[infowarrior1]

(12-16-2015 09:20 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

Double post: I've had a chance to think about it, and I'm probably downgrading this film a couple of notches now that the afterglow has faded.

This film was written about 2-3 years ago, when grrrl-power and rape culture propaganda were at their height. It shows, and it had its desired reaction. When I checked on Murdoch's news.com this morning there was a long, gloating feminist article about all the "empowered" things Rey does in this movie -- but a couple of hours later I've checked back and it's disappeared, I'm not sure whether for the ideological bent or because it contains a shitload of spoilers.

Basically, Rey is not only turned into a superhero who don't need no man around, she's made into a hypercompetent superhero as well. It is a glaring addition -- and even the women I spoke to tentatively about this rolled their eyes when I described what the character does.

I've been sipping from the Last Psychiatrist cup a lot recently, so I've been ruminating on this: exactly why would Disney have taken this sort of risk on an IP this big? Saying 'BECAUSE IT'S A FEMINIST PLOT TO CHANGE THE NARRATIVE' is a bit too simplistic: Disney believes in money, not vaginas. They spent four billion on Star Wars. This film would not have gotten anywhere near a silver screen unless that script had been combed over again and again by Disney's marketing consultants and upper management making sure it was in a form they thought people would swallow in vast numbers.

One conclusion I come to is: they took this route because Joseph Campbell's hero cycle is more or less dead as a storytelling device for men in Hollywood. Dear old Christopher Vogler's book The Writer's Journey has finally hit its logical endpoint where it was being used so frequently and so ineptly that Hollywood -- or big films anyway -- have to discard it, parody it, or disguise it because it's too predictable. And because men are turning away from movie theatres in larger and larger numbers, they have to desperately broaden their base.

Had Abrams gone with a more standard male protagonist who slowly learns his secret abilities under a competent teacher as the movie goes on, the movie would have been derided as cliche and derivative. And whether feminists like it or not this film has a primary target audience of young men and teenagers. Even last night, at a midnight screening, it was overwhelmingly young guys who turned up to watch this, not women.

But here's where I get to a very dark and sad pass: making a hypercompetent female protagonist is not an overt attempt to change the narrative in favour of women. I don't doubt that more indie or overt political movies are designed to do precisely that. Rather, I take a contrarian view: the female casting and the story imposed on that female protagonist are troubling commentaries on where our women lie right now.

Let's start with the basic proposition that in order to make a lot of people sit and enjoy your film, you have to give them characters with whom they identify. David Farland makes a merciless (and singular) discussion of this harsh reality in the context of novels: in virtually all bestsellers, the book features escape from ordinary life and features a wide cast of variable ages and of both genders. Harry Potter does this best: the cast ranges from fucking ancient types like Dumbledore down to prepubescent teenagers, and as a result there's a wide audience appeal. The same goes for films.

So. What tranche of audience members was Rey meant to appeal to? I mean, like any other character, she is in there because the writers hope or expect a large number of women will resonate with her; her prominence as a character means her circumstances and basic attitude have to mirror or reflect a large portion of the target female audience.

Rey is a twentysomething female loner sitting on a dead-end planet with no family or kids, low woman on the totem pole and just surviving (and not well) in a brutally capitalist system, with no father or mother identified to us, but who is very good at a tiny subset of tech-related maintenance activities (while being almost delusionally committed to waiting around "for her family", literally marking the time).

The writers then take the female audience viewer through a life-changing journey by proxy, playing to such women's self-aggrandising fantasies that they can master something the moment they touch it, learn Force powers without any prior training, and (eventually) leave the boy who has been risking his life to save her firmly in the friendzone (and ultimately, on another planet entirely).

As TLP says: if you're seeing it, the ad is for you. Movies -- especially ones like Star Wars -- are fundamentally about escapism. They are about fooling a person at an unconscious level that they are the person in the film.

Rey, then, is not a figure of female empowerment. Quite the opposite: she is JJ Abrams' barometer of Western women -- purposeless women living hand-to-mouth lives with no deeper or spiritual purpose to their existence, women so starved of a purpose they have to be fed myths of hypercompetence and instant mastery to get through their days without cutting themselves. This is the lot that feminism has left us.

If someone knew of her beauty. I don't think this woman would be low on the totem pole for long if the actress is any indication.

As a wife of some powerful male she would end up quite high status before long.

But then that would be sexist and misogynist.