Rey Skywalker is one of the worst Star Wars characters put to screen -- and, no, it isn’t because she’s a girl. The more franchises come and go in the modern era, the more patterns become clear. Recently, “strong female protagonists” are a popular flavor. This is not meant to be a sexist statement, but a number of the characters born of this mindset aren’t very compelling. The aforementioned Rey is a prime example. She has little obstacles to overcome, and her execution of overcoming said obstacles is sloppy because she has to succeed. But she is not alone. Another from The Mandalorian is Kara Dune. We get just enough background to understand her basic motivation, which are broken for reasons undisclosed from the audience. So aside from her lack of personality Kara is just another character who blasts things, and honestly has no purpose beyond carrying Mando’s guns for him and being a female protagonist. And, no, the reason for this lack of complexity isn’t because they are women, as plenty of other fictional characters prove (see Star Wars’ original heroine, Princess Leia, or Shallan from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive), but rather due to the perception of them as women, primarily by male writers. To further explain, when Rey was first revealed at the announcement of The Force Awakens, she was described as a “strong female lead.” Great! We can always use some more of those, but women are people, just like everybody else, and should be deserving of the same treatment as every other character. When a female character is written, their gender shouldn’t define them. The mindset shouldn’t be “awesome girl”, but rather “awesome and a girl”. If more characters were born in this light, the divide between genders would wane until eventually it disappeared. We would no longer get bland characters solely defined by their gender, whilst also receiving better characters of both sexes in equal part.
1 Comment
Jabba says...
12/26/2020 05:30:55 am
Twi’leks make the best dancers
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMcRae Walker, an 20-year-old writer and lover of many dorky topics. Archives
September 2022
Categories |
Proudly powered by Weebly