Women Are Saving Star Wars

Liz Elting

Star Wars has women in it, and apparently, for many, that’s a problem.

You might, if you’re at all like me, be surprised by this; women have been a mainstay of the franchise since its inception over forty years ago. Leia was never a simple love interest; a courageous rebel leader, she risked her life time and time again. She wasn’t just a damsel in distress who needed to be rescued, but a well-drawn character who consistently demonstrated her strength, will, and determination.

Star Wars is a multibillion-dollar franchise with an increasingly female fanbase. But, as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker looms on the horizon and The Mandalorian streams on Disney+, the story on the ground is very different: women, so seeming legions of fans proclaim, are ruining Star Wars.

Star Wars is just one front of a bewildering pop culture war that extends from television to film to video games to sports and beyond, as angry, frustrated men decry the merest presence of a woman with any agency, power, or influence as a “forced diversity” corruption of something they believe belongs exclusively to them. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this conversation really took off, but it’s probably the most innocuous manifestation of a radical misogyny that has, over the last decade, gripped much of the English-speaking world. And it’s one that’s making a radical claim to the companies that produce the media they adore: stop catering to people other than us.

There’s been, over the last six years, mountains and mountains written on the cultural crisis at play, and as I’m not an expert on Star Wars fandom, I’m not going to rehash them; business is my specialty. So I want to talk about this situation from that perspective.

Whether it be Star Wars, sports, or some other fandom, let’s examine the central claim that unites all of these community revolts: that “real fans” are being ignored, abandoned, or rejected in favor of women and people of color, “real fans” implicitly being white men. There is a degree of truth to that, though only a degree; these are institutions that have been overwhelming marketed to and manufactured for boys and men. Sports has been a mainstay of male culture for generations, and geek fandom, such as it exists, has been similarly dominated. None of my girlfriends growing up were particularly into Marvel Comics, for one example; we had our own pop culture institutions we were expected to follow.

But the 1970s and 80s were a different world; mass media didn’t exist the way it does now, dominated by huge multinationals who have spent decades cultivating not only fanbases but cultural presence. Owing in part to some of the very fans who are now angry at their presence, girls have spent decades falling in love with the same sports, shows, comics, and movies as their brothers. It was bound to happen that, as media companies built their strategies for engaging with modern audiences, they’d recognize that they couldn’t depend solely on the same old fans forever. There’s way more money in marketing to boys and girls than boys and boys alone.

The pushback, however, is real, vocal, and outright destructive; Kelly Marie Tran, an actress who appeared in 2017’s The Last Jedi, was harassed off of social media following mountains of abuse and death threats for simply being in the movie (prior to the film even coming out). The same has happened to countless women sportscasters from local news right up to ESPN. Fans threatened boycotts of Marvel’s Captain Marvel, the aforementioned The Last Jedi, a 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, and on, and on, and on. The message was directed, not only at the individual women involved, but at the companies themselves: stand only with us, or we won’t stand with you.

But the numbers belie the point, and that’s what I want people making these decisions and marketing strategies to remember: all of these movies are making billions and billions of dollars. The money is rolling in. New generations of fans are being made, right here, right now, with potentially decades of loyalty (and purchases) ahead of them. The same messages that resonated with ten-year-old boys in 1977 resonate with ten-year-old girls in 2019: that anyone can be a hero, and that you can be whatever you want. That you are important, and powerful, and have a future.

I’m not asking you to be sentimental about it. Through a purely mercenary lens, there’s so little to be gained by doubling down on an insular audience rather than embracing the “mass” of mass media, especially as streaming moves more and more into separate services owned by major conglomerates. You don’t want some subscribers. You want them all.

And considering that women make up a majority of moviegoers and are far and away the major decision makers in household purchasing decisions, well, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Follow me on LinkedIn.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39239800)

women have ALWAYS been the focus of star wars hehe

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39239818)

“Lifelong Star Wars fan Breana Ceballos is happy with the direction Disney has taken with the franchise she grew to love as a child, watching the original movies with her father. “I feel like as long as the message is good and it’s relevant to the world today, it’s probably a good thing to have,” said Ms. Ceballos, a 33 year-old resident of Irvine, Calif.

“Rey is going her own way and finding her own path. I want my daughter to feel like she can do anything,” she said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39239987)

lol no shit, jfc these boomer women suck SOOO much. It is not enough that these movies are by and for Moms instead of kids, we must also kiss their feet and act happy about it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39239849)

"frustrated men decry the merest presence of a woman with any agency, power, or influence"

They're really not seeing the inconsistency here?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39239853)

Wow, it's almost like the overwhelmingly white male fans of Star Wars had no problem with strong female characters when they were well-written and fit in the storyline instead of being deus ex femina Mary Sue Woman Power tropes that made no sense in context.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39240654)

Also many (most) of the sci fi fans who made Star Wars a hit love Alien and the first couple Terminators, both of which have 180 female heroes who were well-written and acted women

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39240740)

*is a semi-literate lower-middle-class forbes contributor pontificating about star wars fandom anyway*

o what a business specialist!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39241648)

Verdict: retards scuffling

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39242878)

Cultural appropriation means things created by and for non-white males is exclusively theirs. Diversity means things created by white males for white males belongs to everyone.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4398196&forum_id=2#39308714)