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I haven't successfully pried myself out of the Star Wars pit of despair. So have some links:
Rey at Risk. This post points out the potential problems for Rey as a leading woman within the Star Wars franchise, both with storylines and the marketing for The Force Awakens, and with LucasFilm's history of undermining its female characters. Written in early 2016, the writer successfully predicted (no doubt to his dismay) a lot of the problems with Rey in The Last Jedi.
Follow-up post Rey at risk revisited.
That's two posts about Rey and the problems with her story within LucasFilm. So here's one about Finn: Finn as an everyman? How about no? (Connecting thought: my entire family thought that episode 7 was hinting at Finn being force-sensitive.)
Tying this back to my own thoughts: I'm rewatching the Star Wars prequels with a new fan, and it occurs to me that some of the racism in episode 1 was mostly invisible on the page; the biggest problem I can point to (as a very white person, to make that clear) were the accents in conjunction with character design. The Gungans (especially Jar Jar Binks) and their broadly cartoonish "comical negro" sound, the Yellow Peril Asian accents and appearances of the Trade Federation aliens, and Watto's big nose and Yiddish accent.
In contrast, episode 8's most noticeable "this is a bad idea in part because of race" moments were within the script: Finn getting zapped with electricity twice, and Finn's recovery from his physical injuries being framed as a comical series of moments.
To clarify: taking the man who was established as the male lead in the previous movie and then framing his recovery from heroic injuries as comic relief (hitting his head twice, falling out of his bed in sickbay, running around the base in a leaking bacta-suit) is an absolute insult; electro-shocking characters for the alleged comedy within those moments is also insulting and foolish; and those choices are even worse considering that Finn is played by a black man. The script was written in 2016 and there's just no excuse for it.
And let's not forget the writing mess for Poe Dameron in episode 8.
On a lighter note, here's a short (7 minutes) video: How Star Wars The Last Jedi Should Have Ended. There's apparently a whole series of these videos for various popular films; they use the initials HISHE (how it should have ended).
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Book rec: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish is fascinating. I have a feeling that Ester Velasquez is going to be a sticky sort of character - the kind of character you remember long after details of a story have slipped away. I had various amounts of frustration with the present-day narration of Aaron and Helen, but Ester - a Portuguese Jewish woman living in London in the 1600s - was endlessly interesting, and the way her story unfolded was gorgeously done.
TV: The Good Place ended its second season with neither a bang nor a whimper but with a "Hot diggity dog!" I'm looking forward to season three.
Rey at Risk. This post points out the potential problems for Rey as a leading woman within the Star Wars franchise, both with storylines and the marketing for The Force Awakens, and with LucasFilm's history of undermining its female characters. Written in early 2016, the writer successfully predicted (no doubt to his dismay) a lot of the problems with Rey in The Last Jedi.
Follow-up post Rey at risk revisited.
That's two posts about Rey and the problems with her story within LucasFilm. So here's one about Finn: Finn as an everyman? How about no? (Connecting thought: my entire family thought that episode 7 was hinting at Finn being force-sensitive.)
Tying this back to my own thoughts: I'm rewatching the Star Wars prequels with a new fan, and it occurs to me that some of the racism in episode 1 was mostly invisible on the page; the biggest problem I can point to (as a very white person, to make that clear) were the accents in conjunction with character design. The Gungans (especially Jar Jar Binks) and their broadly cartoonish "comical negro" sound, the Yellow Peril Asian accents and appearances of the Trade Federation aliens, and Watto's big nose and Yiddish accent.
In contrast, episode 8's most noticeable "this is a bad idea in part because of race" moments were within the script: Finn getting zapped with electricity twice, and Finn's recovery from his physical injuries being framed as a comical series of moments.
To clarify: taking the man who was established as the male lead in the previous movie and then framing his recovery from heroic injuries as comic relief (hitting his head twice, falling out of his bed in sickbay, running around the base in a leaking bacta-suit) is an absolute insult; electro-shocking characters for the alleged comedy within those moments is also insulting and foolish; and those choices are even worse considering that Finn is played by a black man. The script was written in 2016 and there's just no excuse for it.
And let's not forget the writing mess for Poe Dameron in episode 8.
On a lighter note, here's a short (7 minutes) video: How Star Wars The Last Jedi Should Have Ended. There's apparently a whole series of these videos for various popular films; they use the initials HISHE (how it should have ended).
Book rec: The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish is fascinating. I have a feeling that Ester Velasquez is going to be a sticky sort of character - the kind of character you remember long after details of a story have slipped away. I had various amounts of frustration with the present-day narration of Aaron and Helen, but Ester - a Portuguese Jewish woman living in London in the 1600s - was endlessly interesting, and the way her story unfolded was gorgeously done.
TV: The Good Place ended its second season with neither a bang nor a whimper but with a "Hot diggity dog!" I'm looking forward to season three.