references about elven hair being long from Tolkien's works

Pretty sure! But i also feel elven-hair bowstrings were not quite the standart issue, even among silvan folk!
 
I wish the show-runners McKay & Payne would read your posts. They are extremely knowledgeable but they don't know everything.
Visually, I love almost everything I've seen in the teaser/trailers but two notable exceptions are the Harfoot feet and the hair on many of the elves. They’re pretty jarring to look at.

Aside from the evidence you've pulled together here, there's the practical consideration of the nature of hair itself. For the race of men, aging brings with it loss of color & density and a change in texture, so that what may have been smooth, shiny hair becomes coarse, dry and brittle into older age. Presumably, these changes would not have affected elves. Being a thing of beauty, therefore, it's hard to make the argument for shearing elven hair, especially into styles that are inferior (certainly for Celebrimbor and Elrond) and quite unlike anything Tolkien specifically described. Unfortunately, even the long hair of Gil-galad appears false & wig-like (exacerbated by the lack of sideburns). Overall, a sad step down from the hair styles created in PJ's Lord of the Rings trilogy.

We could be criticized for focusing on something as 'superficial' as hair, but I would respectfully disagree with such critics. Even the most cursory reading of Tolkien suffices to highlight the beauty of elves. Elves in adaptations must surely be depicted as beautiful. And disharmonious characteristics risk pulling us out of suspended disbelief.

The only exception would be - as you point out - short hair for those in thrall, or possibly for those in battle for whom long locks could be a vulnerability.
 
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What bothers me most isn't so much their neck and chin-long hair, but the pompadours and 90ies boygroup short-haired look of some elves like Finrod. Its an unecessary modernization that doesn't even look good.It's a bad aesthetic choice.
 
Argh! I don’t think I could cope with mullets. :)

On a positive note, I think the actors playing the three principal elf characters (Robert Aramayo, Charles Edwards & Benjamin Walker) are all extremely strong & will succeed in pulling us into the story regardless. Charles Edwards, in particular, is a well known Shakespearean actor in England.
Still, it seems a pity that they have to achieve their task not with the help of hair/make up but in spite of it.
 
Yes, they are good actors!

Mullet... long in the back, shorter on the front is a classic warriors hairdo... one can see variants with many old greek, other mediterranean, near eastern and celtic figures...
But no! It has long since been made unapplicable by certain rocker and pornstar types... whatever JRRT might have thought of it once.
 
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Yes, Elvish Hair magic. She deliberately grew her hair out so she could weave that cloak, and then cut it off. Why couldn't she grow more? And also, don't forget that she is not a 'typical' Elf. She is 1/2 Maiar and that must mean something for her ability to control her own physical form.
 
Dunno.She was born incarnate and her mother became incarnate to have sex and give birth to a child...
 
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I am a little confused why The Nature of Middle-earth is being used to critique the design choices of the Rings of Power show. I have to imagine that most decisions related to the pre-production of the show (including the look of the Elves) were determined well before the publication of NoMe. So, the decisions were made when access to that information was simply unavailable. Furthermore, Tolkien fans' opinions on elven hair were also developed long before the publication of that book, so it's not like this new material is somehow groundbreaking or something we didn't already think about Tolkien's elves. To be fair, a lot of fan art and Peter Jackson's films also shape people's opinions on what elves ought to look like, and not all of that was based on what Tolkien wrote, either.

But I'm also curious why someone is starting with the most obscure references to establish whether or not Tolkien considered his elves to have long hair. It's not like their aren't specific examples in the texts.

Frodo and companions see Glorfindel for the first time on the way to Rivendell in The Fellowship of the Ring:

"The rider's cloak streamed behind him, and his hood was thrown back; his golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed."​
Here's the Fellowship meeting Celeborn and Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring:

"On two chairs beneath the bole of the tree and canopied by a living bough there sat, side by side, Celeborn and Galadriel. They stood up to greet their guests, after the manner of Elves, even those who were accounted might kings. Very tall they were, and the Lady no less tall than the Lord; and they were grave and beautiful. They were clad wholly in white; and the hair of the Lady was of deep gold, and the hair of the Lord Celeborn was of silver long and bright; but no sign of age was upon them, unless it were in the depths of their eyes; for these were keen as lances in the starlight, and yet profound, the wells of deep memory."​
Olwë is likewise described as having long hair, though to be fair this description appears in HoME X: Morgoth's Ring (not the published Silmarillion):
"Two lords they had, for their numbers were very great: Elwë Singollo, which signifies Greymantle, and Olwë his brother. The hair of Olwë was long and white, and his eyes were blue; but the hair of Elwë was grey as silver, and his eyes were as stars; he was the tallest of all the Elven-folk."​
The description of Fingon's long dark hair plaited with gold from "The Shibboleth of Fëanor" in HoME XII: The Peoples of Middle-Earth has been known since 1996, and is incorporated into most fan art depicting Fingon after that date. Here's some samples:

"Cousins" by Ivanneth
Ivanneth_cousins.jpg


"Rescue of Maedhros from Thangorodrim" by Kasiopeia / Catherine Karina Chmiel / Katarzyna Chmiel-Gugulska
thangorodrim-chmiel.jpg


"Wardens of the North" / "Siege of Angband" by Jenny Dolfen:
siege-of-angband_fin.jpg



Coincidentally, all three images also contain Maedhros...who is also depicted with long hair by Ivanneth and Kasiopeia, who have a rather universal 'elves have long hair' standard in their artwork. Jenny Dolfen often depicts Maedhros in Beleriand and Fëanor with short hair, but other male elves with long hair. So, some variety for her depiction of the Noldor.


I recognize that "long hair" is subjective. How long is long? I think that Tolkien provides a clue concerning that in Lord of the Rings. When Boromir arrives in Rivendell for the Council of Elrond, his hair length is described as 'his locks were shorn about his shoulders.' To me, this suggests that allowing hair to grow longer than shoulder-length is normal in Rivendell, so that Boromir's is particularly short compared to the others (despite his 100 day journey). Other interpretations are possible, naturally, but the use of 'shorn' here in particular makes me think that Boromir's hair is noteworthy for being short, rather than for being long. Either way, we know it's shoulder-length, which is more specific than we get in most descriptions!

Most artists tend to interpret 'long' as...very long indeed, as the examples above are quite typical rather than unusual when it comes to the representation of Elves in Tolkien fanart.
 
I am a little confused why The Nature of Middle-earth is being used to critique the design choices of the Rings of Power show.
Because it is a short summary of the autor's vision, quick to cite and concise. Tolkien gave us hints how he imagined his elves, but the quotes above give the general rule explicitly - showing that most of his readers interpreted his hints correctly. It is not as if he had described his elves short-haired in TLOTR and later changed his mind. He just kept his descriptions vague but still most readers got it. The readers were accused of overestimating their own imagination, they were told they have just imagined elves long-haired (for seemigly no valid reasons) but those quotes show that Tolkien himself led his readers to imagine elves as long-haired because he did that himself.

And while NoME has not yet been published the original underlaying texts cited therein and Christopher Tolkien himself were still available to be consulted if wanted during the preparation phase.

Still the citations here are interesting also independent of the series, it is just that the question came up in this context.
 
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Most obscure? I didn't collect the most obscure quotes but about anything from all throughout the HOME i could get because i have it as a searchable pdf. I do not have lotr and hobbit or UT nor NOME as pdf so no quotes from these, as simple as that.
 
During the SDCC, one of the showrunners (I believe it was Patric McKay) was asked why some elves had short hair, to which he replied something to the effect of: "Elves like any race of many beings don't all look the same, especially not over thousands of years. In the the books it sure felt like that's what Tolkien was saying too."

It's hard to argue against this interpretation of McKay's (though I expect most taking part in this thread would disagree with him, based on the evidence presented); McKay, like any other being is free to interpret Tolkien in his own personal way, as we all are. However, I fail to understand how in a time period so many thousands (or perhaps hundreds of thousands) of years in the past, elves could have gained hold of a blow-dryer with which to achieve the poofy looks presented. The showrunners' decision also diminishes the importance of tradition (in all senses of the word) in favour of individual choice - a distinctly 20th/21st century philosophical take.

Same goes for another one of my pet peeves in adaptations - make up not used merely to enhance & beautify the actors (or the reverse as appropriate) but that clearly looks like "make up" with garish, easily discernible lipstick etc. Here, I'm not referring to what we've seen so far in ROP teaser/trailers but of the vast majority of 'historic' adaptations & often the case where a highly sought after female actor wishes to cling to the contemporary sensibility of hair & beauty at the cost of historical accuracy. I put ROP in the same category, that is, historic adaptation instead of fantasy, since Tolkien himself treated his stories as discovered histories.

We're probably splitting hairs here (um ... sorry) ... I'm fairly confident the show is going to be highly impressive & thoroughly engaging, but all the more frustrated that small details that do make a big difference were not given due consideration.
 
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The showrunners' decision also diminishes the importance of tradition (in all senses of the word) in favour of individual choice - a distinctly 20th/21st century philosophical take.

I agree. It humanizes the elves, blurring the differences to humans:

1. elves are past-oriented
2. elves do not get bored
3. they mistrust innovations and "progress" - which they often perceive as corruption
4. they tend to value form over content and art over efficiency
5 they tend to see beauty as a sign of goodness and lack of it as a sign of evil. As such it is as important for a male elf to look beautifull as it is for a female elf. It is almost a moral statement.
6. they do not grow old from age - but might from suffering - even if this is rare - (they usually just grow beards when very ancient and then their bodies start fading)
7. they are the master speakers of Arda - better even than the Valar in this regard
8. they are intrinsically magical

All I see in the promotional material presented until now seems to be humans with pointy ears...
 
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All excellent points, Odola. And why I hope someone out there from the production team is reading your posts.
All the same - I am the eternal optimist, even if I often do end up with egg on my face.
 
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