Discussion: Podcasts

Jason Fry will be on the "What the Force" show! I'm so excited! Marie-Clair is a genius! I know she asked him a while ago...

I'm sure he can give us a better insight to character motivations than Kogge

snufkin wrote:

Oh yeah, the women have been sexualized for the male gaze, ergo we must eschew anything and everything to do with sex argument in response. It’s very second wave. Versus questioning the system which doesn’t just negate sexual agency and pleasure for women (and female characters), but which removes them from the position to demand/expect what’s afforded to men. Also that whole line of logic, I remember the backlash that happened with Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs (basically arguing about sex for the male gaze peddled as empowerment) but besides Millet there was Brownmiller and Dworkin teaming up with anti porn conservative Christians. You almost see that in some corners of the Internet with the concern trolling over how you’re a bad feminist if you want  little Rey of Sunshine to be anything other than a blank and cheerful female empowerment vehicle, let alone knocking boots with the villain. It’s the same fans (idiots) who complained about Qi’ra and L3’s sex talk in Solo because 2 female characters who get to discuss their love lives and sex is radical after 40 years of a franchise plagued by the Only Girl problem but blah blah the Bechdel test. Also don’t get me started on the dumba**es who complained about Qi’ra being supposedly a cliche without even bothering to learn about Film Noir (these also tend to be the same type of people who assume that pre code and the Golden Age movies are worse for women when in fact they’re better than today)

@snufkin
I remember when my aunt was talking about that book, Male Chauvinists Pigs, alot.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that the premise of the book struck me as a bit puritanical.  Still, I like hearing about the debates. I remember being really impressed by pro-sex goddess Annie Sprinkle, who was asked about Andrea Dworkin (probably the most extreme of the 80s anti-porn writers.) Sprinkle said that although she didn't agree with the conclusions, Dworkin had made some good points about how exploitative porn can be and saw it as important provocative discourse that got mainstream exposure and lots of people thinking about the topic as a result.  Haha, I feel like I am really dating myself here with these 20th century references - in many ways the debate about porn is over. But, I still see the same types of arguments applied to films and YA fiction.  Are women really being portrayed as helpless victims or do we just insist on interpreting them that way?

For ex., to relate back to this podcaster's youtube video about Harrison Ford films and "predatory romance" - I mean, I see where he is going and rather appreciate drawing attention to those silly (sometimes annoying) tropes of the male hero manhandling his lady love who feigns disinterest. And, I don't know, is he right that young men take their cues from Hollywood films and learn atrocious courtship skills from them? Maybe. But, I suspect that he mischaracterizes Han & Leia's relationship a bit (he claims that they don't have any kind of romantic history before ESB begins and suggests that Leia's just playing 'hard to get.') Also, I wonder, would he be scandalized by the entire genre of romance (far & away the best selling genre of fiction, largely written and consumed by women) that more often than not features men behaving much more "problematically" than characters in mainstream movies?

Lastly, when compared to the vast majority of the films I've watched, I just can't see Reylo as "toxic," whatever the h*ll that even means.  It feels very different, because there is so much emphasis on them being the same/equals - in strength, in loneliness, in their very essence of mystical force-ness.   They challenge each other, but the power balance is continually shifting between them.

Male/female active/passive roles in courtship predate the entire film genre by centuries, so blaming movies for poor courtship skills is a tad too easy IMO.

LadyHa wrote:Lastly, when compared to the vast majority of the films I've watched, I just can't see Reylo as "toxic," whatever the h*ll that even means.  It feels very different, because there is so much emphasis on them being the same/equals - in strength, in loneliness, in their very essence of mystical force-ness.   They challenge each other, but the power balance is continually shifting between them.

@LadyHa

This is where it blows my mind that people don't see how Rey and Kylo are equal in strength and that's the entire point of this venture. It's probably stuff like his Crait tantrum, and the "you're nothing" blunder, but I don't think we're going to see that level of dumb-ness on Kylo's end in IX. He's rock bottom now, so the only way to go is up.

@LadyHa Yep it gets treated like a zero sum gain, this sh*t happens so therefore we should remove women entirely from that sphere instead of questioning the systems which put those tropes into place. Or valueing women's relationships and inner (emotional/sexual) lives as part of what makes them tick A lot of people making those arguments, half the time don't even know what they're talking about beyond a very shallow and current understanding of films and genre. I've posted it a million times, but the filmmaker Anna Biller (of The Love Witch fame) talks about how people are so quick to point to pre-code, Hayes Code, and Golden Age of Hollywood films as being regressive or bad (see the hand wringing over Qi'ra by people who've never bothered to watch a single film noir classic) for women when the representations are in fact superior despite the political/social freedoms for women being worse back in those eras. That's why Han and Leia are iconic, because Gloria Katz ghost wrote part of the original script and told George Lucas that Leia should be like a Howard Hawks female characters. But most people don't even get that far seeing as how an ongoing battle you see on Film Twitter are the # of people out there with opinions whose knowledge of film/popular culture won't go back further than 1977 and the original film.

snufkin wrote:That's why Han and Leia are iconic, because Gloria Katz ghost wrote part of the original script and told George Lucas that Leia should be like a Howard Hawks female characters.

@snufkin

I didn't know that about Katz! I see that you shared an article about her from the Guardian on this forum last year, but I missed it! (archived posts)  It's worth revisiting - I found a slightly different interview format article by the same author on The Mary Sue here: https://www.themarysue.com/interview-gloria-katz-star-wars/. Good part from the interview:

TMS: Did you meet Carrie Fisher on set?

Katz: Just randomly—she was very young and very funny. I was thinking about the relationship between American Graffiti and Princess Leia. Graffiti originally started out with the Laurie Henderson character as the perfect blonde high school princess. And that thought radically changed in the casting of (brunette) Cindy Williams. The casting director Fred Roos was a very big influence on that. Once you create Laurie like Cindy, then that leaves you to rethink. For Star Wars, George had originally seen (blonde actress) Yvette Mimieux in her heydey as Princess Leia.

When we talked to him about the character, we said Leia should be a more ‘Hawksian woman,’ with all the traits that that woman had: she can take command; she doesn’t take any s***, but at the same time she’s vulnerable and to write her as really focused, instead of just a beautiful woman that schlepped along to be saved. For her to be the one that initiated the action. And because Carrie Fisher was so young, the contrast between this young girl and her goals became more poignant.

TMS: So this idea of the ‘Hawksian woman’ came from the films of the director Howard Hawks?

Katz: Yes—a great example of the women that played them is Barbara Stanwyck and Lauren Bacall. To Willard and I, they were such great characters, we thought it would be really neat to repeat them in a space opera where you wouldn’t expect it. Also, George Lucas was inspired by the work of writer Leigh Bracket. She established the space opera genre, and she was one of the writers on The Big Sleep. So George hired her as a screenwriter on The Empire Strikes Back.

Good video about the visual storytelling in SW up through TLJ.



He talks about objective versus subjective filmmaking. For some reason, I think this could work really well with some of the more fantastical, surreal elements of IX. JJ did that trippy vision scene in TFA, he could do something neat with the Rey-Kylo stuff, maybe the "rebirth" scene many of us are anticipating.

@LadyHa Yep, Katz's influence on the first movie and then Leigh Brackett working with Lucas on the first draft of Empire Strikes Back's story and script

By 1977, the aging Brackett was retired and living in Los Angeles, and would be dead from cancer in only a few short months; her husband had himself passed away earlier that year. According to John Baxter's Mythmaker, she was brought to Lucas' attention by a friend, who put a paperback in Lucas' hand and said "here is someone who did the Cantina scene better than you did." It is not known if Lucas was actually familiar with her sci-fi work. Lucas was on the lookout for a writer for Star Wars II, so he got in contact with Brackett. Baxter describes their telephone conversation as follows:



Lucas: Have you ever written for the movies?

Brackett: Yes, I have. Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye...

[pause]

Lucas: Are you that Leigh Brackett?

Brackett: Yes. Isn't that why you called me in?

Lucas: No, I called you in because you were a pulp science fiction writer!

The What the Force ladies have just uploaded their podcast interview with Jason Fry!



So ima summarise the juicy Reylo bits. He basically said their relationship is deeper than romance, and calling it romance can be limiting.

This is what he said “they have been each others minds, pasts, deepest fears, Their experience is more intimate more than anyone has ever had, the closest analogue is romantic, the only analogy we could pull on. Its middle chapter, after 9 we could see the full arc of that story”

I think he pretty much is describing them as soulmates

It's interesting that he used the language of "if things will turn romantic" in IX, as in, he doesn't see it that way right now. Maybe he means "explicitly romantic"? Though I know some would still disagree that it's already overtly romantic. 

...or maybe it's more of the thing where they have to "protect the mystery."

adamdrivershair wrote:It's interesting that he used the language of "if things will turn romantic" in IX, as in, he doesn't see it that way right now. Maybe he means "explicitly romantic"? Though I know some would still disagree that it's already overtly romantic. 

...or maybe it's more of the thing where they have to "protect the mystery."

@adamdrivershair

It’s clear from what Jason Fry said on the podcast and what he’s said on his Twitter account, that he sees the potential for Rey and Kylo to have an overtly romantic relationship in Ep IX. However, he isn’t viewing it so much in terms of romantic love now but as something more akin to soulmates through the force. Something more spiritual than bound in the physical, I suppose. Jason Fry has been very clear that he doesn’t know anything about what will happen in Ep IX. It’s all on JJ now.

Jason Fry is certainly open to the idea of reylo and he sees the foundation for overt romance, as I’m sure many among the general audience also do. I don’t think many people would be surprised to see Rey and Kylo together as more than powerful light and powerful darkness in the force in Ep IX. But Jason Fry is simply acknowledging that there’s a whole chapter of the story left to tell. JJ could theoretically take things in a number of directions e.g something more mystical akin to Mortis, although there is much to support the redemption of Kylo/Ben and undeniably romantic reylo as endgame.

It does dismay me to see Jason Fry getting tagged on Twitter in so many posts misinterpreting what he’s said or using only partial quotes to infer he’s more in favour or certain of reylo being endgame. He has been polite, engaged, and as supportive/encouraging as he can be. As he states over and over, he doesn’t know what comes next and he has no sway within Lucasfilm when it comes to the future direction of the story. It’s great that he’s been so open and friendly with the reylo community but it’s also understandable he wants to stay cautious in light of the negative side of fandom.

adamdrivershair wrote:It's interesting that he used the language of "if things will turn romantic" in IX, as in, he doesn't see it that way right now. Maybe he means "explicitly romantic"? Though I know some would still disagree that it's already overtly romantic. 

...or maybe it's more of the thing where they have to "protect the mystery."

@adamdrivershair

Right, in TLJ there was 'romantic' tension, they connected with each other but they didn't kiss or end it in a relationship so it's currently not 'romantic' in that sense.

I agree with what Jason says and I like the way he sees the Rey and Kylo relationship. I think it reflects what we saw hints of in TFA and was brought out in the open in TLJ.

Something very deep and profound developed between them which is not a “typical” romance, but it’s akin to something romantic since that’s the best way we have to describe it. Obviously he doesn’t know what happens next, but he knows the connection is profound enough that it has to have some kind of resolution in IX that acknowledges the deep connection that’s developed.

It’s why no matter what happens in IX, there’s no way the Rey and Kylo relationship will just dissolve into a black and white adversarial relationship where neither of them acknowledges what happened between them in TLJ.

my newest recommendation is the "Rabble Alliance Podcast"

https://soundcloud.com/user-497264543/rabble-alliance-episode-ix-how-will-the-skywalker-saga-end-part-one-responsible-speculation

reylo friendly but also open minded about different opinion - the host Amel sounds a lot like Daisy imo  

@Night Huntress - I like Rabble Alliance! She and I chat occasionally on Twitter, and I might guest with her on an upcoming episode. Might - one never knows, right? But she's very Reylo friendly, and generally very positive, which is a nice thing these days.

PalmettoBlue wrote:@Night Huntress - I like Rabble Alliance! She and I chat occasionally on Twitter, and I might guest with her on an upcoming episode. Might - one never knows, right? But she's very Reylo friendly, and generally very positive, which is a nice thing these days.

@PalmettoBlue

Hello. Thing 1: Love your podcast. Thing 2: Domhnall rhymes with Tonal. Long O. Silent M. Silent H. The M, as Domhnall Gleason has said, is just there to confuse Americans. (Irish person here. And Gaelic written without the Gaelic alphabet has very different phonetics than English, so I thought that might help.)

Just checked Vincent Vendetta, as subscribed to him a while back, and his page no longer exists. I went to his twitter account and he also has no idea why it ceased to exist but is in process of appealing it to get it back up and running.

Ah Karma literally is a b*tch as he plagiarized writing by multiple forum members from here, creeped on and harassed other female fans, and generally stole whole cloth the ideas and writing of female fans to promote himself and then complained he wasn’t getting laid because of it. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving misogynistic PoS

I did eventually see Vincent Vendetta's videos last year and was unimpressed. Yes, it was sort-of interesting seeing a guy spend several long videos on a topic that few other "nerd culture" channels would, especially male-centered ones. But it was a combination of him clearly lifting from other places and also using that hybrid of condescending-but-simultaneously-amateurish delivery, like he's the ultimate genius authority on the subject but doesn't have the polish or research to pull it off convincingly. I visited his Twitter a few times and yeah, he's honestly sort of creepy and sexist, which sounds awfully harsh and judgmental, but the dude is weird, not in a good way.

The saddest part isn't even that he did a weaker imitation/stealing of Reylo podcasts and channels, but that those others who put in all that hard work had such small audiences, while Vincent there got hundreds of thousands of views for it.

@Lily Snape Thank you! Donal...got it. I really appreciate your kind words about the podcast. Sometimes it feels like you're talking into a void. LOL.
Our next one is going to be on Battle Star Galactica. I'm not very excited about it, but Melissa (PaksyBabe) really wants to discuss it, so....here we go, right?
I'd rather talk Star Wars!

@snufkin @californiagirl - I think that is the most maddening thing - when people who lift from others get all this credit. It's one thing when you absorb so much information and discussion, and it just becomes part of your lexicon. But he really did present himself as THE authority on all things Reylo.
I've seen several videos where he's been guesting on other shows, for example, Den of Nerds, and the host just fawned all over him as the expert on these matters. And I couldn't help but think - my dude, you don't even know. Be better.

@PalmettoBlue It’s more how gendered if not outright misogynistic the immediate response was after TFA over noticing what was hidden in plain site and wishing to discuss it. I was on the tail end of the original discussion elsewhere but the original forum members here, all women, can speak to the constant policing of that discussion, snide 100% gendered put downs, and outright “you crazy b*tches,” type comments. Bonus round including other female fans trying to pull the “Fake Geek Girl” move because they wanted Rey Skywalker. Yet lo and behold her comes this douchebag with a YouTube channel thirsty for clicks and after stealing everything women wrote/theorized, he gets attention and it’s suddenly a valid idea. Certainly not at the level of Watson & Crick cutting Rosalind Franklin out of the Nobel Prize, but seriously f**k him and the idea that what he did was ok.

New episode of Six Degrees of Kylo Ren is up. This one is all about our experiences at Dragon Con (focusing on Star Wars) a few weeks ago:

Six Degrees of Kylo Ren has inspired me to attend Dragon Con next year! This pod was fun to hear....

New Lords of the Sith video about Kylo Ren and psychology.