Princess Leia's Bra

Has there ever been a more iconic vision than the sight of Princess Leia wearing that metal bra (and not much else) in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi? It has inspired many an adolescent fantasy and continues to do so today, more than thirty years after it appeared on the screen. You can find images of it, or artistic renderings of it all over the internet. On the one hand it is just another example of Hollywood sexploitation. Of course she appeared that way on the movie poster even though Carrie Fisher really wasn’t wearing it for much of the film, just two scenes. There are many examples of Hollywood sexploitation, too many to name. They have been doing this since the 1920’s and still are today. It is such a common feature of movies that movies without it are almost the exception. And it is not just the women (well okay, it’s mostly women) but from time to time they do put scantily clad males on display too.

The whole point of doing this is to get people into the theater. It must work because they keep doing it. And that is certainly why they put Leia on the poster. But apart from bringing people in, does it add much to the movie? Usually not much. I mean, I like to look at scantily clad women as well as the next guy (or whatever your preference) but in ninety-nine out of a hundred such films, the scenes would generally make just as much sense to the plot of the movies if the women weren’t wearing ridiculous clothes.

But it seems to me there is something different about the Princess Leia outfit. As I said, it still resonates with a certain demographic all these decades later. Other images have not had that kind of staying power. I remember when Raquel Welch performed in an otherwise forgettable movie called One Million Years BC (Yes I know there are fans of the movie who consider it a classic, but I am not one). There was a famous poster featuring her in an outfit that was just about as revealing as Leia’s. The Raquel poster was all the rage for a while, but I don’t think it had the staying power of Leia in her hardware. Why is that? Well, for one thing the first three Star Wars films were much more popular than One Million years BC, and they had their own staying power that spoke to each successive generation. People cared about the Luke, Leia, and Han. It wasn’t just about special effects or sexy women.

And that is the takeaway. Having scantily clad women on the poster is a successful marketing strategy. I am sure it has even drawn me in to a movie or two, but staying power comes from having a well written, well-acted film with characters you can care about.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an e-book through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).

link to Star Liner

Comments

Second Wind

You have heard about athletes getting their second wind? It is not that they feel better, that they are warmed up and ready to run more easily. It is not psychological (at least, not all psychological). No. There is an actual physiological truth to a second wind. It all has to do with respiration. When I say respiration, I am not talking about breathing. Respiration is a biochemical process that happens at the cellular level. It is how the cell gets energy. There are lots of chemical processes that are constantly going on in each cell, and those processes require energy. Without a constant feed of energy, the cell will die. The more demands there are on a cell, the more energy it needs. For example, every one of your muscle cells need more energy when you are running. In fact, you won’t be able to run if the cells don’t have sufficient energy for it. The energy currency of the cell is a molecule called ATP. You may have heard that sugar is how our bodies get energy, which is tr

Roy Batty Figures it out

This is written with the assumption that the reader has seen the film Blade Runner . If you haven’t, you may not get much out of it. In one of the last scenes in Blade Runner , the killer android Roy Batty, who holds Deckard’s life in his hands, has a remarkable speech: “I've seen things... seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... will be lost in time like tears in the rain. Time to die.” I am told that the speech that was written was not working very well, and Rutger Hauer was told to just improvise something. Wow. He nailed it. At this point in the film Roy Batty has been the villain throughout. We have been rooting for Deckard (Harrison Ford) to take him out, but it is not going well, and it seems like Batty is about to kill him. At the last second, Roy Batty pulls Deckard up, to keep him from falling to his death. Then he delivers this

The Outsider

I am reading The Outsider by Stephen King. The first 150 pages or so I found disturbing. Not for the reason you might think. It is not scary, not creepy in a traditional horror way, but disturbing in a tragic way. The first hundred to 150 pages is tragedy on top of tragedy. The most disturbing thing to me (it is disturbing to me anytime I encounter it in any story) is a false accusation. A man is falsely accused and may well be convicted of a horrific crime. That kind of thing disturbs my soul. It makes the whole world seem wrong. I have always been disturbed by stories with that kind of thing. And why not? It happens in real life too. That makes it all the more horrific. In the Jim Crow South, all you had to do was make an accusation against a black man to set the lynch mob in action. No need to bother with a trial. But even if there was a trial, the outcome was a foregone conclusion, innocent or not. We see Vladimir Putin inventing charges against people and they get locked up (or

A speculative mind

Search This Blog