:33:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T16:33:57","slug":"in-defense-of-tauriel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"In Defense of Tauriel"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the first (of hopefully many) post from one\u00a0of our new contributing writers, Lauren. Lauren is a Young Adult author who blogs about books and her writing process at The\u00a0Housework Can Wait<\/a>.\u00a0She\u00a0lives in Nashville with her husband, two kids, and a dog named Wicket. When she’s not busy writing, you can\u00a0find her\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Every time I find myself in a discussion of the recently concluded Peter Jackson Hobbit<\/em> Trilogy, a certain subject always comes up. I\u2019m not speaking about whether it was necessary to split a 287-page book into an 8+ hour trilogy (it wasn\u2019t), or how much Luke Evans\u2019 Bard the Bowman resembles Orlando Bloom\u2019s Pirates of the Caribbean character (SO MUCH), or if Thranduil is wasted on Middle Earth and really deserves to be headlining his own Las Vegas variety show (emphatic yes).<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m talking about Tauriel.<\/p>\n

\"tauriel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You know Tauriel. She\u2019s the feisty ginger Captain of the Mirkwood guard portrayed by Evangeline Lilly. Tauriel is a character named not by J.R.R. Tolkien, but by Peter Jackson, and most of what she does in The Desolation of Smaug<\/em> and The Battle of Five Armies<\/em> is not in any of the Middle Earth books. She also is doted on in the movies by not one, but two warrior-suitors: Legolas Greenleaf, the Prince of Mirkwood, and Kili, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield.<\/p>\n

\"Lookin'<\/a>

Lookin’ good for 77, Kili.<\/p><\/div>\n

Most people I talk to are not fans of Tauriel. Perhaps you<\/em> are not a fan of Tauriel. And that\u2019s fine and valid \u2013 everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and if there is one thing that burns my britches (haha, just kidding, there are a LOT of things that burn my britches), it\u2019s other people telling me what I should and should not like.<\/p>\n

So if you don\u2019t like Tauriel because her red hair is just way too long to be practical, or because she reminds you of your second-cousin Mildred with the strong opinions about your wardrobe choices, or because you still have not forgiven LOST for ending the way it did\u2026 more power to you. I may not agree, but I respect your right to not share in my unabashed Tauriel love.<\/p>\n

However, most of the people who proudly proclaim their Tauriel loathing to me (unsolicited, of course, as I know better than to go around asking people what they think of Tauriel) cite the same reasons over and over, and I have a bone to pick with some of those. I don\u2019t expect anyone in the Anti-Tauriel Camp to convert to Team Tauriel based on my arguments. I wish only to explain why I am firmly Pro-Tauriel, and why I think she has gotten a bit of a raw deal in the fandom.<\/p>\n

So here we go with the Debunking the Top Three Arguments Against Tauriel.<\/p>\n

1. She is not in the book.<\/h4>\n

This, for my money, is the weakest argument against Tauriel, because you know what else is not in the book? Most of these three movies. Yes, some of the added material is taken from The Silmarillion<\/em> and the appendices from The\u00a0Lord of the Rings<\/em>, but most of the Hobbit<\/em> trilogy is unapologetic fan-fiction.<\/p>\n

The grand tree-battle that ends An Unexpected Journey<\/em>? Not in the book. The dwarves flee from the goblins by\u00a0climbing trees, the goblins light the trees on fire, and the dwarves are rescued by eagles. There is no swordplay, no heroic leap into a pack of goblins, no anything except cowering and fleeing.<\/p>\n

\"eagles\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Azog\u2019s survival of the Battle of Azanulbizar and subsequent obsession with Thorin? Not in the book. Azog is killed by D\u00e1in and never gets his ridiculous spear-arm \u2013 and even that brief history is not in The Hobbit<\/em>, but in The Silmarillion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The dwarves quick-melting of vats of gold so they could attempt to kill Smaug Viserys-style? Not in the book. Smaug and Bilbo exchange a few riddles, Smaug mistakenly assumes Bilbo is from Laketown, and he leaves the mountain. No giant semi-molten gold dwarf statue. Nada. Zilch.<\/p>\n

\"smaug<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s be honest, if you are a Tolkien purist, you need to stay far, far away from these movies (and probably watch the 1977 animated version instead). If you decide to sit through Jackson\u2019s entire Hobbit<\/em> trilogy and want to enjoy it at all, you need to check canon at the door and settle in for an extravagant spectacle that, yes, is based more or less on Tolkien\u2019s story, but that takes extensive liberties with the source material.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re right. Tauriel is not in the book. There is a (male) chief of the Mirkwood guards, whose main role in the story is to pass out drunk, thus allowing Bilbo to steal his keys and liberate the dwarves from their prison. The chief is never named (nor are most of the elves), and doesn\u2019t do anything particularly masculine other than exist in Tolkien\u2019s Middle Earth, which is apparently powered by pure testosterone.<\/p>\n

It should be noted, the chief of the Mirkwood guards is in the book more than the Prince of Mirkwood, aka Legolas, aka Orlando Bloom, aka He Who Is Also Present In These Movies And Yet Receives Far Fewer Complaints.<\/p>\n

And maybe I\u2019m in the minority here, but I\u2019m very much in favor of giving the elves more to do in this story than Capturing Dwarves and Passing Out Drunk, until of course the final battle which is \u2013 shockingly \u2013 also not really in the book (okay, the fact that the battle occurs is in the book, but what happens during the battle is not, as Bilbo spends the whole thing unconscious and the story is told from Bilbo\u2019s point of view).<\/p>\n

I mean, let\u2019s for a minute recall that the L\u00f3rien elves were not supposed to show up for the Battle of Helm\u2019s Deep in The Two Towers<\/em>, but they did and it was awesome. (If that bothered you, you are probably a Tolkien Purist, and I have to ask again, why are you watching these movies?)<\/p>\n

\"elves<\/a><\/p>\n

So yes, Tauriel does a lot more than her book counterpart \u2013 she kills spiders, she kills orcs, she saves dwarves, she saves children, she defies Thranduil, she gets banished. Yeah, that\u2019s a lot of supplemental material, but even if you took all of it out, you are still left with three movies that only resemble the source material in the broadest sense.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: the fact that the Hobbit movies are not true to the book hardly boils down to Tauriel. She is one of many characters and scenes and plot points added for the films, a fact which you need to be okay with if you\u2019re going to have even the slimmest chance of enjoying these movies.<\/p>\n

2. She exists solely to facilitate an unnecessary love triangle.<\/h4>\n

Setting aside the fact that Tauriel never demonstrates any romantic affection for Legolas in the movies, and therefore I don\u2019t think that this qualifies as an actual love triangle, it\u2019s true that there is no romance subplot at all in the book. However, referring back to point one, that these movies are essentially fanfiction and to enjoy them you must accept a myriad of non-canon events, let\u2019s discuss Tauriel\u2019s romance(s) and whether they are necessary for the sake of the films.<\/p>\n

When we first meet Tauriel, she is dominating a clutter of homicidal spiders (yes, the proper term for a grouping of spiders is \u201cclutter,\u201d which is not nearly menacing enough). In the process, she saves the fair young Kili from being dinner. Kili, because he is not blind, notices that he has been saved by a fearsome and beautiful elf, and thus becomes smitten, which \u2013 can you blame him?<\/p>\n

\"kili\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kili then attempts to woo Tauriel by making her laugh and paying her genuine compliments, which \u2013 the scoundrel. And Tauriel, despite the fact that the elves in general, and the Mirkwood elves in particular, have been established as elitist and racist (er, speciesist? Not entirely sure what the term is for being so adamantly anti-dwarf), treats Kili kindly. Like he is a person deserving of respect.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s step back for a minute and think about this. Galadriel and Elrond aside, two characters who are so enlightened they\u2019re practically oracles, most of the elves in The Hobbit<\/em> are extremely bigoted. Yet here we have Tauriel, a female guard who has risen through the ranks despite her lowly Silvan birth, treating a dwarf with compassion and respect. When Legolas and Thranduil attempt to shame and humiliate her for her insistence on treating the dwarves as equals, she refuses to back down, defying orders and ultimately getting herself banished \u2013 which is a huge deal for her. She stands to lose everything and has no backup plan, but she stands as the lone voice of equality against a society preaching superiority. Eventually Legolas sides with her over his father, but it\u2019s very clear that it\u2019s only because he\u2019s smitten with her, not because he agrees with her.<\/p>\n

\"tauriel-legolas<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, The Lord of the Rings<\/em> gives us hobbits and dwarves and elves and men working side by side, and yes, Legolas and Gimli\u2019s friendship eventually helps bridge that dwarf-elf chasm, but Tauriel stands alone before any of this ever happens.<\/p>\n

Wait, no, not alone. Because you know who stands with her? Kili. Because, oh yeah, the dwarves are just as elitist as the elves. No one else in Thorin\u2019s company supports Kili\u2019s affection for Tauriel, despite the fact that they\u2019d all be dead several times over if not for her.<\/p>\n

Yes, then they do develop romantic feelings toward one another, but to say that Tauriel exists only to be part of a love triangle cheapens what these two characters actually stand for in this story, which is demonstrating that in a pre-Fellowship Middle Earth, there were still those who could see the value in races outside their own. They sacrifice for each other and save each other in a world where anyone else \u2013 even most of our protagonists \u2013 would just stand by and let anyone who is not a member of their race die.<\/p>\n

\"kili-tauriel\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Aren\u2019t these stories, at their core, about companionship and the ability to overcome differences for the greater good? Isn\u2019t that Bilbo\u2019s main role \u2013 to remind everyone that life would be a lot better if they could all just get along? Tauriel is able to come to that conclusion on her own, even before Bilbo\u2019s impassioned pleas, and stays the course even when it seems the only possible outcome for her is death. She and Kili pave the way for The Lord of the Rings<\/em> by showing us that some people of Middle Earth actually can see past the ends of their own noses.<\/p>\n

And really, isn\u2019t it more realistic that there would be at least a couple characters who would see the benefit of looking past race and seeing the good in others? Most of the characters in The Hobbit<\/em> never truly are able to see the other races as equals, Bilbo and Bard being notable exceptions. Every other race has very self-centered reasons for showing up to that final battle, and even though they are forced to work together to defeat the orcs\/goblins, when the dust settles, most are still only focused on their own people. The only characters to really mourn anyone of a different race are Bilbo and Tauriel. It\u2019s not much, but from where I\u2019m sitting, it\u2019s more hopeful than Bilbo being the only one to have learned anything from all this.<\/p>\n

And Legolas? Does anyone really feel like Tauriel was torn between Kili and Legolas? She did everything but roll her eyes and make a gag-face every time Legolas or Thranduil would mention his feelings about her, but he was a Prince and offered her aid and protection when the rest of her people were turning their backs on her, so obviously she accepted his help. Object of his affection, she absolutely was. A point on a love triangle, she was not.<\/p>\n

\"tauriel-legolas\"<\/a><\/p>\n

3. She\u2019s only there because of tokenism.<\/h4>\n

Before I make my argument, let\u2019s look at what Peter Jackson actually has to say about why Tauriel was in the film:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a very thin book that we had to create characters with some different complexity. And there aren\u2019t that many you can do. The dwarves move from one place to the other. So the elves in the Woodland Realm were an obvious [choice]. In The Hobbit, Thranduil [an Elven king] isn\u2019t even named. He\u2019s just called the Woodland King. And there are no particular elf characters\u2013\u2013you just have this one guy. And we obviously know there\u2019s a son, because in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien names Thranduil and reveals that he had a son [Legolas]. So that gave us a clue. Everybody thinks that Orlando [Bloom] came to these films as a sexy box-office [draw], but we actually needed characters, and he was such an obvious character, it\u2019d be nuts if we didn\u2019t use him. Then you\u2019ve got the king and you’ve got a son, and stories are best told with three people, not two, because then you can create conflicts and triangles. So we wanted a third elf character. Was this a chance to put a female role in the story? Because there are so few female roles. Also you do have a lot of young girls seeing this film, and they should have somebody in there who they can empathize with. It was a very cold-blooded decision. Yes, OK, a female elf. And that was how it came about\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

You have to be aware of your audience or otherwise you\u2019re just not doing your job. I just think of all those eight-year-old, nine-year-old, 10-year-old girls who come to see these films. Who are they going to actually empathize with? At least they have Tauriel. At least they know how to kill Orcs now. So that could come in handy one day. We are teaching girls good skills!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

So yes, on the one hand, I suppose you could argue tokenism because they wanted someone girls could relate to. On the other, they were looking for more characters \u2013 any characters, from what it sounds like \u2013 and if there is one thing Middle Earth does not need more of, it is male characters. This is creating a character from scratch to fill up screen time (again \u2013 YAY FANFICTION!), so why shouldn\u2019t she be female? We have Galadriel and Arwen as precedent to show us that female elves can hold positions of power, we already have an established awesome male elf action hero in Legolas \u2013 making the Captain of the Guard female just makes sense.<\/p>\n

Also, on a personal note as a mother of two young girls, it gets really old listening to them argue over who gets to pretend to be the one female character in a story. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve had to break up arguments because one of them was hogging the role of Princess Leia, or Black Widow, or Gamora. And yes, I can suggest that they can be genderswapped Han Solo or Captain America or Rocket Raccoon until I\u2019m blue in the face, but why should I have to? Trust me, they see that as the consolation prize it is, and then I\u2019m consoling a weeping six-year-old who wonders, \u201cWhy do I always have to be the boy?\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have a good answer for her.<\/p>\n

So yes, maybe there is a bit of tokenism in Tauriel\u2019s existence. Maybe her presence in the story isn\u2019t strictly necessary, maybe she\u2019s there just to have \u201ca girl.\u201d Maybe there should be more women in Middle Earth. But we have to start somewhere, and as Peter Jackson said, at least we have Tauriel.<\/p>\n

\"tauriel<\/a><\/p>\n

So there you have it, folks. My defense of Tauriel, and why dismissing her at face value because of her romance subplot or because she\u2019s not in the book or because Tolkien liked to conveniently forget that women existed is, perhaps, not giving her enough credit. If you don\u2019t like her, I don\u2019t expect that I changed your mind. I hope only that I made you think about why you don\u2019t like her, and if it\u2019s based on the character herself or on what everyone is saying about the character.<\/p>\n

And if this essay has wooed you to the Tauriel side, or you, like me, have loved her from the first moment you saw her \u2013 welcome to Club Tauriel. It\u2019s a fabulous place to be.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first (of hopefully many) post from one\u00a0of our new contributing writers, Lauren. Lauren is a Young Adult author who blogs about books and her writing process at The\u00a0Housework Can Wait.\u00a0She\u00a0lives in Nashville with her husband, two kids, and a dog named Wicket. When she’s not busy writing, you can\u00a0find her\u00a0on\u00a0Twitter. Every time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Guest post by @LaurenTHCW: In Defense of Tauriel http:\/\/wp.me\/p4Vfwz-","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[194,193,78,79,192],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-character-study","tag-kickass-ladies","tag-kili","tag-legolas-greenleaf","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-tauriel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.avengingforce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/tauriel.jpg?fit=1191%2C670","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Vfwz-aq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":676,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions\/676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.avengingforce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}