Saga How feminist is the Star Wars galaxy?—SEE WARNING ON FIRST PAGE

Some of the complaints are not there are women in SW, but that some of the current handling of female characters is offputting and sexist. Such as Rey, who is more powerful and mastered the force easier and more quickly than either Anakin or Luke as wel;l as knowing the MF better than Han himself. The only character she doesn't upstage is Leia, another woman. Most people don't give two craps if a character is female as long as they're likable or competent or even just cool at what they do, like with Boba Fett. When you start getting preachy and smug about it though is when you start to lose people. This series was supposed to be for everyone to enjoy. That was the appeal of SW. Now it's not so much anymore. Now it's for space-kin Sally who likes to post lame anti-male memes on tumblr. Some of the more derided characters like Phlasma, Rose, and Holdo aren't disliked by some people only because they're women. They could have easily been male characters, and many people would still dislike them for their poor actions and attitudes from being poorly written. However, because they're women, some fans will dismiss the people who dislike them by claiming them as merely being a group of sexists.

It is part of a troubling trend. It's not really an agenda now it is simply marketing. It's the fact that white collar women, minorities and "white male allies" are the primary demographic many companies want to target now. They are trying to "retool" Star Wars to be more attractive to the new female, minority white collar urban class that has appeared after the recession and the rapid movement of middle class blue collar manufacturing overseas since the 1970s.

When you realize this, you begin to see it everywhere. The media is now openly hostile or at least dismissive of the middle class white male demographic that once supported these franchises. Because they deemed them a market that is no longer worth pursuing, middle class white men, especially blue collar ones are a shrinking demographic, or they've been forced to the lower class due to the decreasing number of middle level blue collar jobs. They have less spending power, diminished social media influence, and their politics are typical antithetical to the current progressive and globalist trends, ie wrongthink that must be corrected. In the end it's just about money, pure and simple.



You can see the demographic they wanted to court with SW now and made changes needed to do so. You can see this pattern in many of today's movies like with the 2016 Ghostbuster films and it's toxic marketing plan.

 

I find the idea of an agenda silly.

It's giving the writers way too much credit. I doubt most of them are smart enough to fill the movies with the sort of messages they apparently put in.
I didn't see some anti-male agenda in TLJ, just people who decided to read it that way.

 

I agree that not every member in each group or sub group thinks the same, (hence the male allies) but politics and marketing like to paint broad stokes and pretend they all do think the same. Stating the agenda doesn't mean the person who states it believes SW is only for any single class of people, but that they believe that the content owners and creators may be trying to pander to one group more. As I said, it's not about pushing an agenda, it is following where they think the money is now. What is sad is that the OT is often derided as having being made to mainly appeal to nerdy teenage boys, yet they are the films that appeal to the most people, while the ST which is praised for being woke and inclusive appeals to less people. Perhaps the writers are too concerned with appealing to the twisted views of keyboard warriors rather than writing good stories and characters.

Sadly I think its more of the latter, people trying to look feminist while not really understanding it. Like they just gleamed a couple of toxic sites on Reddit and thought they represented the whole movement. Again they are interested in the money, not the cause. Overall, there just seems to be a real lack of direction that the 6 Lucas films have.

 

No, they are simply including more diverse characters in the films. That's not 'retooling' the franchise. The franchise has always been progressive generally for its time and it's simply keeping up the pace. The only complaint you have voiced here is Rey, so that's the only one I can address: ultimately she isn't any more powerful than TPM Anakin who wins the equivalent of a F1 Grand Prix and destroys military installations in fighter jets? Why is Rey called out for it?

As for the shirtless scene, why not show Anakin in AOTC and ROTS? Oh, that wouldn't suit your argument.

 

I agree SW is progressive, that is why it is stupid to retool it to make if progressive on top of being progressive. In other words, the 6 older films are progressive in a honest and timeless sense, while the ST is shameless pandering to the current prevailing political and opionin orthodoxy, aka trendy right think.

In TPM, Anakin is the choosen one, and even then his power is only limited to a sixth sense without training. Even then, he was soundly defeated by better trained force users in AOTC.

While Rey, with neither no special force connection or training masters force techniques and defeated well trained force users, which took Anakin years of training to do. Also the PT does show Anakin shirtless.

 

What is 'progressive on top of being progressive' even mean? You don't think it was controversial to have a female leader of the Rebellion? Or have the Princess be dominant, assertive and the leader of the group (and ranking member). Besides Rey you have yet to outline any of this 'trent right think'?

Anakin won a F1 Grand Prix, took down a military instillation, built a pod-racer and a protocol droid. Rey, what? Flew the Falcon competently and beat Kylo Ren (who is half trained and not trying to kill her) in a fight by surprising him at the last minute.

 

Not to mention that Anakin was 10 and lead a life relatively free of violence, while Rey was in her 20s and had to survive on her own for the majority of her life.

 

Rey knowing how to do a Jedi Mind Trick was absolutely absurd.

The difference between Rey and Anakin is that, while Anakin was very mechanically inclined, he didn't consciously know how to suddenly do force powers. Rey already knows how to pretty much do everything, and is already able to use a lightsaber to take down another trained lightsaber user. Which is absolutely insane, seeing as Luke and Anakin didn't use a lightsaber in combat until the second movie of their respective trilogies, after years of training.

Which is why I (and many others) don't like Rey as a character.

 

Would you be so kind as to elaborate upon this with an example? South Park made a point of "Token" for a reason.

So, we've had what, a number of minority and female led movies that can be counted on one hand in the past 5 years and all of a sudden whitey can't buy movie tickets anymore? By and large the majority of cinema offerings are still white middle class/upper class centric. It's not a niche market by along shot. I'll grant you that movies with minority led casts, female leads etc. is a ripe market. As it should be. I would imagine that groups of people who have not seen themselves represented on screen and not in a stereotypical or exaggerated/negative way would open their wallets. Yes there is a business decision here but the second order of effect is that it brings to light that art has not imitated life. "Oh my God, Lando is a pansexual! Gasp". There was a dude in a wedding dress at the royal wedding trying to get the prince's attention. It's a brave new world.

You seem to be saying that the spending power of non-male whites is something new. You selected the Twilight picture, a series of movies that all grossed nearly 300 million, with one actually doing so and that started in 2010.

Oh no. we got sparkly vamp boy and Kylo with their shirts off. Us hetero whites got slave Leia, black leather hooker Padme, Oola... the list goes on. Fair play I say.

I would disagree with you on spending power. We've pushed plenty of white male, blue collar demographic movies into the hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office since the recession. Is it "wrong think" or simply the time is now right to buck the trend of what had been non-official but all too real racism and misogyny and censorship of anyone who "isn't us".

Yes, there is money involved:
http://fortune.com/2018/02/21/black-panther-record-box-office-diverse-audience/

But it's not in a vacuum. We've got every form of non-hetero person there is achieving all along the same lines as the "normies", women in positions of authority and leadership and finance, females entering the military, passing Ranger School, serving on submarines, going into combat and not every minority has to be a drug dealing, poorly speaking hood rat who occasionally breaks out in song and dance.

Respectfully,

A well off white dude

 

I think the SW galaxy is and has been progressive from jump. I know SW stood out sharply to me against other movies and tv shows of the late 70s and early 80s. It had powerful female characters, no obvious racial tensions amongst the on screen cast. There was a blending of people's, aliens, languages and customs that felt commonplace, unlike downtown little city where I grew up. Sure Han seemed to dislike Leia and princesses in particular at first, but that fell away and we saw him for the scoundrel we all love.

Later on in the prequels we had powerful female Jedi, senators and individual characters that felt neither above nor below their male counterparts. There is a chain of command that exists between master and apprentice, commander and soldier, but it isn't a male vs female or ethnicity driven hierarchy as far as I can see. While there is a push to make SW more inclusive , I don't see a need to push for it. As far as I can tell, it was open all along for it.

Rey doesn't "know" how to do anything. The Force is guiding her actions, usually to her bewilderment. Having lived alone, she has no reference for life outside of scavenging for food and water. She doesn't have the barriers that Luke and Anakin had. Moreover, she isn't awesome or impressive even at a little with the feats she achieves. These things happen upon her . As for her lightsaber technique, it is as plain as anyone who picks up a broom stick and mock ninja fights with their buddy in the back yard. Neither Kylo Ren nor Rey can fight like Anakin, Obi Wan, Vader or even Luke. Why? NO TRAINING.

The force comes first. Training comes second. We've seen this in the previous six films. We are seeing it again with a major exception: without the masters of the Jedi and Sith to train their apprentices, there is no fine tuning that we saw previously. Ren and Rey are rough, piecemeal, and ragged with their use of the force and the weaponry associated with it. Snoke was shown to be strong but also ragged and unrefined. And he died. There is no one left alive who can now teach them in the ancient ways. Theyll have to figure it out for themselves. Sure, they'll learn stuff, but they won't appear confident like Anakin or Luke before them.

 

In some ways I view SW as feminist, but in terms of the core stories I don’t even remotely view it that way. I think LF is dominated by views that yes of course women are equal, just not equally entertaining. In the gffa, fathers are more important than mothers. In the gffa, Rey has almost no POV or story beyond being nervous around the shirtless villain. She literally spent the last movie bouncing between two men asking them to explain to her her role. She was told that she has no place in the story, except that the guy that said that generously wanted to grant her one.

Reylo is to me the ultimate anti-feminist story, as is the assumption that a Reylo story is the way to open Star Wars to the young female demographic.

This didn’t start with Rey though. Leia starts the OT the emotionally toughest, smartest, and most committed to the cause of the OT3. Then Han is made general before her. Padme starts the PT a badass warrior, strategizing and fighting for her people. In RotS, she is diminished to begging a children slaughterer to run away with her, and the audience doesn’t hear her thoughts on too much else, save for one or two lines before letting Anakin’s temper tantrums shut her up.

I don’t think it’s overt on LF’s part. I don’t think it’s mandated. Edwards did great with Jyn and I think JJ is better than most at LF. I think LF is just very male-dominated and lacks strong female insight at the creative level. I don’t think they get it, so instead what they do comes off as pandering. That irritates people from all groups, not just people that are concerned about white men being pushed aside (a concern I am totally unmoved by).

 

There is no feminist SJW agenda in Star Wars. Disney isn't that competent.

Kathleen Kennedy & co are trying to make a universe that's more inclusive... but in reality, there are just two more women who actually talk, and there's another black guy. I'm telling you guys - the only agenda these films have is to make more money.

 

Disney is actually taking a risk by letting Lucasfilm be so “SJW”. A female lead and a black lead? That is definitely bold even for today. They suffered in China apparently because of it. Also not having Luke, Han and Leia together, having th m failed and depressive and having the only Skywalker descendant being a new Vader was pretty daring. They put storytelling over fan service and inclusivity over safe box office return projections. I commend th m for that.

 

The problem is when it turns into box office pain, as it has with Solo.
I'm all for story over fan service, but doing stuff fans aren't interested in won't make money.

I don't think Black & female leads are much of a risk anymore.

Denzel Washington movies do well, so did Black Panther which pretty much had a totally black cast.

Wonder Woman showed female lead movies can be successful if they're good.

TFA made $2billion, which shows fans don't care about who the leads are if the movie is entertaining.

 

The Force Awakens came out before Wonder Woman and Black Panther.

 

I do find it funny that those types of people boycotted Solo even though it’s main lead was White.

 

They boycott to hurt the studio.

What's funny is they think there are enough of them to make a difference.

Unfortunately the movie is a box office failure which means they think they succeeded

 

Exactly.I liked Star Wars better when it was escapism from all this stuff. It used to be a purely chaste, asexual world of lasers and adventure for kids with the closest thing to sexuality being a romantic kiss .
It wearies me that we have to endlessly import this battle of the sexes drudgery into every part of media and pop culture.
I really don't think it does anything but get folk riled up at each other.

 

This thread shouldn’t exist. You don’t need television to empower you. And if you did, Star Wars should be a go to source. Leia was a strong female character back in 77. Mon Mothma was the commander in Chief of the rebellion. Almost every Star Wars film has a moment where a woman takes control. There are countless female senators, and the old and new EU have tons of great women, Mara Jade, Jania Solo, and so many others. The Star Wars galaxy doesn’t have modern American race and gender politics, most of the social justice I see going on in the galaxy would revolve around how humans enslaved non humans under the empire. And I imagine that there would be a Star Wars equivalent to Buzzfeed that trashed us xenophobic privileged humans. If your wondering why there not that many female background characters, it’s a WAR. Men are naturally better fighters with higher reaction times, so you would expect the majority of the fighting force to consist of men. The women of the Star Wars galaxy don’t have some historical oppression, and in some societies, women are dominant. Like on Dathomior, where men are used as slaves. The Legends Empire was a little sexist, but their the bad guys so I don’t see why that’s a problem.
I’m all for representing women, but don’t expect any politicalized stories about “fighting the patriarchy.”

 

rogue one writers were very open with the politics of the movie, "diverse group led by women fighting white supremacy", so I don't buy the "there is no politics" when the writers flat out say what the politics of the movie are