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Star Wars Sunday: Vice-Admiral Holdo and the Importance of Costuming
I recently came across this Hollywood Reporter interview with the costume designer for The Last Jedi. Here's the bit I want to talk about:
I've never made any secret about the fact that I have some...issues with the costuming choices for Vice-Admiral Holdo. Costumes are a vital part of visual storytelling. How a character dresses tells the audience a lot about their socio-economic status, group affiliation, and priorities before they open their mouth. It helps to set up audience expectations and places a character within their proper context.
In The Last Jedi, every resistance member, male, female or space!gender, wears some sort of uniform except Leia and Holdo who both wear fancy civilian dresses instead. Uniforms are important. They physically demonstrate affiliation and show that they belong within the group. In past films, Leia always appeared in uniform when acting in a military capacity. She wears one on Hoth, on Endor, and at her secret base in The Force Awakens. By contrast, Mon Mothma never wore a uniform, not in The Return of the Jedi and not in Rogue One, because she was a civilian politician. Similarly, none of the other civilian politicians in the council scene from Rogue One wear a uniform. They all wear fancy clothes, even the men.
When we watched The Last Jedi together, my mom thought Holdo was a civilian politician like Mon Mothma despite her repeatedly being addressed as "Admiral." Why? Because she was dressed like a politician! After all, what sort of person wears a fancy civilian dress to a military evacuation? A wealthy civilian? Someone wealthy and not particularly practical? A military officer who cares more about their personal style than dress codes and has the power to get away with it?
For the longest time, I thought it was a deliberate bait-and-switch by Rian to ensure that she was underestimated. The character who introduces her describes her brilliant and heroic past, but the film over all frames her as shady as fuck. Except for a few brief moments at the beginning and end from Leia’s POV, the entire Resistance arc in TLJ is told from Poe’s point of view and, from Poe’s point of view, she’s not a good guy. She’s overly secretive and dismissive of him and, by extension, us. Of course we’re suspicious of her. She’s deliberately withholding information we (and Poe) want so there must be something wrong with her. The reveal that she does have a plan and that it's Poe who is the problem is the big turning point of the film and Poe's character arc. I assumed that putting her in a civilian dress instead of a uniform was part of the overall plan to trick the audience into being suspect and dismissive of her.
The article quoted above, on the other hand, reveals that the entire point of Holdo's gown was to heighten her sexuality. She's flirting with Oscar Isaac's character. She needs to be unique and balletic. The audience needs to see her body and a uniform just isn't going to cut it because they aren't feminine enough.
I never been thrilled with her outfit, but when I thought it was part of the over all trick Rian Johnson pulled with her character, I was okay-ish about it. Finding out it was just about turning her into a flirty, balletic sex-object? Fills me with rage. What did you think of Holdo's gown when you first saw it? What do you think now?
One of the film’s most feminine looks was a draped, cape-back jersey gown worn by Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern).
I thought when I read the script that Holdo would be wearing a uniform, so I did some uniform designs and showed them to Rian and he said, "Oh no, no, no, no. She’s flirting with Oscar Isaacs’ character, I don’t want her to be in a uniform, I want her to be unique and almost balletic." He said, "I’d like to see her body and her body language, and her silhouette, and have her be more feminine." So I started thinking about feminine balletic design, and something kind of Greek, which made me start thinking about jersey, and then I started thinking about Madame Gres. So that’s where that came from.
I thought when I read the script that Holdo would be wearing a uniform, so I did some uniform designs and showed them to Rian and he said, "Oh no, no, no, no. She’s flirting with Oscar Isaacs’ character, I don’t want her to be in a uniform, I want her to be unique and almost balletic." He said, "I’d like to see her body and her body language, and her silhouette, and have her be more feminine." So I started thinking about feminine balletic design, and something kind of Greek, which made me start thinking about jersey, and then I started thinking about Madame Gres. So that’s where that came from.
I've never made any secret about the fact that I have some...issues with the costuming choices for Vice-Admiral Holdo. Costumes are a vital part of visual storytelling. How a character dresses tells the audience a lot about their socio-economic status, group affiliation, and priorities before they open their mouth. It helps to set up audience expectations and places a character within their proper context.
In The Last Jedi, every resistance member, male, female or space!gender, wears some sort of uniform except Leia and Holdo who both wear fancy civilian dresses instead. Uniforms are important. They physically demonstrate affiliation and show that they belong within the group. In past films, Leia always appeared in uniform when acting in a military capacity. She wears one on Hoth, on Endor, and at her secret base in The Force Awakens. By contrast, Mon Mothma never wore a uniform, not in The Return of the Jedi and not in Rogue One, because she was a civilian politician. Similarly, none of the other civilian politicians in the council scene from Rogue One wear a uniform. They all wear fancy clothes, even the men.
When we watched The Last Jedi together, my mom thought Holdo was a civilian politician like Mon Mothma despite her repeatedly being addressed as "Admiral." Why? Because she was dressed like a politician! After all, what sort of person wears a fancy civilian dress to a military evacuation? A wealthy civilian? Someone wealthy and not particularly practical? A military officer who cares more about their personal style than dress codes and has the power to get away with it?
For the longest time, I thought it was a deliberate bait-and-switch by Rian to ensure that she was underestimated. The character who introduces her describes her brilliant and heroic past, but the film over all frames her as shady as fuck. Except for a few brief moments at the beginning and end from Leia’s POV, the entire Resistance arc in TLJ is told from Poe’s point of view and, from Poe’s point of view, she’s not a good guy. She’s overly secretive and dismissive of him and, by extension, us. Of course we’re suspicious of her. She’s deliberately withholding information we (and Poe) want so there must be something wrong with her. The reveal that she does have a plan and that it's Poe who is the problem is the big turning point of the film and Poe's character arc. I assumed that putting her in a civilian dress instead of a uniform was part of the overall plan to trick the audience into being suspect and dismissive of her.
The article quoted above, on the other hand, reveals that the entire point of Holdo's gown was to heighten her sexuality. She's flirting with Oscar Isaac's character. She needs to be unique and balletic. The audience needs to see her body and a uniform just isn't going to cut it because they aren't feminine enough.
I never been thrilled with her outfit, but when I thought it was part of the over all trick Rian Johnson pulled with her character, I was okay-ish about it. Finding out it was just about turning her into a flirty, balletic sex-object? Fills me with rage. What did you think of Holdo's gown when you first saw it? What do you think now?
no subject
Here's another one from Johnson about Holdo, demonstrating that he did indeed write Poe Dameron - OF ALL PEOPLE - with a deliberately sexist attitude:
“[Poe] is a hotshot pilot, so you ground his X-wing and you face him with the question of bravado vs. true heroism, which is leadership,” explained Johnson. “I started watching World War II movies, because you see that type of relationship reflected a lot in films like ‘Twelve O'Clock High’ or 'The Dawn Patrol.’ The fact that it’s a woman, and not only that, but it’s a woman who isn’t in a general’s outfit but has a real feminine energy, seemed like the toughest thing that Poe could come up against.”
Honestly, what a waste of a potentially interesting character. I like Dern's work in other films and I was excited to see her in TLJ, but the whole storyline, including her outfit, is a misfire for me.
no subject
A better re-wtite would have been, I don't know, putting her in a proper uniform and having her give Poe a problem he couldn't shoot his way out of that he had to solve by leading and inspiring others to work with him.
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And I didn't catch what you rightly spotted about Leia and Holdo being out of uniform in TLJ, and how that's not how Leia usually rolls. (In the "behind the scenes" spirit, though, I seem to remember that after the prequels Carrie Fisher had kvetched about how Natalie Portman got all the pretty clothes and she never did, and I seem to remember seeing somewhere that Rian Johnson had specifically wanted to do something about that for her, which makes Leia's costumes suck a bit less if true, but I have no sources and the latter part, about Johnson's intent, might have been fannish speculation.)
But. Argh. So much argh. Especially when, from my point of view, they already had Finn as a character with some flaws to overcome and they could have given John Boyega a more serious arc to play, and let Poe just be awesome and clueful.
And also, I love Holdo, I completely ship her with Leia, and this whole background business just makes me rage right along with you.
Also, ALSO, given all the ranting a certain subset of fanboys did around "too much icky girliness" in this movie, the fact that the stereotypes were alive and well in the creative process just makes my head go all desky. (I mean, FFS, the end of the movie gives us the most standard possible little white boy future protagonist, with the little boy with the broom on Canto Bight. What more did they want?) (Also bonus: apparently the little black boy on Canto Bight is Force-clairvoyant, how else would he have known about the battle on Crait to be able to retell it to the other two? And the little white boy uses the Force to grab a broom. The only one of the three we don't see using the Force is the little probably-white girl. It's been lovely but I have to scream now.)
no subject
Did not realize that bit about the little black boy on Canto Bight being Force-clairvoyant. I was sort of assuming the retelling was taking place after news of the battle had already gotten out, but that's cool if it was intentional on their part. It almost makes up for them dropping the Force-sensitive Finn angle...NOT.
Obviously, if they were going to make Poe a full fledged character with an arc and everything, they needed to give him flaws to overcome and an antagonist or whatever, but they needed to be flaws which existed in the pervious film. Based on his interactions with Leia and his pilots in the first film, he can see him as a reckless hotshot, but one who chugs respects women juice. That's why leadership vs. heroism is such a cool idea, especially if Leia is grooming him to be her eventual successor, but it was handled in the worst possible way.
no subject
I may be wrong about where they were going with the black kid at the end--- it seemed to me that there wasn't enough time for the news of the battle to have filtered down to kids in their situation, especially given that the Resistance's allies bailed on them and that the First Order has the level of control of the galaxy it apparently does, so having him be Force-sensitive is the only explanation I could come up with. Which STILL does not make it okay with me that they had the two boys who are the obvious future-protags be Force-sensitive and leave the girl out. And I am just not okay with ANYTHING about Finn's arc at this point, except maybe how well he teams up with Rose.
And a bunch of hell yeah about Poe's arc being handled in the worst way possible.
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