@clubjade: "Their best bet, honestly, is to give a strong female lead and then sexualize her."(twitter)
With attitudes like this it's no wonder there's a bit of an uprising going on over lack of well written female characters in Star Wars.
http://clubjade.net/?p=39261 reading this well thought out post and then reading the comments especially by the person named Chris leaves me shaking my head.
I suppose I could write a long rambly post on my thoughts about all of this but other people have said it better so I won't. Instead I will just say that smart people, both male and female appreciate well written, well thought out characters. Badly written star wars books sell because they are star wars and people buy the name, Good writing will sell even more. Aiming for quality and equality is not detrimental to sales.
This won't change until there is enough pressure to do so and that will only happen if enough people get vocal and push for it.
It appears nobody is capable of taking my comments in context. The above quote has nothing to do about what I think of women in Star Wars. In fact, I reaffirmed multiple times that I would gladly read a Padme novel, have no problem seeing more women characters in SW etc. I also, like you, reaffirmed my belief that SW needs a genuine increase in better writing. Too many people read Star Wars for the name, as you say. When I said something similar, it was taken to mean that nobody likes the characters; what I meant was, the quality of the writing is not what brings most people to read SW books. They read for everything the name "Star Wars" entails.
ReplyDeleteThe above quote has been so removed from context, nobody has bothered to consider it.
It's an objective truth about today's society. I'm NOT saying it's a good thing. I'm NOT saying people shouldn't try to change it. I'm say that is how society is right now, and although it may not please anyone, activism has to work within that societal context.
There is no denying most young men in the target age range are susceptible to sex as a selling point. Companies trying to sell to males in that age group would be foolish not to utilize that, from a purely business standpoint. Discussions regarding moral capitalism, of course, could lead to the argument that it is irresponsible to do so, but I'm considering this from a purely business standpoint.
It isn't a personal statement regarding my opinion of women in SW. It's the state of modern society, and though efforts should be made to change that, the fact remains that such a radical shift in society - what essentially is cancelling out thousands of years of culture and biology - is slow in coming.
We should all read the books and just enjoy them, male or female, with male or female characters. Be frustrated about the sexualization of female characters, but understand WHY companies do it. Nobody has to be happy about why they do it, but we should all acknowledge that they have a legitimate business reason for doing do.
I'm not interested in starting another long debate, but as my Twitter feed over the last 24 hours has featured a number of my own quotes and responses, I feel as if I should at least be able to defend what I said in context, as opposed to it being taken for something it was not.
Chris