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My name is Beth Winter, and I am a Star Wars geek
First, scans (or rather photos, since I still don't have a functioning scanner) from The Art of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. I had to skim it quickly in order not to be spoiled, and still managed to come out with some ouch-major-plot-pointage, but them's the breaks. Meanwhile, I picked some of the ideas that DIDN'T make it into the movie:
I own all the Art of Star Wars books for the prequels, and since the first one the designers always wanted to design the secondary baddie as a female. I'm particularly fond of the Phantom Menace designs for a "Sith Witch", but female Grievous isn't bad at all, and neither is evil!Amidala (note the Sith-red highlights in her hair). Alas, once again the villain is male.
While Hayden's grown up nicely indeed, the concept art for his costumes is even better. The long hair was supposed to bring up memories of Qui-Gon, while the dark outfit is basically an all-human Vader image. I love how iconic it is - the perfect dark lord.
I understand that having Han Solo on the Wookiee world, being raised by Chewbacca's parents, would have raised even more groans than making Jango Fett a major character in AOTC, but...
Oh, who am I kidding. Little Han is freaking adorable <3
And while I'm posting Star Wars:
Females in the Star Wars universe
Star Wars, like Lord of the Rings, is a modern attempt at mythology. It reaches back to the fairytale conventions, with knights and princesses and Dark Lords. With one key difference: in LOTR, the lack of important female characters (Arwen the housewife, Galadriel thecoward hypocrite, Eowyn the drama queen) is a discord with me. In SW canon (because I don't read Extended Universe, and I'm most definitely NOT a Mara Jade fan), even the fact the token females are respectively a Queen and a Princess, I'm perfectly fine with it. The hell?
SW females play the roles given them by fairy-tale conventions: they're royalty, they are on the side of good, they fall in love with their rescuers. But at the same time, they take those stereotypes to the logical conclusion. Royalty means power and pride, and so they stand up to the dangers, they don't give up. They perform their role without losing personal dignity or taking the first chance to give control over to a male.
That's what I like most about Padme and Leia: they're strong. When I think of them, I see Leia back-talking Vader, Padme in the Senate. And at the same time, Lucas allows them to be human in private. I always loved that scene in ROTJ in the Ewok village, where Leia's vulnerability was emphasised by her hair falling down freely. Yes, they don't pilot starfighters or use lightsabers - because they're politicians, not pilots or Jedi. You don't have to cause physical damage to prove you're not a doormat. Queen, Senator, Rebellion Leader - those are all positions of power. They're the ones who tell the pilots and the Jedi whose arse to kick. And they're not overly sexualized either - the only instances of that are Padme's leather outfit in AOTC, explainable by her subconscious yelling "hello, hot Jedi to be seduced here!", and Leia's bikini, which I find a great visual way of showing how Jabba degrades her, by only valuing her body.
As I mentioned above, since the first prequel there's been the idea of a female Sith. Now that the third one's wrapped up, we know that won't happen. And I think this, too, goes back to the fairytale roots of Star Wars. When you have an evil Queen, she has to be the main villain of a story. With a well-rounded male and female main villain, you have either a lovers, siblings or parent-child dynamic, and all of those mean that the villain's image is no longer black and white, which in turn means he cannot be punished for his deeds outright. That's why Anakin, with his love for his children still in his heart, had to be redeemed. Male villains, it's much easier to treat as cannon-fodder.
Apart from the main cast, take the secondary characters. Even in the original trilogy - and remember the date of its making, before the politically-correct eighties and nineties got into swing - Mon Mothma's the head Rebel, which is hard to beat. There are a lot more females in the prequels: Aurra Singh and Zam Wesell are both bad-ass bounty hunters. Shmi is the mother archetype, yes, but still manages to influence the fate of the galaxy through her influence on Anakin. Padme has an entourage of devoted handmaidens, who can both blast you into oblivion and make up all those hairstyles.
No wonder I'm much more interested in writing and reading SW-gen than Tolkien-gen ;)
...I need a Star Wars icon.
I own all the Art of Star Wars books for the prequels, and since the first one the designers always wanted to design the secondary baddie as a female. I'm particularly fond of the Phantom Menace designs for a "Sith Witch", but female Grievous isn't bad at all, and neither is evil!Amidala (note the Sith-red highlights in her hair). Alas, once again the villain is male. While Hayden's grown up nicely indeed, the concept art for his costumes is even better. The long hair was supposed to bring up memories of Qui-Gon, while the dark outfit is basically an all-human Vader image. I love how iconic it is - the perfect dark lord. I understand that having Han Solo on the Wookiee world, being raised by Chewbacca's parents, would have raised even more groans than making Jango Fett a major character in AOTC, but...Oh, who am I kidding. Little Han is freaking adorable <3
And while I'm posting Star Wars:
Females in the Star Wars universe
Star Wars, like Lord of the Rings, is a modern attempt at mythology. It reaches back to the fairytale conventions, with knights and princesses and Dark Lords. With one key difference: in LOTR, the lack of important female characters (Arwen the housewife, Galadriel the
SW females play the roles given them by fairy-tale conventions: they're royalty, they are on the side of good, they fall in love with their rescuers. But at the same time, they take those stereotypes to the logical conclusion. Royalty means power and pride, and so they stand up to the dangers, they don't give up. They perform their role without losing personal dignity or taking the first chance to give control over to a male.
That's what I like most about Padme and Leia: they're strong. When I think of them, I see Leia back-talking Vader, Padme in the Senate. And at the same time, Lucas allows them to be human in private. I always loved that scene in ROTJ in the Ewok village, where Leia's vulnerability was emphasised by her hair falling down freely. Yes, they don't pilot starfighters or use lightsabers - because they're politicians, not pilots or Jedi. You don't have to cause physical damage to prove you're not a doormat. Queen, Senator, Rebellion Leader - those are all positions of power. They're the ones who tell the pilots and the Jedi whose arse to kick. And they're not overly sexualized either - the only instances of that are Padme's leather outfit in AOTC, explainable by her subconscious yelling "hello, hot Jedi to be seduced here!", and Leia's bikini, which I find a great visual way of showing how Jabba degrades her, by only valuing her body.
As I mentioned above, since the first prequel there's been the idea of a female Sith. Now that the third one's wrapped up, we know that won't happen. And I think this, too, goes back to the fairytale roots of Star Wars. When you have an evil Queen, she has to be the main villain of a story. With a well-rounded male and female main villain, you have either a lovers, siblings or parent-child dynamic, and all of those mean that the villain's image is no longer black and white, which in turn means he cannot be punished for his deeds outright. That's why Anakin, with his love for his children still in his heart, had to be redeemed. Male villains, it's much easier to treat as cannon-fodder.
Apart from the main cast, take the secondary characters. Even in the original trilogy - and remember the date of its making, before the politically-correct eighties and nineties got into swing - Mon Mothma's the head Rebel, which is hard to beat. There are a lot more females in the prequels: Aurra Singh and Zam Wesell are both bad-ass bounty hunters. Shmi is the mother archetype, yes, but still manages to influence the fate of the galaxy through her influence on Anakin. Padme has an entourage of devoted handmaidens, who can both blast you into oblivion and make up all those hairstyles.
No wonder I'm much more interested in writing and reading SW-gen than Tolkien-gen ;)
...I need a Star Wars icon.
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And I love your thoughts on female characters.
Gina
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*shudders*
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Gina
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And thanks.
Gina
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*revels in her collection of SW icons*
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I adore Padme's outfits in ROTS. Talk about maternity fashions - they're both gorgeous and accomodate her condition perfectly.
*envies like WHOA*
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Did I mention that I'd dressing up as Amidala for the premiere? :P
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I can't even make it to the premiere, gotta play nice at the newspaper party.
(And besides, with my height the only people I can dress up as are Qui-Gon and Anakin :P)
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Apparently there's a female villain in the Clone Wars cartoon, which I still haven't seen. I am curious about it though because I've heard good things.
Leia's bikini, which I find a great visual way of showing how Jabba degrades her
Probably over-analysing here but something else I like about that is the fact that she turns it against him. She uses her chain to strangle him, if he hadn't degraded her like that, she probably wouldn't have been able to kill him.
They're the ones who tell the pilots and the Jedi whose arse to kick.
Don't forget that there are female jedi too. I did a happy dance of joy when that was made clear in the prequels. ;)
As for Tolkien's female characters, I think the frustrating thing is that the building blocks were there. He had foundations for interesting female characters but he just didn't bother to build on them. Galadriel is sketchy, Arwen is arm decoration, Luthien is idealised to the point of absurdity, Eowyn, argh. Eowyn. Not so much in the film but in the book I want to slap her around and tell her to cheer the fuck up.
Of course there is a problem with female SW characters too: They make Luke (the main hero, natch) look so. Freaking. WET. :p
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Eowyn would make sense if she was sixteen and wore too much eyeliner. I mean, come on.
They make Luke (the main hero, natch) look so. Freaking. WET.
Luke's problem is that he's in the same movies with Vader, Kenobi, Solo and Leia. Anyone would have that problem :P
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Your discussion of women in Star Wars was excellent, and you're right, I feel closer to the women in Star Wars than I do to those in Lord of the Rings.
if you need some Star Wars icons quickly, you are welcome to use mine. I have one of Anakin in progress but I haven't yet uploaded it, it's not quite done. I really do love the costume design they did for him. I broke down recently and bought two of the Star Wars Unleashed figures/statuettes that they sell, the detailing on them is quite amazing. This particular set featured Obi-Wan and Anakin and was meant to interlock together. They look like they're fighting, and lava is splashing all around them. Not sure where I am going to put it, my other figure of Obi-Wan is currently standing on top of my secondary computer at work, the primary computer supports a figure of the Witch King of Angmar. :-)
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I make my own icons, I just need to sit down and go through my pictures :) And OMG I need action figures... I think they have that set at the toystore in my neighbourhood mall, I just need to find the excuse to buy them :D
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That's easy, they keep away the computer-demons when perched on top of the CPU box. Of course, this doesn't explain why I have far more figures than PCs...
Buy them when you see them, they seem to be hard to find once sold out, I discovered that with the LOTR figures.
I'd love a bigger pic of young!Han, if it's not too much trouble. :-)
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Here you go. Sorry for the delay, it took a while to clear that account :/
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So far, the Witch-King has done a great job of keeping his PC clear of bugs and glitches. We'll see how Obi-Wan manages - he's got his lightsaber out, but the W-K has his Morgul-sword and his gigantic battle mace.
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My sheep baas. It's much scarier than it sounds, trust me.
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I had a toy horsie that whinnied and talked. It sounded like it was possessed, so I quite understand about the baa-ing sheep.
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Maybe that's why they didn't do it...
He looked so sulky I took the pic and made a sulking icon - I hope you don't mind.
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I'm so torn on SW women. On the one hand, when they're done, they're done damn well. On the other hand, they're given such cursory attention and limited roles in the series. Characters like Leia and Mon Mothma and even Padme have such presence and consistency and such strong parts to play in their worlds, and Shmi and Beru are sympathetic, intelligent characters who feel real, and more present in the movie for how grounded in reality they are. And, as you say, they give the minor characters such potentially interesting social roles, in the handmaidens, the Jedi, the pilots, the bar waitresses.
But female Jedi and female rebel pilots, even the dancing girls, they're so lost in the whole thing - they're onscreen, but there's more about them on the webpage than in the movies, and that feels like cheating to me. You don't get credit for good female secondary characters if they exist mainly in another media. And it does bother me that all the women who have roles are the gentle mothers and the feisty princesses. Had that been the case in one trilogy, I wouldn't have minded, but making it the case in two iterations, two generations, of the story makes those characters feel less like full characters to me, and more like stock types who fooled us once but then became obvious on the second go around.
The additional women brought in are given such short shrift. Padme's family, her sisters and mother and so on, were cut from EpII. Bultar Swan doesn't even get a name onscreen, let alone lines. Aurra Sing appears onscreen, but I don't think she gets a name or lines, either. Maybe Barriss Offee or Luminara Unduli will get a line or some Zam-Wesell-style action screentime in EpIII, but otherwise, they're little more than eye-candy. Which is so disappointing, because I'd love to see female Jedi participate, even if it's only to the level of Celia Imrie's EpI fighter pilot, or all the EpIV fighter pilots. Or a dancing girl given the amount of participation of Jabba's doorman there. Or get a name, the way Wedge Antilles, onscreen for all of ten seconds, gets a name. The women aren't even really full footsoldiers. Which disappoints, next to how good the fully and partially fleshed-out female characters are in SW. Even Mon Mothma's a limited secondary character, but such a damn good one, and a satisfying one. Jocasta Nu, perhaps, as well. But there's such a dearth of women in the first and second tiers, and a relegation of most of them to the realms of well-costumed extra.
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25 years down the line, I find there's a certain tokenism in the SW women which I don't find in Tolkien's. Each of Tolkien's women is an individual character with her own fully rounded personality. Galadriel - I have no idea where you're getting the idea of her hypocracy or cowardice from - began life as a warrior maid, fought Morgoth and Sauron for 7000 years, and eventually had to make the exact same renunciation of power Elrond did.
Eowyn is a woman seeking glory and immortality the only way her culture allows. Luthien does what none of the male characters can manage - defeats Morgoth (for a while). Melian is the one thing that stands between her country and annihilation, and she succeeds in doing it for 10,000 years, until her husband's stupid mistake brings them down.
Padme is really just Leia all over again. So I can't be persuaded that SW has more interesting female roles than Tolkien. It really only has one, recycled.
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And I'll friend back, too.
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And you know, I think RotS will influence everyone to write Vader fic :D I've got an epic in progress at present, set after RotJ as an AU, and it really is a ridiculously fun fandom to play in, no matter what Lucas did to episodes one and two and their dialogue :)
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