 | |
| This is Artoo |
I read an article about a Star Wars fan
who edited all the women out of The Last Jedi, creating a 45
minute all-male version. This is either a work of genius or some kind
of hysterical obsessive compulsion to assert some kind of sense of
male pride from a guy who finds successful fictional women intensely
emasculating.
Of course, the fan in question could be
a woman and it could mean something else entirely, but if the
presumption is correct, and the edit made was a reaction and protest
towards the film, I struggle to see what is overtly anti-male about
the film. It is barely pro-female for that matter.
Perhaps it is Laura Dern's character
who appears to be particularly condescending to upstart men until it
is proved she is actually a highly competent leader, and it is the
upstart male who is the idiot. Perhaps it is this included story
fragment that is particularly upsetting to some people, who need
fictional masculine role models to reassure them their gender is
inherently special.
Apart from that, the film seems to me
to be overtly generous to its idiot male characters. For me, the best
part of the film is when the fighter pilot character twice
disobeys orders, twice
contributing to deaths of his fellow rebels, yet receives nothing
more than fond looks from Leia and Laura Dern, accompanied with their
exclamation of how likeable he is.
This film is the
flawed male's wet dream. Every terrible father across the globe must
have cheered when that character escaped retribution.
The Last Jedi
is a shambles of a film: a mess of good bits incoherently sewn
together without guile or focus. What left me after viewing this film
is how often it failed. This matters to me because I pretend to be a
writer of fiction, and one thing I think is important to fiction is
to uphold values and to not let poor storytelling prevent you from
losing sight of what is ethical. Or to put it another way: do not try
to dress up the failures of your characters as profound qualities
purely because you find it too difficult to write something better.
I contemplate the
lack of simple honesty in the story structure, and I am reminded of a
tweet that I saw being passed around on the web. The tweet was
defending the premise of this and the previous Star Wars movie,
saying the similarities with these movies to the original trilogy is
an expression of how history repeats itself.
And here's me
thinking it was ineptitude on the part of the writers. Who'd have
thought lazily rehashing ideas from previous films was such a noble
act?
But no, it is not.
We are not talking about real life here; we're talking about fiction
and the lame recycling of pre-used themes. The thing here is that
this style of (non) storytelling can only be defended by the
unimaginative and the easily amused. Some people, uncreative people,
are just unable to deconstruct a work of fiction, viewing it only
through the superficial, viewing it only on face value.
Anyone with an iota
of creativity will know the point of history repeating itself, if it
is worth being made at all, can be made without the need to re-use
old ideas. The only reason I see for this rehashing is the movie
makers' fear of potential failure, so resorting to tried-and-tested
themes to guarantee at least some success. Big deal.
I was
reading some comments on the Black Panther
movie on a Facebook post from Occupy London and there was a similar
difficulty for many people to look past the superficial. The topic of
the post and discussion was questioning the film's progessiveness and
many people had a lot to say about it; but what failed to escape
virtually everyone's mind was the fact that Black Panther
is a Hollywood movie.
How progress do you expect it to be exactly?
Without watching
it, I know the themes of the film will only touch upon the
superficial, implying strength through an American style of heroism,
and expressing culture through African inspired costume. The
political will not be granted moments of reflection, except through
passing, un-profound glimpses of non-sight.
Those comments on
the Facebook post are from consumers; people who have rarely or never
set foot in a contemporary art gallery, people who do not think
critically about the information they consume – by that I mean
deconstructing the information rather than merely questioning its
message. These are the words from the people who cannot look beyond
what is put in front of them.
(I might add here I
am in no way suggesting contemporary art, or artists for that matter,
are automatically and inherently beyond the plebeian outlook that
understands culture in mainly superficial ways; just that some
art and artists can be, occasionally).
My mind turns now to that film about
Margaret Thatcher , the one I watched on TV the other day. I believe
it is called The Iron Lady.
It was a perfectly watchable film, enjoyably bland and well-acted,
but no matter how seductive the mechanics of the film might be (or
not be), I felt like I was watching the film on an armchair made of
gravel. I just could not sit comfortably with the film.
Like the movies
mentioned above, this movie is vapid and superficial. The main
problem is with the filmmakers' attempts to humanise Thatcher whilst
decidedly steering clear of the political. (Again, except through
those mundane glimpses of political happenings).
Like Black
Panther, I would not expect a film of this sort to go deeply into
politics, given the production company that made it and the obvious
political leanings of the person who would be inspired, or bothered,
to write such a film; and I am sure the film would be far less
watchable if it was more political.
However, by looking
at Thatcher as a human being, a lover, a wife, a mother, then
ultimately a person who develops dementia, we are asked to sympathise
with a politician who often showed no sympathy for the British
people. Essentially this film is about a successful, career-driven
woman who ends her life without a husband, suffering mental illness.
This
is all very well but one must take issue with a film that fails to
recognise its protagonist is a woman whose actions affected the lives
of millions of other people. It is easy enough to say no
matter what she did as Prime Minister, she was a human with feelings
and problems, just like the rest of us,
but without being a teensy bit critical of her leadership, the film
portrays her almost as some kind of tragic victim.
She is portrayed at
times as a kind of feminist icon, and although many people could
argue she did a lot for women, helping women's advancement in
professional life, her politics are hardly in keeping with the
majority of feminists; and as this
article clearly puts it: Being an empowered woman does not
mean she empowered women.
Too right. Again,
under the resonance of the moving image, we are expected to be
seduced like the suggestible idiots we are.
Over and out.
L
xxxx
Comments
Post a Comment