Concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products
This is unsurprising, but it makes me sick. An example of women being deliberately deleted from a cultural product on the grounds that boys hate girls.
According to an industry insider, the dearth of Rey merchandise for The Force Awakens was no accident — it was an intentional decision.
The inside source shared their story with Michael Boehm at Sweatpants and Coffee, speaking on the condition of anonymity…
The source alleges that, during toy pitches held last January for executives, “initial versions of many of the products presented to Lucasfilm featured Rey prominently.” But under the direction of the executives, Rey’s presence was deliberately minimized in the planned merchandise.
“One or more individuals raised concerns about the presence of female characters in the Star Wars products,” Boehm reports. “Eventually, the product vendors were specifically directed to exclude the Rey character from all Star Wars-related merchandise.”
Allegedly, the industry insider was told, “No boy wants to be given a product with a female character on it.”
It’s not at all new or unusual, but it infuriates me. We need to fix this loathing of all things female, not encourage it and defer to it and empty the world of women because of it. Boys hate girl cooties because of all this constant relentless endless teaching, and so we get more and more movies with five or ten men doing something and women nowhere to be seen.
“Diminishing of girl characters is common in the industry,” the anonymous source relates. “Power Rangers asked us to do it. Paw Patrol, too.” Allegedly, this philosophy has developed into a solid mandate in the toy industry to “maintain the sharp boy/girl product division” and “marginalize girl characters in items not specifically marketed as girl-oriented.”
But the extreme cultural impact of Star Wars, coupled with Rey’s inarguable prominence in The Force Awakens, has thrust the question of “Where’s Rey?” (and its corresponding hashtag) into the spotlight. Most notably, Hasbro was recently compelled to reassure fans that the movie’s main character would be included in an upcoming Monopoly set.
Much as they wish they could omit her.
For far too long, fans searching for merchandise of their favorite female characters have been told that the onus is on their wallets. “Buy the toys that are out there,” the message has echoed, even as fans scour the unyielding shelves for a green-skinned assassin, a black-clad Avenger — and now a fearless young woman who hums with the power of the Force.
It is time to reverse the conversation. Toy and merchandise companies muststop taking a character’s gender into consideration when including them in products. Put Gamora with the rest of the Guardians. Leave Black Widow on her motorcycle. And when Star Wars: Episode VIII finally arrives, don’t make us ask “Where’s Rey?”
This isn’t Saudi Arabia, after all. Wake up.
I thought the reason the original toy sets left her out was because her centrality to the film, her emergence as its main protagonist, was a closely guarded secret.
In any case, having a ladyhero hasn’t hurt the movie any. Apparently all the boys going to see TFA ain’t complaining (well, the MRAs are, but who cares what they say?) Highest grossing film of all time; breaker of numerous records–not too shabby.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_box_office_records_set_by_Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens
(waves hello at Ophelia, it’s been a while)
There’s been some talk that we’re going to see Black Widow and Rey in upcoming product lines: but what they don’t tell us is whether or not those toys will be short-packed.
For people who don’t know, short-packing is the practice of toy companies making a toy of a female character, and putting less of them within each shipment. For example, when Hasbro-Marvel was making the 3.75″ (standard action figure size) superheroes called the “Infinite” line, they seemed to short pack founding avenger Wasp in favour of loads and loads of obscure heroes like Hyperion and the Marvel-UK character Death’s head. The toy store gets a box of all the figures in the wave and has a dozen of everyone, but maybe half or a quarter amount of the women characters.
So when Hasbro is making a lot of noise about new Black Widow and Rey characters, it’s one thing to make the toy, it’s another to ship enough of them to keep up with demand.
As a dad of two boys, I try to balance their action figures as best I can, but the toy companies don’t make it easy.
Of course, no one bothers to assume that girls don’t want toys with boys on them. Girls recognize the need for boys to fix things, lift things, scare away scary things, etc, so they get toys that include boys – Barbie has her Ken, for instance, who was not being played with by any boys I knew, so must have been designed for girls.
It’s the same in theatre. Plays written by women? Oh, but they are ABOUT women, which means…boooorrrrriiinnnngggggg. No one wants to see that! (Though I will say that plays written about women by men are put on without anyone seeming to notice they are about women, and plays written about men by women are ignored even though they are not about women). In addition, the plays written by women have higher box office – they are well regarded by the audience, in other words – but close much sooner in spite of that. This also looks like a deliberate attempt by men to prevent women from encroaching on their precious monopolies (except, of course Monopoly the game which will have the female character, no doubt so someone can sweep the boardwalk).
@Lady Mondegreen – if Rey-as-central-protaganist was a closely guarded secret, then why was Rey the largest and most central figure on the official poster? That excuse was trotted out in defence of the Monopoly omission and seems pretty thin.
“According to an industry insider, the dearth of Rey merchandise for The Force Awakens was no accident — it was an intentional decision.”
I’d like to nominate this for “least necessary sentence ever written.”
@Glendon Mellow — it’s even thinner when you consider that people interested in buying Star Wars merchandise are pretty damn likely (almost certain, really) to be aware of who the characters are.
@ZugTheMegasaurus Yup. And if the excuse were really true, why did we know Finn was a trooper switching sides? That’s at least as major a plot point and it has impact on the story throughout the film.
@Glendon Mellow
That’s interesting, did not know that. Thanks.
Re: Rey, there was certainly no reason to leave her entirely out of toys, even if they wanted to keep her status secret.
(Haven’t seen it yet myself, but my source for this sort of thing–a sci fi/superhero geek guy who works for Disney–told me about unprecedented secrecy at Disney over several plot points. Rey really was a big deal to them. But I agree that sexism was at play in the way the toys were marketed.)
(waves hello back at Glendon – good to see you!)
She was on the poster and in the trailer– the “secret” doesn’t work as an excuse.
This *is* about training boys to be misogynist, because *boys* want their heroes– including the girl heroes. Even if they don’t want to *be* her, they may want her abilities, or picture her as a friend or imagine she’s supposed to be their babysitter but then takes them on a grand adventure. That is how child brains work.
But *adults*– adults take away glitter crayons and dolls and scream at boys for liking “girl stuff” until the boys learn to scorn anything for girls, because they are afraid they boys won’t be macho enough. And it is adults who *buy* the toys. The industry isn’t afraid boys don’t *want* Rey and will reject an entire *set* of ultra-cool toys– they are afraid Uncle Ralph won’t buy it so his nephew won’t be a sissy. And even more so– so that entire congregations don’t get preached at about how these evil toys are undermining American manhood and promoting a secret homosexual agenda.
I am pleased (relieved?) that my 13-year-old son often chooses to play as or identify with female characters in his various computer games. Some of his favorite characters in Magic (Magic: The Gathering, that is) are female. He seems not to have learned that he’s supposed to think female characters are gross or stupid or boring.
‘Suse me. The “secret” (no scare quotes necessary) was real and was very tightly kept.
The secret was not that Rey was a character in the film. It was that she is (SPOILER)
.
.
a Jedi. You’ll notice that in neither the poster nor the trailers was Rey shown holding a light saber.
As I said, sexist assumptions about toy marketing likely played a part, but in this particular case, there were likely other considerations in play as well. Releasing the figure with a light saber was off the table; releasing a Jedi character without one may have seemed wrong. This sort of thing, trivial as it may seem to you and me, obsesses fans and Disney execs alike.
I’m very happy that the highest grossing film of all time has a woman for its main protagonist. Between Rey and Imperator Furiosa, 2015 was a very good year for overturning sexist action film conventions.
Well, generally speaking, unless there is a genuine risk of death or arrest, I think anonymous sources should be dismissed out of hand. I agree the Monopoly Rey business was a mess, but I haven’t noticed a dearth of Rey toys. In fact you can hardly move for them over here.
The toy store gets a box of all the figures in the wave and has a dozen of everyone, but maybe half or a quarter amount of the women characters.
You mean Hasbro decides how many of what it sends to its customers and not the other way around? Isn’t this a surprising inversion of the usual realationship?
My 33-year-old son often plays as a female character, too. He has been horrified at the amount of abuse he gets while “gaming as female”. It’s been an eye opener.
Maybe the original relationship, but this began being the norm in the early 20th century. Companies promote the items they want customers to buy, and do a lot to try to shape the market in their image rather than responding to the market as it is. They did this in the 90s, too, when US motorists were buying Japanese cars that were smaller. The car makers were miffed. Instead of responding by making smaller cars that the public wanted, they started making them even bigger (SUVs, Hummers), and then running infomercials (basically looked like news items but created by the companies and planted as news stories in media markets eager to save money on reporting, and willing to put these commercials on as real news because someone else paid for it). This is one reason why I have little use for the phrase “Free Market”. The global marketplace, left to the unregulated businesses (or regulated, but by industry insiders), is not really based on the concepts that people think it is – well informed consumers making choices that drive the market.
On the bright side, I wonder if this particular bit of standard order boneheadedness might actually do some scattered good, too.
The thing is, Rey is _such_ a central character in the movie, I wonder if people aren’t going to notice this who might not have otherwise. I can picture people in that target demographic for those toys–and the boys asking, I think, would be the real wins–asking ‘okay, _why_ is it so hard to get a toy depicting Rey?’ And those are conversations that can go places.
Sort of off-topic: I quite liked both the young leads in this thing. Found most of the thing so derivative it felt like a bit of a ripoff, honestly, and foolishly had just showed the ten year old who watched it with me ‘A New Hope’ just before, so he was commenting too, asking, erm… didn’t we just see this? But those two were a bright spot. And (spoiler alert again) :
I quite liked the ‘stormtrooper is sick of shooting civilians’ thing. It’s a pretty huge advance from the faceless cannon fodder of previous episodes. _Those_ are the interesting characters in fiction and in life, for my money, the people realizing whups, I’m not liking my direction, here, and rising to greatness, doing so. And the only real hope for the world, in real life, if you ask me, too. Rey was very well-acted, engaging in what could have been a pretty bland, standard role, and I’m going to be quite pissed at the writers if they cop out, as I fear and suspect, and make her somehow (surprise… really, are you surprised?) somehow yet another lost piece of the fucked up and tired royal dynasty of Force-mad saviours-in-waiting Skywalkers. _Please_ resist, you idiots, and just let her be a good person had a bit of a bad ride, didn’t let it sour her too totally, did the right thing anyway.
I think we’ve all had quite enough of royal bloodlines. And thank you. Spoilers out.