The Saga against Feminism?

I don't know but more and more I start to think that the saga is against feminism.

We have Padme and Leia who both start off as butt kicking, strong, smart, passionate and self-suffiecent women but over their trilogies degrade into the backround as lovers or pregnant housewives and just tag along for the journey and both become more submissive.


This is not a personel complaint or anything...Just curious what other people think.

Does Lucas have a negative outlook on us girls because of his ex-wife or something else? Does he at all?

Is the SW saga a bit anti-Feminist?

 

While the trends you mention end up playing down the female characters, I couldn't think of the saga as anti-feminist. Lucas did make these strong female characters in the first place. I'll always remember Leia expertly giving orders to a large group of men before the defense/evacuation at Hoth. There was also a time Lucas really considered making the female twin the main character in the OT.

On the other hand, I'm a little disappointed Lucas didn't bother to involve a strong female Jedi more prominantly in the plot of the PT (but there were female Jedi depicted on the council itself). He also made Mon Mothma scense in ROTS but cut them? And there were no female pilots... that doesn't make sense because piloting isn't really something male soldiers have a physical advantage in.

But then within the Empire there seemed not to be ANY female officers. Being that the Empire is evil, it's a sign of oppression and a statement sort of like "The evil side has no females in its leadership, but the good guys do.. after all, they're good and accept women as leaders."

So, I agree the trends with the main characters in the saga defintitely favor the males... and that's a little bit disappointing. But, I wouldn't go so far as saying the saga has an anti-feminist tone. It's not extremely pro-feminist (although I still think of Leia commanding those soldiers as a VERY pro-feminist moment)... it's just kind of grey... no political statement's being made. And simply as in basically all fantasy genre stories, the primary protagonists tend to be male. The men are easier to portray doing harder core stuff, while female characters are more convenient for adding necessary softer moments to the storyline (traditional; not so pro-feminist). Most of the female characters themselves though, in this saga are people of high esteem/rank, which is certainly on the pro-feminist side.

 

An important thread. Here are my thoughts...

Padme's "submissiveness" is a direct offshoot of her intense compassion and love for Anakin. Leia's "submissiveness" is a consequence of becoming more comfortable with herself, getting closer to Han and not having any Grand Moffs or mind probes to resist. (Han's brashness also diminishes, too). There was deliberate intent with the depiction of Padme; with Leia, it's incidental. For what it's worth, Leia is still pretty tough in RotJ - she confronts and pulls the wool over the eyes of Jabba, the Don Corleone of Tatooine, freeing Han and ultimately killing Jabba and doing her bit to dispose of the Hutt regime; she later befriends the Ewoks and helps defend their home from the invading stormtroopers.

No - I don't believe that Lucas is remotely feminist. Just as I don't believe he is remotely racist. At least... he's no more of these things than we all. Whenever we focus on one set of things (in Star Wars' case, the fall and rise of two white male protagonists guided by other white male protagonists), everything else becomes secondary - and in some senses, subordinate - to that. It should be pointed out that Shmi Skywalker and Mon Mothma are two very strong female individuals. Aunt Beru is also the warmer and more pragmatic out of her and Owen.

Lastly, we must remember that Star Wars is a mythology first and anything else second. Mythologies always paint their ideas and themes in broad strokes: characters are archetypes and archetypes are idealised patterns or concepts. To give but one example of this generality at work: parental roles in Star Wars are defined by gender - males serve as father figures and women serve as mother figures (not all, you understand, but when called on to be such things, gender is inevitably the determining factor). But real life can be more complicated than that. There are many single parents, not to mention homosexual couples, who have to perform reverse - and sometimes both - roles. Lucas himself has adopted children and raised them on his own. Perhaps he considers himself a dad; perhaps he sees himself as something of a maternal figure, too. Simplifying certain concepts down to a universal essence, however, gives Star Wars, like all works of fiction that are built on conceits, a pleasing uniformity and cohesion.

Art always says something about the artist. I don't buy into this "art"-and-"artist"-as-separate-entities line of thought. But we have to be careful and reasonable when considering the flow of inspiration between the two. We shouldn't just make black and white assumptions when the world and everyone in it are more complex than that. Intellect and intuition should symbiotically reinforce each other. As a wise man once said: be mindful of the Living Force!

 

If I agree that Padme's role, after a revealing peak in AOTC, has greatly (and sadly) fade away in ROTS (although it is less true with the deleted scenes - but if they're deleted, can we say they count ?). However, I think Leia's role is quite constant throughout the OT. She is as strong in ROTJ as in ANH or TESB in my opinion, as Cryogenic pointed right.

By the way, Cryogenic, I like the way you point on the way females are represented on the Republic and the Empire. There is a true difference, even if the EU does give some leading role to females of the Empire (Daala and the Hand of the Emperor, for instance).

So, anti-feminist ? Definitely not ! Although you certainly can't say it's strongly pro-feminist, I think Star Wars if fair in that matter.

 

Star Wars is hardly anti-feminist. Leia was the first "girl with a gun" in movies--before Ripley picked up a flamethrower Leia was gunning down stormtroopers, and she didnt loose her femininity the way Ripley did--James Cameron's version of Ripley was basically "Rambo with breasts" but Leia still retains her womanhood and doesnt have to resort to all-out combat to be a strong character--she uses her wits and her force of personality, and when she has to she isnt afraid to pick up a gun and shoot back. I mean Leia is rescuing her rescuers in ANH--that had never really been seen before.

The degradation of her character in the sequels is mostly due to the degradation in writing in general, especially when it came to ROTJ. ESB I will admit Han is very dominant over her, and though she is very assertive and in his face at the beginning once they start kissing she kind of becomes passive. Padme also is left with little to do in ROTS since teh rebellion scenes were cut out. But these things are very minor and hardly constitute the saga as anti-feminist.

American Graffiti was charged with chauvenism by feminists when it was released, and these claims are at least somewhat valid since the story is told through the eyes of teen boys.

 

i shouldn't think it's anti-feminist. but it's not very female oriented in a way. it would have been great to have more females intereact with each other or else just more female jedi. this way it looks like it's a very male game.

 

Natalie Portman also talks about Lucas' positive representation of women - namely, Padme - in an Attack of the Clones webdoc. Padme's decline into passivity/submissiveness/losing the will to live, while a very bitter pill, is not so much a scathing condemnation of and stereotypical representation of feminimity as it is a lamentation for the proud and independent spirit that Padme once was. Luke and Leia mop up the sins of their parents by ultimately proving themselves as the strong and free-willed people that Anakin and Padme could and should have been. Luke and Leia remain steadfast and true and "fight the good fight" while it exists to be fought.

 

I see what you mean, but yeah the saga (as well as the world) is more male oriented..oh well.

 

But, contrary to what i posted earlier, as someone pointed, out very much is a boys movie. Most of these types of films are. Its not about daughter and mother, its about father and son. Women are in the saga, and represented stronger than just about any adventure film ever made, but it is still a male-dominated tale, as most are.

 

I understand..but I still like it.

 

The reasons behind Anakins fall are intresting. He loses his mother. He falls in love with a woman, can't let go of them and falls to the darkside. Then he is redeemed by his son (note not by Leia but Luke. A male. Leia was unimportant to Vader. He was ready to throw Leia to the wolves.). It allmost seems as if women where the reasons for all the bad things that happened to Anakin. Love is the reason Anakin is saved but not love of a woman. Leia's compassion would have never saved Vader. In fact Leia was never portaryed as being as cmpassionete as Luke. Quite the opposite. I think it's very unfortunate. I don't think it is deliberate on Lucas part put he does portray love and passionate love for a woman in a bad way. It's the Platonic love that saves Anakin and not the romantic, passionate love that one can feel towards the opposite sex (or for the same sex but you know what I mean...I hope...). So in a way the saga does not paint a very favourable picture of love towards woman. It's the root of all evil. And in doing that it makes the women in StarWars look bad.

 

Well, Lucas based a lot of the saga on the writings of Joseph Campbell, who largely based *his* writings on the traditions of Indo-European society, going back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. These cultures ran fairly high on the sexism spectrum, and Campbell seems to have developed some selective vision as well, which didn't help. He wrote something to the effect that there was no "female journey" that corresponded with the male "hero's journey;" rather, "the feminine" was the negative-space home/wilderness/home through which the hero traveled. Females were associated with the fertile and mysterious earth, which is powerful in its way, but basically inanimate. Only the masculine archetype produces "the individual," a person distinct from his neighbors and background, who must complete the cycle of identity-seeking, proving his mastery, and then returning home to bring his new knowledge to the people. Feminine archetypes exist, but they always come fused with some force of nature or societal role that overshadows their existence as individuals. The most famous of these is the goddess figure who represents the fertility of the land, and who becomes the hero's wife and his sons' mother. Frequently, "the people" (whichever people are telling the story and living on the land in question) consider themselves descendants of this divine union. "The eternal feminine" is therefore the confining home to be escaped, the object of desire to be yearned for, the prize of fertility and regeneration to be won, and finally the restful home to be returned to--with the hero in charge this time. In the Campbellian world, female things just *are*--they're the backdrop to the hero's journey. They don't *do* anything. (I'm paraphrasing from memory here--let me know if any of this is mistaken.)

Campbell has been accused more than once of completely missing an entire genre of tradtitional entrance-into-womanhood stories, which usually start with the innocent, virginal heroine setting out from her home and proving herself by withstanding various tests, often magical in nature. The end is frequently marriage to "the prince" (often nameless), who is the male parallel to the goddess/land/wife archetype. Legends in which meritorious virgins are the only people who can walk through some fatal danger and retrieve a lost or hidden prize were especially common after the rise of the Marian cult in late-medieval Europe. These stories are the exact parallel of the "hero's journey" stories in which a youth with a special destiny must go out and find the magical object that will save the village, etc. However, feminist authors of a generation ago were frequently offended by the focus on these mythical heroines' marital and reproductive status, and dismissed them as yet another oppressive weapon of the patriarchy. Griselda, Vasilisa, and Scheherazade got some love in the 19th-century "Golden Bough," but very little attention in modernist studies of folk and fairy tales since then. Now, feminist examinations of pre-feminist culture are themselves out of fashion.

So Lucas based Star Wars on a "grand unified theory" of world myths that is incomplete in the gender department. Supposedly, he took Campbell's "hero's journey" and copied it step by step--it's not surprising that Star Wars' heroines inherit the aimlessness of female characters in that model. Shmi, Padmé, and in the last analysis, Leia, represent the "home" that must be left behind for individuation to occur, and then "found" again at the hero's return. It's a shame that there is no female counterpart to the Skywalker men's journey, especially since Luke was originally supposed to have a sister as a nod to the Jungian/Campbellian idea of positive power coming from a balance of masculine and feminine energy. (This would be masculine and feminine energy contained within a male body in "Hero With A Thousand Faces" terms, but that's as may be.) We almost see an example of the female coming-of-age journey in Padmé's transformation from maiden to mother, but her story is so overshadow

 

I wouldn't really say anti-feminist
because to call it that grants it an amount
of intellect that it doesn't really have.
I do think, like westerns, SW women are conceptualized
from a male perspective... some might call it
objectification. Like me. Cause I just did.

When the female characters are strong
it is almost as if it is just enough to say
hey, SW has strong female characters, see.
Not anti-women here.

You have to also look at the creator and his relationships
with women. GL divorced over SW (basically)
and one can't divorce (see what I did there?)
the creator from the creation.

Look at Owen Wister, the author of the classic western
"The Virginian." The view of women presented there
certainly is rooted in his fractured view of women,
a la his overbearing mother and activist wife.

 

Some brilliant thoughts in here by everyone! Especially Ophelia. Bravo!

Yes.

At the simplest level, you could argue that Star Wars, concerned as it is with personal values and intergalactic politics, is ultimately a reflection of the male-dominated society we live in today. Women just don't get their dues. Maybe they never will. That's horrible to hear if you're a woman or a man that believes in gender equality - but it's certainly the way things will remain for the foreseeable future. When America - the nation that hails itself as "the land of opportunity" and purports to be the model democratic society whose sovereinity should be revered - can't even offer its nation and the world a single president that isn't a white caucasian male, it shows you we have a long way to go.

 

If I agree that Padme's role, after a revealing peak in AOTC, has greatly (and sadly) fade away in ROTS (although it is less true with the deleted scenes - but if they're deleted, can we say they count ?).

Padme played a strong role in ROTS . . . without her having to be a kick-butt action figure, as she was in TPM and AOTC. Someone once pointed out that the number of females that died in AOTC was a sign that the Empire's negative and heavily-male influence was slowly shadowing the galaxy. If anything, Padme's death was the true sign of the Republic's death and the Emperor's ascendacy. By the way, how does a female who is in her third trimester become an action hero in a story?

 

Bear in mind, women fall in love, marry and have children. If they didn't, society would have ceased to exist long ago. Men do the same, only switch "have children" with "father children". Just because Padme does the same does not make her a weak house wife. Actually, she's not even a house wife. She's still in the senate and still making a stand.

Again, just because Leia fell in love doesn't make her a weak character either. She continues to fight for the Rebellion until credits role in ROTJ.

One other thing, ROTJ has the Rebellion led by a woman. I can't imagine GL is against feminism. Best prove of that: Willow.

 

Interesting topic... I'm a female person, even (gasp!) a feminist, and have always loved Star Wars (having grown up with it, back in the day...blah blah blah). I don't see the saga as being pro- or anti-female...it's more of an "it is what it is" kind of thing, in my opinion.

On the plus side, you've got some strong women characters---feisty Princess Leia, who mouths off to Darth Vader and doesn't hesitate to give her rescuers an earful when she thinks they've botched the job. Likewise her mother, Padme, fearlessly fights for her people, kicks CGI monster butt, and is able to fool even a Jedi Master with her decoy/handmaiden tactic. Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebellion, is another strong and capable woman.

On the flip side, you don't really see a lot of women in other roles---there are few or no women Rebel pilots; no female Jedi as main characters; etc. However, I imagine that has less to do with Lucas being anti-woman, and more the fact that people often don't think outside the boxes of their own reality. Lucas is a guy, working with the guy-focused Joseph Campbellian myth structure (as mentioned above)...so, his movies reflect that.

In some ways, the OT, despite being created in the '70s and '80s, actually seems more "feminist" to me. Once upon a time, a handsome space pirate rescues a beautiful princess (ANH)....and she rescues him right back (RotJ). And in both PT and OT, you have women---Padme, Mon Mothma, Leia---fighting hard to right the wrongs that MEN---Palpatine, Vader, et al.---have created. So, women in Star Wars don't come off looking too bad in my opinion.

 

Girls are only good for sex and slavery! Now get back in the kicthen, slave girl!

 

****!

 

I remember having read that Luke Skywalker was at a point designated to be a woman. Now *that* would've been interesting ! A woman as a hero !

But it was changed back to a male hero ...


ersonally, I believe it has to do with the mythologies and ancient, archaic stories George Lucas uses in Star Wars : Let's take fairy tales (German : "Märchen") for example. I don't know too many with female heroes ...


In humanity, it has been for thousands of years that the man was designated to be some kind of "hero", the ancient stories tell this, and women rather not. My thought was, that George Lucas merely draws off these sources into his own story (Star Wars), and is thus influenced by them. If he had had more focus on the relatively few fairy tales (at least I don't know many) which feature female heroes, then things would've been different.

To put it short : To me, it's all a matter of the source.


Which doesn't mean he could've acted against it. Against these clichés. But his intention was - if I remember correctly - to tell a story (which was) like a fairy-tale, so things are stuck with it.

In the end, it might have something to do with feminism, after all. If the roles had been switched for example throughout these thousands of years, we would perhaps have movies with mainly heroines and men who would have rather the role of what women often have in movies today.

Alrik

 

I find this point of view extremely interesting. Thanks for sharing !

 

I couldn't agree more. But you can't fight a radical feminist you know

It all depends on what you mean of femenism. You have the liberals and the radicals. The liberal only talk about equal rights and stuff like that. In the SW republic things seemed so. We have a female Queen who acts more like a president. We have a female senator who shows much greater judgement than her male companion, Anakin. We have Leia who is one of the leaders of the rebellion. What more would you need? Can't a person select whether or not he wants a male or female protagonist without being accused of discriminating women? That has nothing to do with feminism or equality, it has to do with freedom to develop your own story and the narrow mindedness of those who accuse him of such!

 

I don't think so. Leia is still kicking butt in RTOJ. She kills Jabba the Hutt with no blasters or light sabers. She quickly jumps on the speeder bikes to take out the two scouts that take off. She is killing stormtroopers while Han tries to Hot wire the bunker doors.
Padme is still very much involved in politics while still with child. The parts that were cut out of the RTOS show that.
Mon Mothma is the Leader of the Rebellion

 

I couldn't agree more. But you can't fight a radical feminist you know.

Blast!

 

yeah, but it'S not about how many you can kill, or is it? that'd be utterly brainless. or restricted to physical power.