In 2016 can we all resolve to stop doing that obnoxious surface-level analysis thing where we pretend that any interest expressed in villains means a 100% endorsement of their behaviour as if they were a real person, rather than a narrative tool used to explore particular themes that individuals may find interesting for every reason OTHER than endorsement
*wearily*
Yes, please.
Also, can we stop doing that thing where a character being established as a villain of one kind is taken to mean that they are automatically a villain of EVERY kind, and therefore it’s okay to charge them with all sorts of other crimes and faults they never actually displayed in canon?
Like, I’m pretty sure that if Kylo Ren was a mansplaining, gatekeeping, misogynist trollboy who went around belittling all the women in the movie for not being up on their Darth Vader trivia, I would not have been even remotely inclined to be curious about his backstory, let alone where his character might be going in future (unless it was out the nearest airlock). In fact, it was the complete absence of any sexual menace or gendered discrimination in Kylo’s treatment of Rey that made me start to wonder what the movie was trying to tell me about his character. But apparently it’s okay (nay, mandatory) to read every kind of vile attitude and intention into Kylo now, because he’s a male villain and that’s the kind of thing male villains do.
Sigh.
You’d think after all the stuff with X-Men and the like people would have figured out that fiction with any depth of characterisation or plot makes for a very poor analogy for real world social issues beyond the very broad strokes. Riffing on ideas and images from the real world is not the same as literally being them.
Not to mention people bring their own history when it comes to interpretations of fandom. The same act can have different connotations to different people.
But I do think a lot of this comes down to people who just don’t care for the character – which is fair enough – and thus have no real interest at looking at him beyond the superficial. Which is the (relatively) powerful white male who causes harm to the female and POC leads – very easy to box into whatever thinkpiece “real world” stereotype, since that’s the general oppressor demographic. The stuff that makes Kylo Ren interesting is a bit more complicated and ambiguous (and not fully explained i,e. backstory) and doesn’t fit as easily into stories about TFA being a story about how Creative Female Fans are superior to Male Gatekeepers. Or whatever.
I feel the same about Rey, for the record, as I think I’ve said on twitter. She’s a lot more interesting as an actual character with flaws and fragility and prickly bits and a vicious streak than as Rey Flawless Icon Of Fangirl Feminism Who Defeats The Oppressors™.
Man…I hate it when characters get lionized. Like how in Les
Miserables fandom there was a time when you couldn’t say anything
against any member of Les Amis, even though between the nine of them
they harboured fascinating flaws like hypocrisy, sexism, abuse apologism
and the sexual harassing of at least a few women. But any criticism of
them was considered a criticism of activism itself, it seemed, and people really weren’t down for that.
And
then there’s Captain America….oh, Captain America. It’s so strange what
happened there. He’s a white man from the 1940s and we’re meant to
believe he’s never had a racist, transphobic, sexist or otherwise
bigoted thought in his life? That’s not how characters work! That’s not
even how thoughts work!
