Talk:Themes of The Lord of the Rings

"Rebutted Negative Portrayals"/ "Critiques" section neutrality

I have renamed the "Rebutted Negative Portrayals" section as "Critiques" because the previous term violates NPOV. Any piece of literature is going to be subject to scholarly discussion, and while the facts of the discourse may lead towards a certain consensus, it is inappropriate for Wikipedia to use its editorial voice in framing a scholarly discussion as one side "rebutting" another. The usual term for such sections in Wikipedia is "Criticism" or "Critiques." It is also inaccurate to portray the arguments discussed in this section as "negative portrayals" - for example, simply observing that there are more male than female characters in a book is not necessarily negative, and if a critic dislikes this imbalance and makes an argument against it, this is a valid literary critique and it is inappropriate (again) for Wikipedia to call this negative.

I also renamed the subsections to be as neutral as possible - "Alleged Racism" became "Racism", "no Women" became "Female Characters," etc.

Ultimately, I think it would be better if each of these subsections became their own sections and expanded, titled simply "Gender" "Religion," and "Race" (I'm doubtful if the "no modern relevance" section should be retained at all - it seems to be here only because this entire section is summarizing a single academic paper. But for now simply renaming this section as "Critiques" should suffice. theBOBbobato (talk) 23:58, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for discussing, and you are right that the old section heading certainly wasn't a good one, though I don't agree at all that the section is anything other than neutral. It was seeking to avoid a term like "Criticisms" or "Controversies" or indeed "Critiques" which are rightly deprecated by Wikipedia policy, as such things encourage poorly-cited contributions and trivia. However, "Critiques" is wrong for a second reason, which is that a critique is a reasoned essay by a scholar making the case against something. That isn't what has occurred in these cases: there have been sometimes intemperate verbal attacks on Tolkien the man (arguments ad hominem) as well as on his writings, and these have been rebutted by scholars using the evidence from his writings and his life. Therefore, we need a heading which states that these matters have been debated; I suggest that "Debated themes" would be suitable as it correctly implies two sides while remaining neutral. I agree with you that the subsection theme headings should be as sharp as possible, but they must also be accurately descriptive: "Religion" for instance is misleading, as the accusation is apparent lack of religion, not its presence, so these headings too probably need some reworking. The "No modern relevance" subsection can, I agree, probably go; Wood may be right but it's a minor aspect and probably undue here. As for expansion, the section is a summary of three existing articles which offer much more detail; it wouldn't be appropriate to say much more on those topics in this article. The suggestion "become their own sections" is in one way enticing – we'd avoid giving any handholds of the "Criticisms" kind to certain folks – but it isn't correct, as these themes have been robustly rebutted, in sharp contrast to the other themes in the article (it's hard to imagine that anyone has seriously argued that Tolkien wasn't interested in languages, for example). They are rightly grouped as they are. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:51, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the changes you made, "Debated Themes" is a better term to use than "critiques" in this instance.

In regards to titling the section on female characters, I still think that it should be titled without qualifiers. The "lack of female characters" argument is only one aspect of analyses that have been made about Tolkien's representation of women - there have been arguments that Tolkien's female characters are less developed or are presented according to traditional norms, for example. Calling the entire section "Lack of female characters" is also a bit of a strawman - this position is rebutted immediately, which primes readers to discount discount arguments that there's too little female representation. Anybody participating in a serious discussion of Tolkien's work knows that the books have significant female characters. But people who argue that the gender ratio is skewed are more likely to argue that there's "fewer female characters, or that the books don't pass the Bechdel test, which requires a deeper engagement with Tolkien's treatment of gender.

Thanks, but that is missing the point that the theme is not "X" but "Perceived absence of X". The heading "Lack of religion" in the article clearly identifies a topic; "Religion" would look like a duplicate of the "Christianity" theme, which it is not. On the other hand, "Sexism" will be an improvement on "Lack of female characters", and it is a charge with some force in his case. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:32, 31 October 2022 (UTC)