"Did Inadequate Women's Health Care Destroy Star Wars's Old Republic?"
posted by Winston Smith at
9:28 AM
Wednesday, January 04, 2017
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6 Comments:
That article has tongue firmly planted in cheek. The author is well aware that she is attacking a plot hole, not the republic's purported lack of decent medical care.
Derp.
Poes damn law.
Even I can't tell anymore.
Subheds like 'Lack of Medical Options Makes Anakin Just Lose His Shi' are a pretty good indicator of a certain lack of complete seriousness.
Alright! Alright!
Let's not make a big deal out of who is or isn't a dumbass on this.
Maybe there needs to be a lesson in rhetoric class on 'the uses and abuses of preposterism.' It's apparently really easy to get this wrong, both as a reader and a writer. (The ironical use of 'woke' comes to mind as another example.)
OK, so the author is being clever and ironical about the lack of OB/GYN's in the Old Republic. But, in sincerity, she's trying to point up a "plot hole" that shows George Lucas (and apparently all male Star Wars fans) to find reproduction and women's bodies icky and mysterious.
But Padme's lack of prenatal care and Anakin's ignorance about how babies get made and born is not a plot hole, but a plot point.* Padme hasn't gone to the droid Dr. for an ultrasound because she is hiding her pregnancy, since it apparently not done for Galactic Senators to have children. Anakin can't ask anybody about how babies are safely had since he is also hiding his romantic and sexual relationship with Padme, which is explicitly against the rules for Jedi. Both of them are raised in a society that, for whatever reasons, takes little children from their families and raises them to be warrior monks and elected monarchs. Both of them are physically adults, and competent within the roles they've been raised for, but are clearly still children in many respects. Their reactions to the adult situation of pregnancy are both adolescent: Padme at one point suggests simply running away. Anakin's reaction to his inchoate fear for the future is to try and become Superman.
There is an (old fashioned) feminist reading here: The society of the Old Republic has made it impossible to reconcile political and family life, and thereby created functionally male and female spheres. Being raised in such a society creates helpless victims and murderous man-children, who, if they are in positions of power, can wreck the society.
Of course, that feminist reading would not fit the basic template for all attention seeking cultural criticism on the internet, which is: "The things you like are bad and you are bad for liking those things."
* Insert ritual apology for liking and knowing about this sort of thing.
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