Guest Post, Mark Lewandowski: Bikini Clad Bad Ass

Mark Lewendowski holding a panda cub.Moments after leaving the theater, my wife Katie checked Facebook and found out Carrie Fisher had died earlier in the day.

The adrenaline pumping through me after experiencing Rogue One dried up immediately.  The news wasn’t unexpected, but as all good movies do, the newest Star Wars film had kept reality at bay for nearly two and half hours.  Granted, Rogue One isn’t the most uplifting of the Star Wars entries.  Pretty much all the good guys are killed off.  But, it ends in the way I had hoped:  Princess Leia, one of cinema’s all-time great bad asses, accepting the plans to the Death Star, the very same plans she will feed into R2-D2’s databanks in the original Star Wars.

Since hearing of Carrie Fisher’s passing, I’ve spent a lot of time in my memory, hearkening back to my first meeting with Princess Leia.  I was twelve in 1977.  I saw Star Wars at the drive-in with my family, the sound squeaking through those tin speakers you had to hang from a partially closed window.  (The cheapest lap top produces a cleaner sound today.)  Like so many others in 1977, I instantly crushed on Princess Leia, but I can’t say it was sexual.  Maybe I was too young yet.  I just couldn’t remember seeing another female character like her on the screen (big or small) before.  She wasn’t cheesy like Wonder Woman or Barbarella, and didn’t look at all like Racquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., nor did she resemble the femme fatales of every James Bond flick.  Unlike Samantha in Bewitched, or Jeanie in I Dream of Jeanie, Princess Leia didn’t give up any special powers just to please the men in her life.  In my 12 year old eyes, she was completely unique.

At the beginning of Star Wars, and just moments after the end of Rogue One, Princess Leia slips the Death Star plans to R2-D2 and instructs him/it/whatever to find Obi-
Wan Kenobi.  She then turns and accepts capture at the hands of Darth Vader, stooge of the Imperial Emperor, who tortures her in an attempt to find out the location of the rebel base.  Even after seeing her home planet obliterated, she doesn’t give an inch, sacrificing herself for the cause.

Once in her holding cell, George Lucas sets up Leia as the classic damsel-in-distress; that’s certainly how Luke Skywalker and Han Solo see her.  However, Lucas subverts the archetype.  Once Luke frees her from her cell, Leia grabs a blaster, holding her own against advancing Stormtroopers.  With their only apparent path out of the prison cut off, it is Leia who engineers their escape via the giant trash compactor.

Later, as the Millennium Falcon zooms away from the Death Star, Han Solo quips, “Not a bad bit of rescuing, uh?  You know, sometimes I even amaze myself.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Leia jabs back.

Only Leia knows the rescue was too easy, and that a homing beacon was likely planted in the ship.  Her own “escape” will lead the Imperial Forces to the rebel base she kept hidden under torture.  The future of the rebellion rests entirely on her hope that the plans R2 has hidden in his databanks will prove useful.  In Joseph Campbell’s analysis of a typical Hero’s Journey, the protagonist initially shows reluctance to accept his task.  Han Solo shows his reluctance throughout the film.  Even Luke must be pushed by Ben Kenobi to leave the “ordinary world” of his home planet.  Leia?  Never.  Of this triumvirate of heroes at the heart of Star Wars, she is the strongest, the most steadfast of them all.

. . .

Some years ago Hallmark released a Christmas ornament of Princess Leia dressed in the infamous bikini from The Return of the Jedi.  My eight-year old nephew had recently discovered Star Wars, so I bought it for him.  His mother wasn’t amused.  Like so many others, she views Leia’s get up as some kind of sexual exploitation.  Is it?  I’m not sure if I see it that way, and when I gave my nephew the ornament, I wasn’t playing the clichéd role of the perverted uncle.  Even now, when I rewatch The Return of the Jedi, I don’t see a sexed up, exploitative version of Princess Leia; I just see another manifestation of her heroic strength.

At the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo is frozen in carbonite.  At the beginning of the third movie, he’s nothing more than a wall decoration for the mobster, Jabba the Hut. Leia enters Jabba the Hut’s fortress disguised as a bounty hunter, with Chewbacca as bait.  We realize Leia is part of an elaborate ruse, along with the droids, Luke and Lando Calrissian, to free Han Solo.  Arguably, Leia has the most dangerous task.  She ends up playing chicken with Jabba the Hut when she activates a thermal detonator to illustrate her ferocity.  If Jabba doesn’t give in, she’d blow herself up, as well has everyone else in the room.  While the ruse works initially, Leia is ultimately discovered.  Jabba dresses her in that bikini (giving new meaning to the concept of going “undercover”), and chains her up, replacing another bikini clad female who had earlier been fed to the planet Tatooine’s twisted version of a Bumble, which lives in a cave below the throne room.

Luke Skywalker eventually arrives to save the day, but once again, Leia doesn’t play the role of damsel-in-distress.  With the boys messing about with light sabers and laser blasters out in the desert, Leia steps up and wraps the chain around Jabba’s enormous neck, choking him to death with the very thing that had tethered them together.  It’s the very last time we see Leia in a bikini.

Leia ends up doing all kinds of other cool things in The Return of the Jedi, like killing off a lot of Stormtroopers and zipping around the forest on a hovercycle.  (It’s a shame she’s never allowed to train as a Jedi Knight, but she does achieve the rank of General.  That’s not too shabby.)  Without Leia’s heroics in the original Star Wars trilogy, we might never have become acquainted with Daisy Ridley’s Rey, or Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso, let alone Buffy Summers, or Xena the Warrior Princess, or River Tam, or any number of past, present and future female heroes.

Thank you, Carrie Fisher

Meet the Interns: Dustin Diehl, Nonfiction Editor

dustinDustin Diehl is a Senior at Arizona State University majoring in English Literature and minoring in Religious Studies. He is also pursuing a LGBT Certificate.

Superstition Review: What do you do for SR?

Dustin Diehl: I solicit work from nonfiction authors to be considered for publication. I then read through submissions (both solicited and submitted) and decide which ones I think should be included. Together, with Liz, we decide which ones to include, then send out rejection/acceptance e-mails.

SR: How did you hear about or get involved with Superstition Review?

DD: Trish is my Honors Thesis advisor and asked if I would like to participate…I said yes!

SR: What is your favorite section of SR? Why?

DD: I really enjoy fiction; however, I’ve been earning a deeper appreciation for nonfiction…seeing how people can take ordinary circumstances (or even not-so-ordinary circumstances) and convey them in a creative and readable form is fascinating to me.

SR: Who is your dream contributor to the journal? Talk about him/her.

DD: I would love for Michael Stackpole to contribute a short fiction story. I love his Star Wars novels and he’s a local writer!

SR: What job, other than your own, would you like to try out in the journal?

DD: I think it would be fun to be a part of the marketing team. I work for an online ad agency, so getting to apply my job skills to something fun like SR would be pretty cool.

SR: What are you most excited for in the upcoming issue?

DD: I’m really excited to read the submitted work…it’s always fun to read people’s work, especially when you find a diamond in the rough!

SR: What was the first book you remember falling in love with and what made it so special?

DD: The first book I fell in love with was The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. I loved how it deftly juxtaposed religious history, political history and fiction into a very readable and timeless story. In high school, I adapted the book into a play script and would still love to produce a stage version of the book.

SR: What are you currently reading?

DD: Currently reading the Star Wars: X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston. Reading should be fun, and these books are fun!

SR: What are some of your favorite websites to waste time on or distract you from homework?

DD: I’m a huge movie buff, so I’m constantly on WorstPreviews.com, a movie news blog.  I’m also an avid Star Wars fan, so I enjoy TheForce.net as well.

SR: Do you write? Tell us about a project you’re working on.

I do write; usually fiction, but I’ve found nonfiction to be very satisfying as well. I’m working on a collection of creative nonfiction essays for my Honors Thesis as well as a LGBT-themed modern fantasy novel.

Meet the Interns: Kat Corliss, Blogger

With the semester picking up speed and things really starting to get done on the journal, we’ve come to realize that it’s also about that time that we ought to start introducing the interns working on Superstition Review this semester. We strive to be in touch with our reading audience and that includes letting you get to know our entire student staff. We feel it gives you perspective as the reader, especially when getting to know the personalities of our editors as they change each term with new faces every semester.

I suppose I should go first, though, since I’ll be the one writing the updates here for the next three-and-change months, and then introduce our team members as I interview them.

My name is Kat Corliss, and I’m serving on the Web Design team. I’m the Blogger. I’m a student of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, majoring in English: Creative Writing: Fiction, with a focus on Young Adult Literature. I am a Senior this semester and will be graduating December 2009.

Superstition Review: What do you do for SR?

Kat Corliss: I’m the Blogger for SR, which means I write tri-weekly posts about what’s going on with the production magazine in our blog. I’ve also kind of become the Social Networker, in a sense. I maintain our Facebook fan page and update our Twitter account. I make sure the public knows what’s going on internally with the journal, I announce calls for submission and deadlines, and I communicate local events pertaining to the literary and art world.

SR: How did you hear about or get involved with Superstition Review?

KC: I was introduced to our Editor-in-Chief, Trish, by a classmate of mine at the 2009 Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference at ASU Main. Trish had just talked on a panel about SR and it sounded really exciting and something fun to pursue so I submitted my application later that week.

SR: What is your favorite section of SR?

KC: Probably the art section because I’m a really visual person. I like being exposed to new artists all the time. Plus, the online delivery of our journal really allows for higher quality images to be published than a print magazine would.

SR: Who is your dream contributor to the journal?

KC: In writing, it’d be Manuel Munoz, a (now) local writer. He is absolutely amazing. I just read his Faith Healer of Olive Avenue this summer and it was breathtakingly well written, smart, and painful. For artists, I’d have to say Chris McVeigh. He’s just plain fun. His photography often involves LEGOs or Star Wars action figures and it’s just that little connection between passion for creating art and embracing childhood whimsy that I adore.

SR: What job, other than your own, would you like to try out in the journal?

KC: Definitely fiction editor. It’s what I’ve been doing in school for the last few years, it’s what I want to do with my life–edit young adult fiction–so that’d be fun to work on. I’m glad to have been given the opportunity to see the publicity side of journal editing, though, and I’m excited to work on the social networking aspect because it’s new and flexible, a lot of it experimental. I’m never bored with what I get to do for the journal.

SR: What are you most excited for in the upcoming issue?

KC: The changes we’re looking at in formatting. We’re updating our look a bit. We’re hoping it will be ready in time for launch so the Web Design Team has already been in a couple meetings discussing what we’d like to change and what’s working great for us.

SR: What are you currently reading?

KC: Loads of YA lit for a class and an independent study project I’m working on. I just finished a Goosebumps graphic novel–did you know they’ve started republishing the classic scary stories into visual format? How cool is that? I’m also in the middle of The Time Traveler’s Wife, something I picked up over a year ago and haven’t managed to sit down and finish. A stack of graphic novels and comic books. I’m about to start Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys.

SR: Do you write? Tell us about a project you’re working on.

KC: Yes, I do. One of my current projects is writing a full young adult novel under the supervision of Dr. Blasingame at ASU Main in an independent study. It’s a story that follows a 17-year-old girl on a trip halfway across the US in her search to find out more about her mother who committed suicide when the girl was a toddler. She ends up reconnecting with a family she didn’t really ever get to know since her father moved her away when her parents had gotten divorced and, in the process, learns a lot about what her mother was like and why she killed herself, and how she’s actually more like her mother than she thinks.

SR: What are some of your favorite websites to waste time on or distract you from homework?

KC: Oh, definitely Facebook. I love Twitter, too, especially since my favorite part of Facebook are the status updates my friends make, and that’s all it really is in my opinion. I also spend a lot of time on LiveJournal, especially in the Literary Tattoos, Trashy Eats, and Thrift Horror communities.

SR: What are some of your favorite literary links?

KC: I definitely follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter, read his blog, and sometimes even listen to his library on LastFM because it’s just plain interesting; he’s one of the authors who has jumped into every aspect of online life and is always just keystrokes away from connecting with fans, and that’s just cool in general, beside the fact that he’s a brilliant writer. I also read Fiction Circus blog posts, one of my favorite literary bloggers/literary magazines. I also enjoy the Australian site, Inside A Dog, created to promote reading to youth by the Centre for Youth Literature.

 

More intern interviews coming soon!

Making it Big — Big Screen?

It seems like everything gets made into a movie these days. This is a visual, media-fueled era we are living in.

The current collegiate generation, for example, has grown up with J.K Rowling’s hit Harry Potter series in both book and movie form. Not to mention all supplementary video games and fan-made materials.

Before us, George Lucas’ Star Wars took the screen–did you know the film was originally intended to help promote sales of Lucas’ book of the same name? Instead, the film madly outshone the books and made a great impact in how we view movies today.

Today’s tweens are anticipating Arizona’s own homegrown Stephanie Meyer’s hit novel series Twilight to be released in movie form. Love it or hate it, Meyers has made an impact on American youth culture.

Clearly, an excellent way for an author to gain a following and visibility is through the film industry. Among the headliners in today’s contemporary literature circles is Chuck Palahniuk–author of Fight Club, a book and a cinematic cult success. Accordingly, another one of his novels, Choke, has also been made into a film.

Among writing manuals and guides, the hardest step for many writers is the first–actually sitting down and writing or typing out your ideas. Having the determination to sit it through and devote the necessary time and focus into getting those ideas down onto paper or a file. This step is the most important step that the aforementioned authors took into making it big time. As a strategy for finding this focus, Chuck Palahniuk suggests an “egg timer” trick.

“Two years ago, when I wrote the first of these essays it was about my “egg timer method” of writing. You never saw that essay, but here’s the method: When you don’t want to write, set an egg timer for one hour (or half hour) and sit down to write until the timer rings. If you still hate writing, you’re free in an hour. But usually, by the time that alarm rings, you’ll be so involved in your work, enjoying it so much, you’ll keep going. Instead of an egg timer, you can put a load of clothes in the washer or dryer and use them to time your work. Alternating the thoughtful task of writing with the mindless work of laundry or dish washing will give you the breaks you need for new ideas and insights to occur. If you don’t know what comes next in the story…clean your toilet. Change the bed sheets. For Christ sakes, dust the computer. A better idea will come.”

This tip, and more, are featured on Palahniuk’s website. Keep a look out for more writing tips and updates on our next news blog.