On Star Wars, the Force Awakens, and Sharing Bad Literature with your Children

Warning: Herein lie spoilers for The Force Awakens. Proceed at thine own risk!

Yesterday I finally saw Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. While it was not, in my estimation, a particularly good movie, it is a good Star Wars movie. A series of discussions I had with Chloe (regular readers of this blog know of Chloe, the now-nine year old with whom I've been sharing my love of fantastic literature), I was pondering how some (but not all) of our beloved classics are, in various ways, deeply flawed. Can you still love something with problems?

The initial discussion was about Return of the Jedi, particularly the revelation that Luke and Leia are brother and sister. Her question (as she saw a part of it out of context) was WHY this was. It lead to a nice chat about the love triangle between Leia, Luke, and Han along with what a love-triangle does in fiction in the first place. I then pointed out that making Luke and Leia siblings after teasing the relationship for the first two movies can be read as a cheat. It resolves the conflict without having to have one of the two rivals "lose". It was a nice discussion that lead to more of a chance to teach about the shape of stories. And this brings us to The Force Awakens.

The biggest and most obvious weakness, to me, is how closely The Force Awakens tracks the plot details of the first trilogy. It's almost as if someone made a checklist:

• Black-masked, lightsaber-wielding supervillain
• Killing a beloved mentor (repeated in Ep IV, I, and and now VII. With a scream of "NO" each time)
• Stormtroopers
• Young dreamer on a desert planet
• Hot-shot pilot.
• Death Star. Even bigger death star!
• With a small vulnerability
• Destroyed moments before obliterating the Rebel base.
• (Death Stars were destroyed in Episodes, IV, VI, and VII. A droid command ship was destroyed in similar circumstances in Episode I)

we also get Han Solo, the Millenium Falcon, Princess Leia, a new Emperor-like figure. It is, in its way, a better film than A New Hope; most notably, the acting and dialog are far better (although there are a few parts - especially near the beginning - in which it's a bit too far on the snappy side). Kilo Renn is a more interesting character than Darth Vader, yet he's less menacing. Vader was, in some ways, more of a force than a character. He had no facial expressions, showed no emotion, existing as a pure threat to the heroes. Renn, on the other hand, is emotional. In the Star Wars mythos of the "Dark Side" of the force being fueled by negative emotions, he's the first we've seen really feed on uncontrollable anger. It also makes him less of a credible threat, but more of that later.

As in all Star Wars films, the plot in  The Force Awakens relies heavily on coincidences. Landing in the one part of the planet where another important person lives. The one dessert scavenger who can use the force stumbling across the macguffin. Etc.

It's not without its charm. I LOVE the new "Jedi to be" character Rey; there was a moment early in the film in which she was in danger and it appeared that the male lead was going to rescue her. He then watched, almost slack-jawed, as she fought off multiple attackers on her own. Less convincing is her emergence as a budding force-user. We see some tricks from the standard Jedi playbook: the Jedi mind trick, the grabbing something from a distance with her mind, fancy lightsaber fighting.  Where it breaks suspension of disbelief (for me) is that she does all of these things almost instinctively, after revealing earlier in the movie that she didn't even believe for certain that the Jedi were real. We even saw her sneak through an enemy base in a scene very reminiscent of Obi Wan Kenobi on the Death Star in Episode IV.  It was, from my mind, too much from this character too early.

This was echoed in my mind later when she fights Kilo Renn. It's a great lightsaber battle in which the untrained, young woman who has never before held a lightsaber defeats a foe who had destroyed the new Jedi order and sent Luke Skywalker into hiding. It's a moment which, to me, not only did not feel "earned" but is the wrong shape for the story; I'd rather have seen the hero defeated in a hard-fought battle rather than emerge triumphant. This leaves something more to which to build for their next encounter. As things stand, he's been beaten once. That will make it mean less when he is beaten again. 

Was the movie fun? It absolutely was. It looked like Star Wars, with all the rough edges and beautiful decay we've come to expect. Harrison Ford gave a very memorable performance as Han Solo and, sentimentality aside, did an excellent job showing us the once-swashbuckling hero as an older man, hanging on to the things he knows how to do after facing a tragedy. Ditto for Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia. Overall, though, what bothers me the most is how safe it felt. It's like a once-great band on a reunion tour playing their greatest hits from back in the day. Yes, we still like them. And yes, it's fun while it is happening. At the end of the day, though, it's not "art" so much as a package: as what we expect wrapped up in a pretty box for us. Disney spent four billion dollars on Lucasfilms. 

 What they got is a cash cow to milk, nostalgia to sell back to us. 

Was it a good Star Wars movie? Ultimately yes. A good movie? For that it would have had to take more risks, break more new ground, give us something to say.

And that is today's lesson: it's one which would be harder to tell with a better movie. To look critically at film and literature and see it for what it is, not what we want it to be. 

So endeth the lesson.

May the force be with you.

About that Slave Leia figure; When All Women are Pin-Ups.

Earlier  this month, a concerned parent complained to Hasbro that the easiest to find Princess Leia action figure was the "Slave Leia" costume from her brief imprisonment by Jabba the Hutt at the beginning of Episode VI. The complainant has been praise for caring about female depiction and empowerment, ridiculed for not understanding the source material, and ignored from various corners of the internet. Coincidentally, this kerfuffle comes on the occasion of my daughter's first watching of the films at the age of eight. Last night we watched the first film, A New Hope. (For the purpose of this discussion, there are a total of three Star Wars films, which were released in 1977, 1980, and 1983. This isn't prequel-bashing, but an acknowledgement that the "classic trilogy" has a place of cultural important and influence which the later ones do not share). It's worth looking at what Star Wars says about women, why "Slave Leia" is so problematic (as I believe that, to an extent, it is), and how things could be better.

First, re-watching Episode IV with my daughter was overall a wonderful experience. The acting is, of course, abysmal as is much of the dialog, the plot is fairly predictable and the villains range from cartoonishly pure-evil (Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin) to cartoonishly stupid (the Stormtroopers). That said, the film has a distinctive look,  some great (for its time) action sequences, and is great fun overall. Getting to the topic of the depiction of women, one can't help but smile at Princess Leia, especially in the moment where she takes control of her rescue after Han and Luke have gotten themselves cornered. Throughout the movie she's depicted as strong, dignified, and honorable. Given this portrayal of overall strength, why is it a problem for her to be very briefly stripped of her clothes and dignity only to turn around and literally use her chains to strangle her captor? Two reasons.

First, and most importantly, is that anything which happens to Leia happens to all women. Why? Because Leia is very nearly the only named female character in the trilogy (yes, there's Luke's Aunt Beru who gets perhaps four minutes of screen time and about six lines of dialog. We barely get to know her and barely remember her when the final credits roll). This gives her depiction a gravity which isn't there for male characters. Han Solo appears selfish and arrogant? He's counterbalanced by the naive, good-hearted simple farmboy. Lando Calrissian acts cowardly and dishonest? Not, as they say on Twitter, all men; there are plenty who are honest and honorable. Han Solo is taken prisoner, frozen in carbonite? Another man is there to lead the rescue effort. Princess Leia is captured by Stormtroopers, captured by Jabba the Hutt, forced to wear a metal bikini? That's every single woman we know in the Star Wars universe. Watching Episode IV, I noticed that the background characters don't even  include women - and that's a shame. Why not have some female soldiers fighting alongside the men in the Rebellion? Why are there no female officers on the Death Star? The more women present, the less representation becomes a statement on women in general and the more it becomes about the single character.

How female fans depict to Leia

More Leia cosplay

The second issue is that the Slave Leia costume is blatant sexualization which teaches girls that participation includes showing off female bodies. Take these Google Image Search results for "Princess Leia Cosplay"; I took the very first images which came up and see that, of the first dozen, ten are the "slave" outfit. Yes, women are within their rights to show off their bodies if they want and no, I don't consider such displays shameful.  What it DOES remind us is that messages - even unintended ones -  echo and that sex, as they say, sells. Throughout the films, we see Leia as a warrior, a leader, and a hero in her own right. We see her defiantly stand up to her captors, including the imposing and intimidating Darth Vader. We see her in battle, blaster in hand. We see her dressed in long white robes, in cold-weather gear, in jungle camoflauge. And, for a few minutes of one film, we see her in a metal bikini. Sexual displays of female bodies get so much attention in our society that the one glimpse of her body takes a disproportionate share of our consciousness, and is elevated to an iconic status which, to be fair, the source material does not deserve. As I said, Leia is a hero and a strong character whose focus is NOT her sexuality.

How female fans depict Hermione Granger.
Note that she is wearing clothes. 

When we sexualize the only female character in a franchise, we encourage sexual engagement from fans and send a message that fandom is about sex. When we only have one female character, that character represents ALL women. Compare, for the sake of discussion, the Harry Potter books and films. While the main character is a boy, we have multiple important women and girls (Professor McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood and, arguably the most important villain of the series, Dolores Umbridge). This means that Luna's flightiness tells us that Luna is flighty, not that girls are flighty. 

It's also noteworthy that, even as characters mature and fall into relationships, neither Rowling nor the various filmakers involved "sexed up" any of the female characters. If you look at cosplay of Hermione Granger, for example, you'll see the same kind of dress-up as Harry Potter cosplay; representations of the character as they are. The Potter characters aren't sexless by any means; one could argue that the Harry Potter books are a more adult-oriented work than Star Wars, certainly with a more interesting a varied take on romance. That they could do this without turning all females into pinups is a good thing.

So yes, while I understand that it's part of canon and that many fans have affection for it, the Slave-Leia depiction is a big negative in portrayal of women and in giving them a broad welcome into fandom. We need to do better. 

Agree? Disagree? Let me know. Watch this space for more flash fiction later this week, and check out my AV-related posts over on rAVepubs.

Memories of Star Wars Past, a look towards Star Wars Future

"Robots don't have names. They have numbers."

Do I remember that explanatory whisper, now four decades ago? The year was 1977. The film - the first film I  ever saw - was, of course,  Star Wars. It was a time when going to the movie was something special, when it was the only way to see a movie. It would be over a decade before VHS would win its battle over Betamax and bring movies - albeit cropped or letterboxed - to our living rooms. And - while it would have been more thematically appropriate from my father - in my head I hear the whisper in my mother's voice. Was I confused by the opening in media res during the imperial attack on Princess Leia's ship? I think that I was, that I sensed that there should have been something before, but that's another memory I can't trust. Remember, I was five. If I was five. These are my thoughts and memories about that, and the new ones. 

Three years later came The Empire Strikes Back. I remember not believing the big reveal - thinking at the time that the villain was lying because he's a villain. Saturday morning cartoons had taught me that the hero always wins; I found it profoundly disorienting to walk out of the theater with our heroes at such a low point. Later, in discussion, I cried about the unfairness of it (I was, in my way, a sensitive child). This brings me to the earliest "boys don't cry" moment I can recall - an admonition from my father that I was crying not only about a movie character, but a movie character who hadn't even died. It came with the wholly empty threat that there would be no more movies for me if I couldn't handle the sad parts. 

I loved those movies, right through the last one -  with an uncritically, whole-heartedly, unconditionally. And for me, like for so many other kids, Star Wars grew past the movies into the real world. There were the action figures (I specifically remember an Obi Wan Kenobi with a lightsaber that extended from a hollowed out forearm), toy blaster guns, activity books. I remember the Jawa sand-crawler made from an empty milk-carton. The line-tracing game to reattach C3PO's severed arm. I remember bicycles as  X- and W-Wing fighters, the sidewalk the central trench of a new Death Star (not always, of course. Sometimes a bicycle was an orange Dodge with what I didn't know to be a horribly racist symbol painted on its roof. Sometimes it was a black Pontiac that talked to you. And sometimes - quite rarely - it was just a bicycle). There was an interesting quirk  to this play; my brother would always want to be Luke Skywalker, other kids Han Solo or even Chewbacca. I always wanted to be a background character - an unnamed rebel fighter pilot. It's not because I didn't want to be a hero, but it's because I wanted to be the hero, and that Luke's story was already told. Perhaps that was the genesis of my later life as a storyteller.

My feelings about the prequels are more complicated. There is, for me, something about the John Williams score that brings me back to that day in 1977 when I first learned what a movie was. Scroll the introductory text up along a black field of stars as the score plays and - for a moment - I'm again five years old. This fit thematically one  more time in my life, on May 18th, 2002. It was the first day in a long time I'd not spent the night with my then-fiance, the lovely Karine Suskin. The next day we'd wed, and we'd wanted to separate for the day to add a symbolic specialness to our official joining in matrimony. So, the day before, full of nervous energy and hope and excitement I let Lucas take me back, accepting this movie as a bookend to my childhood.

It wasn't a very good movie.

You know that it wasn't; the characters were flat, the comic relief character was, arguably, a stereotype. The plot hinged on coincidences implausible enough to make Dickens blush. It was, as it was happening, pleasant enough. I saw it in a nice, single-screen movie theater (the Syosset Universal Artists, long since gone). It was an experience that, after it ended, felt somewhat empty. There wasn't any more there than there was on the surface and, in some ways, less. The good guys were good. The bad guys were bad. It was great spectacle, but not great fiction.

Today, as a new set of films is approaching, I'm reminded of this and reflecting on the ongoing experience. Horror writer Joe Hill said it quite well in  a discussion on Twiter:

I gradually had to admit, upon rewatching, that the original STAR WARS films had some really agonizing flaws, especially JEDI.

— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) April 10, 2015

I had unrealistic expectations that the prequels could never have lived up to. A real assessment of the originals could've prevented that.

— Joe Hill (@joe_hill) April 10, 2015

He's right. The film we now call Episode IV: A New Hope was, at the  time, the best movie I'd ever seen. It was also the only movie I'd ever seen. It's all tangled up with the cabinet full of action figures half of them missing their little plastic blasters, in the discussions about Darth Vader's real identity, in the pretend X-Wing fighter dogfights, the newspaper comic strip serial, and all of the things that go into a spectacle.

All of the flaws that I mentioned from the prequel trilogy? The reliance on coincidence, the stereotyping, the sloppy storytelling? Characters who are little more than pure archetypes? All of those flaws exist in the original movies. Coincidence? The entire plot of all three films hinges on Luke Skywalker happening to need to buy a droid at exactly the  time the Jawas had captured R2D2 and C3PO - and that of all the people on Tattooine,  he happened to be the one to buy them (instead of any others). Stereotyping? Is the shiny-gold cowardly and somewhat effeminate  robot any less a gay stereotype than the broken-English speaking Jar Jar Binks is an African American stereotype? Speaking of African-Americans, is it coincidence that they chose to dub an African American man's voice over the black-clad villain?

Flaws aside, I still love those films the way that I love Cadbury Creme eggs, the way that I love milk mixed with Coca Cola,the way I love a McDonald's hamburger. These things are, objectively speaking, terrible. I can acknowledge that and still, on very rare occasions, indulge the part of me that wants to look back. Perhaps I will indulge that part of me this winter; I will confess that the second trailer - the one showing the Imperial Star Destroyer half-buried in what I assume ot be the desert sands of Tattoine - strikes a chord with me. The Star Destroyer and X-Wing are such powerful icons of my youth, it's hard to not be drawn in, even if just for a moment. Whether that moment will sustain a whole movie is to be determined.

What I'll not indulge is the romantic notion that these are the greatest films of all times, and that the judgements I made at the age of five still stand today. Tastes change and people change. I stopped reading A Song of Ice and Fire because I'm not the person I was when George RR Martin wrote A Game of Thrones twenty years ago; I'm certainly not the person I was nearly four decades ago when Lucas gave us the first of the Star Wars films.