Star Wars on Trial

by David Brin

  THE COURTROOM

  DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover?

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: I'm on it, Your Honor. Ms. Cavelos, congratulations on an eloquent argument. Now. You are aware, are you not, that Princess Leia is-your argument notwithstanding-both popularly and critically regarded as the prototype of the female SF cinematic action hero, the direct ancestor of Ripley from the Alien films, and Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, to name only two. A number of subsequent filmmakers found Princess Leia an inspiration for their female heroes; I'm wondering where, in cinematic SF, you think Mr. Lucas should have looked for inspiration for his own. For example, how does Princess Leia stack up-forgive the pun-next to Dale Arden, for example? Or Captain Kirk's miniskirted secretary-er, that is, communications officer (yeah, right)Lieutenant Uhura? How many people do you think can even name the character (without looking it up, or having seen the film in the past month or so-no fair cheating, now) that Patricia Neal played in The Day the Earth Stood Still? How about the girl in Forbidden Planet? The title character's name in Attach of the 50 Ft. Woman? The doctor's girlfriend in Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The innumerable adoring secretaries, lab assistants, wives, helpless love interests and assorted victims who are the only women to even have names at all in 98% of previous cinematic SF?

  JEANNE CAVELOS: It's interesting that, except for Uhura, every example you give is from the 1950s or earlier. You're not really playing fair. Obviously the images of women in film changed a lot between the fifties and the seventies. Barbarella, nine years before Star Wars, reflected the independent, sexually liberated woman of the 1960s, while in the 1970s, Carrie revealed the dangers of oppressing female power. Before Star Wars, TV shows like Won der Woman, The Bionic Woman, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and Isis featured strong women heroes who weren't sidekicks, wives or secretaries. The times were changing, and women in SF/F were changing with them. Leia was not created in a vacuum.

  While I agree that Leia has inspired both viewers and filmmakers, to call her the "ancestor" of Ripley is not accurate. While I'm not an expert on the origins of Alien, I know that the original script treated all characters as "unisex," not establishing whether they were male or female. The writers generally imagined them all as males. So to say that the writers were inspired by Leia is not true. They weren't thinking about creating a gutsy female character at all. The decision to make Ripley female came late in the process, when the head of 20`h Century Fox suggested the switch to create a stronger emotional effect. Alien is basically a horror movie, and women often serve as main characters in horror movies-for many reasons, including the fact that women may seem more vulnerable and may evoke stronger emotions in the viewer. I believe both Ripley and Sarah Connor arose out of this horror movie tradition, and embody a mix of the endangered/terrified horror heroine (like Laurie Strode in Halloween) with the tough/resourceful SF hero.

  Those caveats aside, I agree that Leia marked a major breakthrough for women heroes in film. George Lucas's creation was amazing and groundbreaking. Before 1977, few women in film fired a gun-the symbol of male power-and those few who did generally fired once, missed, dropped the gun and started sobbing. Superheroes like Wonder Woman and Isis didn't use guns; they operated in a rarefied, "separate but equal" universe where a woman could triumph without using such crude weapons. Leia, on the other hand, played by the same rules as the boys and used the same weapons (though she never got a lightsaber-talk about symbols of male power ...). Even more striking, she stood up to the men. While Colonel Wilma Deering-a precursor to Leia in the 1930s serials George Lucas so loved-outranked Captain Buck Rogers, she didn't insult and belittle him. There was a sort of tacit admission that he was superior, being a male hero, despite his inferior rank. Yet in the original Star Wars, Leia clearly believes she knows best and isn't afraid to let everyone know it. And the kicker is-in that first movie-she's almost always right. The damsel-indistress stereotype is given a quick, no-frills burial when Leia says, "This is some rescue," grabs a gun and takes over the escape. As a seventeen-year-old girl, I was thrilled to see a female hero talking tough, shooting a gun and actually hitting something. George Lucas blazed a trail with Leia that many writers have followed, and all viewers who like seeing independent, self-reliant female characters owe him a debt of gratitude.

  It's in large part because he was initially so successful at creating this compelling image of a strong female hero that my disappointment is so great. If she had never been strong, then she would have simply been one of the crowd. But she showed something more, something amazing. Unfortunately, it was short-lived. George Lucas weakened Leia as the series continued, taking away her power, her good judgment, her skills and her gun, and turning her into just another one of the weak women we've seen countless times in SE While movies like Alien and The Terminator were making the next quantum leap for the female hero (and then another quantum leap after that with their sequels), Star Wars was moving backward, reinforcing old stereotypes that it had at first eschewed. While we now have characters like Trinity in The Matrix and the Bride in Kill Bill, Star Wars has moved even further backward, with Amidala the woman dying of a broken heart, a cliche that was old sixty years ago.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: In nitpicking Leia's decision making style, I wonder if you might stop to consider that her intuition is backed by the Skywalker touch with the Force-which has been specifically shown, in her father's case, to involve prophecy. Thus, her actions on Cloud City are perfectly reasonable-nothing else she would have done could change the outcome, and telling Han it's a bad decision is nothing more nor less than the truth, yes? In fact, her power explains nearly every cavil you've made. For example: given that her intuition is backed by the Force, it's a reasonable interpretation to say that in making contact with the Ewoks, she realizes instinctively that they will be the key to the Rebel victory, and that attempting to establish friendly relations with them-by befriending Wicket-is, strategically, the best move she has available at the time, isn't it?

  JEANNE CAVELOS: Whether Anakin has powers of prophecy is arguable. Many Star Wars viewers believe Palpatine planted Anakin's dreams of Amidala's death to manipulate him. But to focus on the subject of Leia's decision making, you have my condolences. In the attempt to make her seem wise and helpful, you've contorted yourself into more knots than a Twister champion. If Leia has a "bad feeling" about Cloud City, then she should investigate, not change her clothes and braid her hair. The Force doesn't offer up neat pronouncements like "Nothing you can do will prevent the bad thing that's about to happen, so you might as well give yourself a makeover." Anakin certainly does not accept the idea that his dream will come true no matter what he does; he tries to change it. Leia's character, as established in most of Episode IV, is not the kind to sit back and give up, no matter how bad her intuition might tell her things are.

  If the Force provides her with some prophetic hotline to the future, then one thing it absolutely should tell her is that Alderaan will be destroyed. Yet I don't see her shrugging her shoulders and telling Tarkin to fire away. She does everything in her power to stop the destruction of her home.

  Thus at Cloud City, she should do the same. If she has a feeling they are going to end up guests of honor at Darth Vader's Torture Party, then she should do everything in her power to get them away from Cloud City. How about booking passage on another ship? She could sell Han's services to the lonely female miners to raise money. Any intuition would only increase her motivation to act. (And while we're on the subject, if Leia has strong intuition, why does she kiss her brother? And why doesn't she sense Vader is her father?)

  On the Ewok moon, a strong intuition would again provide more motivation for Leia to act. If she has a sense that the Ewoks are key to the Rebel victory, then she should be much more proactive in gathering intelligence on their abilities and gaining their help. Standing around saying you're lost and eating a granola bar aren't really effective ways of cementing an alliance on a short schedule. Similarly, she fails to wor
k toward an alliance once she gets to the Ewok village, instead giving herself another makeover. C-3PO does more to gain their help-and that's about the biggest insult I can give to any character, so I'll stop there.

  As a friend, I think you really need to break off your unhealthy codependent relationship with George Lucas. His achievementsincluding the creation of Princess Leia's character in the original film-are amazing, inspiring, groundbreaking. But he's not perfect. The Star Wars films went on to undermine her, neglect her and sap her strength, and the sooner you stop making excuses for that, the sooner you can get out of that uncomfortable-looking pretzel position. I know a good chiropractor.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Hey, thanks. Can he do anything for this cold chill I get whenever Opposing Counsel looks this way? Or how my mind goes blank whenever he twitches his fingers like that?

  DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover, the Court suspects that the blankness of your mind has nothing to do with Force-based powers.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER Probably true, Your Honor. Well, thanks anyway, Ms. Cavelos, and on behalf of Lucas Enterprises and the entire Star Wars franchise, I would like to take this moment to apologize to you personally for not putting some brutal torture of Princess Leia on-screen. It was a mistake. I'm sure we'd all feel better about her character if we could have watched her screaming in agony.

  DAVID BRIN: Objection! That's not a question-he's just abusing the witness.

  DROID JUDGE: Sustained.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Don't want to see her in pain, huh?

  DAVID BRIN: (tiredly) Objection....

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Withdrawn. No further questions.

  DROID JUDGE: Mr. Stover, you have not addressed the portrayal of the other female character, Padme Amidala.

  MATTHEW WOODRING STOVER: Your Honor, I most certainly have. I spent nearly a hundred pages addressing exactly that in my novelization of Revenge of the Sith, and members of the jury still troubled by this issue can find my arguments in better bookstores everywhere (another shameless self-promoting plug). Next witness!

  -HINGS WERE NOT GOING well for the good guys. I

  Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewbacca the Wookiee had just infiltrated the detention level of the first Death Star. They had located the missing Princess Leia, but the only way out of the cell block was through a squadron of imperial stormtroopers.

  "This is some rescue," Leia says. "When you came in here, didn't you have a plan for getting out?"

  "He's the brains, sweetheart," Han snaps, referring to Luke.

  The princess's response is almost as quick. She grabs Luke's blaster and fires at a panel on the opposite side of the corridor. "What the hell are you doing?" Han demands.

  "Someone has to save our skins!" Leia crosses the corridor, while laying down covering fire. "Into the garbage chute, flyboy!" she orders.

  Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope changed the face of movies in many ways. One change that is sometimes overlooked is the role of women in action-adventure films. The Star Wars films gave us women who didn't wait passively to be rescued, women who could match the male characters in independence and resourcefulness.

  The above scene captured this new attitude for a lot of people. And that approach received a warm welcome. Like many first-gen eration Star Wars fans, I made regular trips to the theater in 1977 to explore that galaxy far, far away. On those trips, I often heard cheering and applause when Leia took charge on the detention level.

  Although there have been some definite missteps along the way, strong female characters like Princess Leia have appeared in the SW prequel trilogy and in the licensed fiction of the Expanded Universe. In addition, she has made an impact on pop fiction as a whole. Ripley, Sarah Connor, Buffy Summers and Xena can all trace their ancestry back to Leia Organa. Leia even paved the way for another character that Lucas had a hand in creating: Marion Ravenwood, the hard-drinking, tough-talking female lead of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

  Now, almost thirty years after A New Hope, seeing a strong woman in an action-adventure film doesn't produce the same surprise that it used to. So, I think a good way to explain what George Lucas, Carrie Fisher and the other SW creators accomplished would be to compare Leia against other women in pop culture in the 1970s.

  Hollywood was willing to cast women as stars in serious dramas during that time. In 1974, Ellen Burstyn starred in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. In 1977, the year A New Hope was released, Vanessa Redgrave starred in Julia, while Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine shared the lead in The Turning Point.

  Action-adventure films, however, were another matter entirely. The testosterone-laden Dirty Harry and The French Connection premiered in the early 1970s. They were followed by The Exorcist, which featured the young Linda Blair as a damsel in demonic distress.

  As far as genre films were concerned, I think the character that came closest to Leia during that time was Zira, the chimpanzee scientist portrayed by Kim Hunter in the first three Planet of the Apes films. Zira didn't have any combat skills-chimpanzee pacifism was a significant plot point in the series-but she was intelligent, strongwilled and unwilling to be treated like a second-class citizen.

  The situation on television was a little better. Both Wonder Woman and the Bionic Woman were fighting crime during the mid-70s. People who wanted to watch TV late Friday night-or who had that technological innovation, the VCR-could watch Joanna Lumley invoke the spirit of Diana Rigg on The New Avengers.

  At the same time, this was the era of Charlie's Angels and Police Woman. For those unfamiliar with the latter show, here's how The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows describes Police Woman: "Sexy Sgt. Pepper Anderson (Angie Dickinson) was an undercover agent for the criminal conspiracy department of the Los Angeles Police Department ... she was called on to portray everything from a prostitute to a gangster's girlfriend."

  There's a reason why the phrase "jiggle TV" originated in the seventies.

  "THE BOYS JUST KIND OF TAG ALONG"

  George Lucas has said more than once that the Flash Gordon movie serials were a significant influence in the creation of Star Wars. However, he probably never wanted Leia Organa to be mistaken for Dale Arden, Flash's perpetual girlfriend.

  In "The Characters of Star Wars," a mini-documentary on the original trilogy DVD set, Lucas says, "It was always about these twins, and their father.... At some point I took the female lead and made her the hero and then, eventually, I shifted it around to the male character."

  On the audio commentary for A New Hope, Lucas says he considers Episode IV to be Leia's story. "The boys just kind of tag along on her adventure."

  Princess Leia is young, Lucas says, but "instead of being kind of an idealistic young farm boy from the nether lands of the galaxy [she's] very sophisticated, an urbanized ruler, a senator.... She rules people and she's in charge."

  Elsewhere in the audio commentary, he says Leia is "very, very strong even though she's very young.... She's pretty much in control of things."

  Carrie Fisher told another interviewer that Lucas "wanted me to be proud and frightening....I was not a damsel in distress. I was a distressing damsel."

  This approach did cause some problems for Fisher, as a performer and as a writer. In her part of the audio commentary, Fisher says she wanted a chance to ad-lib some of her lines in A New Hope. However, she said, it wasn't easy to change Leia's dialogue. "When I would change it, I would make it funny, and really, she's not that funny." Given that Fisher has gone on to write novels and screenplays rich in humor, it's really not a surprise to hear that her ad-libs were funny.

  I think Leia maintains her strength and independence in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. In the former, she leads the evacuation of Hoth and spars verbally with Han Solo during the long trip to Cloud City. In the latter, Leia takes part in a clever reworking of the Orpheus myth. She enters the metaphorical underworld of Jabba the Hutt, in a daring attempt to rescue Han.

  Of course Jedi also contains t
he sequence where Leia is enslaved byjabba, and dressed in a skimpy outfit reminiscent of the women in metal bras who decorated the covers of science fiction magazines in the 1950s. Now this certainly detracted from her image as a liberated woman, but it should be remembered that, at that point, she wasn't liberated. She was a slave. Jabba had her dressed in those clothes; she didn't choose them for herself.

  It's been suggested that Jabba wouldn't have chosen those clothes for Leia, since he probably wouldn't have found her physically attractive. It's not difficult, though, to come up with other reasons why Jabba might've made this choice. That outfit would've kept most women feeling vulnerable and off-guard. It's also an effective way for the gangster to display his new prize to the other members of his entourage.

  In any case, if Leia ever felt vulnerable and off-guard, it didn't last for long. She was soon wrapping a chain around Jabba's neck and strangling him to death. It's an impressive feat, given the Hutt's size and the difficulty anybody would have finding his neck.

  A more pressing question might be Leia's Jedi training. Specifically, the question is: "What training?" Leia exhibits her jedi potential more than once during the original trilogy. The best-known time is probably when she receives Luke's telepathic cry for help in Empire. However, it has also been suggested that she drew on the Force to survive Darth Vader's torture in New Hope. In addition, the superhuman strength she displayed when strangling jabba may have come from more than adrenaline and rage.