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Viking ZX


Author of Science-Fiction and Fantasy novels! Oh, and some fanfiction from time to time.

More Blog Posts1449

Feb
21st
2019

OP-ED: Disney’s Star Wars Doesn’t Understand Strong Female Characters · 11:55pm Feb 21st, 2019

Hoo boy. I know this topic is getting tagged with “Controversial” without even having finished it. Crud, it’s controversial just from the title. Discuss anything to do with female characters, strong or otherwise, and you’re painting a gigantic target on yourself.

Which is why I’d like to point out, for those sharpening their pitchforks before they were even finished reading the title, that I’ve had some experience with strong female characters of a wide variety. Yeah, it sucks that I have to lead with a disclaimer, but people are just that trigger happy these days. But I’ve written some very well-received female protagonists who are strong and capable, whether they be Meelo Karn, the Imperial Inquisitor of Shadow of an Empire, with her quick, deductive mind and talent for investigation, or Samantha, a young journalist determined to be the first to interview her city’s elusive superhero.

Crud, I’ve written Being a Better Writer articles on here before about gender in stories, and in those admitted that I have a fun habit of flipping a coin for secondary characters just to keep things fresh and fun. I don’t have a problem with strong female characters. The world needs strong women and strong men. Neither should be excluded.

Which, in a way, is where Disney is getting things wrong. And with that, we get to the point.

Disney’s Star Wars, as well as the company itself, has come under fire as of late. Once maligned for being a house proposing (generally) only a singular type of female character, Disney has in recent years worked to round themselves out, giving us characters like Moana or Rapunzel that are more varied than their female protagonists of the past.

Unfortunately, some aspects of Disney have shown they don’t quite understand what this approach entails, and have simply flipped everything as far the other direction as they can manage. The result is, well … bad. And I don’t just mean cringeworthy, but flat-out showing that the folks making the decisions don’t understand A) What a strong female character is and B) How to make one.

Still puzzled as to what could have made me write this post? No, it wasn’t The Last Jedi, though that movie falls into many pitfalls that are only expanded on what you’re about to see. And yes, I do understand that this now means there needs to be a BaBW post on strong female characters. It’s now on the list.

But that’s for a Monday in the future. For the here and now, I want to talk about Disney’s new Star Wars Galaxy of Adventures.

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Comments ( 6 )

Thanks to you for explaining what a strong female character is supposed to do.

Now, don't think about tin foil hats.

I wonder if they at Disney do know better, but they like their way better?
Not sure why though. It seems that following good story structure would give them a better story.
I have a vague feeling that they have latched on some way to tell stories that fits their plans, and good writing guidelines are irrelevant.

I also wonder if this is tied in with the issues with the latest Ghostbusters or even Captain Marvel?
Brie Larson has said some things that in an earlier age, people would be going what?

Maybe the same movement affected Mass Effect: Andromeda?
Even Dr. Who with the new female doctor has problems too.

I have declared Star wars dead to myself. After watching, "A new hope." I was already smelling the stink of a dying franchise. Then I saw reviews on the last jedi, and I decided that Star Wars was dead to me. What they did to Luke was an abomination. A guy who was always hopeful. Heck, he even had hope for a nasty dad who cut off his hand! Then they turned him into some bitter old man sucking on some alien creature's tits. Why would they do such a thing? I've watched a lot of the movies, and even the prequels with their crappy dialog. But this was the last straw.

It seems like there have been terrible things done in entertainment media and the chickens have come home to roost, but the guilty and innocent are being crapped on at the same time.

I might be combining a bunch of unrelated things together or not.
Apologies if this came out ranty.

That is an exceptionally bad rewrite of a great character, but it's too unappealing and blatant (crossing my fingers as I say this) to take people in.

The usual interpretation of "strong female character" is bad in a more subtle way: "write strong female characters" is taken to mean "write women who are masculine, not women who are feminine." So the message becomes that being feminine is bad, but that's okay, because women can become good by acting more masculine. This is actually the ultimate in misogyny.

Hoo boy. I know this topic is getting tagged with “Controversial” without even having finished it.

I don't see how. Rey is shit and they've ruined Leila in more recent work. I won't even get into talking about Admiral Gender Studies. It's painful how bad these hacks are at their job.

Wonder if bits and pieces apply to MLP as well. While not exactly a male/female issue, I do take a lot of umbrage and actually stopped watching the series because I've encountered one too many episodes that make character A look good by exaggerating, and sometimes reverting character development of characters B, C and D. That or have them grab the idiot ball too hard.

Get woke, go broke.

This is easy enough to explain - they've boxed themselves into an N of 1. Luke, Han, Chewie, even 3P0 and R2 - they're all dudes. Or not significantly different from the default, which is "dude". No matter what any one of them do, it can never be read as "this is how all dudes act" unless they all line up to do it. But Leia? Who else has she got?

This is part of the reason the Bechdel "Test" is even a thing. If you get multiple female characters in a scene together, they're not stuck being judged as a singular deviance from the perfect default dude. They can be different, work together, and succeed without being perfect.

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