Friday, 22 January 2016

The Force is Feminist? (Warning, spoilers!)

A response to https://archive.is/ZFlEC


“can we stop giving all the credit to JJ Abrams ”


The guy in charge? Oh right - it’s the guy part you don’t like. You are happy to make him responsible for all wickedness and no goodness, because you hate men.

“This is the guy who made two Star Trek films (You know. The franchise that’s meant to be built on equality & progressiveness?"

Equality AND progressiveness? Pick one! I don’t recall any time the makers of Star Trek said these shows were about dismantling the Patriarchy, destroying the family, teaching women to be political lesbians or giving a good old “Eve Ensler” to little girls.

" Both women were in their underwear”

Oh! Those sluts! You should demand they wear a hijab! Un-free the nipple!

" one of the women died offscreen a couple scenes later”

Oh no! A WOMAN died! Billions of men, too, but they don’t count. Re-write that movie! We can’t allow a WOMAN to die!

Because Feminism is equality, but some are more equal than others (the ones with vaginas, of course).

"Oh, and that woman was an alien whose hair colour is on record as having been changed to red from the canonically established hair colour of black for her species, because the makeup design guy thought it looked hotter that way, & it was pitched to production on those grounds. Yikes.”

Fucking fuck me to death with a spoon - that is what you are objecting to? I wonder if some amazing technology could alter someone's appearance in the manner you describe?

Something that real human women use routinely in order... to look hotter?!







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"A scene which the male writers are again on record, as having put in the film because the male writers decided that, since they had a underwear scene ‘to appeal to the male fanbase’"

Reference? None, of course. But I seriously don’t care. Why the fuck do you? Why is appealing to male sexuality bad?


Are you saying we can't even look?




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Feminism cannot maintain any consistency about it’s message.





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Either men can look, or we can’t - make up your mind.





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What you are freaking out about is the idea of male sexuality - it’s fine for these self-proclaimed sluts to show themselves - but you can’t handle the idea we might lust for them.

It makes you anxious - the thought that you can’t control our feelings.
It makes you feel inadequate, too - all those sluts - how dare they look better than you do!


” they need a birth scene. Because all women love babies”
You don’t make a movie with the idea that everyone will love what you are doing. But are you claiming it’s not a good commercial idea to make something appeal to a lot of people?

Because, I grant you, you might well loathe babies - probably because they might be male, but it might be a part of your general loathing of all forms of life - but most women adore them.






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This is one of the most powerful moments in a human life. If this stirs nothing inside, then it’s no wonder you are a Feminist.


"The total lack of sexualized costumes for women”







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Either this is good, or this is bad. PICK. ONE.


"Probably not on JJ, so much as him being surrounded by women offering better perspectives & more nuanced reasoning for decisions than ‘Rule of Boob’."






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You seem awfully obsessed with breasts. Is it because you don’t have any worth looking at - or because all the good looking women won’t let you play with theirs?


”Kathleen Kennedy is on record at pointing to the amount of women who worked on the movie as being integral to the way that women are represented in the film.”

No citation, of course.
So how are they represented? They are boring as fuck.
Compare it to Star Wars 1, where Leia - a very young woman, 16 according to the original script - stands up to Lord Vader.








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She snarks the instant she sees a Storm Trooper in her cell - despite having just been tortured.







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She’s witty, but flawed; trying to command people she doesn’t have authority over, for example.






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In fact, the reason she falls for Han is he stands up to her - she’s had people obey her all her life - but he’s not an enemy, like Vader. He thinks differently - and sometimes better than she does.

He’s an equal - which is why the chemistry exists, why it’s memorable, and why they, generations after the first movie, still have that romance going in the latest film.






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She’s not the best pilot that has ever been born despite never having touched a star ship, she can’t fight better than a trained force acolyte with a light sabre, or use telekinesis more effectively.

She’s not a fucking Feminist Mary Sue.






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You remember her.

Her hairstyle immediately makes an impact - and became a cliche. Her sexuality is appealing to many men and some women - and if you don’t think women go to see movies because of sexy men, well, maybe you don’t know any people outside your toxic Tumblr safe-space.

Women like looking at sexy women - and often want that sexiness for themselves. Which is why Leia’s costumes are immensely popular.

You think people will dress like Rey to future conventions in anywhere near the numbers they did Leia for decades?

No, because Rey is boring.





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Oh god. She’s still on screen. She’s still on screen. Make it stahhhhhhp!
They even seem to recognise how ridiculously easy everything is for her in the movie.

The movie becomes a parody of itself.



 

 Wow. What a thrilling escape that was.






This isn’t a dig at the actor, btw.





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Although it does amuse me that, had Rey dressed like the actor dresses irl, Feminists would have fumed about the male gaze and how she was being‘sexualised’.

Going back to the Mary Sue...

She’s a better melee fighter than people who fight for a living - despite starving, despite barely scraping by as a scavenger. (You’d think she would have found a better job with her amazing abilities, but ... wage gap.. Patriarchy... or something)

She picks up a blaster and immediately starts shooting better than troopers who fire them from nearly the moment they are born.

She’s a better pilot than Han Solo - PILOTING HIS OWN DAMNED SHIP - despite having never flown.

She can use the force better than Yoda. With no training whatsoever.
(If you ever want to see an example of a well-written set of characters, including one learning how to use the force, watch this





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)

Seriously, she should just have farted and blown up the Death Star 3, and queefed and resurrected the dead. Maybe that’s in the sequel.

In fact, the movie would have been better without Rey. We could have had a someone as the centre of the film, someone who was complex - flawed, yes,  but able to grow, with motivations that would involve the audience.


Someone who could bridge the gap between the factions of this civil war, as well as the halves of the Force itself.







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And that was the image used to promote the movie, not Ms McAwesome McAwesomeness.






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Now let’s leap back to Leia...or at least, someone costumed like her.





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Fucking gorgeous.
And that’s not counting the metal bikini.







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The most iconic costume in movie history. Incredibly popular - WITH WOMEN.





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Either it’s ok for woman to dress sexy, and for men to desire them - or it isn’t.







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