Remember the time Leia electrocuted Han for leaving the Rebellion in A New Hope? God, that scene was so funny. Remember also how she punched Han across the room as he was recovering from being frozen in Return of the Jedi? A total laugh riot. What a wacky, endearing character!
These things didn’t happen, of course, because it would have been completely off in tone and made Leia look like a weirdo. It would have cheapened Han’s character and the story as a whole.
So why is it okay for Finn, and why are viewers falling over themselves trying to find excuses for Rose? “She lost her sister-” Leia lost her planet. Next excuse.
I’m not saying you’re a Bad Racist Person if you liked The Last Jedi. I hope you enjoyed it and it rekindled your love of the franchise. That’s what we’re all here for, the fun and joy of loving these adventures.
I’m saying that Hollywood and audiences alike have a bias when it comes to whose pain is given respect and whose pain can be played for a laugh. And that bias is not only hurtful to fans caught on the wrong side of the empathy gap, it also hurts the quality and integrity of the works themselves.
It’s possible to love a work and also see how others might not feel the same way about it. Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to be a dismissive jerk or wilfully deny a work’s flaws. It’s fun to be a fan, but it’s imperative to be a person.
You know, it’s amazing how bad things can sound when you take the context out of them. It’s amazing how you talk about being critical about things you like, similar to how a rational person would, when you’ve been on an Anti-Rose-Tico tirade since before you even saw the movie – if you’ve even seen it at all at this point.
Anyway, so, Rose is positioned – presumably by a superior – to guard the escape pods from deserters. These deserters could likely be trained fighters, so they give the mechanic Rose – who probably isn’t that good at hand-to-hand combat – a weapon: a stun gun. Harmless in the long run, it knocks out its victims for a brief period of time, enough time for Rose to get any would-be deserters to superiors to be dealt with. Makes sense, right?
So this guy – Finn – comes by near the pods. Rose has had to stun several people by this point, but she’s cool with Finn. She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?
She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance.
She did her job and stopped who, to the best of her knowledge, was a deserter, and, somehow, she’s a villain for that? Anti-black? Extremely violent? That’s a pitiful claim, too.
And she punched him across the room – when, how? I may have just forgotten, and, if that, please explain to me when that happened. But somehow, the description seems unlikely.
There’s one more claim to address, though – your claim that her crashing into Finn to stop him from committing a pointless heroic sacrifice was violent. What else was she supposed to do – watch Finn kill himself in a pointless endeavor that had more loss than gain; wave her arms and hope he stopped; or take charge of the situation to save her friend? You chose!
There’s being critical of a franchise, and then there’s downright being hateful, hypocritical and mocking people who hold a different opinion on your blog. Hint: you’re not the former.
Oh hey, everyone, criticizing the way Rose is written is now being anti Rose! Like, don’t think I can’t see you using a female Asian character to shield a white dude’s writing decisions from criticism.
You know what you sound iike? You sound like one of those dudebros who get suuuuper defensive about sexual objectification in video games and comics, saying shit like, “Of course her tits were hanging out, she was in hand-to-hand combat against a claw monster with a lactation fetish! Do you expect her clothes to be all pristine and intact after that?!”
News flash: The context does not grow out of the earth. Rian Johnson wrote it and specifically cooked up a situation that “justified” Rose tasing Finn. Even worse, he played it for a laugh. That answers the speeder crash part, too. Johnson also made it so that Rose “had” to crash her vehicle into Finn’s.
And even in the situation you mention the tasing doesn’t hold up because Finn is–guess what? Not a Resistance member. Hence, he can’t be a deserter. He was a free agent who did more for the Resistance than anyone could be expected to, and was receiving medical care from them as a result.
This is specifically why I compared him to Han at the end of ANH because Han, too, was an outsider. Unlike Han Finn wasn’t even trying to leave the Resistance for good, he was trying to protect two of its major allies, Rey and by extension Luke.
And like, thanks for making your own racism crystal clear by calling Finn’s reasons “pitiful excuses.” I’m sure you’ll sound so much braver and more coherent when someone’s menacingly waving a weapon at you that causes excruciating pain.
You also directly contradict yourself by saying that Rose was cool with Finn because of the way he bravely risked his life and then, in the next breath, saying she doesn’t know him and has no reason to trust him. Like, even to listen for half a fucking second?
And yes, it’s antiblack as fuck to contrive a situation to make a Black character suffer and pass out for no good story and character reason, and to play his pain for laughs. It cheapens Finn’s character arc because he didn’t get to make a choice to stay the way Han came back of his own free choice. Finn spent his entire life being controlled by pain and fear, and at Rose’s hands he gets more of the same.
By Leia punching a recovering Han I was referring to Rose making Finn, who had just recovered from a life-threatening injury, fly backward with the taser.
The op was like literally the mildest possible critique of the tasing incident yet here you are on my post, choosing to be hyperdefensive and fragile about it. I guess the exhortation to have some empathy really does sound like a threat to some people.
Well, first of all,
Yes, tagging something anti Rose, does mean, that, in fact, your post is being titled by you, the writer, as anti Rose! So, guess you’re just criticizing yourself at this point.
And nice job spending around ¼ of your rebuttal criticizing me as a person instead of my argument! I just think it really shows the lack of strength in a person’s debate if they can’t even scrounge up a few measly criticisms on my actual argument, but, instead, spend their time comforting themselves by changing my gender and adding 20+ years to my age so they can think that, at least, they’re not the loser living in their mom’s basement.
And what, Johnson specifically writes situations to put Finn in pain? He thought, Hey, why don’t I stun Finn, cause’ I hate him, but, oh, how? I got it! I’ll make it so he attempts to leave the Resistance and gets stunned by Rose! It sure is fun writing a significant scene that introduces a new main character and starts a new sub plot based specifically on causing one character pain! I love ruining Star Wars!
And I also guess literally any other use of stunning (which, in the Star Wars universe, is a heck of a lot, and in The Last Jedi, a decent of a lot, since it was established as a weapon early in the film that then justified its use later in the movie while also making sure the audience wasn’t jarred by the sudden use of a completely new weapon in an important battle – hey! another reason why Finn could have been stunned by Rose!) is also racist and made by Johnson specifically to hurt characters! Wow, amazing how stupid that sounds!
And maybe, just maybe, Rose crashing into Finn to save him from sacrificing himself was a culmination of the human life vs. military gains debate that had been raging throughout the entire movie since the death of the bomber squad to take out the dreadnought as well as showing how Rose, despite not being able to save her sister, took the chance to save another one of her loved ones at great personal risk. Because, let me remind you, Finn was fine after the crash, being able to run and walk around immediately after, while Rose was the one bloodied up and needing medical care.
And considering Finn was kept with the Resistance and fought for their causes, it may seem to a low-level mechanic that he was, in fact, a member of the Resistance! Shocker what we can discover when we look at what a character would know in context of the story, and not what we, the audience, knows.
Also, nice job on having zero reading comprehension skills, since it’s quite clear that “pitiful excuses” is referring to Finn’s failed attempts to explain to Rose why he was leaving through Rose’s eyes and not his actual reasons for leaving. And how is that even racist? Isn’t something racist supposed to relate to the race of a character, like, say, making an assumption based on their race? Cause, please, I fail to see how saying Finn did a poor job of explaining himself is racist.
And Rose knew Finn at that point similar to how someone like me knows Ryan Gosling. A celebrity, maybe someone you adore? Sure! But not someone you would place the same amount of trust in as a friend or family member.
And why would you make a reference to the same thing twice in different ways? Literally just make your one reference and go, don’t make it seem like you’re referring to two different situations.
And nice job dodging the fact that you started hurling criticisms at this movie before you even saw it. After all, how can someone construct a thorough review on something they didn’t even see?
That’s…. your supposed gotcha? I don’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for you. It’s called tagging etiquette, keeping critical content out of the character tags. “Anti” is just one of the tag conventions for such posts.
You sound like a dudebro =/= you are a dudebro. I’m not even sure where the age thing comes from, dudebros are YOUNG guys between 16 and 25. Is this your way of telling me you’re a fetus? #PlotTwist
It doesn’t matter what Johnson’s specific intention was, the impact is what you described in italics. (A very apt summary, thank you.)
Since it looks like you stopped reading everything in the paragraph after “dudebro,” let me elaborate on that comparison. Let’s say I had a female character get into a fight and had her breasts hanging out of her torn clothes as a result, and treated that visual in a very sexual way. It doesn’t matter whether I started out intending to objectify her, it’s still objectification and it’s still sexist. I wrote the plot that would lead to the character’s breasts being exposed and sexualized, and I don’t get a pass for that.
The same goes for the tasing and crash scenes, somehow Johnson didn’t write scenes so that Finn could have his own realizations and make his own crucial choices but rather had to be hurt “for his own good” and I find that objectionable.
You might want to look up what “implicit bias” is. I was pointing out the seeming contempt for Finn in a situation where he was clearly scared of having more pain inflicted on him. How’s that for an empathy gap?
I guess I assumed that people who saw the movie would remember that Finn went flying across the room because it’s uhhh rather memorable? I mean it looks like the couple hundred people in the notes got it without any problem.
On a side note, human lives vs. military gains is such an odd way to frame that scene because I think the Resistance who were going to be killed by the FO also consists of human and also alien beings?
You seem pretty well acquainted with my recent blogging history, not to mention really fucken’ obsessed with my media consumption like a few anons I was getting a while back. As I told one of those anons, if you don’t like how or at what point I’m talking about a movie you’re free to ignore me? I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.
Thanks for missing the point of every single one of my arguments and instead focusing on very minor points! Seriously, “you’re a fetus”? I’m so hurt.
And, no, “anti” in the context of tumblr 2017 very specifically means you are “anti” or against said thing. I’m sure you know that by now.
And how about I put it this way? A female character getting her breasts exposed serves no other purpose than to provide fan service for those who swing that way. Finn getting stunned, however, A: moves the plot forward (without Finn being restrained in some way, he would have left and thus not be able to travel to Canto Bight and make all those revelations and character revelations and connect with Rose…etc. Finn is rather headstrong, and if he could have, he would have escaped to make sure Rey was safe, not sit around and play story-time with Rose if she did not pose an immediate threat to his plan. He was under a time crunch, after all) B: puts the stun gun as a weapon in the audience’s mind, thus setting up all the other uses of it throughout the film (like Leia stopping Poe’s mutiny) and C: establishes Rose’s allegiance to the Resistance as well as, despite her being introduced crying, do-what-you-got-to-do attitude.
And how do I show contempt for Finn? Do I say he’s stupid? A bad person? I said he gave poorly-word excuses. No need to blow it out of proportion.
Okay, how about this: humans-and-sentient-creatures-who-are-often-humanoid lives vs. military gains. Better?
Also:
“I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.”
Can you at least make up a better lie?
in other words, you didn’t know what a dudebro is and got mad at me for your own ignorance. Okay.
Are you saying I should use the Rose Tico tag with content critical of Rose? But then you’d be mad at me for crosstagging. As the late Admiral Ackbar said, “It’s a trap!”
So it’s not racist at all to have a Black character repeatedly hurt for humor and to take away his agency as long as there’s a plot purpose. Okay. Never mind that the plot could have been written in a completely different way. Obviously this was the only possible plot and Rian Johnson was forced to make choices that humiliated Finn.
You show contempt for Finn by talking about how pitiful his excuses are without the least empathy for his pain and fear. I mean you don’t even remember the part where he flew across the room and hit the wound on his back, which tells me how little his pain matters to you.
Since I must evidently spell every single thing out, I’m saying Rose stopping Finn was not a case of choosing lives over military gain because she condemned Resistance members, who are sentient beings, to death.
I laughed so long and hard at your “receipt” and had to reblog it for posterity because… how to break it to you? Tags to additions don’t show up in the main tags. They’re only relevant to my blog. The tags of my op, which you also faithfully screenshotted a few posts up, clearly show me staying out of the main and character tags. (I used #star wars because I assume it’s such a big and unfocused tag that no one really uses that to browse, but I can take it out or move it to the back so it won’t be searchable as tagged.) This is yet another case of you being mad at me for your own ignorance. Nice coloring job, though.
I really think you’re the one who should be checked for their reading comprehension skills. Especially since your argument keeps flip-flopping as you try to avoid debating what I’m saying.
Maybe use Rose critical, like you do your last jedi tag? I’m sure you’re smart, you can think of something.
And I’ll think I’ll quote what I said, since I have to evidently spell everything out for you.
She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?
She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance.
First, it’s from the viewpoint of Rose in that moment (once again, assuming what the character would know, not the audience) and she has just spotted him trying to leave in a pod, after several other people – deserters – has also tried. He fails to explain his actions in a clear-cut manner under pressure, and thus, she would find those excuses “pitiful”, since it would seem similar to a many poor excuses thrown to her by deserters. She has also done this many times, and is understandably angry that many who had pledged themselves to the cause are now escaping like cowards when her sister had died for it.
Now, I’m sorry I did not unnecessarily bring my own personal thoughts of this moment into the paragraph, since apparently you need assurance on the moral fiber of my character. Here you go: I don’t hate Finn. I do not think his reasons for leaving were somehow sad or pathetic, but a natural extension of his loyalties and thought process seen thus far. I do not think he was trying to desert, or that he had sworn loyalty to the Resistance. I also do not think it is somehow sad that Finn failed to articulate his thoughts clearly under pressure, cause literally everyone does that. Are you happy, and will stop trying to derail my main point by making unnecessary accusations on my character now?
I’m also sorry for not remembering every minute detail of this movie that, at the time, I have no reference for while writing this considering it’s still in theaters.
Also, come on. I have explained to you in great detail why A: It is wrong to characterize Rose as violent or bad by her stunning Finn, and B: What purpose that scene did for that movie, as well as what purpose the stun gun, specifically, being included served. Yet, you persist. I just. Can’t continue repeating what I’ve been saying.
And, really, what you’re saying is false? This scene is literally the only one where A: Finn is hurt by an ally (I already explained the crash scene, just scroll up), and B: when it’s played for humor (? I don’t remember this being played for humor, but, I’ll trust you? Ugh). Hardly repeatedly.
Anyway, take his agency away, hardly. He eventually makes a new plan with Rose, of his own will. While saving Rey was noble, it was selfish and a hasty decision, as it placed his attachment to her over what she wanted to do, which was to return and help the Resistance (she didn’t even know Finn had the locator, she thought it was still with Leia) as well as place the Resistance in further danger, as it is (actually) repeatedly stated that they need Luke (who Rey was going to bring) to change the tide of the war.
And Finn and the rest of the pilot were told specifically to pull back by their leaders in that scene, as they determined it was an ultimately useless move as many pilots were being gunned down and that (say it with me now) the loss of lives was outweighing the need to take down the blaster. Finn continuing was not only disobeying orders, but putting an important member of the Resistance in danger for an, ultimately, futile quest.
You also tagged it rebelfinn in your original post which is, sorry to break it to you, a main character tag.
Thanks for the coloring compliment too, and do think it’s quite aesthetically pleasing! (Yes, I know that was sarcasm. The former was too).
And maybe insult me to my face, instead of hiding in the tags?
You’re saying the exact same content can be tagged “critical” and I wouldn’t be anti-Rose? Like, your sole basis for saying I’m anti Rose is for tag wording choice? Cool, I can change the tag.
Re empathy with Finn, you seem to be saying that Rose can’t empathize with Finn’s fear in that moment, that she has only contempt and anger for him and put an injured man through excruciating pain. With fans like these, who needs antis?
Your focus is so narrow that you are unable to comprehend what I’m saying. The scene was not some force of nature that had to happen, it was in there because Rian Johnson, the writer, wanted it to be in there. By your own admission it wasn’t necessary for even the story as it currently exists, because Finn came around to helping the Resistance of his own will and didn’t have to be hurt or made unconscious. I think that was bad and unnecessary and yes, his pain was portrayed as humorous where it didn’t have to be. There was no story purpose for that and it was very, very uncomfortable for many viewers, particularly Black audiences.
I think you should look up what passive voice is. When I said Finn was repeatedly hurt for laughs I didn’t mean just him being hurt by allies, I meant things like his literal first appearance after falling into a coma being falling out of bed. Like, holy goalpost moving, Batman.
Umm after Rose stopped Finn the cannon blasted a hole in the Resistance’s defenses and they were sitting ducks. Maybe Finn wasn’t acting out of hatred like Rose said, maybe he wanted to save lives? Or something? The dichotomy you posited doesn’t really work for that scene.
I tagged it rebelfinn because it’s about Finn, lmao. Those who don’t want to see Rose-critical content in the Finn tag can filter #anti rose tico and #rose tico critical. See how that works? But, you know, nice job wanting to drive Finn content out of the Finn tags. That makes a whole lot of sense.
How the hell does mocking you in my tags constitute hiding when you’ve literally screenshotted them twice in this very thread? You seem to be as obsessed with my tags as you are with what media I consume. I meant for you to see those, so… enjoy.
L.J.'s Obsessions 