Carrie Fisher Says Discontinuing "Slave Leia" Merchandise is "Stupid"

[Oinodaemon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eitTGYQS2jc

From a perspective untainted by gender politics...

 

[Nurb]

Give em hell, Carrie

 

[Erttheking]

We now live in a overprotective nanny state where everything that could potentially be offensive is swiftly shoved under a rug.

Hyperbole. If we did live in a nanny state we'd be seeing a lot more radical changes being made, not downright mundane and trivial ones like this.

It may be hyperbole, but it's still ridiculous.

Is it stupid? Kinda. Is it having any kind of impact? Hardly. This is barely indistinguishable from sensationalist news. People yell a lot about something, if there are any changes they're minor and then life goes on.

 

[Furnicula]

Or they could have...you know...said "screw all the haters, we're releasing our game in the West regardless of what some bloggers on the internet might say about it" and released it anyways. Countless games have proven that controversy will drive sales, not detract from them. GTA proved it when it was just getting started. Dragon's Crown proved it when it came out and said "Yeah, our sorceress's tits are that big. Ask us if we care what you think!" Hell, even Hatred proved it by making a game about going on a murdering rampage in a time when our society is dealing with real life murder-rampages all too often. And now Play-Asia has proven it by stirring up controversy over DoAX3.

Any game developer with any sense should simply release their game with bold pride, completely unconcerned about what any nae-sayers might say about it. From a business standpoint, if anything the best choice is to release it to the world, get the people who are going to cry about it to start crying, and poof: you've got the best free marketing campaign you could have ever hoped for.

It's rather baffling to me too, but for some reason they believe that the majority of gaming publications like Polygon, Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, EuroGamer, GamesIndustry.biz, GamaSutra and lately even GameSpot or IGN represent and speak for a Western audience of gamers like they should, and not posting insular political drivel that most gamers don't agree with. And when they post rants about how boobs are bad and Asian developers are horrible misogynists who hate women they seem to take that to heart without further knowledge of the Western market and react accordingly.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I agree with her. You can't empower women by sticking them in a gilded cage and never let anything bad happen to them. Like she says, something bad happened to Leia and Leia dealt with it and came out on top. She wouldn't have been half as interesting of a character if she didn't face some form of adversity.

A bit disingenuous there, she's not the only one facing adversity, she's the only one facing adversity in weird lingerie.

I mean, in theory, she could have been thrown to the Sarlacc with her clothes on, and Solo chained to the slug monster in his undies, but that was never going to happen, was it?

(Oh, that's a point, next special edition Lucas throws at us can CGI everyone as half naked. Wouldn't put it past him.)

OTOH, though, it was...15 minutes or so from a film from 30 years ago? Sure, if they did that again nowdays, there'd be something to complain about, but I think "meh" is the response to this.

 

[Morti]

I don't know where you are getting your information that the outfit was forced by an executive buy you would be incorrect.

Just to clarify, I was talking about slave leia merchandise, not the outfit itself.

Actually, surprisingly, not even that. It was Carrie Fisher of all people who asked for it because she wanted to showcase her body.

First see above.

Second, Carrie did not ask for it. She hated it. What she did complain about was that when she was in the white bedsheet, she didn't look particuarly feminine. George interpreted that as "put her in a bikini". She just wanted to be a badass lady.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

The "What am I going to tell my kids?" argument just makes me steam. It just tells me that said father was, for some reason, so thoroughly uncomfortable with the idea of sexuality being a briefly-used narrative device that he somehow lacked the basic brainpower to vulgarize this incredibly simple situation for his kids to understand.

I mean - how is this hard?! "Bad slug-man make woman wear silly outfit because he mean. Woman kick slug-man's ass and take silly outfit off." End of.

Parents who just sit there and squirm uncomfortably at the mere mention or sight of bare skin have issues to work through, I think.

I remember a similar mini-controversy gracing a few clickbait sites, concerning the way a gay couple handled a flustered mother who couldn't explain their kissing to her kids.

Gays kiss one another because they're in love. If that fact makes your brain miss a few CPU cycles, you've got a problem.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Second, Carrie did not ask for it. She hated it. What she did complain about was that when she was in the white bedsheet, she didn't look particuarly feminine. George interpreted that as "put her in a bikini". She just wanted to be a badass lady.

Huh. That's weird. I remember reading a news article a little recently at the Escapist where the outfit was something Carrie asked for. Or at least something more sexy. I dunno.

 

[imperialwar]

if i was carrie fisher i'd release a fashion label of princess leia inspired clothing.

also if she hated the bikini so much why are there backstage photos of her sunbathing in it with her body double. you'd think given the first opportunity between takes she'd at least cover up with a robe if she hated it

 

[Lightknight]

if i was carrie fisher i'd release a fashion label of princess leia inspired clothing.

also if she hated the bikini so much why are there backstage photos of her sunbathing in it with her body double. you'd think given the first opportunity between takes she'd at least cover up with a robe if she hated it

Because that's how you prep to look good in a bikini you're wearing for a movie.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I agree Carrie. It is very, very stupid.

 

[Politrukk]

Can we just say this whole controversy was a giant waste of time and we need to stop thinking about tits for five seconds?

There was no controversy.

 

[CaitSeith]

"And then I killed him because I didn't like it."
Also, because he was a horrible gangster who casually murdered innocent people for the amusement of others.

And because he made a decoration out of my boyfriend dear friend.

 

[Morti]

Second, Carrie did not ask for it. She hated it. What she did complain about was that when she was in the white bedsheet, she didn't look particuarly feminine. George interpreted that as "put her in a bikini". She just wanted to be a badass lady.

Huh. That's weird. I remember reading a news article a little recently at the Escapist where the outfit was something Carrie asked for. Or at least something more sexy. I dunno.

From Wookiepedia:

Princess Leia Organa's slave costume was created partially in response to complaints by Carrie Fisher about the lack of interesting costumes her character wore in A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back. Fisher felt one could not tell "she was a woman" from the wardrobe, and said of it years later, "I got one, sorry, two dresses, and the first one (looks) the same all the way around."

And on the bikini:

"I remember that iron bikini I wore in Episode VI: what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of hell."

 

[stormtrooper9091]

I honestly wonder who are the people who profit from this and similar "controversies" and how fat they become because of it. For a normal person, this is a complete non-issue and I can't for the life of me understand why there's so much god damned buzz about it

 

[Thaluikhain]

I honestly wonder who are the people who profit from this and similar "controversies" and how fat they become because of it. For a normal person, this is a complete non-issue and I can't for the life of me understand why there's so much god damned buzz about it

Eh, remember back when everyone was talking Justin Bieber, but all anyone seemed to be saying was that people should stop talking about him?

It was quite a while before I heard anything about him other than that people were sick of hearing about him. Admittedly, he did turn out to be a tosser, but that wasn't clear at the time.

 

[Zulnam]

Upset you won't be getting any more royalties from the revenues brought in by the toy, Carrie? It's alright, the world will move on.

 

[C14N]

I agree with Fisher. This is stupid. We now live in a overprotective nanny state where everything that could potentially be offensive is swiftly shoved under a rug.

What exactly does a private corporation voluntarily discontinuing a toy they make have to do with a "nanny state"? I don't see the state entering into this equation at all. As far as I can see, a franchise was bought over by a company whose primary audience is children and aggressively pushes a wholesome, family-friendly image so they decided that their toy line up was not going to include a sex icon that gave millions of boys their first boner in the 80s after some dad complained. The loss for many, I'm sure, but the free market has spoken.

And don't act like this shit is new. American parents have been getting flustered about their kids seeing depictions of sex since before any of us were born. Elvis was reported to the FBI for shaking his feet too much in the 50s and you should see what the mainstream press wrote about the moral degeneracy of his rendition of Hound Dog on TV. Things in general have never been more permissive than they are now.

 

[C14N]

if i was carrie fisher i'd release a fashion label of princess leia inspired clothing.

There's no chance that she has the rights to do something like that without Disney agreeing to it and Disney have just made it pretty clear that they wouldn't agree to it.