ST Diversity in the Sequel Trilogy (see warning on page 11)

I'm trying to make the case for Rose because I felt there was less people doing it and because I've been in the Finn thread and know there are smarter people than me making better cases for where the film failed him that I hadn't even considered before. Finn is one of my favorite characters and I think some of the fights scenes he's had in TFA and TLJ show more fighting style than anything I ever saw from Han Solo do so I've long thought of him as cool, heroic, funny and brave. I did acknowledge that I suspected Random Grey was right and that if Finn had been swapped out by say... Joseph Gordon Levitt or someone else with that Boyega mix of assertiveness in a fight and adorkable charm that the character of Finn has, but who was played by a white actor like that would have more fans and that that's unfortunate and is certainly the same concept as what I was going for with Rose.

I guess I see Rose and Kelly Marie Tran as the bigger underdogs of all of TLJ and for representation overall within Hollywood so I felt like I'd be one to stand up for her since so many others are already doing a good job for Finn. I really do think her character is a good and interesting one and I think a lot of the hate has more to do with how she looks than how the role is written and that bothers me. I think she gets a lot more hate than Finn does overall as well and I think there's an impression that she doesn't deserve someone as handsome and cool as Boyega that I think is unfair and not based on character but perhaps pretends to be. Since when is a character being envious of another woman a deal breaker? It rarely is. I think Han was slightly jealous of Luke even for a time and possibly even Lando. Since when is being sassy a deal breaker? Leia did some of the same things some seem to be getting angry at Rose for with regard to her assertiveness. People seemed to have less issue with that from a white woman.

To take my Joseph Gordon Levitt comparison for Finn above further... and I don't expect people to answer honestly on here... I'd be very curious to know how differently people would react to Rose if she was played the exact same way and was just as feisty but it was instead Janelle Monae in that role, or Emma Stone. My guess is that the perception of Rose as a character would have changed enormously for different groups within Star Wars fandom based on each of those choices and I think a lot of that has to do with appearance and race.

 

It's very admirable to want to stick up for Rose, but I don't think you can lump in criticism of antiblack tropes in the Finnrose relationship with the general hate that Rose gets. When black fans say they didn't like Rose tazing Finn, for example, that has nothing to do with not liking a "feisty" Asian woman and everything to do with not liking that kind of painful imagery played for laughs.

 

I was reacting to the 3 quotes that Jedi Jesse chose to post in the post there exclusively. Relating more to Rose being jealous or thinking of hitting him.

FWIW, It may have been a privilege thing for me but when Rose tased him I didn’t even think about the cultural sensitivity of that initially due who was doing the tazing. With it being a female mechanic who was guarding the escape pods during war time I suppose the image of that felt far enough removed from white law enforcement for it not to register for me. Especially since she mentioned she’d used it several times prior that day.

The same can’t be said for the CBPD scene which I recognized immediately as tone deaf and something that should have been handled differently based on what’s occurring on Earth right now between largely white law enforcement and POC. Although, I’m not really sure what the solution to that would have been. Would “Hands up” with gun have been better or worse? Simply tackling him? I’m honestly not sure.

Anyway, I was reacting more to the dog whistle racism I’ve observed online toward Rose from fans who hate her and hate her with Finn and it sounds like you’re referring more to antiblack tropes you and others observed in the film. Including some that involve her which I hadn’t even considered before.

 

Finn has been tased two films in a row for laughs. The first time for alleged and incorrect thievery, the second for alleged and incorrect desertion/disloyalty. I don't think you can separate Rose's character from that. I haven't read the novelization, but that tweet says that Rose wants to "taze," not hit, Finn for thinking of Rey. Which is it in the novel?

I'm less interested in the novel because it's meaningless to me, but either way I think that's bad. Jeez, RJ writes all these weird gender-focused dynamics, including Leia hitting Poe because *reasons, like that's appropriate for a general (more like daytime soap opera behavior for a woman to a man), Rose tases Finn, Rey assaults Luke when his back is turned, raises a lightsaber to him, and kicks him into the mud, and on top of all that, apparently the novel has Rose fantasizing about assaulting Finn some more? This isn't about feisty asian women being less well-received than feisty black women.

 

I can see more how those were poor choices. The CPBD one was the one that stood out to me as tone deaf given the perpetrators. It just felt really scary and violent and too real. The others felt lighter because of who was doing them and how he reacted to them. Finn has functioned comedically a little like Han in ROTJ and taken on some of this kind of stuff:



If Han had been zapped by R2 or a character like Leia and reacted with a “Don’t do that!” I would have reacted the same way. His zapping equivalent in Indiana Jones is basically the snakes, I guess. That’s
how my mind processed 2 of those 3. The CBPD choice I didn’t find the slightest bit humorous at all and recognized as a poor choice right away.

It’s helpful for me to hear how others view these scenes though because my privilege means I won’t see some of this the same without hearing other perspectives.

Zapping just feels like a part of Star Wars I guess because we’ve seen electricity play such a role visually in Star Wars films that I hadn’t considered it as antiblack before reading it here.

 

Actually, now that I think of it more... that Han scene above probably highlights just how careful the writers have to be for most things involving Finn. That scene above with Finn suddenly takes on a much more painful kind of imagery for obvious reasons.

Writers really need to be extra careful when writing for POC for many different reasons.

 

The main problem people have with Finn being tased is mostly about Finn rather than who exactly is tasing him, I think. Granted, it's particularly sketchy to have Finn's potential love interest be the one holding the taser, but BB-8 electrocuting Finn for laughs again in TLJ probably wouldn't have gone over much better. Especially since Finn and BB-8 were supposed to be friends by then.

 

So can we all agree now that people who object to Finn being tased and humiliated for humorous purposes are not, in fact, "the real racists"? (obvious implication, if not a direct quote).

How did this become a thing?

 

Heh, now I'm just imagining BB-8 sitting there like, "Well, I tried the easy way, I guess I'm gonna have to tase him aga- Oops, damnit I accidentally played that video of Rey he wasn't supposed to know about."

 

Objections related to a POC being tazed on screen is necessary to educate and get more people to realize what’s going on in the world, what’s occurred in the world, and get writers thinking about different ways to allow for POC characters to face antagonism and adversity the way all protagonists do but in ways that are more sensitive to stereotypes, tropes and history.

All that said, it’s still possible to be driven by all of that (and more) and still bring body shaming or racism into criticism related to discussions around Rose and ignoring that after tasing she did show several positive characteristics and strengths that frequently aren’t discussed when thinking of her that may have interested Finn. Nor does it negate the fact that people on Earth who resemble Kelly Marie Tran physically are generally underrepresented on screen — even when Hollywood does cast Asian women they tend to do so through a very narrow and limiting physical profile that’s frequently played up sexually and “exotically” or with another Asian trope in mind — and that a mechanical engineer who gets her hands dirty and who’s not wearing sexualized clothing in a blockbuster film and wearing oily, baggy mechanics clothing not entirely dissimilar to something the original Ghostbusters or the characters in Repo Man wore, is underrepresented on screen.

There is racism and prejudice online related to this film and its characters and if we jump to conclusions in any one direction it’s not helpful. No, not all people who don’t like Rose and Finn together are racist. No, not all people who don’t like Finn and Rey together are racist. No, not all people who are angry that Rose, to some, had a more involved, decisive and heroic arc (in their eyes) in comparison to Finn are racist. But some are. The existence of some racism by some people doesn’t negate legitimate criticism that isn’t racist and strongly worded criticism or insults that aren’t well-supported by other assertions can run the risk of seeming prejucial or racist depending on the context.

 

Yes, but this particular sidetrack began when Jedi Jessy posted a black fan's criticism of the characterisation of Rose in the novel, and you jumped in with the suggestion that this fan and others like her might have found Rose's "sassy" and "jealous" behaviour and thoughts of hitting/tasing Finn again quite acceptable if she were a black woman, concluding that "if" this were the case "their reasons for disliking Rose's character would be, by definition, racist". Which is technically true, but also totally irrelevant unless you have something to back up that "if". A very strange loop to go on, I think.

 

The difference being of course that Han got to have his cool moments in the first two movies (and some comedy ones to, there was more of a balance with him than there has been with Finn thus far). And really not many fans hold up ROTJ as the best portrayal of Han anyway.

 

I mean this board doesn't care about diversity. Hence why they erase Poe a minority representation from the banner for the sequel trilogy and replace him with a whiny white boy.

Pue Poe on the banner, that is not cool what yall did.

 

This, pretty much.

If your defense for Finn’s portrayal in not just one, but two consecutive movies, is “but Han in ROTJ!...” then it’s just not a good defense. Han in ROTJ is not exactly the reason why people fell in love with his character.

 

I object to that summary because, as I stated immediately afterward, none of the images of the tweet storm shared on here — or whatever those are called— actually involved tazing. Only if one clicked on it and read the entire thread was that there. I was reacting more to the idea that Rose was a horrible character for thinking of smacking him as he talked about wanting to leave the fight to be with her and that she was jealous. If I could somehow seek out the amount of female characters who’ve said aloud on screen, much less thought it in books, “You know... I could smack you right now” or “Somebody needs to smack some sense into him” or some variation of that kind of wording it would probably shock because in reading that in the 3 images it just felt like grasping at straws at justification to hate her to me initially.

Only when you and others expanded those 3 image quotes and reminded of the taser moment from her did what that person was going for become more clear to me. And since that point in time I’ve just been working through that conversationally. A thought experiment is merely that.

 

@Ender_and_Bean Rose's treatment in Finn is really abusive and the person who I posted already said that she is against a Rose's death and the point is how Lucasfilm wrote Rose especially when she is with Finn

 

This is such garbage, trashy writing that it’s kind of hard for me to even care about the abuse aspect of it. TLJ definitely has some hardcore abuse going on between other characters. This feels like a Disney channel writer that doesn’t know how to convey adolescent jealousy with more depth than a daytime soap opera writer that has jealous women slap people every other episode. It’s classically bad more than anything. Yes it’s abusive, but it doesn’t even have self-awareness about that. It’s trying to be Dawson’s Creek while being General Hospital instead.

 

Well fortunately movie trumps book and Rose didn't do those things in the movie. Though I still think Rose is about as "abusive" as Rey is.

 

The problem is that the books are supposedly canon on par with the films (at least, that's what I think happened considering that they demolished the Canon-Tier Levels that governed Legends) and give us insight on how these characters think that the film could only imply. For many, these books were essential to understand what motivates Snoke and how he fits into the overall story. Why does Luke think killing himself would result in something better? Why does Holdo not tell Poe her plan?

If you were to say that they were already in the film and I didn't catch on to the implications, then understand that I can most certainly interpret Rose's actions as a jealousy clinging girl trying to fill a hole in heart for the loss of her sister by replacing her with Finn, so much that she is willingly to doom the entire Resistance if it means saving her "boyfriend" from death.

I have no reason to believe why Rose's jealousy traits wouldn't be canon if they were featured in the book as Rose's inner thoughts. If Movie trumps Book, then what was the point of getting the novel in the first place? But that's another topic altogether.

 

Even without the book, Rose's behavior in the movie itself isn't great, and she comes across as self-righteous and hypocritical.

Also as for the "deserter" thing, since when is Finn OBLIGATED to stay with The Resistance?

 

And Finn woke from his coma just some hours ago. Then he was zapped and being unconscious again

 

Since he's on their ship in the middle of a battle, that's why.

If the coast guard picked up and saved refugees, as they're on the run from pirates, in the middle of the ocean. The coast guard isn't just going to let one refugee go "I'm not obligated to the coast guard. I'm talking one of your life rafts and leaving."

That's not how life works dude.

 

Really, because the Rebellion just let Han leave in ANH, and was prepared to let him leave in the middle of a crisis in ESB. And Luke just wondered off during a mission that he volunteered for in ROTJ.

That IS how life works in Star Wars. Comparing to real life, doesn't work (or at least that's what some people keep telling me), nor does it match up with previous films.

 

He was in that ship because he was receiving medical care after almost die helping them in their last mission. And he wasn't just leaving, he wanted to warn Rey or she could be attacked by the FO