Non-performative inclusion and āThe Mandalorianā
This post contains minor spoilers. Proceed with caution.
In the season two finale ofĀ āThe Mandalorianā there is a scene near the beginning of the episode in which a strike team (minus Mando himself) storms onto an Imperial ship, blasts stormtroopers, etc. Itās an extended action sequence. Two of the characters are helmeted.
I was well into the scene before it hit me that all four of the characters on this strike team were women.
The fact that there was this all-female action team wasnāt new. Iāve seen that before. What was new about it was that this was the first time Iād seen a team of women that didnāt feel performative.
Remember that scene inĀ āAvengers: Endgameā, theĀ āsheās not aloneā scene where All The Lady Characters Assembled, and you could tell the filmmakers were getting some kind of weird boner of ālooooook at how many Strong Female Characters we have, letās put them all together and have them be Strong Female Characters at the same timeā and it felt super gross? That was performative.
Iāve heard and used that term before but Iām not sure I really grokked what it meant until I saw what its absence looked like, inĀ āThe Mandalorian.āĀ
It didnāt feel performative because each of those characters had been part of the narrative in their own time over the previous two seasons, with their own agencies and backstories. They were characters in the story as it needed to be told, they werenāt Strong Female Characters introduced for the purpose of being that (in a sexy way, of course). There was never a sense of ticking off theĀ ākickass lady characterā boxes. When Cara Dune is introduced, or Fennec Shand, or Bo-Katan, there was never that subtext ofĀ āOkay here is our Lady Character, isnāt she such a great Lady Character, look look weāre Doing the Thing you want us to do with having Womens in our Boy Stuff.ā
No. It was, hereās a Rebel soldier. Hereās an assassin. Hereās a Mandalorian exile.Ā Hereās a Jedi. Hereās a magistrate. They have functions to perform and stories to tell in this narrative. Those functions and stories happen while these characters are women, not becauseĀ they are women.
And itās so, so subtle, the difference. Itās hard to put your finger on how itās usually done wrong until you see it done right. Itās not just the writing although thatās a big part of it. Itās in how they were filmed, framed, shot, costumed, and lit. Itās in how they were directed, how the camera treated them - i.e. no differently than the male characters. None of these women were sexified, either. Not that they werenāt being portrayed by attractive women, but that wasnāt remotely played up or displayed in how they were styled, costumed, and made up.
Unfortunately now that weāve all seen how non-performative inclusion of women into a narrative can be done right, everything else is going to seem that much more insufferable.
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