Carrie Fisher: A Legend Lost

By now you've most definitely heard that Carrie Fisher has passed away at the age of 60. In the years that I have had this blog, many great actors and actresses have died. It's the sad fact of life: everyone will die. Never before has an actor died who was such a huge part of my love for movies. As Princess Leia, Fisher brought to life a defining character of my childhood, and her death particularly stings. Though none of us knew her, she still felt like a close friend to anyone who watched in amazement at Star Wars and any of its sequels. If you look at her body of work compared to actresses like Julia Roberts and Jane Fonda, she lacked the paychecks and awards that many received in their lifetimes. She also never really became a "household name". But isn't the true success of an actor when their work (in her case, Princess Leia) becomes iconic and forever branded into American culture. I'm here to explain and hopefully remind you of the reasons why Carrie Fisher was a legend.

The picture above is of a scene from 1983's Return of the Jedi, in which Princess Leia is captured and chained to Jabba the Hutt as his slave. Her metal bikini instantly became an iconic costume attributed with the character, the Star Wars franchise, and 80's culture as a whole. In the time since Carrie Fisher's passing, I have seen many people asking that the bikini be forgotten, claiming it was a sexist costume, and Fisher was much more than a sexualized object. In case anyone has forgotten, Leia strangled Jabba with the chain of that bikini, killed him, and escape. I'd counter that her act was pretty feminist for that time period. My point is, Carrie Fisher should be remembered for everything she did. She's complained so much about the metal bikini, but it's an iconic part of her career that we will remember fondly. Many are aware that she was very heavily involved with drugs throughout the early stages of her career. This is not a time to forget that she did drugs simply because she has died. This is the time to open up a conversation about the effects of drugs and the effects of fame. She passed away at sixty, and though her cause of death will never be attributed to drugs, they could easily be a factor in her weak heart. Fisher was always open about her mental illness and personal struggles with fame. This is not the time to try to bury the things she has said so we can raise her as a Saint. Share her quotes, because they describe experiences that very few people, let alone celebrities, are willing to open up about. Just knowing someone else shared an experience with an illness and pushed through can give someone hope. And isn't "hope" what Carrie Fisher's iconic character was all about?

I'm also against Carrie Fisher only being remembered for Princess Leia, and I'm happy to see that many are sharing her other achievements. She was a renowned author. Her novel Postcards from the Edge was a bestseller, and she adapted it herself into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep, for which Streep received a Best Actress nomination. She wrote numerous other books, all of which were autobiographical or semi-autobiographical. She was known for supporting roles in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, and the films Shampoo and When Harry Met Sally. She even appeared as a fictional version of herself in 30 Rock and received an Emmy nomination. If you've ever seen Fisher interviewed, you have seen her irresistible charm and witty humor. As I searched the Internet for these videos, I found clips of Fisher on The Late Show only a month prior to her heart attack. Her sharp and edgy sense of humor is hilarious. She had just released her tell-all autobiography The Princess Diarist, which famously revealed she and Harrison Ford had engaged in a love affair on the set of Star Wars. I don't want to trivialize her passing, but I think she went out in a way she would have liked: by dropping the bombshell that she slept with one of Hollywood's biggest hunks, and in doing so, probably pissed her friend Harrison Ford off.

Personally, the death of Carrie Fisher hurts because I felt like I grew up with her. Of course, this is completely false, given that she is about forty years my senior. But when I was six or seven and watching Star Wars with my brother and father, I had no idea that the film came out in 1977, nor did I have any real concept of time. I watched the original trilogy more times than I could count, and sometimes on what seemed like a loop. I can remember being grossed out every time I saw Leia's kiss with Luke, two movies before she would learn he was her twin brother. I can remember the buildup of the inevitable romance with Han Solo, and the pretty steamy moment where they finally reveal their love in Empire Strikes Back. I remember the shock on her face when her true love is immobilized in carbonite with the famous "I love you / I know" exchange. Princess Leia, along with Luke, Han Solo and all the characters were pretty strong influences on my childhood. I played Star Wars with my friends on the playground and we acted out the movies (and several side-stories that I'm sure George Lucas was intending for more sequels) at recess and in my backyard. Last December, I was enjoying nerd-heaven when The Force Awakens came out. All of my favorite characters were coming back, and they had all aged. I felt as if the characters I knew and loved grew up with me, and I was back on an adventure with my old friends.

Finally, I have always thought that Leia was the princess that little girls should aspire to be, rather than the unobtainable Disney princesses. She didn't care what she said, and she had a temper. She wasn't the perfect weight, she was a real human. She had a gun and she liked to shoot it. Nobody was going to protect her. She fought herself. In the role of Leia, Fisher broke down every barrier for female heroines in an era where there simply were none. Characters like Ripley in Alien, Katniss in The Hunger Games and even Moana owe their successes to Carrie Fisher. Many female actors in action movies owe their careers to Fisher taking the first step in 1977. While her personal life isn't the best model of behavior, her later life shows a willingness to accept one's past and move forward. You'd be hard pressed to find a more realistic role model for girls. I hope that in the afterlife she's found R2-D2 (actor Kenny Baker alsopassed away in 2016) and they're waiting for the rest of the crew to join them. Rest in peace Carrie, in a galaxy far, far away. Your fans will never stop missing you.