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| Image courtesy of The Harvard Gazette. |
So. Carrie Fisher.
And, separately, Princess Leia. Let me unpack a little bit.
When the news broke
that Carrie Fisher had suffered a massive heart attack, my first thought
wasn’t, “Oh no! Not Princess Leia!” Princess Leia is a fictional character and,
trust me, Not Dead.
My first thought was,
“Oh, crap. I need her on twitter if I’m ever going to survive 2017.”
This week's lightsaber
vigil at Alamo Drafthouse wasn't much about Carrie. Instead, we mourned
Princess Leia. I watched my sister-in-law, dressed in Leia’s white robe,
console my niece, corral a stroller, and brandish a lightsaber without missing a beat. A kerfuffle arose between the men wanting to toast “Princess”
Leia, and the women shouting “General!” A marching band played songs by The
Modal Nodes. Cinnamon-roll buns abounded. It was impossible not to see what
Princess Leia means to us as a culture and not to think about how she shaped
me, personally.
See, Leia's the first
person I saw break out of her archetype. Star Wars is about as in-your-face
with the Hero Cycle as it's possible to get, and that means everyone and
everything has a role. Leia is the meeting with the goddess. She's the damsel
in distress. If you look at the movie in terms of structure, she plays the
typical female parts.
But the second she
gets placed in those roles, she starts breaking down the walls. "Help me
Obi Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." Sounds pretty typically damsel-y,
right? She's not asking for rescue, though. She's asking him to take the baton
and get it to Alderaan while she gives up her life in an attempt to stall and
outmaneuver the Empire. To put it in gaming terms, tiny 18-year-old Leia is the
tank of A New Hope.
And what does she need
the guys for? To unlock the door. The second it's open, she goes from damsel to
rescuer: "This is some rescue. You came in here, but you didn't have a
plan for getting out? ...Somebody has to save our skins."
She has absolutely no
respect for the role she's supposed to inhabit. She's not gracious or soft-spoken
or helpless. From "Into the garbage chute, flyboy," to "We have
no time for our sorrows," she never flinches away from putting aside what’s
expected of her to get the job done. Princess Leia doesn’t so much escape her
archetype as explode it from the inside.
When I was a kid, I
adored Carrie Fisher—because I was a kid, and I conflated her with Princess
Leia. Now I adore Carrie Fisher separately. She fights just as hard as Leia
does, but she does it with messy humor. Leia fights the power. Carrie Fisher
sticks out her tongue at the power and blows a raspberry. Both Carrie and Leia were born into royalty, and both refuse to be confined or silenced by the expectations of their positions.
Leia barks orders. Carrie plays words the way some people play piano.
And both taught me
that trouble isn't something you sit back and passively take. You don't have to
be defined by your hardships. You can define yourself by the way you choose to
react.
