Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
My 8-year old son is, like myself at that age, a big Star Wars fan. But his road to the stories has been more complicated than mine. Much of what he knows about them comes from a computer game version where everything is for some reason visualised as built out of legos. So he asks me a lot of confused questions that I can't always answer.
Just now we had such a conversation where I learned that he had gotten all three main female characters mixed up: Luke Skywalker's grandma, mother and sister were the same person to him. When I teased him about this he just replied, philosophically, "It's kind of hard to tell when they're made of legos".
[More blog entries about children, starwars, humour, humor; barn, starwars, humor.]
Comments
That's priceless. Kids certainly develop their own unique perceptions about Star Wars. Last year, my 5-year old son was looking at a cartoon version of the movie in a video store, and started asking me about the characters. "These guys are the Jedis?" he asked. "And they're the good guys, right?" I nodded. He continued, "so, which ones are the Republicans?" From the mouths of babes...
Posted by: Karmen | February 18, 2007 12:55 PM
Many moons ago, when my eldest daughter was about four, her favourite passtime was a computer game called Lego Racers. She (or we)played it non stop for months, until one day when she just quit cold turkey. I asked her why, and she told me it was "because I am a girl, and there are twelve different players but only two are girls. I am sick of being those two faces, and Cassie and Amanda say I can't be a boy when I play" (Cassie and Amanda being the very cool older neighbour girls). You know, that had never occured to me. Since I believe parents should do as they teach, and I teach my kids they are not a gender but a human, I decided to call Lego to the mat (as well as Cassie and Amanda). I e-mailed Lego and asked them to please explain to my daughter why it was that they had so many boy racers but only two girl racers. I thought I would get the kind of response I usually get to these kinds of things: "Our research has shown that...", with my inevitble reply "Well, maybe if you made it accessible to girls, they'd play the damn game/wear that type of diaper/watch the show/buy the toy" or whatever. Instead I got the best response so far: "Yeah! Damn straight! That's stupid. I'm going to point that out to the guys that design this game so that doesn't happen again." Consequent issues of the same game have not had the same problem, and the consequence of that is that I buy Lego for my kids. It is one of the few games kids can play without gender bias - it's up to the child to choose what colour blocks to select and when. Apparently your son has found a sore spot, so call the company on it. E-mail them and have them fix it for the next set. If for no other reason, it's sometimes humourous to see how companies try to wiggle out of things, so that they don't ever have to use the words "gender bias"! - Tina
Posted by: Christina | February 18, 2007 5:00 PM
I think this probably has more to do with the secondary roles played by women in Star Wars and with my son's none-too-exact grasp of English. The three ladies are never on-screen at the same time, and he probably doesn't pay much attention to them as they do little in the games, so he's gotten them mixed up. I mean, the games are all about fighting Republi-, um, sorry, Imperial troops.
Posted by: Martin R | February 18, 2007 5:20 PM
My sons love Lego Star Wars II too. The lack of female characters (in the games as well as the movies... why the hell were there no female Jedi?) is troubling, but they seem to have tried to compensate by giving Princess Leia the ability to slap the shit out of the other characters. It's a small consolation, but it helps just a little bit. ;)
Posted by: kristi | February 18, 2007 6:48 PM
You'll love this: The Brick Testament
Archaeologists find rare wooden statue
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | February 19, 2007 1:58 PM
Haha! Love the Brick Testament!
Posted by: Martin R | February 22, 2007 3:51 PM