Sorry to be a few days late in responding to the posts on the bondage Leia
doll: I followed them with immense interest, but have had TOO MANY papers
to read/comment on this week. I was a very reluctant SW fan; in fact, I was
so irritated at my Trek friends who (I thought at the time) became
immediately brainwashed by Jedi Knights that they deserted Trek (two friends
saw it sixty some times in the first year or two) that I refused to see SW
until 1983. Then I was in England and so homesick that I went to see it. I
saw the second and third ones soon after, and remember being so irritated at
the slave scene that I ranted to friends: the thing that irritated me was
what I believed to be obvious pandering (in all senses of the word) to the
fathers who were dragged by kids to the movies. Yes, Leia is a slave
then--and does escape--she has no choice. But she is a slave to a
completely non-humanoid alien: I don't know what kind of sex life Jabba the
Hut and his species have, but I doubt he'd (???) be turned on by a woman in
a costume that melds the brass bikini and harem girl look. If he knew
enough about humans to want to humiliate his slave, he'd probably have her
naked (casual nudity didn't seem to be big in the Empire!). But of course
that wouldn't fly. If his species didn't wear clothes, and he didn't know
about humans, why bother with anything? If they'd wanted to flash some
skin, they could have had her in her original outfit (whatever she was
wearing when captured??_ but have it be a bit tattered by the time she'd
spent as a captive. There was no kind of dramatic rationale for that
costume within the movie--and I hated
it because I figured it was just for the men in the audience that someone
(who knows who) thought would appreciate it. Reminded me of those famous
covers from the earlier pulp magazines! I also read an interview with
Carrie Fisher where she talked about how the darn thing would hike around to
a more or less X-rated position whenever she moves. *sigh* Robin.
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