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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2EveGED
la-tarasque:
ms-daphne:
senatorgana:
tlj mood
I’m not saying Poe has never done anything wrong ever. But after [integer between 1 and 10] viewings, I still see Poe and Holdo the same way I did the first time: as two leaders making the best decisions they could with the information available to them.
The tragedy is that they were both acting on incomplete information, because neither trusted the other.
I was a little shocked when I went back online and found that fans had quickly divided into hardened camps: either you’re on his side, or her side. An impossible choice, for me: I love Poe Dameron with all my heart, but I’m also here for one of Leia’s childhood friends a) surviving this long, and b) being an iconic space diva.
(I really wish she hadn’t died. I imagine she and Poe would have had it out in an epic, tearful AAR and gone on to become the space queer power duo that together could have filled Leia’s shoes and lived up to her hair legacy.)
The point is, the thing that ultimately proved so disastrous was their mutual distrust.
I don’t see a lot of people taking that as the take-away. I see a lot of people assuming that because Holdo made a heroic sacrifice, therefore she was Right About Everything All Along. And I can’t blame them- that’s a trope, a signal we’ve learned to interpret from a century of movies.
And it sounds, from the way-too-many interviews I’ve read and watched, that neither Rian or Laura intended to say that. So… is Rian a narcissistic wanna-be auteur, too wedded to his own vision to care how people would very predictably read her story? Or is he a grown-up writer who trusts audiences to think for themselves?
The thing is, these movies aren’t just made for grown-ups. Hell, some people insist they’re not for grown-ups at all.
*flash back to the 80’s*
The original trio were so important to me as a kid. Luke, for his love and compassion and his yearning for something bigger. Leia, for her idealism and strength and leadership. Han, for his resilience- his ability to bounce back from the indignities the universe shoveled at him with a half-decent attitude.
Leia was *so* important to me; there are no words. But you know what really sucked the joy out of her character? Little boys on the playground that insisted girls could *only* play her; if there was more than one girl the others had to be extras or victims or maybe A Nurse or something. You could never be a male lead and a boy would sure as hell never play her.
I’ve only seen ROTJ twice. The first time, I was maybe eight, the Bikini Scene was slap in the face I didn’t see coming. The fact that it was bracketed by Leia being an all-around badass both before and after did little to palliate the wound to my very soul. Honestly, it was fucking damaging. Reading later how much Carrie hated it, and the way she mocked it with her acid wit, helped a lot. It helped to focus my burning hatred toward the correct targets and away from self-loathing.
*skip forward a generation* *or two*
Poe Dameron and I are about the same age, viv-a-vis events in the original trilogy. We have the same generational memory. So here’s me in 2015, trying not to get too excited before TFA because what if they fuck it up, and along comes this charming motherfucker, who chose to follow in his mother’s footsteps, who asserts the presence of “flygirls” in the navy, who chooses those flygirls for his elite special-ops squadron, and who finds himself honored to be Leia Organa’s protege. He doesn’t just respect her as a leader. He doesn’t just admire her as a hero. He takes her as his personal mentor and role model.
Maybe I’m being a little sentimental, here, but to the wounded eight-year-old child inside me? It felt a lot like one of those little boys on the playground asking, “Can I be Leia this time?”
I take Poe and Leia’s relationship pretty personally. And hearing Oscar talk about how much it means to him is a little like Carrie talking about how much she hated The Bra. You know? It's important for women to assert themselves and demand respect, and it’s also important to have men who just *have* that respect as naturally as breathing, not because they’re supposed to. And having a guy like that as a bad-ass hero for a generation to look up to was pretty fucking awesome.
So these fucking bloggers with their twisty, “original” hot takes and clickbaity headlines, saying that Poe’s primary character flaw is fucking chauvinism? What? The hell? I mean, I’ve seen this movie [x] times and I can sit here all day and frame-for-frame show how that just doesn’t exist on-screen and they’re just dead wrong, but just seeing those headlines at all was hurtful, like, really hurtful, to me personally. And at the risk of sounding like Edna Lovejoy wringing her hands, I think it’s also a fucked-up interpretation to hand down to the youngest generation.
Agree to everything there and (selfishly) especially the last paragraph.
(Your picture was not posted)
la-tarasque:
ms-daphne:
senatorgana:
tlj mood
I’m not saying Poe has never done anything wrong ever. But after [integer between 1 and 10] viewings, I still see Poe and Holdo the same way I did the first time: as two leaders making the best decisions they could with the information available to them.
The tragedy is that they were both acting on incomplete information, because neither trusted the other.
I was a little shocked when I went back online and found that fans had quickly divided into hardened camps: either you’re on his side, or her side. An impossible choice, for me: I love Poe Dameron with all my heart, but I’m also here for one of Leia’s childhood friends a) surviving this long, and b) being an iconic space diva.
(I really wish she hadn’t died. I imagine she and Poe would have had it out in an epic, tearful AAR and gone on to become the space queer power duo that together could have filled Leia’s shoes and lived up to her hair legacy.)
The point is, the thing that ultimately proved so disastrous was their mutual distrust.
I don’t see a lot of people taking that as the take-away. I see a lot of people assuming that because Holdo made a heroic sacrifice, therefore she was Right About Everything All Along. And I can’t blame them- that’s a trope, a signal we’ve learned to interpret from a century of movies.
And it sounds, from the way-too-many interviews I’ve read and watched, that neither Rian or Laura intended to say that. So… is Rian a narcissistic wanna-be auteur, too wedded to his own vision to care how people would very predictably read her story? Or is he a grown-up writer who trusts audiences to think for themselves?
The thing is, these movies aren’t just made for grown-ups. Hell, some people insist they’re not for grown-ups at all.
*flash back to the 80’s*
The original trio were so important to me as a kid. Luke, for his love and compassion and his yearning for something bigger. Leia, for her idealism and strength and leadership. Han, for his resilience- his ability to bounce back from the indignities the universe shoveled at him with a half-decent attitude.
Leia was *so* important to me; there are no words. But you know what really sucked the joy out of her character? Little boys on the playground that insisted girls could *only* play her; if there was more than one girl the others had to be extras or victims or maybe A Nurse or something. You could never be a male lead and a boy would sure as hell never play her.
I’ve only seen ROTJ twice. The first time, I was maybe eight, the Bikini Scene was slap in the face I didn’t see coming. The fact that it was bracketed by Leia being an all-around badass both before and after did little to palliate the wound to my very soul. Honestly, it was fucking damaging. Reading later how much Carrie hated it, and the way she mocked it with her acid wit, helped a lot. It helped to focus my burning hatred toward the correct targets and away from self-loathing.
*skip forward a generation* *or two*
Poe Dameron and I are about the same age, viv-a-vis events in the original trilogy. We have the same generational memory. So here’s me in 2015, trying not to get too excited before TFA because what if they fuck it up, and along comes this charming motherfucker, who chose to follow in his mother’s footsteps, who asserts the presence of “flygirls” in the navy, who chooses those flygirls for his elite special-ops squadron, and who finds himself honored to be Leia Organa’s protege. He doesn’t just respect her as a leader. He doesn’t just admire her as a hero. He takes her as his personal mentor and role model.
Maybe I’m being a little sentimental, here, but to the wounded eight-year-old child inside me? It felt a lot like one of those little boys on the playground asking, “Can I be Leia this time?”
I take Poe and Leia’s relationship pretty personally. And hearing Oscar talk about how much it means to him is a little like Carrie talking about how much she hated The Bra. You know? It's important for women to assert themselves and demand respect, and it’s also important to have men who just *have* that respect as naturally as breathing, not because they’re supposed to. And having a guy like that as a bad-ass hero for a generation to look up to was pretty fucking awesome.
So these fucking bloggers with their twisty, “original” hot takes and clickbaity headlines, saying that Poe’s primary character flaw is fucking chauvinism? What? The hell? I mean, I’ve seen this movie [x] times and I can sit here all day and frame-for-frame show how that just doesn’t exist on-screen and they’re just dead wrong, but just seeing those headlines at all was hurtful, like, really hurtful, to me personally. And at the risk of sounding like Edna Lovejoy wringing her hands, I think it’s also a fucked-up interpretation to hand down to the youngest generation.
Agree to everything there and (selfishly) especially the last paragraph.
(Your picture was not posted)
