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squire
Half-elven
Dec 24 2016, 8:11pm
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Why does Denethor not wear a beard while both his sons do?
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I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but I recently ran across some old Tolkien-fan discussions about whether or not Numenoreans were bearded.
The thrust was actually whether they even could grow beards - some asserted that their Elven-blood made them beardless, like the Elves, while others pointed out that Theoden, for instance, was half a Dunedain and had a full beard, while the statue of the King at the Crossroads had a carven beard. Evidently many illustrators from the period before the films gave Denethor a beard, presumably to convey his wizardly senior wisdom (one of their clues may have been when Pippin thinks Denethor resembles Gandalf at one point).
But I think it's notable that the film's character designers have this Dunedain father beardless, and his two sons, of the same nobility and house as himself, bearded - slight beards to be sure, but still...
Has anyone else found this odd, or thought of a reason to explain it in either a 'real-world' way or a movie-practical way (i.e., "in Gondor, like in its model the Byzantine Empire..." or "John Noble explained he was allergic to facial adhesives...")?
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Na Vedui
Rohan
Dec 25 2016, 12:02am
Post #3 of 10
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The sons of the very beardy Victorians rebelled and went into Edwardian bare chins and moustaches; after a few beardless decades, the Sixties got beardy again (at any rate if you were a hippy). The 1300s were mostly beardy (eg Edwards I - III; Henry IV), the1400s mostly not (Henries V & VI; Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII) Henry VIII went beardy again. James VI and Charles I - beard. Charles II and James II - not. And so on.
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Eledhwen
Forum Admin
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Dec 25 2016, 3:19am
Post #4 of 10
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Denethor lives in a castle with access to hot water at all times and servants to shave his beard. Boromir and Faramir are in the Wild most of the time, and certainly when we see them, meaning it's harder to shave.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Dec 25 2016, 9:49pm
Post #5 of 10
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Denethor lives in a castle with access to hot water at all times and servants to shave his beard. Boromir and Faramir are in the Wild most of the time, and certainly when we see them, meaning it's harder to shave. I think that's an important point, and it tells us a lot about Denethor as soon as we see him. He's a man of comfort and refinement, who takes pride in his personal grooming. I think his appearance can be seen as a symbol of the gulf between him and his sons (which we see spelled out in the Sons of the Steward scene in the Two Towers EE). I imagine his sons wouldn't choose their father's effete look even if they had the time to shave!
Denethor also has a look that's reminiscent of Grima - the shaven face, the rich black robes - and also makes me think of kings' counsellors such as Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons or even Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall (although this came out long after LotR). It's movie-shorthand that allows the viewer to recognise Denethor's position as steward to a king, even if there's currently no king.
One other thing I've noticed with Denethor is that his clean-shaven look starts to deteriorate as he gives in to his grief and madness. His stubble becomes very noticeable as his veneer of refinement is stripped away. A nice effect that only works because Denethor has no beard!
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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DainPig
Gondor
Dec 25 2016, 11:42pm
Post #6 of 10
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Perhaps because John Noble didn't look good with a beard?
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squire
Half-elven
Dec 26 2016, 2:35am
Post #7 of 10
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It makes sense for the film, in its own terms, to portray Denethor as "effete" and "only a Steward, not a King" by having him be clean-shaven. It's consistent with the character we see, who is a bit of a weasel and a coward much like Grima. I love your point about how his stubble becomes a sign of his deterioration as he nears his insane, suicidal end. And in this version of the story, yes, perhaps his two truly manly sons, out in the field and too rough-and-ready to shave, disdain to follow their citified father's toilet.
To say that I don't think Tolkien would have agreed, either that Denethor was a fundamentally different character from Boromir and Faramir, or that in a medieval ruling family the sons would defiantly adopt a look as fundamentally different as a beard, is to say nothing at all at this point. The film is the film, of course.
That said, I think what got me interested in the question was my own guess that the film missed a chance to differentiate the more "barbarian" (i.e., bearded, quite literally) Rohan, and perhaps also the Ranger Strider, from the more "civilized" Gondor (aka Rome - no Caesar or Constantine wore a beard, even when campaigning in the wild). Imagine a clean-shaven Boromir looking down his nose at a shaggy Aragorn in Rivendell; and the contrast between a neatly-kept Faramir, even in the wild, with the hirsute Eomer in the parallel scenes where they appear to capture members of the Fellowship. And I think it would have been great if Aragorn had ridden out to the final battle in RotK in his grand Gondorian armor - suddenly clean-shaven to look like a ruler of the southern Dunedain kingdom.
But the film had other, non-Tolkien-inspired, fish to fry, as you so neatly point out.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Dec 26 2016, 1:07pm
Post #8 of 10
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Very much agree about book vs movie concerns
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That said, I think what got me interested in the question was my own guess that the film missed a chance to differentiate the more "barbarian" (i.e., bearded, quite literally) Rohan, and perhaps also the Ranger Strider, from the more "civilized" Gondor That's a very interesting idea, especially if (as they said themselves, I think) the filmmakers' vision of Gondor was inspired by Rome or Greece. But in the end, their design for the characters seems to remain medieval/renaissance England (as, to be fair, Tolkien's own vision seems to do - book-Minas Tirith seems to be surrounded by English-style fields, and the Gondorians including Denethor could come from a Shakespearean history play).
Your suggestion of a clean-shaven Boromir and Faramir would make for a striking contrast with Aragorn and Eomer, but I'm not sure that could be based on medieval styling. Younger, active men as well as kings themselves who want to look young and active (e.g. Richard 1, or Henry VIII, in contrast to his ministers Cromwell and More) affected beards. Older men, and especially advisors (perhaps because many were in holy orders) seem more likely to be clean-shaven.
And I think it would have been great if Aragorn had ridden out to the final battle in RotK in his grand Gondorian armor - suddenly clean-shaven to look like a ruler of the southern Dunedain kingdom. A nice idea if the concept of Greece and Rome were to be carried through to the characters, and if Aragorn had ridden out dressed like Hadrian* Augustus or Constantine (which means short hair as well as no beard). But that's a lot of extra baggage for the story to carry, and as I said above, I don't think Tolkien weighted his own story down that way either. And you have to bear in mind that Middle-earth includes other races and cultures - Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Wizards - where beards (or lack of them) are part of their identity. Perhaps one basic look for Men, based on the familiar (movie) medieval English style, is about as far as it's worth trying to push it. (It occurs to me that the semiotics of beards is a complicated topic, but I don't think I'm qualified to go there!)
*turns out Hadrian had a beard!
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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squire
Half-elven
Dec 26 2016, 1:47pm
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I agree that medieval English models would indicate a bearded aristocracy for Gondor. But the beauty of Tolkien's fantasy world, including the fun of designing a film of his work, is that he mixes and matches and so can we. And beards, as you say, are a very loaded subject: in one culture they can represent boorishness and lack of cultivation, in another they connote masculinity and strength. Then sometimes they are simply indications of fickle fashion, worn or not because everyone else has one - the article on Hadrian you gave says the Romans began wearing beards for the next generation of so, just because the emperor had done so! I think the filmmakers had complete freedom to do what they wanted here, and as long as it was done consistently according to some plan it would have been perfectly believable.
Although I regret the films' lost chance to fine-tune Tolkien's intricate sub-racial constructions that differentiated the twilight Men of Rohan from the elven-inspired Men of the West - something they had no problem doing with the architecture and the costumes, for instance - the films' producers do seem as you say to have thought of beards on the race of Men simply as individual character markers, with the very contemporary message that in a pre-modern setting, 'everyone knows' that beards=masculine warriors, and clean-shaven=craven/recessive intellectual wusses.
There may also be an old Hollywood convention that one simply does not make movie stars into part of the art direction - stars are stars, and the audience needs to know exactly who to cheer for, cultural authenticity and/or realism be damned. (We see the same thing in the industry's unwillingness to have stars wear helmets or headgear that disguises their identity from the camera, no matter how unlikely or odd the resulting scene may be.)
squire online:
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StingingFly
Lorien
Dec 27 2016, 3:46pm
Post #10 of 10
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I heard it was because Denethor kept getting tomato juice in his beard...have you seen that guy eat?!
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...also, it does add a nice degree of contrast. I do also remember someone saying that he maybe shaved his beard in grief over the passing of his wife. His bare face fully displays his scowls of contempt...and smirks, which are the hallmark of his character in the films.
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