lavender_sage (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lavender_sage) wrote2018-12-05 04:32 pm
lavender_sage) wrote2018-12-05 04:32 pm
Entry tags:
Gender, Humor, and Comeuppance in TLJ
This question has been on my mind lately. If we’re supposed to enjoy seeing Hux get abused by Snoke and Kylo because of the evil things he’s done, why isn’t Snoke’s death more enjoyable? He’s in charge of the whole First Order; Hux spends most of The Force Awakens waiting for his approval to fire the weapon. Furthermore, Snoke is the outside force who bears the most responsibility for turning Kylo Ren to the Dark Side. But if he shows any emotional at all about being cut in half by his protege, it’s confusion. Where is his terror and anguish? Doesn’t he deserve to feel these things after all the evil he’s done?
I think the answer to these questions is that Snoke is never presented as a figure of fun when he’s alive, so why should he be in death?
For all that Starkiller Base gets brought up by people who feel a need to defend how much they enjoyed seeing Hux get thrown around by Snoke and Kylo in The Last Jedi, none of his punishment actually has anything to do with that incident narratively. It is only relevant in the sense that he no longer has that project to use as leverage to make himself indispensable. There is no narrative reason for most of this abuse except to entertain an audience that wants to see Hux suffer. Not just because he deserves it, but because it’s funny.
There is a lot of slapstick in this movie, and Hux is not the only man who is subjected to it. Both Finn and Poe get roughed up by women–which is far more likely to read as comic than the reverse–but neither of them are defined by that for the duration of the film. It’s funny, supposedly, to see these strong men be tased, shot, and dragged around by much smaller women, but the emasculation they are subjected to is temporary.
Meanwhile, when Hux is thrown around by men who are much more powerful than himself, there is no irony. Emasculation is not what makes him an object of ridicule, his characteristic lack of masculinity is.
Consider the differences between the scenes described above with Rose and Finn and Leia and Poe and the one, partially cut from the film, where Finn and Rose are caught aboard the Finalizer and Hux interrogates them.
When he approaches them, it’s Finn whom he slaps–because not even the vicious General Hux is depraved enough to hit a woman–and slapping itself is a form of violence more associated with women than men. Perhaps his intent is to emasculate Finn (again), to treat him like an errant child instead of acknowledging that he’s a man capable of making choices in spite of the First Order’s efforts. If that’s the case, it’s very short-lived.
In the earlier scenes.Rose has a taser; Leia has a blaster; neither is shown as able to overpower Finn/Poe on her own. When Rose bites Hux’s finger, though, he can’t even retrieve it without help from several Stormtroopers, in spite of the fact that she’s much smaller than he is, bound, and on her knees. That he’s screaming “like a little girl,” to quote numerous commenters, the whole time only drives the point home further.
And this is only one scene out of many; Hux’s “skinny, pasty” body is attacked from one end of the film to the other. And it’s no surprise. Violence against men whose masculinities are deemed suspect or insufficient has been stock in trade in comedy for a very long time, a lot longer than Star Wars has been around. Such men are protected neither by their own physical prowess nor by cultural prohibitions on violence against women. Of course, queerphobia has often been heavily inflected in such violence. If one reads Hux as queer, as I and many others do, it makes these scenes that much harder to watch.
I’m not arguing that hating Hux is a problem; there are plenty of good reasons to hate him. But it’s possible to hate him and believe he deserves his comeuppance while still recognizing that it is given to him in some troubling ways, and for some troubling reasons, in this movie.
I think the answer to these questions is that Snoke is never presented as a figure of fun when he’s alive, so why should he be in death?
For all that Starkiller Base gets brought up by people who feel a need to defend how much they enjoyed seeing Hux get thrown around by Snoke and Kylo in The Last Jedi, none of his punishment actually has anything to do with that incident narratively. It is only relevant in the sense that he no longer has that project to use as leverage to make himself indispensable. There is no narrative reason for most of this abuse except to entertain an audience that wants to see Hux suffer. Not just because he deserves it, but because it’s funny.
There is a lot of slapstick in this movie, and Hux is not the only man who is subjected to it. Both Finn and Poe get roughed up by women–which is far more likely to read as comic than the reverse–but neither of them are defined by that for the duration of the film. It’s funny, supposedly, to see these strong men be tased, shot, and dragged around by much smaller women, but the emasculation they are subjected to is temporary.
Meanwhile, when Hux is thrown around by men who are much more powerful than himself, there is no irony. Emasculation is not what makes him an object of ridicule, his characteristic lack of masculinity is.
Consider the differences between the scenes described above with Rose and Finn and Leia and Poe and the one, partially cut from the film, where Finn and Rose are caught aboard the Finalizer and Hux interrogates them.
When he approaches them, it’s Finn whom he slaps–because not even the vicious General Hux is depraved enough to hit a woman–and slapping itself is a form of violence more associated with women than men. Perhaps his intent is to emasculate Finn (again), to treat him like an errant child instead of acknowledging that he’s a man capable of making choices in spite of the First Order’s efforts. If that’s the case, it’s very short-lived.
In the earlier scenes.Rose has a taser; Leia has a blaster; neither is shown as able to overpower Finn/Poe on her own. When Rose bites Hux’s finger, though, he can’t even retrieve it without help from several Stormtroopers, in spite of the fact that she’s much smaller than he is, bound, and on her knees. That he’s screaming “like a little girl,” to quote numerous commenters, the whole time only drives the point home further.
And this is only one scene out of many; Hux’s “skinny, pasty” body is attacked from one end of the film to the other. And it’s no surprise. Violence against men whose masculinities are deemed suspect or insufficient has been stock in trade in comedy for a very long time, a lot longer than Star Wars has been around. Such men are protected neither by their own physical prowess nor by cultural prohibitions on violence against women. Of course, queerphobia has often been heavily inflected in such violence. If one reads Hux as queer, as I and many others do, it makes these scenes that much harder to watch.
I’m not arguing that hating Hux is a problem; there are plenty of good reasons to hate him. But it’s possible to hate him and believe he deserves his comeuppance while still recognizing that it is given to him in some troubling ways, and for some troubling reasons, in this movie.