The Lens:
Are you a “Star Wars” fan? I am old enough to have seen “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope,” – the first in an unbelievable run of sequels, prequels, spin-offs and series – when it first came out. It was like nothing I had ever seen, a revolution in cinema All anyone could think of after seeing that movie was, when is the next one coming out?
There was so much about that movie that I loved. Great story. Great characters. Great action. Unbelievable special effects. It was fun, tense, thrilling. For a sci-fi, it seemed so real.
There was another element to the movie that I had never encountered in media entertainment – a female princess who wasn’t looking for a prince to sweep her off her feet so she could live happily ever after.
Note: There are some spoilers to follow. The movie came out nearly 50 years ago, though, so I don’t feel too bad about that. Anyway . . .
Princess Leia was small in stature, but she was tough. There is the scene where she, Luke and Han are making their escape from the cell bay. They are trapped and under heavy fire from the stormtroopers. Neither Luke nor Han have a plan to get out. Leia grabs a blaster out of Luke’s hands and blows a hole in one of the walls. She barks at Han, “Into the garbage chute, flyboy.”
Han is like, “What the hell!?”
There is a following scene, now out of the cell bay but still on the run from the stormtroopers, Leia and Luke are trying to cross an area that needs a bridge which in not operational.
As Luke is getting a rope swing in place, he hands Leia the blaster. She proceeds to blast away at the stormtroopers, grimacing while she shoots – this woman with twisted buns onside of her head wearing a soft, white, full-length, robe-like dress taking out stormtroopers right and left.
I have never been a girly girl, but I am not a tom-boy either. Leia was more than refreshing. She was inspiring. Before Leia, women in movies who were tough acted more like men than women. Leia had that right balance between strength and femininity.
It took nearly 30 years for me to come across another female character who could hold her own in a male dominated environment while keep her sense of femininity – Brenda Leigh Johnson in “The Closer.” Maybe there are other female characters like this out there, but the only two I have ever come across are Leia and Brenda Leigh. That shows how rare this type of female character is.
The Refraction:
If you saw the Star Wars movies, you’d know blasters are basically guns. They look a little like an AR15. Blasters don’t shoot bullets. I’m not exactly sure what they shoot but, whatever it is, it is deadly.
If you haven’t seen the Star Wars movies, you probably could have guessed blasters were like guns. You could probably also guess that blasters blast stuff at people, thereby killing them.
Think of the word “blaster.” It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. Merriam-Webster defines “blaster” as “someone or something that blasts something; 1. one whose work is shattering or demolishing something (such as rock) with an explosive device or agent.” Merriam-Webster also includes a science fiction definition: “a handheld weapon similar to a gun that fires bolts of energy instead of physical projectiles.”
Ok. I see now that blasters fire bolts of energy. Guns, on the other hand, fire projectiles. You learn something new every day. But, I digress.
Americans sure have our fascination/obsession with guns – with firing projectiles at inanimate object, animals, people and even, sometimes, at nothing. I would guess it makes people feel powerful, maybe a little sexy.
I wonder how we might feel about guns if they had a name, in the same vein as “blasters,” that more describes the damage produced by the landed projectiles than the implement that fired them? It’s pretty clear what happens If you use a blaster – you blast something, not good. It’s not clear what happens when you fire a gun.
I can’t think of any one word or term that describes the damage a gun causes: blaster, widow maker, orphan maker. None seems to truly capture what happens when a bullet hits something.
Even if we could come up with a word/term, would it make any difference? Would it make us think twice about the need for a gun, for wanting one of our own? Or, maybe labeling guns by their result would only exacerbate the problem – how much more powerful/sexy would we feel wielding a blaster vs. a gun?
Questions with no answers.
Still, maybe there would be one advantage – removing plausible deniability. “But, Your Honor, I didn’t know that would happen.” Judge, “You were using a blaster? What did you think would happen?”