Author: Sarah Dempster

Victory Lap – Star Wars’ Intersectionality Problem

Posted on December 28, 2015by

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Editor’s note: twice a year I give the gang a week off and run the Second Look feature, which normally highlights older pieces I think deserve a little extra attention. This time, just to mix things up, we’re going to revisit five of our most popular pieces from the past year or so and reflect on why they were so successful and how their authors feel about them in retrospect. First up is our newest staff member Sarah Dempster, who roared out of the gate last summer with her piece on Rogue One and intersectionality. – Mike

Star Wars fans have pretty much been exclusively focused on The Force Awakens during the past three months so it’s easy to forget that this time in 2016 we’ll be focused on Rogue One, the first of the Star Wars spinoff movies. The full cast list, as well as the first official cast photo, was released earlier this year during the annual D23 expo, which of course set the internet buzzing with excitement. However, it also reopened the discussion of representation within the Star Wars universe, especially along the lines of gender and race. Though everyone was excited (and for good reason) about the racial diversity of the cast, many were quick to point out that Felicity Jones is apparently the only main female character in the movie. Once again, Star Wars fans had to choose between racial diversity and gender diversity.

I have to confess, I was rather blown away by the response to this piece. There’s no shortage of thinkpieces on representation in Star Wars, but I suppose not many of them had tackled the subject from an intersectional point of view. It inspired a great deal of discussion within the comments and on social media, which is always gratifying as a writer. And it’s important to keep having these conversations about representation and diversity, even if (at times) it feels like retreading the same worn territory. A recent Vulture article revealed that Captain Phasma was originally written as male and that the idea to switch her gender to female happened around the same time as fandom was criticizing the cast for only having one female character. Whether this online brouhaha was directly responsible for the gender switch is impossible to say, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

Judging by certain Amazon reviews of Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath (more specifically, the gay characters he includes) as well as certain reactions to John Boyega’s Finn in less savory parts of the Internet, there’s still a lot of close minded views out there. Star Wars has the chance to change minds and push a more progressive vision of a galaxy far far away, and here’s hoping they’ll take that chance. They’ve made strides (the casts of Rogue One, The Force Awakens, and Rebels are definite steps forward) but let’s work towards being inclusive on multiple axes.

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The Force Awakens’ Over-Reliance on Nostalgia

Posted on December 22, 2015by A Certain Point of View

chewiewerehome

This is not a spoiler-free review so proceed at your own risk.

Throughout the buildup to The Force Awakens, the phrase “Chewie, we’re home” summed up the sentiment that had everyone, myself included, excited for the return to the galaxy far, far away. The movie promised it would be an exciting new story that would return us to our childhoods and take us to that moment when we first discovered the magic that was Star Wars.

But as I walked out of the theater after my first viewing, my first thought was “…that’s it?” The post-Return of the Jedi narrative is supposed to be the Great Unknown of the Star Wars fandom. Unlike the prequel trilogy, we had no idea what was going to happen. Episode VII was the first step into this larger world and was the start of a story for a new generation of heroes. So why did I feel so underwhelmed?

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Rebels Revisited: Promises, Expectations, and the Season So Far

Posted on December 14, 2015by , , and

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Mike: For over a year now, Star Wars Rebels has been Lucasfilm’s biggest product. Sure, excitement for The Force Awakens has always been another animal altogether, but until now, it’s mostly been an abstract item that can be teased and speculated about but not directly engaged with—and certainly not on a weekly basis. With Rebels officially on its midseason hiatus, it finally takes a definitive backseat to the film, and for many, permanent second-class status. If you were on Twitter Wednesday night, you had a front-row seat for this process, as mere minutes after “Legacy” ended a new Chinese trailer appeared and quickly swallowed up nearly all Rebels discussion—this week’s poignant long-term ramifications (and Clancy Brown) be damned.

As major television series go, Rebels is still young; it may have several seasons yet to develop its characters and relationships in a way that rivals the depth of a Finn or a Rey—it’s certainly got much more running time to work with. But if it’s going to punch its weight in a franchise that’s releasing one movie a year for the foreseeable future, Rebels can’t afford to coast on our existing goodwill. As much fun as I’ve had following the show so far, I have to admit to feeling somewhat underwhelmed by “Legacy”, especially as compared to last year’s midseason finale “Gathering Forces”. Maybe it was the return to Lothal, or the lack of a feeling of danger from the Empire and the Inquisitors (in their minute or so of screentime) compared to the confrontation with the Grand Inquisitor at Fort Anaxes, or maybe I was just bummed by the apparent cliffhanger (“Gathering Forces” was the conclusion of a two-parter, while “Legacy” appears to be the first half of one), but looking at the whole show up to this point I can’t help but see certain aspects as a step backward. Read More

Rebels Revisited: And the Children Too

Posted on December 4, 2015by , and Feature Articles

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Ben: Which is worse; a gruesome fate fully realized on the screen, or a future that’s only implied and never stated? As a narrative device, it’s almost certainly the threat rather than the act that’s more effective. While there is certainly an amount of narrative punch to be had in spelling out just how terrible the end of someone’s story winds up being, many more worse things can spring from the imagination of the audience. It’s why horror movies with low budgets can still be just as frightening by not showing exactly what might be killing its character.

That’s what makes the rules of Standards and Practices toward kids’ programs often counter-intuitive. Any potentially traumatizing acts are forbidden to be shown, so the show’s creators will get around that by having the act happen, but placing it off-screen or out of view, or even just relegating it to being mentioned. But a child’s imagination is a fertile thing, and seeing the act has little to do with actually being terrified by it. The sounds, hints and implications are enough.

Rebels very knowingly steps into this territory with “Future of the Force”. The whole plot of the episode revolves around the kidnapping of infants too young to even speak. Whatever fate they might suffer once in the hands of the Inquisitors is never actually said (the closest we get is the Seventh Sister’s declaration “Who doesn’t want to be a mother?”), much the same as this episode’s predecessor, The Clone Wars’ “Children of the Force”. To this point in canon, we don’t know exactly what fate or fates might await the unfortunate infants. But as previously stated, what we can imagine might be even more terrible than what is true.

So let’s do some imagining, shall we? Read More

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Speculation

Posted on November 11, 2015by A Certain Point of View

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With roughly a month and a half left until the premiere of The Force Awakens, promotion is ramping up and speculation is running wild. And while there’s more BB-8s than you can shake a stick at, one character has been conspicuously absent so far: Luke Skywalker.

J.J. Abrams is well known for keeping movie plots and key characters close to the chest. He loves to talk up the “mystery box” concept and is a proponent of the idea that the mystery is more exciting than the revelation. And all this secrecy has led many Star Wars fans to wonder if perhaps Luke didn’t become the Jedi Master we all expected but perhaps…fell to the dark side instead.

There would definitely be a certain poignancy in having the Big Bad of the sequel trilogy be the former celebrated hero of the original trilogy. The story of Star Wars is about the struggle between good and evil; more specifically it is about how everyone has the capacity for both good and evil and that it is your choices that matter. Anakin and Luke both follow the hero’s journey but come to wildly different endings, one tragic and one heroic. They act as foils to one another and show how little choices eventually build up into something good or something evil. But to say that Luke will be evil in The Force Awakens is, I think, a misunderstanding not only of Luke’s character development but also a misunderstanding of the type of hero Luke Skywalker is.

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