I guess, technically if the Disney Star Wars producers and story team are making decisions based on sex and gender, not on talent, "right fit for the job", etc., then yeah, there's some sexism at play. White knighting definitely happens here.
Just for the sake of the conversation, though, I do think that going with a female lead was cool. Star Wars hadn't had a female-led film, so it was neat to see them mix it up.
One of the positives of The Force Awakens was that they took hotshot flyboy Poe and iced him fast, and I remembered thinking, "Wow, they took the white, male hero and blew him up. I did not see that coming." I was expecting a straightforward Star War and they were mixing it up. Or, so I thought. Turns out they were going to basically go beat-by-beat through Episode IV, but still... for a moment...
So, yeah. Your main character has to be one of two sexes, and they went with "woman", and that's cool in my book. They didn't make a great character, but the gender was fine.
As far as the PT goes, I didn't like the way they took the story and built the mythology. It was disappointing and conflicting and handled poorly. So I mentally scrub them, too. I do understand what you mean about the ST feeling worse in some ways because the OT characters aren't present, but that's not strictly true because the PT had plenty of whinging little boy Vader to scuttle that character, and Obi-Wan got some proverbial mud on his robes just by being in there (although McGregor's performance was great).
But, yes, the disconnect is harder to maintain with the ST, as you say. But, that said, I still crave that disconnection from the PT.
reply
share
arflexit (2376)
4 years ago
I had no real problem with her character being female in concept; but if you can easily replace the character with a male actor and not make a huge difference it means they did nothing to develop the character as a female. Males and females are not interchangeable.
If Rey would have just been a former student that survived the Jedi Academy destruction years prior and they fleshed out a little more of personality, she would be fine. But I get the sense they didn't really care about the character. There was no vision outside: "Make sure the lead is female". If that is the motivation, that is where the concept failed.
I wish they would have her as the lead and made it work; have like a Selene type of badass, or like a Sarah Connor/Allen Ripley jedi; that would be cool. But Rey just ended up being an egregious Mary Sue with zero personality; and I think that was because they had no plan outside "Make the character female". Then combined with the whole "the force is female" and the obvious chip on her shoulder Kennedy has; it is pretty obvious there was some degree of misandry going on her;
But then the defense of the character (the white knighting) is pretty obviously also inspired by this idea of "you can't criticize female characters". Which as I see it is saying women shouldn't be treated as equals and not held to the same standard. From what I can tell that is because these 'defenders' view women as weak and 'needing to be defended'. That is sexism. if anything, those of use that criticize Rey as harshly as we criticized Anakin are the only ones that are NOT sexist; we held them to the same standard (they both sucked).
"I still crave that disconnection from the PT."
That is an understandable craving. The PT are pretty freaking bad; IMO nowhere near as bad as the 'sequels' but still pretty bad.
reply
share
Ace_Spade (9343)
4 years ago
Yes, characters should have personality, and that personality will certainly be (partly) derived from the sex of the individual. Rey didn't really have much of a personality. Noble? I guess. She would fail Red Letter Media's "character test" pretty hardcore (Finn and Poe would pass, I think). So, insofar as they didn't give her much of any personality, yes. That said, there's a fine line here, because a lot of lead characters are sorta "everyman" types so we can live through them vicariously. For instance, Luke Skywalker has a personality, but they're more "universal" traits that anybody (male or female) could relate to. There's very little there that's male-only. But, yes, they should have given Rey a personality. Whether they went "hardcore" like Ripley or Selene, or found a completely different direction, anything is better than nothing.
I think some of the defense of Rey is white knighting, but I think some of it is just people who enjoyed the movie and feel defensive of it, so they defend all aspects of the movie vociferously. I can't blame them to some extent because of the disingenuous and insidious nature of online "conversation". Often, if you concede a point in a debate on a message board, your fellow conversant just gloats and goes nasty and the whole discussion gets torpedoed. You can't admit any flaw. It's not a good way to converse. That said, I have had a lot of conversations where I and the person I was talking to got into give-and-take and it's very interesting and productive. Those conversations are partly why I still come to message boards.
reply
share
arflexit (2376)
4 years ago
Nah, Luke's personality (ambition, big picture thinking, wanting to explore and then being 'triggered' by a pretty girl) are all characteristics that are predominately male (not always of course by generally, which is why so many more men volunteer for military service then women at 18 years old). Luke is an everyman but his motivations can easily be associated with Male drive, which is why more Males relate to Luke while women were attracted to Han. Rey has so little personality and never has any real motivation outside "waiting for my parents" that there is no sense of who she is and the film is annoyingly self indulgent on the "who is rey" question.
" if you concede a point in a debate on a message board, your fellow conversant just gloats and goes nasty and the whole discussion gets torpedoed. "
That has not been my experience; usually when people are being reasonable and admit flaws and say they liked something despite the flaws, the conversations are pretty good and reasonable. I don't see much gloating or nastiness until people start doubling or tripling down on an argument that neither side will relent any point on and then the ad hominems and sophistry starts in. This is a trend I see heavily on the Rey defenders, rather than just admitting the flaws and saying they liked it anyway (which is perfectly acceptable and reasonable) they will try to use fallacies and non arguments to try to deflect from the criticism or insult the critic (example calling Rey critics 'manbabies'). It is almost always the Rey defenders that do this; much like the Nolanites defend films like Dark KNight Rises; the venomous bad faith discussion is predominately coming from one side.
I think this is because the defenders are taking the criticism of the film as a personal insult against them. That is how they seem to be responding anyway.
reply
share
Ace_Spade (9343)
4 years ago
Yes, but "dreams of adventure", "ambitious", and so forth are universal. His attraction to Leia (also: retrospective ew) is certainly a motivator that is more masculine, as is his aspiration to being a flyboy, but with a couple tweaks, you could "girl up" Luke.
Side characters it's always clearer. Han is more decidedly masculine - clearly. Leia goes against stereotypes a lot of the time, but she's definitely feminine. Obi-wan is the most "neutral", as a matriarchal figure could have been the advice-giver, but Obi-Wan had to be male to be a surrogate for the missing father, whether Luke was a boy or a girl.
To clarify: I agree with you that Luke is masculine and has male qualities and attributes. But as the main hero, he has to have more "everyman" traits so greater numbers of people can relate to him. The male-specific (and youth-specific, etc.) traits make him feel "real", but the everyman stuff is important. I'd argue that Ripley and Sarah Connor both also possess "everyman" (everywoman?) traits, too, although again, they are female in nature (particularly Sarah; Ripley was written as "neutral", along with the rest of the cast of Alien).
I've seen a bit of that weakness-picking behaviour. I think I see it most in politics. But I see this as a general trend that people don't like to give in a little bit.
I'm in the camp you're kinda describing: I like The Force Awakens, it's a reasonably fun action-adventure movie. I know it's derivative and it doesn't deal with the source material/previous films' lore and mythology very well, but it's fun in-and-of-itself, and it's a romp.
To me, Rey is a cypher. She's fine. She's not a good character, but she doesn't annoy me. She's a flatline, but one that's fun to watch.
I think you show a lot of insight in that last paragraph there. People get personally attached to fictional properties and entrench, irrationally defending them to the death. We're a weird species.
reply
share
arflexit (2376)
4 years ago
"with a couple tweaks, you could "girl up" Luke."
Maybe he is a bit more universal; but at the same time his personality traits of whiny, a bit abrasive, etc; are all predominatly male traits. I don't think you could easily 'girl up' Luke and it still be the same character; not in the same way you could make Rey a male and it make almost no difference to the character.
I think we are in almost 100% agreement on just about everything. Our experience is a little different; the 'harsh' critics like myself are not going to bite people's heads of just for liking the film; it is when the defenders try to conflate their personal subjective feelings about the film with objective quality; which at first is annoying but then when cornered they will start to ad hominem and rely on non-arguments; when they do this it really starts to piss me off. That is when I can start to get a little nasty with people. Maybe I am projecting my own response to these things but I don't see too much 'weakness-picking' out of people.
"but it's fun in-and-of-itself, and it's a romp.'
Your opinion is reasonable so I take no issue with it. I like some bad movies and hate some good movies; you don't have to like everything that is 'objectively good art'. It is when people start to say 'bad' art is objectively good that I start to get annoyed. You admit the flaws of TFA so this does not apply to you. But those that say it is a great film and refuse to distinguish "great film" from "film I liked alot" are the ones that my criticism is applied to.
"she doesn't annoy me. She's a flatline, but one that's fun to watch."
For me, she is annoyingly good at everything; and it severely negatively impacts the plot and lore. The plot, setting, OT characters, and mythology are all sacrificed on the alter of "make Rey look good". She IMO is the #1 onscreen contributing factor to the failure of TFA and the sequels. In many ways Ray was the main reason I found zero entertainment value in TFA
reply
share