In case any readers are hermits, let me start with a reminder that The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters this week. The end of the Star Wars story, and so on. But I’m interested here in one of the plot lines of The Last Jedi. Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron went at it several times, from a minor skirmish to a mutiny. I think the conflict reveals deeper ones about gender and politics. It also shares a feature with the Killmonger character from the Black Panther film, namely it’s a Rorschach test! Whichever issues Holdo and Dameron reveal to you probably says as much about your views on gender and politics as the film itself says.
So here are some thoughts about it. Maybe it reveals my own views in some Rorschach-like manner. Or maybe not. We’ll see.
The Holdo and Dameron Narrative
The Holdo and Dameron scenes revolve around questions of strategy. General Leia Organa dies. Or so the characters think. Vice Admiral Holdo takes command of the ship as it evades pursuing First Order ships. For her first act, she gives one of the least inspirational ‘inspirational’ speeches I’ve ever heard. It amounts to a call for a return to the status quo that existed before the First Order fucked up the galaxy. Were I in the room, I probably would’ve headed straight for the escape pods. At no point does she offer even a hint about what’s happening next. As a result, the crew quickly descends into a mood best described as funereal.
Over the course of The Last Jedi, Poe Dameron asks her three times for her plan about what to do next.
The first time is when Dameron approaches Holdo after the speech and directly asks her for the plan. In fact, in this scene, he asks twice. He’s a condescending ass about it both times, and she handles it mostly by ignoring his request. In the space of about a minute, Dameron follows up a sexist dismissal of his commanding officer with a request in a tone bad enough to annoy even Yoda. Holdo dismisses Dameron.
A New Plan and Second Request
The second time comes quite a bit later in the film. After being rebuffed, Dameron forms a more fanciful plan with Rose and Finn and sets it in motion. While Rose and Finn carry it out, he enters the bridge a second time and asks for the plan. And not so much ask. This time he demands it: “Cut it, lady. We had a fleet, now we’re down to one ship, and you’ve told us nothing! Tell us that we have a plan! That there’s hope!”
Holdo kicks him off the bridge.
In the meantime, the evidence Dameron sees leads him to believe, quite reasonably, that Holdo is planning to abandon ship. Knowing such a move would be tantamount to suicide, Dameron authorizes Rose and Finn’s plan, filling them in on what he’s seen on the bridge in the process. This is the information leak that leads to the First Order gaining information and shooting down much of the crew later in the film.
The Mutiny
I’m sure we all know Poe Dameron’s third ‘request’ for the plan. It’s the mutiny. This time, Dameron tells Holdo his own plan involving Rose and Finn. He wants her support for the plan he’s worked up with Rose and Finn. She ignores his request, and he triggers the mutiny.
This scene is perhaps Holdo and Dameron at their collective worst. Dameron is maximally condescending and sexist. Holdo relies on rank and rules to avoid telling Dameron anything, increasing the risk to everyone in the process and reinforcing the depressive and mutinous mood she’s allowed the crew to sink into.
Holdo’s Sacrifice
You all know what happens from here. The mutiny fails. Leia awakens and shoots Poe Dameron, eventually telling him the secret plan once he wakes up. The mistrust between Holdo and Dameron led to an entire series of disasters. Holdo, ever the textbook ‘leader’, stays behind with the ship and launches it into an enemy ship via hyperspace jump. Dameron goes down to the fallback planet and leads a defense operation.
So, about Holdo’s death. Does it bring closure to her story? Sure. But it’s bad science fiction. In science fiction, not everything has to be scientifically accurate or even plausible. Everyone fudges a bit, and that’s fine. Often the difference between good sci-fi and bad sci-fi is that good sci-fi fudges in ways that are relatively consistent and contained. Destroying a ship by jumping to hyperspace is bad sci-fi.
Would it work? I don’t know. Maybe. Hyperspace science is pretty murky. But the point is that if it works for Holdo, it works for anyone else. Why didn’t the Rebels just remotely pilot a few at the various Death Stars? Why didn’t the Empire do it to one of the rebel bases? If it works for Holdo, then hundreds of thousands of deaths in Rogue One, A New Hope, and Return of the Jedi are pointless. I hold Star Wars to far lower standards than most sci-fi, but even Star Wars can’t get away with just any deus ex machina plot move.
Military Framing
Lots of people with a military background have commented on Holdo and Dameron. What they usually say, at least the ones who aren’t obviously sexist, is that Holdo was right and Dameron wrong. Why? Holdo did what military leaders are supposed to do. She took command, handed out information on a need-to-know basis, and she demanded trust from her subordinates.
Is all that correct? I think there are two issues here. First, is the Resistance a military? Most of its leaders served in some military role in the New Republic. But the New Republic is gone. The Resistance is allegedly some kind of movement aimed at creating a new society. As we saw in Holdo’s initial speech, that’s not really her bag. The Resistance, though, seems to aspire to something more worthwhile. The ‘military protocol’ defense seems to profoundly miss the point.
That brings us to the second issue. Even if the Resistance is a military, why not push the question a step back? We might respond by saying ‘yeah, military protocol recommends keeping the plan secret from Dameron, but so much the worse for military protocol!’. A military is a hierarchical, authoritarian organization. Maybe the Resistance shouldn’t be one. At the very least, trusting an authority figure because they’re an authority figure, rather than any defensible claim to legitimacy, isn’t much of a message.
Leadership
The Last Jedi does portray one good leader. Leia Organa. She inspired loyalty among the ship’s crew where Holdo didn’t. And she did it through mutual struggle. When things went wrong, when Dameron defied her in an early scene, she demoted him. He wasn’t happy about it, but he took his lump and no one else missed a beat. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if Poe Dameron tried a mutiny against her?
Contrast this to Holdo. Dameron didn’t conduct the mutiny by himself, and it was hardly charisma alone that got people to go along with him. The mood in the ship was practically suicidal, and Holdo had already caught numerous people trying to leave via escape pods. Good leaders involve people, know when to delegate, know how to activate people’s skills, and inspire action. Holdo didn’t do these things. There’s a reason Leia inspired loyalty and Holdo didn’t, and it has a great deal to do with Holdo’s military protocol contrasted to Leia’s less formal and rigid leadership.
Holdo the Neoliberal and Dameron the Chauvinist
So what kind of people are Holdo and Dameron? I think they’re both pretty familiar characters.
Holdo is the well educated, highly competent and skilled neoliberal corporate manager. She doesn’t make any kind of mistakes, she has a plan, and she’s going to work on completing that plan regardless of the impact on those who report to her. The entire crew is on the verge of suicide or mutiny, but she doesn’t notice because she has a plan. She’s got measurable goals, the tools to achieve those goals, and a vision for how to do it. Who cares what those rank-and-file cogs think? In the end, the plan works out. But it only works when the writers violate one of the basic underlying rules of the Star Wars universe. Only through a fudge does this begin to make sense.
Those of us who work in the corporate world know Holdo pretty well. She’s any number of corporate executives and middle managers. Her work has taken her very obvious intelligence and talents and turned her into something else. In the case of the corporate manager, it’s an instrument for disciplining the workforce and enforcing company policy. In Holdo’s case, it’s an instrument of war followed by an awkward transition to an even more awkward ‘Resistance’. The transition process, at least in the US, is so ubiquitous people don’t register it as something to fight against. Or even notice.
Dameron is the overconfident man-of-action. This is a character just about all of us know, especially women. Plenty of people have written about Poe Dameron and the problems this type of man causes. Perhaps the most insightful commentary comes from sources at the intersection of fandom and feminism. He begins the film as someone who sees himself as a leader, gets miffed when Leia says he’s not ready, refuses to deal sensibly with the woman Leia chose over him, and then fails to display the leadership qualities he sees in himself. Did he learn something by the end of the film? Probably. I suspect he’ll be the fleet commander by the end of the upcoming movie, if not the beginning.
What They Should’ve Done
How should Holdo and Dameron have handled all this? Poe Dameron should’ve set aside the ego and broadened his conception of who can be a leader. And Vice Admiral Holdo should’ve just told him the fucking plan. Or at least that there was one. As for the ‘Resistance’, it should come up with ideas above and beyond restoring a useless Republic.
The Holdo and Dameron story is one of mutually reinforced failure. Both Holdo and Dameron are responsible for creating the kind of place where a revolutionary movement thrives. For Poe Dameron, it’s about setting aside his pride and his chauvinism. For Holdo, it’s about setting aside anti-egalitarian military training, getting more people involved instead of doing everything yourself, and correctly reading the mood of a depressed and mutinous crew.
Postscript: Movies
I’ve discussed movies a few times on this blog! If you’re looking for something to read next, check out:
5 Successful Anti-Capitalist Films
5 Best Movies of 2019 (So Far)
Booksmart and Good Boys
