Is Star Wars a revolutionary feminist film? (spoiler free) - Women's Agenda

Is Star Wars a revolutionary feminist film? (spoiler free)

Short answer hahahaNo. It’s a space opera, if you’re looking for social revolution in light entertainment, you’re looking in the wrong place.

Having said that, if awareness of sexism has been ruining pop culture for you, and you’d like to watch a movie without missing most of it because you’re rolling your eyes so far you see you own brain, Star Wars isn’t a terrible choice.

Star Wars has always had at least one female lead character, so it’s not a particularly big deal (see what I did there, people who’ve seen the film?) that the new franchise has extended that tradition and cast another dewy young woman in a starring role. That the Kickass Female Character TM now wears dystopian rags rather than a muumuu, a metal bikini or ridiculously flowing princess dress, is more a matter of fashion than social change. But Rey is a particularly good rendition of the trope. She doesn’t turn into the damsel in distress in the final act, she has relationships with other characters, albeit droids and wookies (the big bear looking thing that sounds like a broken vacuum cleaner) and she has her own story, one that exists outside the need to drive lead male character’s storyline.

Even the casting of an older woman (ew) in a powerful role isn’t new, Caroline Blakiston was 50 when she played Mon Mothma in Return of the Jedi in 1983, and gave rise to 1000 geeky quotes in the decades afterwards.

But there was something noticeably different about the women cast in the latest Star Wars release. The original trilogy, some 6 and half hours of film, contains 1 minute and 23 seconds of dialogue by women who weren’t Leia. But the new movie learned a lesson from the feminists of the internet and didn’t just cast Wistfully Beautiful Kickass Female Character ™, women were everywhere in the film. Third button pusher from the left, single line unnamed character urgently shouting about incoming things, masked senior officer, uniformed pilot rushing importantly from stage right, mechanic pushing that bit into the other bit, all those barely even noticed characters that are almost always men were not all men. It was noticeable only because it was unusual.

Noticeable, but not really a big deal (did it again) I’ve been watching Buffy for over 13 years now, you need to do more than just have your female characters not suck in a fight scene to impress me.

And, to be fair, one thing about the new Star Wars movie did impress me: the romance storyline between Han and Leia.

Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are well past the age at which American movies will take a romance seriously, but as far as anything in Star Wars could be considered serious, Han and Leia story was given the depth and respect it deserved. And it was something far better than any other romance I’ve seen in an American movie for a long time.  

Those two characters were never going to grow old and comfortable on a couch together, they were meant to be roiling around the galaxy, directing armies, blowing shit up and throwing out sardonic one liners over their walking frames.

It could have been an easy, lazy plotline to depict a normal old-person marriage (because romance between the grey haired wrinkly people is gross) but Abrams took another path. Han and Leia’s relationship beautifully and believably conflicted, but mature, with the passion and tempestuousness of youth replaced by the understanding of each other’s flaws that only comes after decades of connection. There was no need to place them in a traditional marriage to show enduring and steadfast love, they were allowed to have their own journeys, accept each other’s and not feel they had lost anything thereby. The nuance that age and experience gave to the roles made every other character on screen look like cardboard cut-outs and they were so wonderful together I almost want to see it again just to watch the few scenes they have together, I loved every minute of that storyline and it was the only thing that really took the movie that little bit beyond just a rollicking good time. 

One last thought – whatever else the movie got right, what were they thinking with the new villain? How do you go from Darth Vader, one of the greatest villains of the modern age, to that pouty git sooking about daddy issues? That one had me baffled. 

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