All Mixed Up

Skin color is a hot topic right now. The police shooting(s) of unarmed black men is the main impetus and raises some interesting questions about the future of race relations in ethnically diverse neighborhoods. I happen to live in a place where many couples are "mixed" which means that our children have skin colors ranging from very dark to very light. You'd be hard pressed to tell what ethnic background some of these kids have by looking at them. You'd also guess wrongly about what many of their parents look like.

This is, I hope, a peek into the near term future of humanity. Genetic research has shown the falsity of the concept of "race" based distinctions as they are usually defined: by skin color, language, or region. The texture of our hair and the shape of our eyes has no bearing on any other aspect of our bodies. So why are we still obsessed over cultural or "racial" purity? Why do people assume that children must look like their parents? What will happen when we can engineer ourselves, or our children, to a particular appearance?

The typical dystopian vision of humanity is that everyone would cleave to the Northern European ideal, but I think we need to give people more credit. We'll always have rebels who want to violate norms and rock the boat. We'll have the arbitrariness of human chemistry and parents who want their children to resemble themselves. This means that we'll always have people who look different from each other, which begs the question, what will we do with these differences once they are consciously chosen?

Here's a possible scenario: a group of police officers of varied appearance encounters an unarmed, male youth. Today, they'd make assumptions about him based on his appearance versus their own. In the future, they won't be able to do that. A dark skinned youth could have light skinned parents, or dark skinned parents, or something in between. The police officers would have to stop, think, and assess their danger level based on other factors.  The most salient will likely be economic class and the appearance of the neighborhood to which the police are called.

In our long history, in plenty of societies where everyone basically looked the same, the people with power still found ways to abuse those without. That aspect of our nature, I suspect, will not go away even in our post-human, post-racial future. The sad truth of today is that many poor neighborhoods in the U.S.A. are populated by people with dark skin. It's going to be interesting to witness a future when that's no longer the case.

The World We Live In

When we think of personality traits, we find a gender divide in the words most often used to describe typically cis-male and cis-female people. In terms of positive adjectives, men are strong, confident, competitive, brave, unrelenting, stoic, and unemotional. Women are soft, kind, nurturing, compassionate, empathic, sensitive and modest. Obviously these are not universal characteristics, and certainly not truly gendered, but they fit a stereotypical and traditional value system.

The trend in women’s liberation has been to get women to embody more of the typically male positive traits. We encourage women to show less emotion, to be more confident, and to be more physically aggressive. This is, naturally, what women must to do succeed in a male dominated world. In order to play with the boys, you have to be able to act like them. In order to impress your male boss, you need to behave like an aggressive, hyper confident male. Men who embody more of the feminine characteristics, on the other hand, are expected to fall into the “nice guys finish last” bucket.

Let’s think for a moment about the world we live in, and the type of world we’d like to live in. Overall, the trend in human society has been to expand the segments of society to which basic human rights are granted, and then to expand the definition of basic human rights. These days, the only type of violence allowed against another human being is in the name of war or law. Even rape is (mostly) illegal, when once it was a natural spoil of war, much as slaves were.

Civilization is gradually moving from valuing “male” attributes to “female” ones. While we still place great emphasis on certain male traits, how much of that is due to the fact that men dominate the power structures of the world? As women gradually intersperse themselves into executive positions, and I do expect this to take centuries, perhaps we’ll come to live in an ever more compassionate, violence free society. In this future world, empathy and sensitivity are not bad words, and women and their “female” ways are valued as much as their male counterparts. In other words, it’s a world where nice guys and girls can succeed in life.

May The Fourth Be With You

I cannot count the number of times I watched Star Wars and its sequels when I was a teenager. As a girl who was also a fan, I took it for granted that women were not a major part of a science fiction narrative. Back then, everyone knew and accepted this. For a movie series that began in the mid-1970s in the USA, it’s not surprising that the movie is white male dominated, and features an archetypal hero story. If anything, much praise could be given to how progressive its treatment was of Leia in letting her participate in her rescue, and in giving her some power and agency as a political figure.

Nearly two decades later, George Lucas released the prequel trilogy. Once again, the primary characters in the story were white and male, but there were token figures of varied gender and ethnicity in the background. It was a step in the right direction. This week, the major stars of the next movie in the franchise were announced. A hue and cry instantly went up at the once again male dominated cast (at least this time one of the major players isn’t white). As always, there is one woman in the sea of men.

The cast list is definitely disappointing in its lack of women, but let’s pause for a minute and speculate on the plot. What if Daisy Ridley gets to play the protagonist of the new movie? In a post Buffy, CSI, and Katniss world, it’s clear that audiences are ready to watch women take the lead in fantasy, action, and science-fiction stories. J.J. Abrams himself delivered us Sidney Bristow, a character who could kill and cry and party with her BFF. Perhaps he will give us a pleasant surprise with his treatment of women in Star Wars: Episode VII, one which he has spectacularly failed to do with his reboot of the Star Trek franchise.

Another point of hope is that Star Wars is now a Disney franchise. Frozen is now the top grossing animated film of all time (not adjusting for inflation), and its protagonists are two sisters who end up saving each other. If we’re lucky, the studio has taken away the lesson that all audiences, boys, girls, men and women, will flock to a good story - even if it turns out to be all about girls. If we’re even luckier, this will influence the characterization and remaining casting of Episode VII.

Here’s the thing: in the rules of the Star Wars movie universe, the Force is the source of great power. There is absolutely no need for a person to be physically large or strong in order to prevail in combat (witness Luke Skywalker’s stature next to Darth Vader, or Obi-Wan next to Darth Maul). This begs the question, why couldn’t a woman be the strongest Jedi in the universe? Why couldn’t women be the principal actors in the story?

There are usually two types of responses to these questions. One is, “Who cares? It’s entertainment.” The other is of the, “Stop whining, girls. Be glad the boys are letting you in the movie at all,” variety. To the latter, I have no response because, well, I can’t think of how it deserves one.

To the former, however, I say that entertainment in the form of stories always sends a message to the consumer. People have been telling stories to each other, and especially to children, as far back as we know. Whether you like it or not, the Star Wars stories have become an iconic part of our cultural narrative, and they are sending a message to the audience that the story is never about the girl.

By now, the script is complete, and a major rewrite is unlikely. Switching the gender of the protagonist, especially after casting the role, is even more unlikely. All I can do is hope that the Force is strong with J.J. Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Arndt, and they have given Star Wars the heroine it deserves. The new movie is due out in December, 2015. Isn’t it about time we get to see a woman in the fullness of Jedi power?