Trigger warning: This article mentions sexual assault.
My husband and I attended a private screening of the movie She Said when it was released in theaters. The film follows the New York Times investigation into Harvey Weinstein and his history of sexual abuse. Not intentionally -- we just happened to be the only ones in there watching. So if I'd wanted to, I could have stood up and screamed in the middle of the film. I almost did. The world is cruel and unfair and infuriating, and you can fictionalize reality all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that society continues to grant power to people who use it to do unspeakable things to those who don't deserve it.
My reaction to Andor Season 2, episode 3, "Harvest" was different. Bigger. It's one thing to hear women talk about enduring assault. It's something else -- something much more tangible -- to watch a woman survive it.
"Survive" isn't a good word to use in this context, because what is survival if you have to go on living knowing what did happen or almost happened to you? Unfortunately, Bix doesn't get the luxury of being grateful that the worst possible outcome didn't play out, because regimes don't allow their victims the time or space necessary to grieve -- never have; never will.
Is it the Empire itself that led to this moment? Yes and no. The thing about fascism is that it creates opportunity for a certain kind of person to exercise any level of power they might be granted (or seize). You could say that the lieutenant found his way to the Empire because he is the type of person who craves the chance to look down on others. You could also say, simultaneously or otherwise, that in finding his way to the Empire, the lieutenant found his chance to assert his resulting power over others ... and took it. And took it, and took it, until someone was able to fight back.
Not every person who is prone to vulgar behavior -- past or present -- acts on it. It is possible that men like the lieutenant had no real intention of causing harm when enlisting in the Galactic Empire. But thrust into a soul-deteriorating job, one that comes with a bit of authority, combined with pre-existing misogamy, self-hatred, rising anger -- a tendency toward a thirst for dominance quickly and violently festers into a habit. And if he can get away with it once, he will do it again.
It's the spread of certain ideals -- the belief that one class of individuals is somehow superior to the rest; break that down further how you will -- that turn men with poisoned minds into heartless, cold-blooded monsters. The Empire trains its soldiers, its officers, not strictly in combat but simultaneously in mindset. Fascism demands that opposition -- real or imagined -- must be punished. That begins with dangerous criminals, perhaps, but expands outward often so seamlessly that either people don't notice or pretend not to see it. Until you're out in the middle of nowhere, filled with disdain, and wait until an innocent woman is alone to remind yourself of who you think you are supposed to be.
In a regime, it's the ones in power who believe they are the most free. Free to conquer, to rewrite, to abuse and assault and rob without consequence. This would not be Star Wars without hope, and we must endure the worst corners of the Empire's influence -- no matter how traumatic -- before remembering that, at the end of it all, the ones powering the regime lose the war. Pay the price. Are remembered as the worst of them all.
But we are still allowed to acknowledge that Bix is so many of us -- a woman who neither asked nor deserved to face the wrath of an angry, self-loathing man. A woman who is forced to speak truthfully about what was done to her. Forced to flee to another place where she will have to continue on surviving, hopefully long enough to see the Empire that wronged her finally fall.
To stand up and scream in that theater long ago would have soothed me momentarily, but it also would not have quenched the fire within me. Forced to watch this scene now, falling apart on the inside, despite knowing how this story ends, I carry my own quiet rage, as I have for so many years. But I am not a man polluted by the ideologies of evil. I fight monsters with my words, for art is many things -- and in this moment, it must be the means by which we scream, "no more."
If you or someone you know needs to reach out about sexual abuse or assault, RAINN is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at RAINN.org.