But like the Targaryens, the elves and men of “The Rings of Power,” are far too stiff-necked to make any sort of joke.

Bateman pointed to a gold frame with inlaid flowers, containing sketches of a mustachioed man in a tuxedo and a serious woman in a stiff-necked dress.

The elves, half or whole, in “Rings of Power” are a stiff-necked bunch, less otherworldly than socially repressed.

Watson is in a perpetual state of stiff-necked choler tinged with snobbery — “I am better educated, more wealthy and stronger than you are,” he tells Bea, who is unmoved.

Ms. Goldsmith described the Jews here as a “stiff-necked people,” borrowing a biblical phrase for stubbornness, and said they were not going anywhere.