Katy Perry’s female gaze failure is all the worse after ‘The Acolyte’ just showed her how it’s done with its steamy season finale

After a several-year hiatus, Katy Perry has released a new album. Unfortunately for the former queen of pop, her reemergence and “hit single” have been met with limited enthusiasm and a ton of hate.  The journey is the opposite for The Acolyte which, after an incredibly bumpy start, has finally intrigued Star Wars fans enough to warrant a second season.

You’re probably wondering how those two wildly unconnected ideas fit together, but bear with me. Perry is an icon, whose reemergence could have been one for the ages, but she just doesn’t manage to sell the idea she is pushing. The Acolyte is a (relative) underdog, with a small army of people rooting for it to fumble. Both touch on a similar topic, but where one failed, the other succeeded, and the only difference was presentation.

If you’re lucky enough never to have seen Katy Perry’s “Woman’s World” music video, I’m really sorry to do this to you. The Pop Princess’ latest bop is nothing short of a train wreck. It’s a lyrically, choreographically, and visually soulless mess. I’m a lover of all things so-bad-they’re-good, but the process of finding gold often leaves you wading through s**t, which is exactly where Perry’s new video falls.

Like an ambitious child hoping their paper plane will land on the moon, Perry’s s pursuit to capture the “female divine” misses by a long shot. It’s produced by known sexual predator Dr. Luke, and spits in the face of the feminine empowerment it tries to endorse. She spends the entire video wearing little more than bikinis, strikes gratuitously sexual poses, and caters fully to the male gaze – all the while insisting that she isn’t.

She calls it “slapstick,” “satire,” and “very on the nose.” It’s as on the nose as a punch to the face.  As one commenter put it, its “A ‘feminism anthem’ if it was written by the patriarchy….” Perry defends it by saying it is purposely overplayed, and that the second half of the excruciating 3 minutes is when she switches the message to her idea “of the feminine divine.” Perry needs to have a conversation about effective satire with Starship Trooper director Paul Vanhooven.

By contrast, The Acolyte flawlessly showcases the “feminine divine” in the witches, Osha and her sister, and Jedi Masters Indara and Vernestra. But I’m not here to talk about the gorgeous and powerful women who comprise the cast, it’s way too easy of a comparison to make. I want to talk about Darth Teeth. See, as a raging bisexual woman set to marry my gorgeous future wife in the next few months, I should have at least enjoyed Perry’s video for the base components. But instead, I kept thinking about Qimir and his perfectly sculpted, yet nearly shapeless bod, and his subtle catering to the female audience.  

The Acolyte director and fellow lady-lover Leslye Headland has said her series would include a lot of fan fiction, but no one ever told me it was the “T for Teen” kind. The subtle sexuality of Darth Teeth is undeniable, and the Sith-lord has spawned a harem of women ready to succumb to evil. Maybe it’s his smile, those bulging biceps, the adorable way he stalks toward his enemies as he’s trying to murder them, or that amazing cloak (how does he get it to drape like that?) but everything about Qimir is want to send shivers down your spine.

It’s crazy that a woman, who has identified as a feminist for decades, could miss the mark so badly. Was it the Dr. Luke of it all? Is this a sign that Perry’s subconscious is still caked in 90s brain rot about womanhood?  Or is Hedland’s vision for Qimir, an angsty, mysterious man with a penchant for theatrics just a better example of how to express a concept?

For months, we’ve been reading about how Headland was looking to target a different Star Wars demographic, and I think I finally understand what she means. She’s just trying to scratch a part of women’s brains that is rarely touched by Star Wars properties now that Harrison Ford is officially retired from the franchise. At long last, there is a female equivalent of the “Leia Bikini,” and, just as BookTok would have wanted, it’s the ridiculously charismatic baddie.