(May 10, 2022 at 8:05 am)Belacqua Wrote: I haven't seen Mulan, but I did see one of the Star Wars movies with Rey in it. I've read enough on Twitter to know what a Mary Sue is.
But I don't think we can blame bad storytelling and unoriginal plots on women's rights. Both of the movies you name are Disney products, and Disney makes every choice it makes for one and only one reason: money. They have calculated that selling a certain image to a certain set of consumers will be profitable. Parents who pay money for those DVDs, which they put on to keep their kids quiet, feel good about themselves if they think their consumer products are up to date morally. Anti-sexist, pro-woman, etc.
The point is that these are consumer products, and the anti-sexist messages they teach (or pretend to teach) are calculated to ship product. If you want honest morality, clear thinking, and truly good morals, you have to read good stuff -- and that's not going to be calculated for greatest sales.
Probably you know the story about Edward Bernays, who was Freud's nephew. He moved to the US and became the first great ad man. One of his main coups was to persuade women who were working for the right to vote that cigarettes were a symbol of women's freedom. By connecting the two totally unrelated issues -- smoking and voting -- he opened up the market to millions of new consumers.
That's America. Money is so deeply involved in everything, that even the very best moral issues are compromised.
Better rights for women, gay people, trans people, etc., is a great cause, and every improvement is a wonderful step in the right direction. But it's not going to be pure, because nothing that gets widespread retail distribution is pure.
I appreciate your analysis and yes I do believe that these choices are based primarily on money, however I am fairly convinced that the choices that Disney made regarding the character of Rey are only going to work on people in the short term. I mean will parents really be as excited to show their kids episode 7-9 as they are to introduce them to 4-6? I mean, the original trilogy is the main basis upon which the entire Star Wars franchise was built upon. They are still endlessly revisit able classics to this day and because of this they have inspired multiple generations to want to see more and expand the Star Wars universe.
So some soccer mom buys the mar Rey sue trilogy, pops it in for her kids and then what? Do the kids want to be like the characters? Do they buy the action figures? Are they inspired by these stories on any level? Do they want to buy comics or videogames based on the expanded universe?
Like I said I think that these choices pay off only in the short term, in the long term people will move on past most of these new Star Wars films and I'm pretty sure we will just go back to the original trilogy and perhaps even the prequels when we want to re-experience George Luca's storytelling.
Also I don't think that Rey advances "women's rights" or anything virtuous like that. She's just there being a woman and being treated like the most special person in the galaxy simply because the writers gave her lots of magic points. I can't see how that would inspire young girls to aspire to be anything other than a spoiled and self-centered person.
Mulan was originally an excellent example of a girl who had to actually deal with sexism in order to fight on her father's behalf. She proved that even though she wasn't as strong as the other men she was smarter. She was able to climb the wooden pole and retrieve the arrow on top, she was also able to defeat a large portion of the hun army by using a rocket to cause an avalanche. And, by the end of the story she brought a tremendous amount of respect and honor to her family and country without being a typical pretty girl who is just there to wear makeup and be polite for the men in her society.
I find the originally story of Mulan to be both inspiring and feminist but in a positive way. At no point does Mulan receive special treatment or special magic powers to solve her problems for her. On the contrary, the fact that she is a girl means she needs to put forth extra effort to hide her gender from the other soldiers so she consistently needed to be clever in order to avoid detection.
