Alanis Garay, 2023

My sister has been begging and pestering me about watching all nine Star Wars movies with her for most of my life. Our dad made sure to share his love of movies with us and that is our safe space as a family. Whenever conversations lull or get awkward, as conversations with dads do, film and TV have always been a reliable olive branch. She’s two years older than me and when our dad first put the movies on for us, I was a bit too young to care. That means that for at least the past ten years of my life she has been annoying me into submission. She finally had her success the first week of April while our dad and brother were away on a spring break trip. My spring break turned into a hard launch of my introduction into the Star Wars universe as we watched about a movie a day, sometimes two. With a cinematic universe as large as Star Wars I was, rightfully so, hesitant to start while sitting there, staring at the clock and the runtime of A New Hope.

 

We are in an age of mass production and distribution of television and film with the surge of streaming services since COVID. Shows are being made and released at much quicker rates to an overwhelming degree for viewers. Unfortunately, that can mean that the quality of these shows and movies aren’t the best due to rushed decisions. Every decision made on a film set has a consequence. There is an average of 500 people working on making a single movie with a similar or higher number of people working on making a TV if it has multiple seasons. When we watch a film or show we are subconsciously processing every single piece of visual and/or auditory information, as well as the messages they are promoting.

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Bell hooks once wrote, "Mass media are a powerful vehicle for teaching the art of the possible," (The Will to Change p.134). I finished reading this book the same night I watched The Last Jedi, the last movie of the latest Star Wars trilogy. I watched Kylo Ren die the same night bell hooks told me that whenever we see men in film try to reach any level of self-actualization or finally free themselves of the hold this patriarchy has on them they are in turn punished by dying. Kylo Ren is representative of the angry and violent patriarchal male who only becomes more angry when called out. Throughout this trilogy, we see every moment of doubt he has in his violent actions that he perceives as weakness. There are people who remind him that he can change, he can choose another life for himself but he doesn’t believe that, he doesn’t think he has anyone or anywhere to go. Rey is the person who ultimately makes him see that change is possible and worth it. There was an incredible potential to tell the story of a man who had gone as far as Kylo Ren did into what we know as the patriarchy and chooses to change and show what life looks like afterwards. But they robbed every boy and man from being assured in their ability to not be violent and be capable of love and loving.

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When we fail to recognize the importance of media representation we fail to see the overall power of storytelling. Psychology Today published an article written by Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, professor and researcher of the impacts of microaggressions, titled “Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough”. In this article, Yabut Nadal talks about the real positive effects that exposure through mass media representation has on stigma surrounding marginalized groups. Representation isn’t the end all, it won’t solve all the social injustice that exist in our culture but it can be a powerful tool in changing the way people view others. When we differentiate good and bad representation, the distinction is that good representation undoes the stereotypes promoted by other “representations”; Yabut Nadal also says that good representation addresses social inequities.

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We often discuss the lack of positive representation for marginalized people but don’t spend enough time discussing the gross promotion of patriarchal masculinity. Bell hooks wrote, “Popular culture offers us few or no redemptive images of men who start out emotionally dead,” (pg. 101). To us, that is who Kylo Ren begins as. He has shut himself off from every emotion and has covered them with violent anger. But we see by the end of the trilogy that he is capable of change, he is capable of love, and he is capable of being loved. Kylo Ren is the name and persona he took over when he joined the dark side, Ben Solo is who he was before. You realize by the end of the movie that you only got a glimpse of the whole person Kylo Ren and Ben Solo could have been; Not a whole person but the potential of a person. That violent anger is what drives the patriarchy and our inability to see men outside of it is what keeps the cycle going. Storytelling through film and TV has a way to show us different possibilities to the end of this cycle and to recognize that capability to open ourselves up to a world where everyone is seen as whole and not parts of a person; A world where boys and men are encouraged to feel and to love; A world where women, or anyone, are more than victims of male violence.