It's actually astonishing that the Jabba/Leia scenes in ROTJ didn't cause a scandal, back in 1983
- Thread starter Unimatrix Q
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No one was offended by the slave Leia costume in 1983. To this date, anyone arguing that it was failed to provide even a particle of evidence to support the argument because none exists. Yes, only in recent times have some decided to be offended by the costume, yet by some miracle they seem to miss the large numbers of women who dress the part at conventions, and some among them have Instagram accounts dedicated to their photo shoots in the costume.
Again, some want to find controversy in that non-issue.
Agreed.
Sorry my experience as evidence. Even Fisher was against the costume. Saying "no one was offended" is disingenuous, at best. That it isn't a controversy is fine, some were offended, from my own experience.
I don't mind women dressing up in it. That doesn't change others views.
Respecting of differences is key.
the new Lego Star Wars game has given her a full skirt instead of just a cloth in front. Which is even a change from the last real life Lego figure of her, which only had cloth only in the front.
Except you know the people in this thread who said they were.
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Yep. What is basically comes down to:
Someone talks about criticism they heard. Someone else insists they must be lying just because they personally never heard it, as if that's some end-all be-all.
Not that it really matters one way or the other. Is anyone really under the impression the early 80s was some zenith of enlightenment or equality? The appropriateness, or lack thereof, of the costume should be argued on its own merits, not on what attitudes were decades ago.
Except that the title of this thread is specifically about what attitudes were decades ago, and completely misunderstands them. So a discussion of those attitudes is surely relevant to the thread, though I suppose we covered that pretty thoroughly on the first few pages.
Also, since the costume was designed and utilized in 1983, I would think that an argument "on its own merits" would have to take into account the context of its design and use. I was taught in college history courses that you always try to consider the context and attitudes of the time rather than back-projecting your own present-day perceptions and definitions. And as fireproof78 correctly pointed out, attitudes back then were not monolithic; there were those who questioned the costume's appropriateness at the time, including Carrie Fisher herself.
Just because people weren't as vocal about having a problem with it back then, doesn't mean that they didn't have a problem with it. I don't think it's necessarily that people's attitudes have changed that much, it's just that people are a lot quicker to say when they have a problem with this kind of stuff.
The thing to remember is that there's never one uniform point of view. There are always people on both sides of a debate. What changes over time is which side is in the majority. For instance, views on smoking. In the past, smoking was socially acceptable, allowed most places, and ubiquitous portrayed in film and TV, but there were plenty of people who were aware it was dangerous and tried to convince others not to do it. Eventually that side of the argument won, and now smoking is outlawed in most public places and rarely shown in the media without a content warning; but there are still people who smoke and think it should be acceptable.
In this case, there were plenty of people in the '70s and '80s who objected to the widespread sexualization of women in the media, either because they were feminists fighting for respect for women or because they were moralists objecting to sexual content in general. But the objectors' point of view wasn't dominant. These days, the arguments in favor of respect and equal treatment for women have gained more headway, and so we don't see as much casual objectification of women in the media. But there are still plenty of sexists out there. Both attitudes have always been there, but the balance of power between them has shifted.
You know, Jabba had Leia literally on a chain. He forced female slaves to dance for him, and he fed them to his monsters when they failed to gratify him. You can't put lipstick on that pig. Leia's outfit was appropriate for that scenario. If the outfit is a step too far, then so is the whole scenario. Arguing over her costume fails to acknowledge that.
That's the issue: anyone saying that costume was "controversial" in 1983 is speaking from a period (the present-day) where some will find anything "offensive" and project said "offense" to anything throughout history, no matter the fact they cannot produce evidence to support the charge. As noted in my previous post, you have a large number of women actively cosplaying as slave Leia in the here and now, with some promoting themselves as that character. The "it was offensive / controversial" crows should take up their argument with the cosplayers and demand to know why they're not offended by the costume. Perhaps they will not do that, since the cosplayers' very existence calls the "controversial / offended" crowd's claim into question.
True. I wonder if some understood that in the ROTJ story, and why Jabba would have Leia wear that outfit.
Exactly.
Or they don't bother to be as vocal about it any more since, as evidenced by this very thread, people basically shout down opposition without any consideration.
The whole scene is a step too far, yes. But, that's my opinion. The outfit is ridiculous too but that's the thing I seen taken more issue with than the whole situation.
Women aren't a hivemind. Those cosplayers no more undermine the validity of the criticism than the criticism undermines the validity of the cosplayers' perspective.
And cosplaying as something isn't necessarily some kind of wholesale endorsement. They're wearing convention costumes. It's a different context. Believe it or not, the cosplayer dressed as a sexy Minnie Mouse is not rooting for actual Minnie to look like that, and she would probably think something's wrong with you if you advocated for that.
Are there many people saying the rest of the scenario's perfectly fine and dandy but the specific outfit is what takes it too far? Somehow I doubt it. The costume is the focus because it's the most obvious and well-known signpost for the whole scenario, is all. It doesn't mean people think all the rest of it is perfectly perfect.
Looking back, page 1 of this thread covered the context pretty well.
In 2015, Fisher said that perhaps a father who was outraged about the costume should tell his daughter that Leia "is wearing that outfit not because she’s chosen to wear it. She’s been forced to wear it" [https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/06/entertainment/carrie-fisher-slave-princess-leia-feat/index.html]. Apparently, the father might have been simply ignorant of the plot (unfortunately, the linked video is now gone, and the linked WSJ article is pay-walled). In any case, not every parent is as familiar with the plot of ROTJ as, say, we are here. The millions that aren't obviously aren't going to comment on that aspect; they're just going to comment on what's in front of them.
The violence in Star Wars has indeed always been criticized to a degree. However, I don't think that that has ever risen to the level of controversy either, because the PG rating essentially took care of it by letting it be known that there were issues that parents might want to be concerned about. And when things got really ugly in Revenge of the Sith, Lucas accepted the PG-13 rating.
Think back to the last time some one stole from you.
Now what you did to them is one thing, and what you wanted to do to them is another thing entirely.
Leia tried to steal Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt.
It's apples and oranges, really, because the context is what matters. There's a huge, huge difference between a man (or male-coded alien) forcing a woman to display her body against her will and a woman choosing to display her body of her own volition. The problem with the Slave Leia scene is not the revealing costume itself, it's the fact that Leia was forced to wear it against her will, and that the filmmakers chose to sexualize Carrie Fisher gratuitously to pander to male viewers. Although the scene is redeemed by the fact that Leia ended up turning the tables on her enslaver, so it's really a scene of empowerment, and maybe that's what the cosplayers are responding to. It's also simply a beautiful costume in the abstract, and there's nothing wrong with choosing to dress in an aesthetically pleasing way, as long as it's your own free choice made for your own reasons.
Really, I have a harder time understanding all the cosplayers who dress up as Stormtroopers. I mean, these are the murderous shock troops of an evil, genocidal fascist empire, and they're literally named after a kind of Nazi soldier.
The intended audience was presexual.
3 years old to 12 years old.
What did Bobba Fett do with the scantily clad dancing girls he inherited?
Dancing girls are not there to give the boss a boner.
It's so that the businessmen who show up to make deals with the boss make dumb deals, as all their blood rushes away from their head.
Although the environment does seem like 24 hour party people.
3 years old to 12 years old.
What did Bobba Fett do with the scantily clad dancing girls he inherited?
Dancing girls are not there to give the boss a boner.
It's so that the businessmen who show up to make deals with the boss make dumb deals, as all their blood rushes away from their head.
Although the environment does seem like 24 hour party people.
Maybe for the same reason Vader and Thanos fans dress up: that they were cool villains and this is all make believe? Same for all those trekkers who go to conventions dressed as Klingons or Borg despite the political views of those species on the show.
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I wouldn't cosplay as a stormtrooper because stormtroopers are so incompetent. "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise," my foot! 
In the context of the Star Wars universe, would a giant slug like Jabba even be attracted to bipedal human and near-human women? I vaguely remember in the EU other Hutts thought he was some kind of deviant for keeping scantily-clad humanoid dancers. It could have been more about projecting an image of power and control to the human types he often dealt with.
If this had been one of those trashy fantasy films of the early 80s, Jabba probably would have made his slaves go completely naked to follow Hutt social mores.
Kor
In the context of the Star Wars universe, would a giant slug like Jabba even be attracted to bipedal human and near-human women? I vaguely remember in the EU other Hutts thought he was some kind of deviant for keeping scantily-clad humanoid dancers. It could have been more about projecting an image of power and control to the human types he often dealt with.
If this had been one of those trashy fantasy films of the early 80s, Jabba probably would have made his slaves go completely naked to follow Hutt social mores.
Kor
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