Guest Post by Rebecca Harrison
Last week, I published some preliminary findings from my research about gender and race in “Star Wars.” I’ve been a life-long fan of the films and various spin-offs — yes, even the ewok cartoons — and recently decided to combine my love of the franchise with my professional interest in cinema and technology. My project, “Decoding Star Wars,” explores how computer code shapes the production, circulation, and aesthetics of “Star Wars” media. In particular, I’m focusing on the roles that gender and race play in the fictional universe, from the creation of its algorithms to the ways that characters are represented onscreen.
As such, when someone cut all the women out of “The Last Jedi” earlier this year, I decided to find out what would happen if I did the same with the men, but in every “Star Wars” movie. Having edited all the male characters out of the nine canon films up to and including “The Last Jedi,” my research revealed how much screen time women get in the galaxy far, far away. Unsurprisingly, the results were disappointing.
You can read about my methodology here.
In last place, at just 15 percent, was “A New Hope” from 1977, while in first place was “The Last Jedi” from 2017 – which does at least suggest things are improving. However, in eighth and seventh places respectively were “Revenge of the Sith” (2005, 17 percent) and “Attack of the Clones” (2002, 18 percent), which score worse than the original trilogy films from the 1980s. And while the most recent film, 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” has a number of speaking roles for women, it barely passes the Bechdel Test and is unlikely to surpass “The Last Jedi” when I eventually do the math. While the franchise in the Disney era seems to be taking steps to address issues of representation, progress isn’t always straightforward or guaranteed.
Indeed, in the course of the last week, reports suggest that “Star Wars” actress Kelly Marie Tran — the first woman of color with a major role in the franchise — has been hounded off social media by trolls. Actress Daisy Ridley experienced similar abuse, and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has been targeted by so-called fans calling for her to be sacked. The representation of women and people of color in the franchise, both onscreen and in production, is still a major problem for some viewers.
The more we see ourselves existing in the “Star War”s universe — not just as princesses but as engineers, pilots, Jedi, smugglers, rebels, leaders — the more it feels like the franchise is for us, too. Why should the fly boys have all the fun?
There are also positive effects beyond expanding the demographics of “Star Wars” fandom. Thanks to Tran’s character, engineer Rose Tico, kids will grow up knowing, rather than imagining, that women can work in STEM. They’ll recognize that all women can be great, and that there’s room for more than just one extraordinary woman as Rey, Holdo, Pammrich, and Connix line up alongside Leia. Perhaps this is why some toxic fans are so resistant to the representation of women and people of color: by acknowledging the change onscreen, they have to recognize that things are changing in the real world, too.
Part of the problem is that we tend to overestimate how much screen time and dialogue women get compared to men – studies show that this is normal even in conversation. Many commentators were surprised, for example, that my research put “The Last Jedi” at just 43 percent, and “Rogue One” at 35 percent, when the former features a number of central women characters, and both Rey and Jyn Erso are broadly perceived as protagonists.
Disney certainly marketed the films that way. In promotional materials for “Rogue One,” Jyn occupied the most prominent spot on the poster, positioned above all the male characters. Meanwhile when “The Last Jedi” was released, critics by and large agreed it was a win for women, with publications including The Guardian, Digital Spy, and MTV crowning it the most feminist “Star Wars” film. The New York Times attributed this to Kathleen Kennedy’s diverse story group, which is said to include seven men and four women, of whom five are people of color.
However, until the final scene, all of Rey’s screen time in “The Last Jedi” is shared with male characters, and they do most of the talking. So, while the franchise seems keen to engage its female fans, it feels like the filmmakers haven’t quite woken up to what real equality looks and sounds like — it’s hard to shake those biases!
Hence data like this, as well as qualitative analysis, is important, and we have to keep paying attention to how, when, and where women are represented in the media. Alongside statistics produced by Digital Spy determining screen time for women in the Marvel movies; by the Geena Davis Institute for Gender and Media looking at women’s dialogue and representation; by the Calling the Shots project in the UK, which has recorded women’s participation in production, these numbers matter. They tell us not only how far we’ve come, but also how far we have to go, and where we’re slipping up along the way.
Equal representation, after all, is another step toward full equality. Let’s hope Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams and the “Star Wars” team at Disney give us the 50/50 “Episode IX” that we all deserve.
Rebecca Harrison is an academic at the University of Glasgow, as well as a film critic and founder of the Glasgow Feminist Arts Festival. She is currently working on a book, “Decoding Star Wars: Gender, Race and the Power of Code in a Galaxy Far, Far Away,” which will be published with Bloomsbury in 2022.
