Blog #1: Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Representation

            In 1977, a dynastic franchise was born. The space odyssey enchanted millions and seven films have been made already, with plans for nine total. The story of the fight against oppression in intergalactic arenas, however, was criticized for its lack of representation of black and woman characters. With only two main black characters (Lando Calrissian in the original, Mace Windu in the prequel) and two main woman characters (Princess Leia Organa in the original, Padmé Amidala in the prequel) (Greenberg, 2015), the previous six Star Wars films were seriously lacking. Critics have been vocal about the abhorrent lack of representation, and the 2015 film to start the sequel trilogy, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, addressed many concerns that the critics had, especially with the films’ two main stars being a black man and a woman, and including a tertiary star (like in the original six), who is a Hispanic Latino. The Force Awakens has laid the groundwork in the road to representation in Hollywood by presenting black and woman characters in a realistic light and in realistic proportion.

            In the original Star Wars films, Princess Leia (portrayed by Carrie Fisher) was essentially the only woman. This unfortunately is indicative of the entire science fiction industry. Women were basically outcast from the sci-fi scene and still struggle to get full representation. However, this does not exclude women from being sexualized; not even Star Wars is excluded. One of Leia’s most famous immortalizations is her in the gold bikini in The Return of the Jedi (1983) (Evans, 2015; Greenberg, 2015). In the prequel trilogy, Padmé Amidala (played by Natalie Portman) was the only main woman character. According to Evans (2015), by Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (2005), Portman was the only actress with a speaking role, and in the original trilogy, the five speaking women outside of Fisher had less than one hundred words combined. These issues are “symptomatic of much larger issues within Hollywood” (Evans, 2015). A USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism study from 2014 found that in big blockbuster films, women had 30.2% of 30,835 speaking roles (Evans, 2015). “A galaxy of strong women exists,” Greenberg (2015) says, “Yet they disappear when it comes to big-budget blockbusters.”

            The Force Awakens, to feminists’ delight, addressed many of their concerns about the new Star Wars trilogy. Daisy Ridley stars as Rey in the new film and embodies the protagonist role, which is usually taken on by a male actor, and she is supported by her male partner, Finn (portrayed by John Boyega) (James, 2015). There is even some speculation that Rey is a child to a Skywalker, and her as the protagonist aligns with the unconfirmed theory. According to Bradley (2016), “Rey is positioned to carry on the legacy of not one but two originally male protagonists [Luke Skywalker and Han Solo].” Casting Ridley in The Force Awakens concerned some, expecting her to be as sexualized as Leia and Padmé, but the film allowed Ridley to be a full action-movie character, not put in a box as a necessary woman: Ridley said in an interview, “It just so happens she’s a woman but she transcends gender. She’s going to speak to men and women” (Greenberg, 2015). Rey is allowed to be a person, and is good at what she does (a scavenger on Jakku, and then a valiant revolutionary). She is not sexualized, as she wears what any citizen of Jakku and basically what any Jedi would wear for the entire film (Greenberg, 2015). According to James (2015), she could “never be called the ‘love interest’ or even [a] supporting character.” She is so vital to the storyline of Star Wars that she is the only woman character to display use of the force (James, 2015), despite speculation about Leia’s untrained ability, being a Skywalker heir.

            However, Rey’s position in center stage for the film is crucial to the feminist standpoint (James, 2015). Her protagonist status is highlighted by her interrogation by Kylo Ren, the villain portrayed by Adam Driver. She uses a unique Jedi mind-blocking trick to deter the attack and turn the tables to defeat Kylo Ren for the time being, and it “shows her potential ability to follow in the footsteps of Jedi Masters like Luke Skywalker…” (James, 2015). Not only does Ridley hold the protagonist position, she completely owns it. Despite her taking the lead role, J.J. Abrams did not quit at casting Daisy Ridley to play Rey: the director cast three other women to play main roles: Carrie Fisher reprised her role for a fourth time, and Lupita Nyong’o played the CGI character Maz Kanata. After facing criticism about female characters still lacking in the new film, J.J. Abrams cast Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie as Stormtrooper commander, Captain Phasma, and augmented the gender balance in the film, plateauing it to six men and four women (James, 2015). Even Leia’s character is renewed in a new, well-rounded light. Although a strong character in the originals - a very empowered woman - she was still very sexualized. However, in the new film, no small detail is left out. Her title is changed, going from feminine ‘Princess’ to now accomplished ‘General,’ which shows that women can be represented based on their accomplishments, rather on their given conditions from birth (i.e. her inherited royalty and her womanhood) (James, 2015). As well, Fisher was allowed to age realistically, which is a rarity for women in Hollywood. With few exception, most women portrayed in Hollywood are almost exclusively in their twenties or maybe thirties. Abrams' and the collective production's understanding of full womanhood without stereotype allows for the realistic, wrinkly Carrie Fisher. As well, Abrams exactly doubled the number of female main roles in The Force Awakens from all original six movies, with few exception (such as Shmi Skywalker, Anakin’s mother, who reprises her role once, but would not be considered a main character), and the film passed the Bechtel Test (albeit barely), which, in cinema, is when “two named female characters talk about something other than men” (Greenberg, 2015). Included in the same article by Greenberg, the film also passed the Race Bechdel Test, in which two named characters of color talk about something other than white characters (2015), which has been fairly rare in recent films centered around black culture, such as the slave narratives of Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013), with the exception of the hugely successful biopic, Straight Outta Compton (2015).

            This problem extends into the entire sci-fi scene, and engulfs all of Hollywood, with either black characters being misrepresented or ignored altogether. It is a commonly preconceived perception that “casting black actors as lead characters could tank a movie at the box office” (Morrison, 2015). This stereotypic notion discourages directors and casting agents from hiring black actors and actresses for leading roles, and encourages the casting of white actors to play naturally, historically, or traditionally black figures or characters, as was done in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), which did not produce in the box office, despite casting Christian Bale to lead his Egyptian people and its multi-million dollar budget. Activism around the lack of accuracy encouraged by disregard for correct and just representation within Hollywood made a visually compelling and well-performed movie blunder. This has been traditional in Hollywood, with few exceptions, extending into even this year.

            However, The Force Awakens, with two of the three main characters being of color (Oscar Isaac, a Guatemalan and Cuban actor playing Resistance pilot Poe Dameron, and John Boyega, a Nigerian British actor portraying Stormtrooper-turned Resistance fighter, Finn), the film is well represented. Despite including just two black actors in the original six films (Billy Dee Williams portraying Calrissian in the original trilogy, and Samuel L. Jackson portraying Windu in the prequel trilogy) (Barksdale, 2015), or three if you count James Earl Jones’ powerful voiceover embodiment of Darth Vader in the original trilogy, The Force Awakens addressed many racial concerns. Abrams, according to Barksdale (2015), intentionally cast Boyega as Finn in an attempt to challenge the norm of whiteness in Hollywood. Again, Abrams augmented the number of black and other non-white characters in the film, including Mexican-Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o, who’s character has a similar setup as Jones’ voiceover, although Nyong’o’s character is digitally created, while a white man (David Prowse) replaced Jones in the armor, as called for in the characterization in the film.

            However, when the trailer was released, and a black Stormtrooper popped up on the screen, fans split in either support or opposition of a black Stormtrooper. Some embraced a black stormtrooper, considering it a step in the right direction, pushing media to allow accurate representation of black and non-white people. Others, however, were furious. The white fanboys that dominate the Hollywood sci-fi industry (Morrison, 2015) took to Twitter with the hashtag “BoycottStarWarsVII” (Greenberg, 2015), vowing to boycott the film if Boyega was not replaced. How many actually held to their word and boycotted after Boyega was not replaced is unknown, but despite any boycott, the film garnered $238 million in its opening weekend in North America (Greenberg, 2015), and has already generated $2 billion at the box office alone. Black science fiction fans interviewed about the film shared how excited they were about seeing a black man wielding a lightsaber on the big screen: “It’s nice to see some people of color in leading roles,” Patten Anthony, an African American longtime Star Wars fan said in an interview with Morrison (2015). Science fiction has black fans, but often skimps the black community on roles and representation, as aforementioned, but the black comic book kids are “keeping this industry alive,” New York comic enthusiast Danny Simmons, a 60-year old black man, said in another interview with Morrison (2015).

            Nevertheless, even if there was no hoard of underground black sci-fi fans, according to a 2015 study conducted by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies in Los Angeles, minorities make up 37% of the U.S. population, but only account for 16% of leading roles in films (Morrison, 2015). All people consuming this media are seeing, and emulating, a false reality. Doing nothing to address this issue ensures a continuation of this discriminative cycle. Just as segregation in education was shown to be detrimental to mental health and society, misrepresentation in media discourages young black kids, women, other non-white and non-binary people, and forces a capitulation to the white patriarchal society that the United States built itself on.

            Activists and supporters of diversity have hailed and lauded at Boyega’s casting. Regarding the hashtag, many pointed out the implausibility that exposure to a space odyssey spanning multiple galaxies in which the protagonists encounter multitudes of non-human creatures still yields closed-minded threats of boycott because of a black man. Boyega commented on the trending boycott in an interview with Barksdale (2015): “I just don’t get it. You guys got every single alien in this movie imaginable to man, yet what you want to do is fixate on another human being’s color.” Boyega went on to say that media consumers, and people in general, need to “unlearn what [they] have learned” (Barksdale, 2015). And he is very true: according to Thrasher (2015), humans are “conditioned to believe that whiteness is the norm even in outer space.” This representation problem, like all representation problems, spans across the board in Hollywood. According to the 2014 USC Annenberg study, 73.1% of the 30,835 speaking roles were taken by white actors and actresses, while 26.9% accounted for every other race, not just black actors (Evans, 2015).

            The Force Awakens, thankfully, represents people of color well, again with Guatemalan-Cuban Isaac, Mexican-Kenyan Nyong’o, and British-Nigerian Boyega. Despite the well-rounded cast of the newest Star Wars installment, Evans (2015) still insists that Hollywood has not just up-and-suddenly fixed its historic diversity problem, but it is seemingly changing for the better. The Force Awakens breaking box office records “eliminates any validity to arguments that say diverse casts aren’t as marketable and having a mostly white, male cast is a better business decision” (Evans, 2015).

            However, that evokes criticism of Hasbro’s and other companies’ exclusion of Rey and other female characters from Star Wars toys (Abrams, 2016). There was speculation that J.J. Abrams, notorious for minimizing spoilers in his releases, decided to not include Rey on the shelves, but he announced his disapproval of the exclusion: “She’s somewhat important to the story,” he revealed, elusively, in an interview (Abrams, 2016). Boyega and Isaac, being similarly diverse, were likely included in toys because they are men. This tradition makes sense, toy companies marketing to boys do not want to include a female action figure in conjunction with perceptions that it just will not sell, based on societal notions of masculinity. No boy is going to want to play with a girl action figure, and girls will not be interested in a boy’s film. But activists again took to Twitter, making hashtag “WheresRey” trend (Abrams, 2016), where many pointed out that (1) boys will play with women action figures and other traditionally feminine toys, and (2) girls are interested in science fiction, and leaving out Rey in children’s toys discourages young girls from pursuing paths that challenge the gender norm, and discourages everyone from breaking free from the societal expectations, as Rey demonstrates its possibility and its ease in success. Eventually, Hasbro announced its inclusion of Rey in the edited version of The Force Awakens Monopoly and other toys (Abrams, 2016), hopefully setting a precedent for other toy and merchandise companies to follow suit.

            Despite sounding like overdramatic complaining, representation in media is vital to culture development and society, and media must be reflective of the reality, as Communication theorist Stuart Hall (1997) discusses, because incorrect portrayals negatively affect the misrepresented group, whether it is hyper-sexualizing women or passing over black leads, or, if the actor or actress is lucky, getting typecast. Misrepresentation presents an unrealistic and inaccurate reality, which is consumed as the presumed correct conditions of reality. The audience consuming the inaccurate reality leaves with an inaccurate perception of reality. Hall’s theory (1997) expands on Michel Foucalt’s power theory, as the philosopher described power as strictly going from top, down, complying with the hegemonic, oppressive narrative described by Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, which has brought the United States to its current stature of white patriarchy.

            The latest Star Wars film challenges the white patriarchal norm, and provides a non-canonical criticism of American treatment of black people. Thrasher (2015) describes the film as a Black Lives Matter film juxtaposing the oppressive, colonial First Order with American slavery and the robbing of Africa. As the only unmasked Stormtrooper that the audience sees, Finn’s blackness can be read as an accurate representation of First Order Stormtroopers, especially because, as Thrasher (2015) points out, the First Order’s enslavement method emulates historic societies’ (and even not-so-historic societies’) exploitation of black and brown peoples at the expense that Finn faced: loss of family, lack of autonomy, and complete brainwashing, eventually turning into internalization and acceptance. However, Finn’s ability to see the cloudy immorality of the First Order’s crusade against justice releases him from the internalized inferiority and submissiveness, and he embarks on the subplot of the American slave liberation narrative. Thrasher (2015) describes The Force Awakens’ as a “tale specifically rooted in black oppression and, more importantly, black awakening and rebellion.” Whether or not it was intended in the production side, the perceived inspiration only augments the film’s already glowing critical review of its revolutionary accurate representation (which is pathetic, considering it is 2016). Although, despite how inequitable Hollywood has been in the past, and will likely continue to be in the immediate future, The Force Awakens provided the opportunity to demonstrate the ignored talent of women and black actors and actresses for lead roles.

A diverse cast for Star Wars was presented with many progressive opportunities. For instance, the six films had garnered a massive, loyal following that extends beyond science fiction fans into the mainstream, allowing the new film to present the well-represented cast to a large, heterogeneous audience. As well, being funded by Disney allowed for the film to be masterfully done, comparable with the rave reviews that the original films received, and continuing the story better than how the prequels presented the background. The film itself received impressive reviews as well, bringing people to see it in theaters multiple times, even without the Hollywood plug-in equation for a successful film: a cast of white males and over sexualized women.
When A New Hope premiered in 1977, it revolutionized the film industry with its moral ambiguity and unclear heroics and villainy. Now, The Force Awakens challenges all new films to be as revolutionary as it is. By demonstrating that diverse and well represented casts can and will succeed in the box office, and can create a resounding social impact, hopefully directors will finally abandon the false notion that non-white non-male casts will not do well, so that slowly films will start to take more risks within the sphere of representation, and will more accurately represent reality. The Force Awakens has started to lay the groundwork for better representation across Hollywood, which looks to ensure that reality is accurately reflected in character representation, even in grossly fictional films and media. Rey, Finn, and Poe, the new class of Star Wars heroes, have addressed the question that minority groups have been desperately anxious about: Will they get the recognition that they have earned? The Force Awakens demonstrates that yes, non-white and non-male actors can and will succeed in media.

Edited Mar 7, 7:06pm

References

Abrams, N. (2016, January 9). Abrams addresses 'preposterous' lack of Rey toys for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Retrieved from Entertainment Weekly website: http://www.ew.com/article/2016/01/09/jj-abrams-star-wars-force-awakens-rey-toys

Barksdale, A. (2015, December 21). 'The Force Awakens' fuels 'Star Wars' powerful legacy of black men. Retrieved from HuffPost Black Voices website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-barksdale/the-force-awakens-black-characters_b_8854982.html

Bradley, L. (2015, December 21). The Force Awakens is the movie female Star Wars fans have awaited for years. Retrieved from Slate website: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/12/21/the_force_awakens_is_the_movie_female_star_wars_fans_deserve.html

Cipriano, C. (2015, December 18). What Rey in 'The Force Awakens' is the feminist hero we've all been waiting for. Retrieved from Bustle website: http://www.bustle.com/articles/130516-why-rey-in-the-force-awakens-is-the-feminist-hero-weve-all-been-waiting-for

Evans, Z. (2015, December 7). Diversity awakens: Star Wars and representation. Retrieved from The 405 website: http://www.thefourohfive.com/film/article/diversity-awakens-star-wars-and-representation-144

Greenberg, J. (2015, February 16). 6 sexist, racist, and generally messed up things we hope the new Star Wars films get right this time. Retrieved from Everyday Feminism website: http://www.cracked.com/video_18249_star-wars-terrifying-women.html

Greenberg, J. (2015, December 24). 4 reasons why 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' matters beyond its entertainment value. Retrieved from Everyday Feminism website: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/star-wars-the-force-awakens/

Hall, S. (1997). The work of representation. In Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 1-47). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

James, S. (2015, December 21). Q: How does "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" represent women? Retrieved from Screeprism website: http://screenprism.com/insights/article/what-does-star-wars-the-force-awakens-tell-us-about-its-representation

Morrison, A. (2015, December 17). 'Star Wars' black character controversy: African-American sic-fi fans battle genre's racial stereotypes. Retrieved from International Business Times website: http://www.ibtimes.com/star-wars-black-character-controversy-african-american-sci-fi-fans-battle-genres-2230342

Thrasher, S. W. (2015, December 29). Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Black lives matter's first science fiction film. Retrieved from The Guardian website: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/dec/29/star-wars-the-force-awakens-black-lives-matters-first-science-fiction-film