Thoughts on Anita Sarkeesian's Star Wars The Force Awakens review

It's been a while since Anita put out an episode of Tropes vs Women, 4 months, real speedy on the production there. However, I've noticed she's put up a review of my favourite film of 2015, so I watched it. This probably won't be a very long ramble, but I have some opinions on her review that I feel like addressing, and on the plus side, this video was nowhere near as painful to watch as the last one.

Surprisingly I didn't feel that everything she said was in need of refutation, she describes the positive attributes of Rey, and I, thinking she was the best character in the entire film, or for that matter the entire year from what I saw, agreed with a lot of her points. But I do have an issue with point about the significance of Rey's gender, as well as Finn's race, but I'm a regressive dinosaur who thinks that we shouldn't judge characters based on their race or gender, but instead on what defines them as characters, Rey is a good character because she has dimensions, she's emotional, capable, resilient, qualities that make good characters, her gender shouldn't matter, and on the same grounds, neither should Finn's race. This need to have a more inclusive story is something I've never understood, again, why should we care about something that really should be inconsequential to what makes the character, weather that be race, gender, orientation, whatever, are they good characters or not. Anita then says something I still don't fully understand, the binary representation of good and evil creates a regressive and conservative narrative, what? Conservative, you mean like religion, you mean like God and the Devil, I always saw the Empire/First Order and the Rebellion/Resistance as being comparable to the Allies and the Nazis, one standing for freedom while the other stands for power and oppression. Do you mean the Force, Anita, because you say good and evil are clear absolutes in a constant struggle, well, from how I understand it, that's exactly what the Force is, the light side vs the dark side, both must remain in a constant struggle to maintain balance, and as for people changing completely with no complexity, I must simply say Darth Vader and Klyo Ren. If you've seen the films, I'm surprised that you say these characters have no complexity, Vader in particular. While Ren has very serious emotional damage, and clearly suffers in an emotional war with himself, is that not complexity? Finally, I like how you infer that Stormtroopers are people too. Yes, Finn's desertion does suggest that they can be changed, but there's one word that comes to mind, Traitor, it's something Finn is called a few times in the film. But he is a traitor, he saw something he didn't want to be a part of, he ran, and now his former allies hate him, clearly they have no issue with wiping out towns like Finn does, so how could they be changed like Finn was, Finn's change came entirely from within himself, and I doubt people that would call him Traitor have that in them.

This is a little one compared to my last/only Sarkeesian related post, and I, to her credit, was nowhere near as bored or as furious as I was in Women as Reward, in fact I'm fine with some of what she said in regard to Rey, but I take issue with the rest of it pretty much, maybe I'm not in any better a position on Star Wars, since when it comes to my love for Star Wars, I'm still in the larval stage, but I like to think I've at least been sort of interesting with my refutations. Anita, today you haven't pissed me off, I think you're wrong, but this is a much more tolerable video than the last one I posted about.