Rebellions are built on hope

jewishcomeradebot:

lj-writes:

themandalorianwolf:

lj-writes:

One thing that bothers me about how TLJ is supposed to subvert the traditional SW idea of heroism is, this subversion just happened to take place after SW was led by heroic women and characters of color. Part of the reason fans of color responded so positively to TFA was because it put men of color and a woman in traditional heroic roles with a modern twist. Finn is a reluctant hero, but a former Stormtrooper who wrestles with his trauma. Poe is a hotshot pilot with a heart of gold, but a humble and kindhearted one who doesn’t rely on toxic masculinity. Rey is a Force user who came from nowhere, but a woman who is also struggling with abandonment issues. The main villain is a moderately attractive young white man. TFA has been criticized for its overreliance on ANH’s tropes, but in a way it was what a lot of SW fans needed, to see themselves in the same, even old-fashioned heroic roles that were denied to them.

But no, as soon as we have Black and Latino leads in main trio, there is a huge insistence that things can’t be this way. Large sections of fandom start to insist that the actual tragic hero and true victim must be the murdering and torturing white guy. Then the franchise itself partly backs them up with TLJ’s so-called subversions–no, Finn is a coward who has to be slapped into place by a wiser woman. No, Poe is a macho gloryhound who has to be literally slapped into his place by white women. Rey is a gullible girl who has to rely on one white guy or another. And none of them can be from a special bloodline because we have to subvert that now, too. Force forbid characters of color and female leads have heritage of their own, that’s solely for white men. Oh, and we’re no longer interested in Finn’s, Poe’s, or Rey’s trauma, the only internal life that matters is the white mass murderer’s.

So the message I get from this is that traditional heroism is boring and no longer for SW the moment characters of color and women have a shot at it. To borrow an image that’s been used in other contexts, it’s like we’re climbing a ladder to get somewhere we’ve wanted for decades. Then, mid-climb, the people who have already climbed the ladder to the top kick it away. While we’re on the ground hurting and wondering what the hell just happened, the white guy who kicked the ladder lectures us from on high how useless the ladder was in the first place and how stupid we were to want to climb it. That’s pretty galling, to say the least, coming from a franchise that still has a problem with letting characters of color and especially Black women simply exist on screen.

This is why it rubs me the wrong way when fans, especially white fans, are so enthusiastic about the subversiveness of TLJ. They’re using faux progressive language while being completely oblivious to, or choosing to ignore, that this “subversion” comes across as a slap in the face to many fans.

That’s what pisses me off about TLJ, among other things. TFA is subversion enough.

TFA

Finn: The Red Shirt Stormtrooper turns out to be the hero of the galaxy

Rey: The damsel in distress turns out to be a Skywalker Jedi.

Poe: The hot headed rogue turns out to be a humble Resistance Hero.

Kylo: The son of two heroes turns out to be the villain and rejects redemption.

Snoke: The cool and calm calculating big bad instead of the overused sadist trope.

Hux: The young general who stands toe to toe with Kylo.

The ending of the film ends bittersweet, unlike the happy ending of A new Hope. Han is dead, a system is dead, Finn is in a coma and Rey is traumatized from her experiences. But Starkiller base is destroyed and Kylo is defeated. Luke Skywalker is found. The War is just beginning.

TLJ

Finn: Stereotypical Black comic relief – no character arc

Poe: hot head Latino man who never listens – always wrong

Rey: Soft eyes girl who is used as a plot device – no character arc.

Rose: Refuge – no character arc

Luke: Grumpy old man – used as a plot device.

Kylo: Plot device with a character arc.

TLJ isn’t subversion. It’s a polished turd that no one wants to accept is bad.

Exactly. And yet TFA is lambasted for being derivative, while TLJ is hailed as the great white hope of Star Wars. It’s almost like subversion ain’t good enough if it uplifts and empowers female characters and characters of color.

I’m going to tell you a story about a colleague of mine. I don’t generally talk about other people in my life online because none of them asked to be put here. Heck I barely talk about myself as there’s too many creeps in the world and I don’t want another stalker. But she okayed this story, so here goes.

My colleague is a biracial Black woman and we’ve both been working at this city’s libraries for years. She’s never really been into scifi or comic book movies or TV-series, but her fiancee is and he often takes her to premieres on this stuff. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy the movies but left on her own she’d be a “I’d watch it after its been out a few weeks and the ticket price is down or when it comes out on dvd” type of audience, certainly nor a die hard fan.

Well, when TFA came out her fiancee, then boyfriend, took her to the premiere and she was completely enchanted by it. When we saw each other after Christmas that year she virtually pounced me to talk about it as I’m the biggest Star Wars nerd the libraries have and its a well known fact. She wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t a white guy about it – yes bf is white – because her bf only found it enjoyable but too much of an ANH/OT ripoff, but she loved it. In her words it was “ANH for everyone who isn’t a (white) guy”.

We spent months squeeing about together and she went to watch it three more times. Once with friends and twice on her own. This was a woman who pre-TFA would never have done so. While she had seen all the PT movies in the theater and enjoyed them it had never been more than once and never alone. 

She even started buying merch.

A year later when Rogue One came out bf was away on a business trip at the time of the premiere, but she bought tickets and went on her own to it because TFA had pulled her that much into Star Wars. And though the ending made her sad she still went and watched it twice more.

Fast forward to TLJ.

Due to restructuring in our organization we now work at different satellite libraries and work at the main library on different days, so we don’t see each other as much as we used to, therefore it wasn’t until a couple of months after TLJ came out that I had a chance to ask her what she though.

Now my colleague is a woman who’s very much a “eh, it’s fiction” person in reaction to something she used to enjoy taking a turn for the worse. She can rarely get worked up that much about it, because well, it’s fiction. So when I asked her about TLJ I was not expecting her reaction.

She was livid. I’ve rarely seen her this angry about anything, she’s a very laid back person, and certainly never about a piece of fiction. We spent our lunch break ripping TLJ to shreds.

When I asked if she was still going to see Solo the answer was a flat ‘no’, though when asked her the same question a year ago she expressed some enthusiasm to watch the movie. 

Her response to being asked if she’ll watch Episode IX?

*shrug* “Probably. [Boyfriend] will go, so I’ll probably go with him.”

This isn’t a “disgruntled older fan who can’t let go of the past”. It’s a woman whom TFA brought from the general audience category and into if not diehard fan then certainly impassioned casual, a new fan who was willing to throw a good deal of her “for fun” budget at LF and Disney. 

TLJ killed Star Wars completely for her, she’s utterly lost her enthusiasm and unless Episode IX somehow works a miracle she’ll be a fan who’s permanently lost to the franchise.

And she’s far from the only former fan with this story.

This is what TLJ and its “subversion” faux progressive shit did. Yes it might have alienated some of the older fans, but I think the largest group of those who’s said goodbye to Star Wars are newer fans who was brought in by TFA or RO, who might have liked the OT trio but who fell in love with the new heroic leads only to have to watch Rian screw them all over.

I’ve seen it echoed here on tumblr and other social media. Many of those who remain are older fans like me, not because we don’t hate TLJ and what it did with the same passion, but because we’ve been in love with Star Wars for too long to let one crappy movie drive us away.

The newer fans, the fans that came with TFA and RO have no such long lasting connection and less hesitance to bid Star Wars goodbye.

@beautifulglider

Honestly, I liked TLJ ok while I was in the theater – I think I was just SO GLAD to see a WOC with a name who wasn’t CGI’d into oblivion – but the more I thought about it, and the more I talked with friends…

I think OP is right about all of this. Subverting tropes is all well and good, but this was not the time and place, and this was absolutely not the way to do it. It was like Joss Whedon feminism ™: “[Sexy, waifish] women are powerful [in a violent manner only, but they’re also helpless victims who need men to care for them], and if you don’t agree, YOU’RE the sexist!” You don’t get credit for subverting tropes, when you uphold older, harmful, racist and sexist tropes.

Taking down a hot-headed male is cool. But that was NOT Poe’s character AT ALL in TFA. They should have made a different character if that’s what they wanted. And maybe not played into the Hot-Headed Machista Latino Male stereotype while they’re at it. (And also – literally why didn’t Holdo at least share with him that she *had any plan at all*? Because he was going off of the only information he had, which wasn’t much better than “shut up, Man of Color, and know your place, White people are talking.”)

I liked that the Woman Tries To Save Horrible Man From Himself trope was subverted – but again, that wasn’t Rey’s character AT ALL in TFA. Honestly, I personally read it as “Rey never had any intention of saving Kylo Ren, she was just doing what she needed to do, to survive,” but I also only saw TLJ once, so there may be a lot of wishful thinking there, and not noticing subtext, etc. I read Kylo’s speech about Rey’s family as him Making Shit Up, because he is abusive and literally evil (killed his dad! Star Wars equivalent of a school shooter! Allows a planet to be blown up!), but again, maybe that’s wishful thinking, and Johnson meant for Kylo to just somehow magically know these things.

On the one hand, I liked that it turns out Unreliable Guy is Unreliable, but why did that have to happen just when Unreliable Guy is Latino, and the people who trusted him are also POC, while Han Solo got to come running back into Luke’s open arms in ANH? Not only does it play into racist stereotypes against Latine folk, but it also sets Rose and Finn up to look naive. And while Luke disobeyed Yoda to go save his friends AND THEN SAVED HIS FRIENDS, Finn’s mission ends in catastrophic failure. There’s just no reason his heroic acts shouldn’t have ended in triumph.

And then there’s Rose Explains How Destructive Capitalism Is To Finn. On the one hand, he grew up super brainwashed by the First Order, so it’s understandable how he reacts to Canto Bight. On the other hand, he is literally the only important Black character in the whole sequel trilogy, in a franchise with pathetically few important Black characters to begin with (I’m not counting Maz Kanata because, while she’s played by Lupita Nyong’o, Maz herself isn’t Black, she’s orange.) And given how little character development Finn gets in TLJ to begin with, it isn’t right how much of it revolves around his naivety / ignorance.

And this is why I feel absolutely no shame in straight-up not accepting huge swaths of TLJ as canon. You can make multi-million-dollar films, but you can’t colonize our minds.

Sincerely,

A fan who wishes they’d made more Star Wars films after Rogue One, but I guess they didn’t, what a shame.

TLDR: The Last Jedi isn’t subversive, because it falls back on harmful racist and sexist tropes, rather than allowing everyone who isn’t a White Male to finally have our Heroic Epic Tale.