How Jyn Erso is proof Star Wars never made it out of feminist hell, at least not on the big screen.
I've done hasty and huffy reviews of Rogue One when it came out, and ranted at who would hear me, but I want to take the time to explain the reasons for my rancor against this film. What upsets me with Rogue One, I think, is that it hides under a very thin coat of feminism. Very thin because it's purely aesthetic, in the form of its protagonist, Jyn, being a woman.
What's wrong with that? you ask. It tricks people into not looking deeper, into not demanding more. It sets the bar in hell when you have a film be acclaimed for doing girl-bossing when all it does is write a mediocre character as a woman and calls it a day.
What's wrong with you?? you insist. Plenty, but let's not get into that.
I'll try and bullet point my case.
Rogue One doesn't pass the Bechdel test despite its female protagonist
imdb top cast really speaks for itself.
There are a couple of words exchanged between Jyn and her mother, but nothing that counts. Look me in the eyes and tell me that "Do you remember where to go", or whatever her last words are, is the line that refutes my point.
Mon Mothma, a legacy character, is present at a meeting in which she barely talks. When she does, it's to grill Jyn about her father. This hardly counts as not discussing a man, even if the man isn't the protagonist. Jyn's story begins as her father's story, not her own, and Mon is only interested in her because she can get them to both her fathers.
Later there is that incredibly upsetting rebel leader at the meeting, but that scene again hardly counts, the same way you wouldn't count an interaction with a shop keeper who happens to be a woman as passing the Bechdel test. There's a group meeting where Jyn is present and the people vote against acting. Some of these people are women.
That's really the point. I think anyone who praises Rogue One for anything feminist can be hard checked early by the simple fact the film doesn't pass the Bechdel test.
Jyn is defined by the men in her life.
The post that put me in mind of doing this analysis defended Jyn as being vital to attracting the team she assembles. Being at the centre of it. The argument was done to defend against cutting Jyn out of the film, not to say it's a feminist masterpiece, but the image struck me because it's accurate.
Jyn is the hole at the centre of a donut made out of men. Let's start with a short summary of the film:
Her character introduction is about her dad and how she lost him and her mom, and her second dad who came to get her. Then she wakes in prison. She's rescued from there by men. Then interrogated by 2 men and Mon Mothma (who seems to be contractually obligated to stand in every room where there's a rebel meeting). She then tags along with Cassian, a man, to go meet with her second father, in search of info of her first father.
The arrive on Jedha, where the pilot (a man, for some reason) is captured and held. They meet two monks (men) and do the plot things demanded of them. They go on a wild goose chase for the OG Daddy (and I'll never forgive them for squandering Mads Mikkelsen that way BTW). Will Cassian kill him? Will the rebellion? Anyway, OG daddy dies in Jyn's arms! Then she argues with Cassian over her dead dad!
We're now in a ship with 5 men (the droid counts), and poor fatherless Jyn. Truly orphaned.
She makes her speech and is refused. But a whole host of men, assembled and led by Cassian, declare themselves on her side and ready to go (this scene irks me a lot, but let's put a pin in it. We'll come back to it later).
The antagonist is also a man. And he fights with two other men (Vader and Tarkin).
Then at the end of this dramatic sausage fest, everybody dies, and a creepy undead Leia speaks one line (to a man). Roll credits.
The issue here of course is that nothing at all stops Jyn from being a man. Jyn could be the hole at the centre of a donut made of men, and be a man himself, and nothing at all would change, because there's nothing in the story, not even in Jyn's personal story, that demands her to be a woman. Or benefits from her being a woman.
She joins Saw because he takes her in, because it's the plan her parents devised for her. She joins the rebellion because Cassian frees her and Draven threatens to send her back to jail. She goes to her father because she found a sweet message from him and nobody would believe her.
The only thing that she truly brings that the men couldn't have brought to the invasion is that she knows the name of the file when she recognises her father's pet name for her. But mind you, Jyn as a man could still have been called Stardust by his father and we wouldn't be playing at girlbossing just for social points, and you wouldn't be 1k words into this "essay".
Jyn is encouraged along the way by the men she meets and interacts with. She confronts them, listens to them, speaks up for a thing she believes in just the once, and then goes on a brave mission to die along with them. You could argue that Chirrut and Baze go along FOR her, but you cannot argue that of anyone else.
Nobody else knows Jyn, and it's Cassian who assembles these rebels, who know and trust him, and don't know Jyn.
Jyn is a narrative void. She has no past. What we SEE is about her fathers. The rest we are told, and not shown. She has no life to return to. She comes into this story with the sole baggage of her father and his crumbs left for her. She's defined by this until the narrative funnels her into her high action ending. She brings nothing to the table but her connections.
The backstory that is read to us from her files only exists to tell the audience (and surely the predominantly spicy and male audience) "this woman is badass and can already kick some ass. She was in prison because she kicked ass in the past, so don't act surprised when she can aim a blaster."
If Disney had a real interest in giving us female representation, they could have made ANY number of the one, one time characters women. There is no reason for Jyn to assemble a fully male crew. Even assuming Cassian remains a badass 007 gritty manly man as we see him in RO, there's no reason why they can't meet "nuns" instead of a pair of monks. There's no reason for the pilot, Bohdi, to not be a woman. If they were, the ratio would be 4 women to 2 men.
Hell, want to earn extra cookie points? Have Baze be visibly genderqueer and refuse to elaborate because they abandoned all earthly belongings when they joined, including gender. Yet they won't let go of that big gun, thank you. 3 women, 2 men, 1 genderqueer go on a space adventure! Then you can have Lady Chirrut have a slightly longer conversation about kyber to Jyn, and they can talk about her mother's beliefs, and the order, and boom, suddenly we pass the Bechdel test.
Jyn is an atrociously passive character, regardless of sex or gender
I'm sorry to say, but even if Jyn were a man, or a trans woman, or an exotic 4th gender from Lah'mu, she still wouldn't be an exciting character. She could be more interesting representation, but good representation demands an interesting character, or at the very least an ACTIVE one. This overlaps the point above, because really, even if we made everyone who isn't a legacy character into a woman, Jyn remains the hole at the centre of a donut. She assembles a team, but unwillingly.
She does her fair share of fighting and she is brave!! She is competent and courageous!! I'm not trashing her (hidden, unexplored) emotional core. It's simply that being brave and a good shot does not a compelling character make. Nor an active one.
She's hidden, taken, then found in jail and freed. Forced into a meeting where her choice is either go talk to Saw or go back to jail. This is not a real choice. She is forced to go. Mind you, this means that there is no LIFE that the empire interrupted. We're read a list of crimes, and this is all we get. Jyn had nothing going on that she really wants to go back to. She's a blank slate, which is only ever good for fanfiction writers.
Then she's taken along to see her father, then taken back to the rebel base, where she isn't trusted or believed (rightfully so, since she's the daughter of a dead imperial, has no proof, and is a complete unknown to them).
And yeah, about the scene where everyone assembles to follow Jyn? What drives me nuts is that CASSIAN finds her, and has all these people at his back. Cassian is the one who talked to them. Knew them. Led them to her. Jyn doesn't go around making friends, doesn't go around rousing people. She doesn't talk to anyone to try and convince them to go. Hell, she wasn't even on her way to hijack a ship to go on her own. She was standing there, defeated after the meeting.
Because she's not a real rebel at heart. She's as apathetic then as she was when pulled out of jail and refusing to help the rebellion. Given up on the cause, nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Jyn, once again, is passive. Standing there so a man can come and find the people for her. Then they stand there in the ship for her to do a little speech. People's reactions to that speech was much nicer than to Syril's awkward monologue in Andor, but in my heart they stand shoulder to shoulder. I mean, if I abandoned everything in my life to come to this jungle base, spent gruelling years there, flying missions for the rebellion I believe in, I would find it frankly odd that the chick who was brought in handcuffs 2 days ago is now making the rousing speech before the suicide mission, you know?
While I disagree that Cassian should be the one making the speech (because I believe RO as a film COULD have an interesting and active Jyn), it currently in canon makes NO sense for it to be her making the speech and not him. Narratively speaking, within the universe.
Then Jyn contributes the ONE thing only she could bring to the film (her nickname), gets some revenge on Krennic, and dies a hero (that remains undisputed).
She never makes a really active choice that warps the direction of the plot. Even when she decides to go find her father herself, this is not something that affects the narrative at all. She could have stayed on the other side of the ravine, and seen Cassian aim at her dad there. Heck Eadu couldn't be skipped entirely. Even her moment of glory, declaiming "rebellions are built on hope" is sabotaged, as the room denies her, and the rebels who side with her are assembled (and very much led) by Cassian.
Even goddamned Bohdi is in on the action not because he's taken with Jyn and her leader's charms, but because something her FATHER said to him has been sticking with him and pushes him to rebel.
A comparison to highlight the issues.
Let's go to a different franchise to compare Jyn to a heroine, because Rey is... a mess. And we simply don't have anyone else in a movie (and Ahsoka is barely a "character" and so divorced from her TCW roots that she deserves her own rant-essay).
Let's look at Alien: Romulus and its lead, Rain.
Narratively, they differ from the beginning. Rain is introduced with a dream. It's not about her parents, or her past, but about her own inner dream for the future: Sunlight, on a cloudless world.
When she wakes up in a grim shared room on a mining planet under the rain, we immediately know that our protagonist dreams of sunlight, of better things, but is stuck here. She's not defined by her parents until a later scene, at the job office, where she applies for the flight out, and is refused. The teller asks about her parents and she reveals that they died in the mines months ago.
Just in the first few minutes of the Romulus film, we know about Rain that she dreams of going to another world, literally dreams of sunligfht, lives on a mining colony plagued by disease, that her parents are dead, and that they left her a brother who is in fact a malfunctioning synthetic.
Do you know what's the 9min mark on Rogue One? Cassian killing his intel (the Andor tie in point). We still need to see Bohdi captured before we even MEET adult Jyn. At this stage we know nothing about her, while we know Rain's situation, hopes, and the complication (her legal way off world has failed and she's doomed to the mines).
Anyway, Rain is then called by her ex (a man, sadly), and invited over for a secret meeting. This is where the film becomes an ensemble cast. There are 3 women (Rain, Kay, who is pregnant, and Navarro, who dies first) and 3 men (Andy, the synth, Tyler, the ex-bf, and Bjorn, the synth hating redneck). Already we see here an equality that Disney executives couldn't dare with Star Wars, so I guess it's progress. 1 of each survives, including the one black man, so that's real progressivism for you in the realm of horror!
The group shows to Rain that they found a way out, a station in orbit with cryopods that would allow them the decades long journey to the star system she was just denied. The reason they need Rain is not for Rain herself or for her skills, but because of her brother, Andy, who speaks the AI language necessary to operate the station they plan to invade. He can open doors, restore gravity, etc.
What differs here is that Rain is both his guardian and owner. Andy is not able to disobey her or act on his own whims. His prime directive is to protect Rain. The decision to go is HERS, and she actively choses to go, after some finessing, because this is a way to achieve her dream as established in the first few minutes of the film. Her choice is to stay and die in the mines, or risk everything, loan Andy's abilities, and potentially get everything she wants.
Jyn, in contrast, is used without a choice (prison or do what we order you to do) to act as a key. As a go-between. If Saw were on speaking terms with Mon and co, Jyn would not be needed at all. You could argue "if the team found their own synth, they wouldn't need Rain", but Synth aren't a dime a dozen. They belong to the company. It's an oddity for Rain to have a refurbished one, taken from a garbage heap. It is a real inconvenience shaped by the tech and politics of their world. Meanwhile, Saw and Mon have a forced falling out precisely because the writers need a way to justify Jyn's utility. Saw is being paranoid and unreasonable and dies pretty much a madman, because Jyn's story needed to happen. It's a little nitpicky, but my point is basically that "allies who worked together and call each other must have a fall out" is more forced than "synths are almost never in private hands and by definition belong to the company that owns everyone."
During the exploration of the station, and the subsequent issues with the aliens, Rain proves herself valuable by being smart, quick to think on her feet. She's the one who comes up with the temperature idea to cross a corridor full of face huggers. She's tech savvy and picks up on anomalies more.
More to the point, she actively goes into the ship to rescue her friends, like Jyn actively goes to try and rescue her dad, I guess... But Rain also actively makes decisions to move the plot forward. She unlocks puzzles/blocks in the story (giving the right codes to Andy, finding ways to cross dangerous areas, using the physics to her advantage in combat, etc). And in the emotional beat, she goes back to rescue her brother, whose "humanity" is debated throughout the movie. She'd started the film ready to abandon him and not ready to tell him, then decides to risk her life to go back for him, and actively bring him along, even if she risks expulsion as soon as she arrives at the "heaven" she's headed for.
Rain is also reactive at times, because of the genre she is in. She's a final girl in a monster movie. Being chased by monsters and forced into confrontations is part of the deal. Jyn doesn't have nearly this sort of excuse, because she's in a space opera. She could be anybody, any way.
Rewriting Jyn (a modest and off the cuff attempt)
What really kills me is their insistence on doing "show don't tell" for the plot, but not for the character. Did we need to see Bohdi captured? Cassian killing? Did we need to see Krennic and Erso on that planet? And yet we see nothing that's just Jyn for Jyn's character's sake?
Personally I think they have it the wrong way around. My core suggestion would be to introduce ruthless adult Jyn, knock her out to show snippets of her childhood, then have her join Cassian more actively before being presented to Mon and Draven.
E.g: we meet Jyn in the middle of a deal. Maybe an arms deal that she spent months working on. We realise she's a gun-runner or weapons seller. Some sort of "deals with weapons and clearly knows how to use them" gig. It would be good if she had a sidekick (for convenience, let's say a lady droid). They can have some tense dialogue about preparing the drop, make sure everything's right. Because this is the big one. The last one, perhaps, until Jyn finally has the credits for.. a gateaway, a position in a bigger cartel that will bring her protection, SOMETHING.
The key here is to go in media res, introduce Jyn as someone who has a LIFE, at least one friend she works with, and plans unfurling.
She arms herself and goes to the meeting. I would show a fair bit of it to show her competency. She stands on business, she has a reputation. She can talk shop and isn't intimidated. Then everything is being crashed by the imperials: her identity as Galen's daughter has been leaked more or less at the same time as the rebels heard about it, and she's taken captive. She kills imps, she "resists arrests". Basically everything that's in her list of crimes.
Then she gets knocked out. Maybe she heard her real name said aloud by some officer, and it rings into her head as she goes to dark, until it morphs in her parent's voice calling her "Jyn!" and triggering snippets of memories. They don't need to be a full scene like the Krennic/Erso confrontation. Heck, extra creativity point if the past is pictured in huge, distorted, scary caricature, becoming more and more apparent that it's a trauma dream, and not the exact reality. It doesn't need to be, we would still understand, and a creative director could have some real fun.
When Jyn comes to, she's in a transport, of to some imperial detention centre for transfer. She gets freed, tries to escape again. She might be determined to go back to her life, to the deal she could still finish. But it's important imo that she has to escape the place with Cassian, K2 and Melshi. Better be with rebels than imps. We can establish some early chemistry, and Cassian can try to explain to her on the way what happened: her droid's shot, her contact captured in the hit. A pilot sent by her father was apprehended, and her identity leaked. Cassian and co tracked her, but the empire beat them to her by a little. Now we have time to get the team working together in some action, and get some banter going.
(As an aside, I think the best way to have this happen is for Bohdi to be sent not to Saw, but to find Jyn herself, and Bohdi asks around, investigates, and learns of her new identity and sadly keeps asking. He gets bagged by Saw's people, but not until some imp put 2 and 2 together. It would make sense if Krennic kept a constant search going for Jyn Erso, as a tool against Galen could always be a happy surprise. All of this requires time and action done off screen, but it's nothing that can't be explained as we go, and it's much better to have the focus be on our heroine and not a side-side character!)
When Jyn meets Draven and Mon, it'd be interesting if the dynamic were different. Maybe Jyn sold the rebellion weapons in the past! She may have had ties from her time with Saw. Draven could be annoyed and incredulous. "All this time one of our suppliers was Galen Erso's daughter" and Mon could shoot back that until a few days ago nobody knew or cared about a Galen Erso to begin with.
Jyn's resistance could be one of freedom and reputation. She can't be seen as a stooge to the rebellion. She can't abandon her caches, she could salvage her droid, she has a business she's built herself since leaving Saw's band and she was so close to getting (whatever milestone). The rebellion is offering some distraction, or threatening to return her to the empire, tension rises. More resistance: she's not talked to Saw in years, they parted on bad terms.
What pushes her forward? Maybe Cassian asking, look, please? We rescued your ass and we're only asking for introductions. Also, isn't she curious about the message that pilot was carrying, from her father? After all the pilot was asking for HER. The message is supposed to be for her.
She goes along, all goes the same, but they meet two NUNS. Have a little extra long scene, where she talks to F!Chirrut about kyber, the lore her mother told her, and the lore of the guardians Chirrut gives her. Maybe Chirrut can ask if her mother came to Jedha, that the story she told Jyn were once told here too. This "how it was before" talk can easily segway into "wtf happened to this place" and then to "btw if you know it so well, could you point me in the direction of..." before the action interrupts them.
Very little then needs to change, except of course if I were let free into this script, I would skip Eadu entirely or alter it profoundly. Not relevant to this conversation.
It would be nice if Jyn could contribute things. Bohdi is useful because he knows how to approach Eadu (and they still crash, but it's his reason for being there). I think it would be far more interesting and horrifying if Jyn knew how to approach on Eadu from having done "hazardous material" drops there. Imagine the bleak realisation that she's been a stone throw's away from her father, running her little business, cutting deal with imperial intermediates. She doesn't need to be more skilled than that as a pilot, since she wouldn't be flying and they crash.
Does it give less stuff to do for Bohdi? Yes. IDK why he's there, and the men can surrender a little to the protagonist.
the reason the rebellion still doesn't trust her? She's an independent. She sold guns to the rebellion but never work for them. She flew to Eadu, she sold to imperials, even if she hadn't known they were. She's Saw's creature, she isn't loyal, she isn't trustworthy. She never joined the cause, now she's in it to defend her imp father's reputation? It makes just as much sense and shows how the rebels are ALL paranoid, not as much as Saw, but still.
Now her speech can be more angry, more impassioned. What if she tried to live her life, to get away? There are late comers in the room who haven't spent in this rebellion half the years she has, working under Saw. She was 12 the first time she shot a man. She could reassemble a pulse rifle blindfolded at 11. She sold them invaluable parts dirt cheap precisely because they are the rebellion. She can point out how heartless and divisive it is to nitpick at her allegiances to separate the worthy from the unworthy. The typical leftist infighting/puritanical tendencies. She can angrily call them a bunch of cowards, that they bombed her father in front of her, the least they could do is trust his last words, her words. What if she believes in the cause NOW? Is now too late to be a valuable rebel?
And when she gets outvoted and storms out of the room, she can beeline to the ship and start toying with the radio. Confronted by Cassian and K2, she can say she will call contacts. Friends. People she knows. She has to know someone who'll go with her. Cassian can ask in disbelief if she wants to go to Scarif, what, alone? And that's where she can turn on him and say blah blah, aren't rebellions built on hope? Didn't you tell me that?
To which Cassian's own resolve solidifies, Chirrut and Baze approve, and all, Bohdi included, decide to split and talk to rebels one on one, giving a choice to the people who weren't in the meeting. This can be a very quick montage, but here even if Cassian does the bulk of the work, he at least does it because he's following her resolve, and agreeing to go along. She's led in the action, he agrees and joins.
For Scarif, we really lack time, but it would be nice if Jyn had more to do as a weapons' specialist. Maybe she can rig something special, interact with imps as an officer in that capacity, or what have you. Rain's quick thinking, in a pinch/moment of panic is often what saves the minute (there's no saving the day lol) and Jyn SORELY lacks such moments of personal utility.
The Stardust thing is very sweet, and reinforced in the holo scene, if I recall. It has emotional impact, but at its core it saddens me than in a very not female forward film it is "the nickname my father gave me" man+passive thing. YES yes it's emotional, but in canon Rogue One it's sad that it's Jyn's only unique contribution. In a rewrite in which she's more active, the sappiness of the moment is easier to excuse.
Don't take any of this as word of God (that would be blasphemy), there are many AO3 authors out there who did better rewrites of Jyn's story and are truly Jyn-pilled. This was just an example/walk this line with me type exercise.
What irritates me in Jyn's character, or lack thereof, is that she's the perfect protagonist for fanfic writers. She's so empty, you can give her any life you want. My example as a weapons' expert/seller is just one of many. The fact is, she has no future she dreams of, and no past but a short list of offensives and a one off about her time with Saw. She's an open canvas, waiting for your paintbrush.
And because she's also one of the very rare women in Star Wars films who isn't actively abused by the narrative, it's very easy to make her a darling blorbo who has nothing problematic to erase, only spaces to fill in.
As a result, I always feel like criticising Jyn to her fans' face is a terrible thing to do. It feels like I'm beating their dog with a cane. But no, what I'm doing is again, as always, telling my fallow Star Wars fans "we can have better. We could EASILY have had better. This is not the representation we should settle for. This is not feminist or girl power."
What I want to say is, just because you feel things about Jyn, doesn't mean you can't want more for her. I am a walking daddy-issues trauma AO3 author. I specialise in "evil man adopts girl-child" tropes. Mads Mikkelsen is my number one favourite actor whose Casino Royal poster awakened my partialism for hands. The Jyn and her Complex Captive Daddy who Calls her Stardust BS was made in a lab to make me cry!! The reason I was SO disappointed by Rogue One is that I expected more and WANTED more. I was frustrated that so much of the media narrative went "ooooh.... a lady lead in Star Wars, awooga??? So progressiiiive!" And yet it ISN'T!
If you can make Jyn a man without changing a single plot or character interaction, then you aren't being progressive. It's not even relevant to Jyn that she is a woman. She doesn't suffer for it, or has any social interaction around it. There is no apparent commentary about women in the rebellion, the empire, imperial jails, etc, nothing. Nothing cultural about her as coming from Lah'mu or having grown up with Saw. She's a neutral passive character who could be anything because she only needs to be Erso's Stardust. If the film wasn't going to pass the Bechdel test, they could have done something for her, at least.
Jyn deserved better as a character. Better inner conflict, better history, better motivations. We deserve better representation. We deserve more women in media. More women in Star Wars who are written as such. As sisters, mothers, partners, as women who refused to be defined or tied to womanhood. As women of different cultures for which womanhood doesn't look the same at all.
It's a space opera with an unlimited Mouse budget, it really has no excuses.
I just hope we can agree on that and at least stop praising Rogue One on the feminist/progressive department. It simply doesn't deserve it.
