I am so excited! This year, for my resolution project, I’m rewatching the Star Wars franchise. I chose it because I love Star Wars, and I thought it would be fun to re-watch the movies in order of release date, with perhaps a bit more of a critical and appreciative eye than I have before.
This month’s installment: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
The Premise:
After a daring mission to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt, the rebels dispatch to Endor to destroy a more powerful Death Star. Meanwhile, Luke struggles to help Darth Vader back from the dark side without falling into the Emperor’s trap.
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this movie. There are parts of it I enjoy now, almost as much as I did when I was a kid. Then there are parts that just conflict me but I can settle on adequate reasoning. And then there is something that is leaving me with a massive question. So let’s dive in.
Spoilers for a 30+ year old film ahead
The bike speeders are fun, and I’m going to say this straight up: I love the Ewoks. They are irritating and offensive and useless to the story, but they’re teddy bears! (And I love teddy bears!) I still have all my stuffed animals and dolls from when I was a kid, and have difficulty walking by a store without getting more. I’m a big kid at heart. I really want to get an Ewok costume for my dog, Ebby, for Halloween because just before she’s ready for a haircut, her hair is curly and she looks like one!
When Leia meets the first Ewok, I was reminded of how Disney princesses can communicate with forest 
creatures. Seems a bit prophetic now that Disney bought out Lucas Films and now she is a Disney princess.
Everything to do with the Ewoks confirms for me, that the Star Wars movies really were meant to be kids movies. There’s slap-stick humor, cute creatures, adorable droids, and the storyline isn’t that complex.
However, most of the scenes with the Ewoks seem more like Lucas was stretching out the script to fill up time. And Han’s jealousy of Luke and Leia is unnecessary. Sure Leia’s worried about Luke, but she doesn’t kiss him like she does Han. I also have to say, she and Luke take it very well that they are siblings. I mean, Luke had crushed on her back in the first movie, and she had kissed him in the second, so you’d think there could have been a little bit of horror going on there.
Leia is most conflicting for me. As a kid I didn’t question her portrayal. I knew her gold bikini meant she was a sex slave to Jabba the Hut. Gross, but a natural progression. Luke frees her and she goes on to help the rebellion. As I got older, “Slave Leia” enraged me. By putting her in that bikini, her power had been taken away. She was no longer a leader of the rebels. She was no longer a strong, powerful, leading lady. She was a sex object. One to be oogled and objectified and fantasized over. How dare George Lucas and every other man involved in this franchise, take away my hero.
Except that she hadn’t always been my hero. I had bought into the premise that Luke and Han Solo were the heros. They rescued her from Darth Vader. And they rescued her from Jabba the Hut. I was the only girl in my neighborhood growing up. When we ran around playing Star Wars, I was always Princess Leia. I hated it. I hated being reduced to saying “Help me, Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope.” I wanted to run around with a pretend gun and a pretend lightsaber, but I wasn’t allowed to, because I was a girl.
I was wrong. Both times. Sort of. The premise is still there, that Luke and Han are the heros. They are the ones who go to save Leia. Yes, she is objectified, made into a male fantasy, her power taken away. But Han and Luke don’t save her. They are bumbling idiots. She saves them. And I adore what Carrie Fisher said when asked about her image as “Slave Leia”. She said that she was the only one in a bikini and she still managed to kick-ass and save everyone. She reclaimed her power, and I love that so, so much.
Which leads me to my bigger question about the subtler elements of misogeny or toxic masculinity, in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Star Wars and Star Trek in particular. And this has to do with the perceived danger of emotions. In Star Trek, Spock and the Vulcan way of being without emotion or feeling, is hyped as the ideal, at least in fandom. Vulcans consider themselves as superior beings because of their lack of emotions. In Star Wars, laughter and love are okay, but anything else is a path to the dark side. Anger is not necessarily a bad emotion. Love can be just as dangerous. Yet no one tells Han to be careful, that his jealousy of Luke will send him to the dark side. It seems to me that in both these franchises, the suppression of emotions is ideal. Women are emotional. Men are not. And as I write this, three men in my office just casually joked about needing to repress their emotions, because it isn’t manly.
This isn’t a complete thought. I suspect I am thinking it because I am watching something that came out decades ago, with today’s perspective. But I’d love to know what you think. I am happy to be proven wrong, just do so with evidence, and be constructive in the discussion.
In conclusion: It has been interesting to re-watch this first trilogy. Certainly the first one still holds all of my affection. Whatever the flaws of the franchise, I will always consider myself a Star Wars Kid.
Up next: Lord help us all, I’m going back to The Phantom Menace.
The whole gold bikini/Jabba’s barge scene was a blatant riff on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series, and Lucas has said as much. In the pulp era, women in skimpy outfits were de rigueur as pulp mag cover art will attest. (Despite the outfits, most of ERB’s female protagonists could hold their own in combat.) The homage to ERB makes this my favorite SW scene, but I have to confess that I never found Leia to be much of a sex object. This is only scene I recall in the entire series where sex rears its ugly head. Lack of sex (not to mention the Ewoks) is evidence that Lucas clearly aimed his work at kids and the toy market rather than at adults. It would be interesting to see a re-imagining of the SW franchise like the Sci-Fi Channel’s reboot of BSG with a more sophisticated, adult tone, sort of a Game of Thrones in space. But I doubt the PTB will let that happen.
You’re right. That is the only time sex or Leia as a sex object comes up. It is so oddly out of place in what was so clearly meant to be a kid-focused franchise. Unfortunately, it is most often the part that is picked out and commented on. Want to cosplay Leia? The gold bikini is most prevalent.
Even as a kid seeing this movie, I never thought of Leia as a sex slave to Jabba, although I did understand that she was dressed that way because CREEPER REASONS and to likely demean her from her strong position (aka previously in a bountyhunter outfit threatening to thermal detonate everyone and their alien grandma). But I can’t say that I ever felt her power was taken from her. Not fully – just muted for a while. She was clearly (in my eyes anyway) never one to take things lying down, always telling Luke and Han what was up and to get their asses in gear, so it felt more like even if she did need Luke for a small moment in time for assistance, was still biding her time until she had a chance to take care of business with her own two hands – which she very clearly did.
I blame dudes for the infamous cosplay choice. Not that those wearing it aren’t in charge, but I’d say that they’re the ones that latched onto it and made it more popular than it ever should have been. And in turn others saw this desire/popularity and ran with it. In some cases today though, I wonder if some female cosplayers have sort of taken it back, you know? Like, “I’m doing this, but I’m doing it for me because I like how it looks, (and paid cosplayers may be making money off it), and there’s no fat Hutt telling me to wear it.”
If that makes sense, anyway…