The Red Sonja Dilemma that's about to hit Theatres - Analysing the Trailer & The Trouble with her Sex Icon Status & The Nature of Presuppositions in Art

This will hopefully be thought-provoking

Red Sonja - The Icon - The Problem

There’s been a recent trailer drop, not sure if people heard but the Red Sonja movie is to be released next month. It is already causing a wave on twitter and youtube, and has attracted mixed-reactions. My own if you check out my Brothers Hyborian channel was pretty positive, as was my brother’s. But some of the comment section was slightly less enthused though they were very polite towards me about their disagreement with my optimistic views.

Now straight out of the gate; I’m not a Red Sonja fan. I don’t like the ‘Chainmail-Bikini’ it has always struck me as an odd choice. I mean you exist in a universe where men are slaughtering each other in full plate and chainmail, and you choose a bikini? It just seems an odd choice. Sure, she has unnatural strength granted her by a Celtic goddess, but still…

That said, I can’t exactly not the character’s beauty or some of the ideas behind the character.

For those who don’t know much about the character she was designed and created by Roy Thomas and his artist at the time (I forget his name), and the idea was to create someone who was an equal to Conan the Cimmerian, except female. Now the problem as all who are familiar with Robert E. Howard’s works is that this is a contradiction as Conan is not supposed to have equals in swordsmanship, only Valeria of the Red Brotherhood comes close.

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So you have a character who is essentially a Fantasy Numenorian Musashi, and you have as the second best someone who is a female variant, and then you have Thomas’ invention who is supposed to be their equals? No wait, in some stories she dominates the Cimmerian, so she’s actually ‘bettar’, which is a strange creative decision. Arguably one might even say it is something of an inadvertent subversion. Mark it out in your minds though I don’t think this was the intention, I can’t speak for that. I think somewhere deep down though that there was considerable affection for Conan by Thomas.

I mean look at how long he wrote him for and how skilfully he wrote so many issues of Savage Sword of Conan, and even some of his writings later on for Dark Horse. One must say that it seems that Roy Thomas must have felt it important to carry on Howard’s legacy so that I doff my cap to him on this matter.

Then again the Cimmerian himself who rarely if ever in Howard’s original stories ever wore anything less than chainmail or other suits of armour, is usually in Marvel’s beloved run depicted in a loincloth, same as in later runs. To be quite honest, I think the bare chested loincloth has harmed Conan in some way, in terms of public perception, this has convinced people with academia and mainstream media dubbing him a ‘mere power-fantasy’ and it is hard to argue with this perception if one just looks at the marvel depictions. This isn’t to say that everything Marvel has done with the Hyborian Age is bad. Savage Sword of Conan is beloved for a reason, it was a great series of stories, with the comic book company expanding a great deal on the Conan stories.

And key to this was Red Sonja.

This isn’t to say that I’m absolutely against the character, only that I think she operates with a set of pre-suppositions that run counter to the Hyborian Age of REH. What are those presuppositions?

Well let me tackle that issue; Howard made his Hyborian Age stories to be high adventure, high octane and highly masculine stories. Women were often depicted in scantily clad garments and were often damsels or fierce warriors like Conan. The thing is though, his stories could be quite intelligent and by the time of 1936 he was pushing ever greater, cleverer stories such as Red Nails, Hour, and many others.

Now the angle of presuppositions comes along. Howard’s stories were written as a kind of love letter to the ancient period that he desired so ardently to be part of. He was a man who believed that Barbarous Man was better than Civilized Man. That Civilization was an accident of a sorts and that barbarism was preferable as Men of Europe were naturally kind, noble and honourable by nature and that Civilization perverted these instincts and ideas.

Howard was not a simple man, he was an individual who in spite of his youth was a deeply philosophical person, with a great deal of insight into the human condition. It is for this reason that his stories resonate to this very day.

It must however be said that whatever it was that the likes that De Camps, Thomas and others wrote it was not Howard’s stories. But there was still a spark there of genius and beauty, there that cannot be denied. I won’t lie, Roy Thomas, De Camps, and others of the ‘heirs’ of Howard aren’t as good at writing in my view. Some of their stories are just plain atrocious. But other stories are dazzling and it must be admitted that for this reason I forgive them much.

I have the same view of Red Sonja. I kind of like the character’s backstory, I like the passion that Thomas poured into his creation, and I love that he took such joy in trying to get her to fit within Howard’s greater mythology. It speaks to a certain affection I think.

The trouble once again is that bikini.

Here it is so see for yourselves;

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But what if I was to tell you that Roy Thomas forged another outfit for her? What if I was to tell you that Red Sonja could have avoided being scorned as she is? Yes, that’s right there was another outfit dreamed up for her.

Much better right? Looks more realistic.

Now I know some will say that I’m being somehow ‘anti-fan’ or puritanical. I’ve heard it all before. But the trouble is that Red Sonja has not been elevated to the same heights of glory as Conan, Solomon Kane and even Belit. Why is that?

It cannot all be laid at the door of the Bikini, but it does play a role. Because of it the writers refuse to take the character seriously. Because of it, not only do they remain determined to treat her as little more than a walking joke, or they try to over-do it and are embarrassedly trying to portray her as a girl boss ‘who needs no man!’ While this is consistent with Sonja’s characterization over the years, it has not made her anymore tolerable as a character.

I mean, I don’t want a woman to try to out-masculinize Conan. I want her to act like a woman, because when she rages at male characters in her stories it just reminds me of countless feminist videos online. When she dresses scantily then rages at men, well we’ve all seen those gym videos.

The other underlying problem is that this character has not developed an over-all philosophy. But more on this later.

Now the thing about this recent trailer is that it wasn’t bad. The meanest comment on our youtube video regarding the movie trailer was that it looked like an early 2000s made for tv movie. Now everyone who has a longer memory than 6 seconds can tell you that those movies ROCKED! Sorry, but I loved them, and so I took it as praise and only later realized the person meant it as a criticism (he was very polite about the whole thing, and is a regular so he meant nothing too bad about it).

As I’ve the best fans in the world, he took it well. But there was something he and others didn’t dispute was that the trailer brought with it certain inherent ideas that are quite interesting.

Now the original comics were feminist in nature. So you leave with a strange and bewildering set of ideas; 1. That women can do everything that a man can do. 2. That she’s hot so keep staring. 3. That staring is bad as RS always gets angry when men do in her stories.

So you leave quite naturally, confused and bewildered and unsure of what to believe, think or feel. To this day I still don’t know what to make of this strange conflict in tone and ideas.

That said, the trailer for its part has a few inherent ideas that pervade it. Sure there’s an action-adventure tone to it. It however has visibly softened Sonja, this much is discernible when one of the male characters praises Red Sonja who beams happily at him, looking like a school-girl with her crush. I must admit, my heart melted there.

Red Sonja in the comics is anything but feminine in nature. It makes her hard to like, yet here she looked likeable.

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What do you Walk Away with?

So what do you walk away from this trailer thinking?

Well for one thing it seems like we’ve for villains a kind of ‘Roman’ styled Emperor. The clothes is of course different, with him being dressed in a manner somewhat like a mix between Roman and Qing China, and behaving himself in a manner that screams ‘civilized’ which runs contrary to the traditional backstories for Red Sonja.

Between that, the Gladiator references and the allusions to Boudicca’s rebellion you are left thinking that this is likely to be a struggle between ‘Civilized’ and ‘Barbaric’ which is a fascinating theme. It harkens back to Howard’s days, so that this is a very wise decision or so it seems to me.

The presupposition of the story is very important. The reason this must be mentioned is that

Alexander d’Albini

has remarked that what one watches, reads and otherwise imbibes is integral to influencing how people think.

So if this movie turns into a ‘boss-girl’ movie it’ll be pushing people deeper down the hole of liberalism. If it doesn’t go that route and is more of a straight up story about the decadence of too much civilization which means it’ll influence your thoughts regarding the decadence of our current times.

The idea that Alexander has proposed is that something where the female lead let’s say fights alongside a group of barbarians for their freedom from an ‘Evil Empire’ will then think poorly of the concept of Empire for good or for ill. In this way we can regard stories as having almost a ‘living component’ and what is meant by this is that its living influence so to speak lives on long after the film has been turned off.

Doubtless it will be as many Conan fans have already noted; mediocre at best. This is my suspicion. I’ll go see it, but I suspect it will be either really terrible or at best mediocre.

Thing about mediocrity though is that there’s still lessons to be learnt from it in terms of story-telling and there might be germs of good ideas. That being said, do I expect much? Not really, but it’ll be good for a date or something (and if it ends up really bad I’ll just walk out).

But let’s actually discuss what sort of impressions stories can leave you with. When you read Brotherhood of the Gemstone the hope is that what’s imparted to you is something positive. The importance of tradition, the ideals of honour, goodness, friendship, love and family. All ideas and themes that mean a great deal to me the author.

This is what Fantasy should do; grant you something positive, a sense of hope and of course important lessons and philosophical ideas you may not have considered hitherto that moment.

The Genre is meant to teach, to impart and help direct thoughts towards profundity and wisdom. This has ever been the way of how Fantasy operates, it is why people return again and again to Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion and Hour of the Dragon.

So there’s also a lesson for writers; what do you want to impart to your readers? Do you want to impart ideas of honour, piety, tradition and the like or mad ones. Because while I do think Art must be separated from Politics, it must be understood that it is inseparable from Philosophy and the idea of Beauty. To make something beautiful you must have internal beauty, and you must understand what Beauty looks like.

Also in terms of Philosophy we have to recognize that there’s little to be found in Liberalism left. We have to look elsewhere, therefore we should look to ideas of Faith, Love, Honour and so on and what the Ancients/Medievals wrote of.

If you can capture these ideas effectively you can certainly inspire people to greater action and a stronger sense of fraternity with those you love.

Presuppositions inhabit every story. If they inhabit this Red Sonja story and she ends up being another Boss-Girl (as I suspect she will be), then she’ll have little to contribute and will vanish soon in the public memory. But if she taps into wider and deeper ideas good.

The assumption of good, Noblesse Oblige, loyalty, love and faith and what not could definitely alter people and thinking and even a story. Presuppositions of course means those ideas the characters and world assume to be the most natural things in the world.

Their manner of thinking could become the norm for some people. Now I’m not talking manipulation, or anything of the sort. But inspiration, inspire people to aspire to greatness and goodness. The Ossian Epics inspired Napoleon, so imagine what your grand narratives and stories might inspire among your neighbours.

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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!