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Post by Optimus on Dec 28, 2016 21:34:46 GMT -5
Jesus Christ. I imagine these are some of the same recreationally outraged Regressives who lost their shit at Cinnabon earlier today too.
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Post by Christine on Dec 28, 2016 21:41:23 GMT -5
Just so long as we don't lose our shit over them losing their shit, we should be fine.
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Post by robeiae on Dec 28, 2016 21:42:38 GMT -5
More seriously, I just read that piece at NY Mag. And I think it's overstating the implications in Martin's comment. And frankly, it's missing the boat on the Leia-as-sex-symbol angle, as well. She was a sex symbol from the get-go, specifically because she wasn't one-dimensional, because she wasn't a helpless princess who needed rescuing. As soon as the boys showed up, she took charge. That's what made her uber-hot in the nerdom of the seventies (which frankly is very different than the nerdom of today): she was attractive and a bad ass, a combo repeated in short order by Sigourney Weaver in Alien. Prior to that, there was what? A hapless Farah Fawcett in Logan's Run? A series of scantily clad cave women? The non-talking eye candy of Nova in Planet of the Apes? Sci-fi was a man's world up until Leia and Ripley, imo. Sure, the slave-girl outfit was gratuitous jack-off material, but SNL did "Beach Blanket Bimbo from Outer Space" long before then...
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Post by Christine on Dec 28, 2016 22:12:03 GMT -5
The role of Princess Leia as an "active" character may have been advanced in some ways from previous films, but I disagree that she was a "bad ass." She still "succumbed" to men. Whether it was chained up in a bikini for the slug or overcome with kisses from Han Solo, despite her clear verbal protests. The Han Solo/Leia interaction was mentioned in another thread, but I'll leave this take on it here. Note that the piece isn't a criticism of how it was for Han and Leia, it's about how it came across. I can understand that Leia really did want Han and this was all some nuanced game where she was resisting, but she really wanted him, and he was seeing through her game, and taking her, but that's just not how it is in real life. At least, not most of the time. And these misconceptions from a movie are played out in real life, to the detriment of real people. In my opinion and in my experience, anyway.
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Post by robeiae on Dec 28, 2016 22:21:28 GMT -5
I can still recall some of her lines from the first film.
"Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way!"
"Somebody has to save our skins!"
And so forth.
Contrast her with the self-centered banter from Han, with the whines of Luke. She most definitely was a bad ass, at least in comparison to everyone else. She was also serious, she was also driven. And she was all of this things in a flowing white gown and hair buns. She didn't succumb to anyone in that first film. They all succumbed to her. It was her cause and she brought them over to it, in the final analysis. Without screwing them or promising to do so.
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Post by Rolling Thunder on Dec 28, 2016 22:27:06 GMT -5
Heh. I'm imagining the therapy Luke needed...
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Post by Christine on Dec 28, 2016 22:32:17 GMT -5
I'll grant she had more agency than a potted plant, and some clever lines. Yippee.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 23:01:32 GMT -5
Yeah, I'm on the Leia was a bad-ass side of things. She was a huge hero of mine as a kid -- and it wasn't because she was pretty. Actually, I didn't think she was particularly pretty when I was a kid (I appreciate her looks more now), and I always thought that hair-style of hers was ridiculous. I was responding to the character.
ETA:
As I recall, she managed to strangle Jabba the Hutt to death with a chain. That made a bigger impression on me than the gold bikini.
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Post by Optimus on Dec 28, 2016 23:20:47 GMT -5
And that was after she infiltrated his layer disguised as a bounty hunter and threatened to blow him and every else half to hell with a thermal detonator.
She also later became a general in charge of the entire Resistance.
Bad ass.
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Post by Christine on Dec 28, 2016 23:29:16 GMT -5
I suppose I'll need to watch again. My impressions from memory are quite different--Luke, Han, et al, were the heroes; Leia was a sideshow.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 23:39:46 GMT -5
Methinks you need to watch again.
It would probably please Carrie Fisher immensely that the bad-ass made a far deeper impression on me than the gold bikini.
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Post by Christine on Dec 28, 2016 23:48:57 GMT -5
I'd like to hear your take on the link I posted.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 28, 2016 23:55:28 GMT -5
Will look at it, but not tonight. 'Tis bedtime. I have been silly enough for one evening.
I shall return anon to bicker with, tyrannize over, taunt, and sexually harass you all.
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Post by Don on Dec 29, 2016 5:58:00 GMT -5
The Han Solo/Leia interaction was mentioned in another thread, but I'll leave this take on it here. Note that the piece isn't a criticism of how it was for Han and Leia, it's about how it came across. I can understand that Leia really did want Han and this was all some nuanced game where she was resisting, but she really wanted him, and he was seeing through her game, and taking her, but that's just not how it is in real life. At least, not most of the time. And these misconceptions from a movie are played out in real life, to the detriment of real people. In my opinion and in my experience, anyway. David Wong comes across in this article as an aging, raging metrosexual who hasn't gotten laid enough, and hopes that by admitting his powerlessness over his primitive urges and social conditioning, some women will take pity on him and take him to bed. Not only that, but apparently, in his long life, nobody has pointed out to him that movies are, you know, fantasies, and not prescriptions for living in the real world. FFS, people go around hosing each other with automatic weapons in the movies, but nobody takes that as appropriate behavior in society because they saw it on the big screen. And I'd bet big money that he's also in the "violent video games don't make people violent" camp. Yet apparently, sexual misconduct on the screen makes men into sexual predators. W.T.F.? There's a huge logical disconnect there. Not to mention that all through the article he's denying man's (and by extension, his own) agency, and he wears his collectivist attitude toward his whole gender right there on his sleeve. "Lots of guys do this and that and some other terrible thing, therefore all guys are predators." And it's all anecdotal, with not one shred of data to back it up. "I can't control myself at the sight of a bikini. It makes me want to furiously masturbate or rape somebody. And it's all the fault of conditioning that I have very little real control over." "Men can't help themselves because that's what they learned?" Srsly? Bullshit.
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Post by Christine on Dec 29, 2016 9:14:51 GMT -5
The thing is though, that we as a society have a solid grasp on the fact that killing is wrong. A movie with guns and murder doesn't cancel out that narrative. We also (I think) have a solid grasp on the fact that "real" (/s) rape is wrong. So the scene in Game of Thrones where Ramsey rapes Sansa doesn't make anyone think, hmmm, that looks like a proper way to interact with someone.
But then, we have this other narrative going on where the woman sort of wants to be vanquished and the man has to wear down her defenses and she really secretly loves it when he does that. It's like a game of sorts. It's seen as real, not fantasy. It's "romance." On both sides, I think. The part in the article where Wong mentions the girl who says how lame/unsexy it is that some guy asked her if he could kiss her? I had no fewer than ten conversations just like that when I was growing up. OMG, he asked me if he could kiss me... it was so awkward! Nevermind that the guy asks the girl if they can go on a date, asks the girl what she'd like to do on the date, asks the girl if he can pick her up, etc. But suddenly when it comes to sexual activities, it's lame to ask. Because a guy is supposed to intuitively know what the girl wants in this regard. And then add to that, "resistance" on the part of the girl is supposedly part of the game. It's the role of the girl to protest, but she really, secretly wants the guy to vanquish her.
Hey, I admit, I learned my "role" from this sort of thing. For a long time, I thought this was just the way it was supposed to be. Am I stupid for having thought this? Everyone around me thought it too. Were we all stupid?
Of course, there is such a thing as unlearning things. Thankfully. : )
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