I try not to be one of those types who explodes in rage at things people say. Most of the time they’re just doing marketing stuff, answering questions in a casual way, not giving their words much thought. But this one really stung. Hard. JJ Abrams is quoted in the Guardian about Star Wars:
“Star Wars was always a boys’ thing, and a movie that dads could take their sons to,” Abrams said. “And although that is still very much the case, I was really hoping this could be a movie that mothers could take their daughters to as well.”
His intentions are good, of course. What they mean to say is that they’re making an effort to bring the franchise to girls and women — and that’s great. The new movie boasts more female leads, the article says, than any film in the franchise. It’s just that I took mild offense at his quote AS A LIFELONG STAR WARS FAN.
Star Wars changed my life back in 1977. My sister and I were kicked around from house to house as my mother evolved from being a single mother of four to a realtor and she did this by buying and selling cheap homes around California. There wasn’t much of a childhood homebase that I remember all that well because we were never in one place for very long. But there was always a movie theater. We loved Jaws first, standing in line to see that movie maybe 10 times when it first opened. When Star Wars came along, though, my sister and I lived in the movie theater. We weren’t the only girls who loved it either – then or now. Star Wars fans have always been half female, just like the rest of the world.
The way JJ Abrams sees things is the warped way Hollywood sees things and why so many movies have been increasingly aimed at men and boys – their most reliable demographic (they think – in truth, women make up more than half of the ticket buying population) and so they make movies with men at the center. That is true of blockbusters, it is true of “serious” films, and it will be true of the Oscar race going forward, despite the higher than usual number of female driven films this year. Films featuring women don’t appeal as strongly to most people who cover the Oscars, nor do they appeal as strongly to those who vote on the Oscars.
What Hollywood has become between Star Wars and now is shameful in its treatment of its most faithful movie goers. After all, women are mostly interested in films that star both men and women. It’s men who are only interested (for the most part) in films starring men. The original Star Wars, like the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, had female characters worth writing home about. But honestly? We would have loved Star Wars anyway. That Carrie Fisher was such a funny, smart wise-cracking character was just gravy. But it was also how women were thought of back then. We went to the movies. A lot. For decades and decades prior. It wasn’t that women ever stopped buying tickets — it was that Hollywood stopped caring about women and began helping to firm up the idea that only men mattered.
To this day, I can quote Star Wars from start to finish. I know every cell and fiber in that film. I grew up as a girl thinking it was okay to play in the boys club. I never thought twice about it. After all, look at the role models I had on film. It never occurred to me that women would become as marginalized as they have been over the past twenty years — at the hands of fanboy culture. Now, I see more clearly than ever that Star Wars and other fanboy franchises have signs up on the door, “No Girls Allowed,” but such was not the case back then. And even now — if you go to Comic-Con you can see for yourself how many women are into comic book culture like the new Star Wars. So really, it’s a false perception overall that only boys are into Star Wars. Maybe they’re just the ones people see.
So bravo to JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy for trying to turn things back around to the way they used to be. I just wish JJ Abrams knew — and that everyone knew — what Star Wars meant to us girls back then.
If JJ Abrams was being a jerk on purpose, I’d send Chewbacca to kick his butt. As it is, I think his film is gonna bring in men, women, and everyone in between. Right Chewie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr3sBks5o_8
We’ve
heard the term ‘male gaze’ when it comes to how some men directors
treat female characters. I think JJ may have inadvertently created a new
term for clueless helmsmen: NERD GAZE!
JJ seems to be deluded in only seeing Sci-Fi as a 14 year old fanBOY does. NERD GAZE!
Growing up as a kid in the Seventies and the Eighties, it never occurred to me that many of the popular films of the day were made by guys and for guys (and if girls liked them too, well then more $$).
Some of my favorite directors, including Spielberg, Scorsese and Lucas, were never big on putting women in front of the camera, and they still aren’t too fond of it. Sure, they can be moms or girlfriends, but they don’t usually interact for any amount of time with other female characters.
Unfortunately, the studios decided to hire directors that emulated these guys. The Eighties and Nineties have few money-making, female-driven films because it was deemed that all the money should fund tent poles for men/boys. Still to this day, studios largely neglect the ladies.
I agree with Abrams: Star Wars was made for the boys. Girls have only been able to watch it in the dark. The boys were allowed to make movies it.
High praise to JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy for having one of the most diverse casts in a blockbuster (with both women and people of color in lead roles) in probably 20 years, but that quote illuminates the mindset that has spent the same period trying to elbow women out of sci fi. Hate to break it to Mr. Abrams or anyone who also want to claim Star Wars for boys only, why don’t you ask its creator. See what ol’ George has to say about that.
Ow, wow. Well fuck him. I knew these movies wouldn’t live up to the PT let alone the OT. Can we stop pretending that this prick can make an Oscar movie now?
Preach.
Also, the ad at the top: when is someone going to do a mashup poster of The Danish Girl with Princess Leia and her hair? #toolazytodoitmyself
Girls being obsessed with the films, too, doesn’t make it not a boys’ thing.
The subtext of what he’s saying is that in the 70s, sci-fi was very much a boys’ thing. Even during my childhood in the 80s and teenage years in the 90s, “things” were still divided between “for boys” and “for girls.”
I’m not going to get mad when the Reese Witherspoon Barbie movie comes out and during press she acknowledges that Barbies were a girls’ thing even though I played with them my whole life.
Hate to rain on your privilege but your comment is bullshit from start to
finish. How do you mansplain away these pics of not only Star Wars but actual
GIRLS (yuck, right?) at Comic Con on in ’76 and ’77:
http://geektyrant.com/news/1976-and-1977-star-wars-comic-con-panel-photo
Sasha,
I completely see where you’re coming from when it comes to this article, and I agree with you that is a poor choice of words by Abrams at best (especially given that fact that Princess Leia was such a strong character, she drove most of the action and never afraid to fight and get hands dirty) but I feel like, and I think you do as well, that he was trying to make a point that there should be more strong female characters in movies, he just went about it in one of the stupidest ways possible. You don’t attack one of the few sci-fi/action adventure movies that has a strong, central female character, and dismiss half of the audience of said movie, to try and say that more movies should have strong female leads…Abrams could have just said it without (an incorrect) comparison.
REVENGE OF THE SITH is better than anything J.J. has ever done. That alone should give anyone considerable apprehension about how “great” this upcoming sequel might be. I’m not one of the obsessives but I consider myself a fan. I’ll even gladly re-watch the prequels before I see THE FORCE AWAKENS, that’s way more than I’m willing to do for 80%+ of Abrams’ output as of now.
TFA is playing to JJ’s strengths which are casting, cast chemistry and set up. He’s bad with follow-up and pay-off but that’s Johnsons’s and Trevorrow’s to worry about (unless Disney’s so infatuated with TFA boxoffice and critical success they’d throw hundreds of millions at JJ’s feet to keep him for next 2).
I’m not going to say that JJ Abrams is the greatest director ever or anything crazy like that, but to say that Revenge of the Sith is better than Super 8 or (especially) the two part Pilot of Lost (one of the greatest pilots in TV history, regardless of your feelings on the series as a whole) seems hyperbolic and mean for sake of being mean
Oh, I don’t know about that: I’d rather sit through Abram’s “Star Trek” reboot than listen to Lucas’ tin-ear dialogue about how much Anakin is in love with Padme. Hell, I’d rather sit through Into Darkness than Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones again.