Star Wars on Trial (54 page)

The tragedy is that it did not have to be this way. Amidala and Leia could have been coherent, compelling, powerful characters. Their integrity need not have been compromised to meet the needs of the story; in fact, the story would have been more exciting and suspenseful with their full participation. Their competence need not have been undermined to glorify the males; heroes can each have their own strengths, admirable in their own ways. If as much attention had been spent on the women's personalities as was spent on their clothes, makeup and hair, their actions might have been tied together in fascinating character arcs. Amidala might have been the naive peace-lover who learned the hard way that a world without defenses is a world open to slaughter, might have crusaded for an army of the Republic and triumphed only to find herself duped, might have investigated the suspicious army to uncover its preprogrammed secret orders, might have warned the Jedi only to find she was too late, might have shot herself so Anakin could not turn her children to darkness, might have died a tragic hero's death. Leia might have been the lost leader of an obliterated planet who found a new identity among the Rebels as their head of intelligence, might have been painfully conditioned as a child to repress her Force abilities, might have sensed something breaking free inside her during her torture on the Death Star, might have fought these new instincts and sensations, which carried with them an awakened anger toward Bail, might have electrocuted herself on Cloud City to avoid a second round of torture by Vader, might have recruited Lando's aide into her intelligence network, might have discovered through him the new Death Star, might have faced her own crisis with anger when Luke told her the truth. The characters carry many exciting, unrealized possibilities, unfortunately, because the focus of George Lucas and the other writers was not on the female characters, who were undervalued, underdeveloped and undercut.

The greater tragedy is that these weaknesses are not limited to Star Wars. They surround us. They are more prominent and painful in Star Wars because these movies excel in so many other ways, and because George Lucas's fairy tale means so much to us. As I look at the poster on my wall, at the figure of the heroic woman crouched below the man, I dream about what might have been, "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..."

Jeanne Cavelos began her professional life as an astrophysicist, working in the Astronaut Training Division at NASAs Johnson Space Center. After earning her MFA in creative writing, she moved into a career in publishing, becoming a senior editor at Bantam Doubleday Dell, where she created and launched the Abyss imprint of psychological horror, for which she won the World Fantasy Award, and ran the science fiction/fantasy publishing program. Jeanne left New York to pursue her own writing career. Her books include the best-selling The Passing of the Techno-Mages trilogy (set in the Babylon 5 universe), the highly praised science books The Science of Star Wars and The Science of The X-Files and the anthology The Many Faces of Van Helsing. Her work has twice been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Jeanne is currently at work on a thriller about genetic manipulation, titled Fatal Spiral. Since she loves working with developing writers, Jeanne created and serves as director of Odyssey, an annual six-week summer workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Guest lecturers have included George R. R. Martin, Harlan Ellison, Terry Brooks, Jane Yolen and Dan Simmons. More information about Jeanne is on her Web site, www.jeannecavelos.com.

THE COURTROOM

DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover?

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: I'm on it, Your Honor. Ms. Cavelos, congratulations on an eloquent argument. Now. You are aware, are you not, that Princess Leia is-your argument notwithstanding-both popularly and critically regarded as the prototype of the female SF cinematic action hero, the direct ancestor of Ripley from the Alien films, and Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, to name only two. A number of subsequent filmmakers found Princess Leia an inspiration for their female heroes; I'm wondering where, in cinematic SF, you think Mr. Lucas should have looked for inspiration for his own. For example, how does Princess Leia stack up-forgive the pun-next to Dale Arden, for example? Or Captain Kirk's miniskirted secretary-er, that is, communications officer (yeah, right)Lieutenant Uhura? How many people do you think can even name the character (without looking it up, or having seen the film in the past month or so-no fair cheating, now) that Patricia Neal played in The Day the Earth Stood Still? How about the girl in Forbidden Planet? The title character's name in Attach of the 50 Ft. Woman? The doctor's girlfriend in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The innumerable adoring secretaries, lab assistants, wives, helpless love interests and assorted victims who are the only women to even have names at all in 98% of previous cinematic SF?

JEANNE CAVELOS: It's interesting that, except for Uhura, every example you give is from the 1950s or earlier. You're not really playing fair. Obviously the images of women in film changed a lot between the fifties and the seventies. Barbarella, nine years before Star Wars, reflected the independent, sexually liberated woman of the 1960s, while in the 1970s, Carrie revealed the dangers of oppressing female power. Before Star Wars, TV shows like Won der Woman, The Bionic Woman, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and Isis featured strong women heroes who weren't sidekicks, wives or secretaries. The times were changing, and women in SF/F were changing with them. Leia was not created in a vacuum.

While I agree that Leia has inspired both viewers and filmmakers, to call her the "ancestor" of Ripley is not accurate. While I'm not an expert on the origins of Alien, I know that the original script treated all characters as "unisex," not establishing whether they were male or female. The writers generally imagined them all as males. So to say that the writers were inspired by Leia is not true. They weren't thinking about creating a gutsy female character at all. The decision to make Ripley female came late in the process, when the head of 20`h Century Fox suggested the switch to create a stronger emotional effect. Alien is basically a horror movie, and women often serve as main characters in horror movies-for many reasons, including the fact that women may seem more vulnerable and may evoke stronger emotions in the viewer. I believe both Ripley and Sarah Connor arose out of this horror movie tradition, and embody a mix of the endangered/terrified horror heroine (like Laurie Strode in Halloween) with the tough/resourceful SF hero.

Those caveats aside, I agree that Leia marked a major breakthrough for women heroes in film. George Lucas's creation was amazing and groundbreaking. Before 1977, few women in film fired a gun-the symbol of male power-and those few who did generally fired once, missed, dropped the gun and started sobbing. Superheroes like Wonder Woman and Isis didn't use guns; they operated in a rarefied, "separate but equal" universe where a woman could triumph without using such crude weapons. Leia, on the other hand, played by the same rules as the boys and used the same weapons (though she never got a lightsaber-talk about symbols of male power ...). Even more striking, she stood up to the men. While Colonel Wilma Deering-a precursor to Leia in the 1930s serials George Lucas so loved-outranked Captain Buck Rogers, she didn't insult and belittle him. There was a sort of tacit admission that he was superior, being a male hero, despite his inferior rank. Yet in the original Star Wars, Leia clearly believes she knows best and isn't afraid to let everyone know it. And the kicker is-in that first movie-she's almost always right. The damsel-indistress stereotype is given a quick, no-frills burial when Leia says, "This is some rescue," grabs a gun and takes over the escape. As a seventeen-year-old girl, I was thrilled to see a female hero talking tough, shooting a gun and actually hitting something. George Lucas blazed a trail with Leia that many writers have followed, and all viewers who like seeing independent, self-reliant female characters owe him a debt of gratitude.

It's in large part because he was initially so successful at creating this compelling image of a strong female hero that my disappointment is so great. If she had never been strong, then she would have simply been one of the crowd. But she showed something more, something amazing. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. George Lucas weakened Leia as the series continued, taking away her power, her good judgment, her skills and her gun, and turning her into just another one of the weak women we've seen countless times in SE While movies like Alien and The Terminator were making the next quantum leap for the female hero (and then another quantum leap after that with their sequels), Star Wars was moving backward, reinforcing old stereotypes that it had at first eschewed. While we now have characters like Trinity in The Matrix and the Bride in Kill Bill, Star Wars has moved even further backward, with Amidala the woman dying of a broken heart, a cliche that was old sixty years ago.

MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: In nitpicking Leia's decision making style, I wonder if you might stop to consider that her intuition is backed by the Skywalker touch with the Force-which has been specifically shown, in her father's case, to involve prophecy. Thus, her actions on Cloud City are perfectly reasonable-nothing else she would have done could change the outcome, and telling Han it's a bad decision is nothing more nor less than the truth, yes? In fact, her power explains nearly every cavil you've made. For example: given that her intuition is backed by the Force, it's a reasonable interpretation to say that in making contact with the Ewoks, she realizes instinctively that they will be the key to the Rebel victory, and that attempting to establish friendly relations with them-by befriending Wicket-is, strategically, the best move she has available at the time, isn't it?

JEANNE CAVELOS: Whether Anakin has powers of prophecy is arguable. Many Star Wars viewers believe Palpatine planted Anakin's dreams of Amidala's death to manipulate him. But to focus on the subject of Leia's decision making, you have my condolences. In the attempt to make her seem wise and helpful, you've contorted yourself into more knots than a Twister champion. If Leia has a "bad feeling" about Cloud City, then she should investigate, not change her clothes and braid her hair. The Force doesn't offer up neat pronouncements like "Nothing you can do will prevent the bad thing that's about to happen, so you might as well give yourself a makeover." Anakin certainly does not accept the idea that his dream will come true no matter what he does; he tries to change it. Leia's character, as established in most of Episode IV, is not the kind to sit back and give up, no matter how bad her intuition might tell her things are.

If the Force provides her with some prophetic hotline to the future, then one thing it absolutely should tell her is that Alderaan will be destroyed. Yet I don't see her shrugging her shoulders and telling Tarkin to fire away. She does everything in her power to stop the destruction of her home.

Thus at Cloud City, she should do the same. If she has a feeling they are going to end up guests of honor at Darth Vader's Torture Party, then she should do everything in her power to get them away from Cloud City. How about booking passage on another ship? She could sell Han's services to the lonely female miners to raise money. Any intuition would only increase her motivation to act. (And while we're on the subject, if Leia has strong intuition, why does she kiss her brother? And why doesn't she sense Vader is her father?)

On the Ewok moon, a strong intuition would again provide more motivation for Leia to act. If she has a sense that the Ewoks are key to the Rebel victory, then she should be much more proactive in gathering intelligence on their abilities and gaining their help. Standing around saying you're lost and eating a granola bar aren't really effective ways of cementing an alliance on a short schedule. Similarly, she fails to work toward an alliance once she gets to the Ewok village, instead giving herself another makeover. C-3PO does more to gain their help-and that's about the biggest insult I can give to any character, so I'll stop there.