I was never much of a Star Wars fan. I was a devoted Star Trekker — original show and films only, not the painful, sexless, politically correct series that followed, beginning with Star Trek: The Next Generation, and continuing, judging by the ghastly trailer for Starfleet Academy. The fact that it looks like a DEI fantasy recruitment video without a single white male character (other than an old Star Trek Voyager fossil), or any male in command, means Paramount (Skydance) hasn’t gotten the Star Wars message. Girlbosses are out. Including the girlboss who wrecked the franchise with precisely such feminist and diverse dreck. This week, Kathleen Kennedy got expelled as president of Lucasfilm, according to the Puck newsletter.
Kennedy leaves Lucasfilm burning like Luke Skywalker’s uncle’s homestead in Star Wars, whatever they called or numbered it later. As I stated, I wasn’t a big fan, but I recognized that scene on first viewing for what it was — an homage to John Ford’s Western masterpiece, The Searchers. I also appreciated the movie’s obvious tribute to the 1930s serials that George Lucas and I grew up watching on television, preeminently Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. And I realized their reincarnation via Star Wars provided welcome popular escapism from the morally ambiguous, depressive 1970s cinema (Badlands, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Dog Day Afternoon), great though some of the films were. (RELATED: Exit, the Hollywood Women)
I was right. Before the end of the decade, masculine fantasy heroes took over the big screen, predominantly Superman and, much to my delight, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Not to mention Lucas’s old friends and mine, Flash Gordon (“He saved every one of us!” sang Queen) and Buck Rogers (I was sorry to read about the death of the likable lead actor, Gil Gerard, last month). The trend continued over the awesome next decade, with Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, The Terminator, The Thing, Back to the Future, a better-than-expected Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, and happily more Admiral Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy in additional Star Trek films.
In 1981, Lucas went back to the serial hero well — this time with his fellow movie buff auteur Steven Spielberg — to produce the ultimate manly icon, Indiana Jones, in Raiders of the Lost Ark. There was no question about the source material for the two-fisted archaeologist adventurer slugging, chasing, and romancing his way against Nazis in three fun films. And boys and girls loved all of them.
Not just a woman with no appreciation of The Searchers, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and other boy-friendly fare that inspired them, but a radical feminist with hostility to boys and normal feminine girls.
Then, after writing and directing three bad Star Wars prequels at the turn of the century, Lucas put the torch to both his franchises. He gave them to Kathleen Kennedy. Not just a woman with no appreciation of The Searchers, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and other boy-friendly fare that inspired them, but a radical feminist with hostility to boys and normal feminine girls. Which logically meant she had total disdain for the franchises themselves as Lucas conceived them. But he was too much in the Hollywood liberal bubble to see the danger. (RELATED: The Wreck of Feminist Hollywood)
“It’s time to pass Star Wars to a new generation,” Lucas said at the handover. “Kathleen is a great choice to lead the company into the future.” He believed this because Kennedy had been an efficient enough producer on his films from Raiders on, when she couldn’t push any crazy feminist agenda. The moment she could, she would, to quote John Wayne in The Searchers, “Just as sure as the turning of the Earth.” And she did.
In the same way, the Star Trek: The Next Generation bozos (Rick Berman and Brannon Braga) couldn’t wait to kill off Captain Kirk — embarrassingly too — on their first feature film (Star Trek Generations), because he was too manly and dynamic for their PC concept of Star Trek, Kennedy went to work on emasculating Star Wars. “We’ve created some really strong females with characters like Rey in The Force Awakens,” she said of film one. “Having strong, empowered females in these stories, and really allowing them to become heroes.”
Of course, Kennedy dismissed the fact that the original trilogy already had a strong, empowered heroine. Because Princess Leia’s strength was in her courage, patriotism, and heart, not her prowess with a lightsaber. But more unacceptable to Kennedy and her ilk, Leia was also sexy enough to entice her two male champions, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, into nobler heights by competing with each other over her. “She’s beautiful,” Luke says on seeing a holograph of Leia. Again, this romantic aspect appealed to young people of both sexes — boys who want to rescue pretty damsels, and girls who, sorry, Hollywoke, dream of being rescued.
Kennedy’s Star Wars trilogy would have been an artistic failure and financial disappointment (the last film made less than half what the first did) just on the demerits of the bland androgynous quasi-male heroine. Jedi Knightess Rey appealed to nobody except feminist fantasists. But Kennedy couldn’t leave it at that. She had to utterly destroy her mentor’s beloved masculine heroes.
You thought Han Solo lived happily ever after post-victory over the Empire? Nah. He turned into a bitter wretch, divorced from Leia, who lets himself be murdered by their Dark-Sided son. What about the central protagonist, Luke Skywalker? Is he now a Jedi Master teaching the new breed the ways and wisdom of the Force? Of course not. He’s a guilt-ridden recluse disgusted by the Force and the galaxy far, far away. Where Kathleen Kennedy may soon be joining him.
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