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

Some good posts in here that have inspired me to clarify my own thoughts a bit. I suppose that I try to be a "credit where credit is due" and conversely a "criticism where criticism is due" kind of gal so I want to acknowledge the things I think the Sequel Trilogy does right in terms of diversity as well as the things I think the Sequel Trilogy could have done better or even outright bungled.

Do I give the Sequel Trilogy credit for having a female protagonist in Rey and making her the first major female character who was a Jedi in the main Star Wars movies? Yes. That is a significant milestone to me, so I personally want to recognize it. Even if it was the bare minimum, it was the bare minimum that had never before been reached in a main Star Wars movie. Do I criticize the Sequel Trilogy for making Rey's character journey revolve too much around Kylo's in TLJ, which I thought was a problem from both a feminist and a structural standpoint in terms of the story? Absolutely. That's why I see Jyn as far more successful protagonist than Rey and a character much more consistent with feminist thought.

Do I give the Sequel Trilogy credit for making Finn the first major black character in a Star Wars film? Certainly, and I do think that some effort was made to flesh out his character and give him a compelling backstory. Do I also criticize the Sequel Trilogy for doing some in my opinion tone-deaf things with Finn like having him tazed multiple times? Yeah, I do.

Do I celebrate the first interracial kiss in a Star Wars film between Rose and Finn as well as the first significant Star Wars character of what we on Earth would describe as Asian descent in Rose? Yes, I do. Do I also find it unfortunate that we don't have any openly LGBTQ+ characters in the Sequel Trilogy to date and must still rely on supplementary materials like new canon books for that type of diversity? Certainly I understand the concerns regarding that.

So, I guess to me I understand both sides to a degree. I understand the people who are dissatisfied with the diversity of the Sequel Trilogy and with how diverse characters are portrayed in the Sequel Trilogy since I share and echo many of their concerns and criticisms. Yet I also understand those who believe that the Sequel Trilogy has made important progress on the diversity front that should be acknowledged. That leaves me trying to offer credit where I can and criticism where I believe it is due. Hopefully this post can clear up my scattered perspective a bit.

 

If we are not supposed to be “sociopolitically outraged” as you put it, the option is to give us characters that defy terrible traditional caricatures and stereotypes rather than conforming to them.

 

This could very easily devolve into yet another battleground in the “Reylo Wars.” How about we not do that, and keep the discussion in that particular thread.

 

Yes.

But structurally, that is done by focusing on the POV of the protagonist first and foremost, making sure the story works for them above all else, and usually involves the most complex issues of the conflict with the antagonist. I mean, ultimately the protagonist is more important than the antagonist because they're the main viewpoint character for the audience and the one we're supposed to experience the emotional power of the story through. That's what gives the story more depth and dynamism: exploiting the protagonist's greater screen-time and focus to maximize story potential. Luke and Anakin (and Obi-Wan in TPM) showcase that in their second films, against primary and secondary antagonists: Luke's emotions and POV matter more than Vader's in ESB, and Dooku and the Sand People simply don't have any perspective power against Anakin's.

TFA follows in this pattern with Rey and Kylo; what matters more than his creepy fascination with her is her reaction to him. When he tortures her and violates her mind, its her pain and her fighting back that matters more. When he maims Finn and she rises to fight him, that's her moment, not his (in the same way Finn defiantly charging him was more about Finn than Kylo; Finn outranked Kylo as the deuteragonist). And even Han's murder, arguably Kylo's biggest moment, is equally about Han's exit (as the tritagonist above Kylo), and makes sur eot incude a major punctuation point in Rey's reaction, because again, the film needs her POV and emotions to be valued and focused on more than his overall, so even in his scene, her reaction is emphasized.

TLJ?

Doesn't follow the pattern. Doesn't value Rey's POV much at all, and definitely places it behind Luke's and Kylo's. And with Kylo, its especially egregious because of their protagonist/antagonist relationship, as her development is both crippled and twisted to serve his story instead of her own... even when his story doesn't actually develop him that much. Suddenly, her POV and reaction to the events of TFA doesn't matter and is forgotten: the film does not care about what Kylo did to her and Finn, barely cares about what Kylo did to Han, and only perfunctorily acknowledges the last and the very fact that Rey should be angry and afraid of him before quietly moving her to neutral and then compassionate and focused on Kylo at lightning speed and with not real cause for that. The film values Kylo's own POV above everyone else in the story; it's allowing his own personal narrative in his mind (which a good villain needs, but is also usually acknowledged as being wrong) to dismiss his obviously evil nature towards everyone else. The film doesn't establish a reason for Rey to confide in Kylo or have faith in "Ben" because it assumes that Kylo's perspective is understandable enough for the audience to roll with that.

The film gives Kylo a protagonist's viewpoint, but to the detriment of the story's dramatic potential. Kylo doesn't care about his victims and is self-centered, so the film doesn't care about his dead classmates and is apathetic towards Finn and Rey's initial and totally justified anger, or her basic survival instinct and even her human observational skills. This leads to Finn's story being largely meaningless and redundant busy work that doesn't impact the plot (aka, tokenism) and Rey's story becoming flatter, shallower, and less involved with her perspective. In other words, due to TLJ focusing on Kylo over Rey and Finn, the bulk of TLJ's screen time devoted to the newer heroes is wasted.

So, whether TLJ was intentionally made to be progressive or not, it wound up showing all the literary weaknesses of an accidentally sexist and somewhat racist story-arc.

 

I think this idea is ultimately betrayed by the film itself.

If that were solidly the case, then Rey's scene waking up near an unconscious Kylo after both the Hyperspace Ram and him re-avowing his threat towards the Resistance and dedication to space-fascism, would be onscreen, focused on her perspective when faced with another short way to end the broader conflict by taking out or capturing the First Order's next highest ranking Force user, or at least show why she couldn't attempt that, or anything to give us an idea about what's going through her head during this moment of extreme physical vulnerability faced by all the bad guys in the wake of the Hyperspace Ram. But ultimately, the film is only really interested in Kylo waking up and assuming control of the First Order there. Rey's "pragmatism," as thin and pathetic as it already was, only really existed to facilitate this scene for Kylo's sake. And even the emotional weight of the scene, again as pathetic as it already is, is moved past and discarded in Rey's next appearance.

Adding to evidence that Rey has been demoted from protagonist for TLJ, in structure and function if not in screentime, is how Luke and his story-arc replace her at center stage for the film's ultimate climax, with Luke facing Kylo, his story having it's climax align with the film's own, and her only part in it being a small perfunctory scene that has no real build up towards it when she lifts some rocks, which comes off at best as an orphaned climax to a subplot that never appeared in the movie, and at worse as lazy writing that only values how Rey can help solve a conundrum Johnson accidentally wrote himself into, devoid of actual meaning for her character.

And Rey's place as an active factor in the story is sabotaged by a lack of real motivation or believable characterization, as seen in the way the film handles her interactions with Kylo earlier on. Again, a protagonist has a perspective that matters. And in TLJ, Rey's perspective did not matter to the writing process; if it did, than stuff that Kylo did days before would still matter to her interaction with him, instead of being whittled down to just Han's death and then quickly handwaved away with the idea that the patently evil sounding excuse Kylo makes before changing the subject is adeqaute. And even if Kylo hadn't done the things he did to Rey specifically, a Rey written as a real protagonist would still have compelling reasons given for why she'd think that confiding in this evil space Nazi and evil space wizard is a good idea, let alone why she would have faith in his totally unseen light side personality to save the day on her empty-handed appeal, not just a meta-narrative arguing that she can just copy Luke's tactics in ROTJ (if one incorrectly summarizes Luke's tactics there, as TLJ does.)

In TLJ, the actions she takes are not happening because of a believable character-based reason, but because the plot needs things to happen and needs to ignore things that are inconvenient to that as well... which is similar treatment Padme got in AOTC's scene where Anakin confesses he slaughtered women and children; he and his pain was the center of that sequence, because he was the protagonist, and she as a supporting character to his story was written to ignore some of the implications. It's just far more egregious in TLJ because Kylo's crimes aren't even being given a passing review aside from Han's death (especially not his murdered classmates), Rey is supposed to be the protagonist, and unlike Padme, Rey has no reason at all to start out with even a neutral opinion of the male in her scenes, having only received negative feedback and even more red flags throughout the film after getting plenty of reasons to justifiably hate and fear him in TFA.

TLJ, probably accidentally, prioritizes Kylo above Rey in all things dealing with storytelling and characterization. And again, whether you think its genuinely sexist or not, it definitely shows the writing weaknesses of sexism, and probably plays a part in some of the apathy and disinterest mainstream audience members feel towards Rey, who at least was at the center of plenty of discussion after TFA even among the mainstream guys.

(Incidentally, this isn't even starting on how clearly TLJ's story values both Luke and Kylo above Finn, who TFA's story had no problem valuing more than Kylo and Han, which again maybe shows that even if the film isn't really mean tot be racist, it certainly seems to want to make the character demoted to the third most screentime and happens to be black a skippable part of the movie that doesn't impact the main plots all that much... the way a film suffering accidental and benign racism would.)

 

@dragonchic That's a good point. When there is diversity added to people working on projects, that diversity often gets reflected and more respected in the final project as well.

 

They wouldn't. Every character worth a lick is "planned". It just so happens that hetero relationships are what people expect, so it doesn't feel "forced" to them. The whole "forced" argument is from people not checking their privilege. "If it's not what I'm used to then it's forced, or unnatural, or SJW, or being rammed down my throat", or some other butthurt complaint of the privileged majority. They always fail to realize that doing something that they're not used to will ALWAYS feel strange, and that the only way to overcome that is to do it anyway until it doesn't feel strange anymore. But, that requires people to be open minded and willing to change their perspective, which most people aren't willing to do.

 

I agree with you that Star Wars was very diverse from the outset, and I would say progressive as well with its portrayal of Leia (I can see Lando as a progressive portrayal as a successful man of color as well, but I’ll leave it to posters of color here to indicate whether I am right or wrong).

What many of us are asking for is that Star Wars not go backwards from that.

 

Maybe you didn't notice the lack of women or people of color in the OT when you were a child, but as a child I did. I noticed that there weren't that many female characters in the OT and even though I loved and admired Leia, she didn't entirely make up for that lack of other significant female characters. My brother and I commented that Lando was the only non-white human character in the OT when we were children. We noticed these things not because we were picking the films apart but because the galaxy far, far away with exotic alien creatures in some ways didn't even manage to accurately depict the diversity we saw in the world around us.

Perhaps we didn't know the genders of the Jawas and the Stormtroopers, but for a majority of the characters whom we knew the gender of, those characters were clearly male, and that's the point. The OT was heavily male-dominated. For some people, that does make the story less believable and enjoyable. Maybe you aren't among those people, but those people still exist and matter.

Yes, the OT movies were excellent. That's why they've remained popular so long. The way they handled diversity might have been appropriate and even progressive for 1977, but not for 2019. Maybe people in 1977 didn't talk about diversity in entertainment but people in 2019 do. People in 2019 do want media and entertainment that reflects the diversity of our modern world. Times change. So do entertainment and media. What worked in 1977 isn't going to work in 2019.

People are quite capable of seeing the plot and characters of the ST while also being allowed to discuss the diversity of the characters who appear in the ST. Discussing the diversity of the characters in the ST doesn't mean no discussion of the plot and characters of the ST takes place. There are plenty of threads around here that discuss those things. This is the diversity thread, though, so, in it the topic of diversity does take center stage. If you don't find that topic interesting and important, that's fine, but plenty of people do. That's why this thread exists, because some people find the topic of diversity in the ST worthy of discussion.

To be honest, telling people on a thread dedicated to discussing diversity that they shouldn't bother being concerned about how diverse people are represented does to me come across as a bit marginalizing in its own right. It comes across to me as saying that groups of people who have been historically marginalized (a marginalization that continues into the present era) in both society and media shouldn't care about how they are represented in entertainment. The marginalization certain groups of people experience in the real world is often reflected in the marginalization of those same groups of people in media and entertainment. That's why many people care. They're tired of being marginalized in entertainment as well as society as a whole or they're tired of seeing other groups of people marginalized.

Sure, we can pretend that we are part of a larger Star Wars universe. A universe that presumably includes people of all genders, races, and sexual orientations who can be depicted on screen. After all, if we can show Porgs, we can certainly include LGBTQ+ characters as well.

Personally, I don't want to move beyond diversity and inclusion. I want to see diversity and inclusion in Star Wars and other forms of entertainment.

The OT was progressive for its era. Many people like myself would like the ST to be progressive for its era in terms of the inclusion of diverse characters. Yes, the ST is more diverse than the OT and the PT in terms of having a female protagonist, a major non-white character, the first significant character of what we on Earth would call Asian descent, and an interracial kiss. Now people are naturally going to have conversations about how adequate the representation of diverse characters was. That's the thing with representation in entertainment and media. Once it occurs, many people will want to have important discussions about how effective and accurate the representation was. Personally, I don't consider those important conversations to be whining.