Star Wars and racism

Well, look at the reactions to an obviously not white guy cosplaying Luke Skywalker.

Why it is important is two-fold.

1. You do not need exact representation for people to see themselves in a character. It is not to say that you should only have white men playing every single role from babies to grannies, but the current forced diversity is patently idiotic and stupid. (Not to mention divisive and counterproductive, but whatever.)

2. Star Wars fans, by large, are NOT racist or sexist. The criticism Rey, Reeva, Rose, and the rest of the newer characters get is not due to racism or sexism. That is not to say a little vocal minority does not have issues -they are shit people, and there are shit people everywhere. Ewan McGregor's rant in a car got that right -although the problem with these virtue signaling messages is that they address a truly small group of people, giving them more prominence than they actually deserve. Oooor -they are used to deflect any and all blame from a shit show and a shit character with accusing anyone who dares to criticize them as racist and sexist trolls. This is part of a well-known strategy you could see in the all-female Ghostbusters, Rings of Power, Star Wars, etc. called fan baiting. 

So, are Star Wars fans, by large, racist and sexist? 

Dunno, let's take a look.

Was Yar Yar Binks was reviled (and poor Ahmed West hated) because the actor was black or because Yar Yar was a terrible character? He did get personal attacks by those already mentioned assholes which are unacceptable -but the fandom also stood behind him and was happy for him in his return role en masse. Did people dislike Reeva's character because she was a black woman, or because it was a shit character?  How were other actors of color treated? Did Pedro Pascal, Billy Dee Williams, Samuel L. Jackson, Forest Whitaker, Carl Weathers, Ming-Na Wen, Temuera Morrison, Gina Carano, Titus Welliver, Michael Lang, Rosario Dawson, John Boyega, Donnie Yen, Jiang Wen, Giancarlo Esposito, etc. etc. needed special treatment from Disney warning them of those horrible, racist, toxic fans like Moses did? 

I guess not. Do they get massive hate on social media by those toxic fans? I guess not.

By the way, why wasn't the criticism of the Book of Boba Fett met with accusations of anti-Maori and anti-Asian racism and sexism? It does not work as well as with black actors, eh? Or maybe it was so bad even they could not bring themselves to do it... Oh, and maybe it is not the fans who are racist, but Disney itself... (Weird turn of events, ain't it?)

So what is it, dear Disney? You know, to keep a franchise alive, it is not enough to bring a crowd into the movie theater. "Casuals" will watch your show, then forget about it, and get to the next Avatar or whatever that comes after. You actually need fans. Fans that you are actively pissing off and alienating in order to please a non-existent mass of potential fans who express their opinions on Twitter quite loudly, but who are actually a minority (just like those racist assholes you use to taint the whole of fandom). They will not bring in revenue for you. They will not buy your Rose action figures, your spinoff books, your computer games, they will not subscribe to your streaming service for your shows. They will wreck this franchise and move onto the next one to destroy.

And one more thing: Star Wars was always inclusive. In fact Star Wars was always the refuge of the outcasts, who were not cool enough for the cool kids, so any and all were invited. Now you are alienating the people who buy your merchandise, your books, your DVD special editions, and the rest -and this will kill your franchise.  

Who gets to play what

  Well, this is about actors. It seems that lately even the supposedly smart and wholesome actors fell victim of this trend of wanting only people from a particular identity group play characters who belong to that particular identity group. Tom Hanks said he would not do Philadelphia (but taking this line of thinking further, surely only a HIV positive gay actor would be eligible to play, no?), there were issues of non-Jewish actresses playing Jewish characters, and so on and so forth. In the same time, of course, we have the constant gender and race swapping, which is apparently fine with the very same people. More on that later. 

But what about Spanish actors? Is Banderas forgiven for playing a Mexican guitar player, or is he considered to be white? Where do the lines lie exactly? Can someone, who is bisexual, play a gay character? Can a gender fluid person play a gay character? Isn't the point of being an actor is to, you know, act? I saw a video of Luke Evans saying how proud he is about playing a straight character convincingly. I mean, yeah -this is your job, isn't it? It should not be such a big issue... I do not recall Arnold being proud to play a cyborg, or Benedict Cumberbatch being proud to play a dragon after all. (And the last I checked, he was NOT an actual dragon, either.)

The scary thing about this is that if you just give it one second to think about this idea, it leads to really, really weird (and stupid) places.

So if only gay people can play gay people, if only Jewish people can play Jewish people, and so on and so forth, that means you are forcing everyone into an ever decreasing box. That also means they cannot play any other characters. That means that Jewish people cannot play non-Jewish characters, and like it or not, there are more gay actors, than gay characters on screen -which means they would have severely limited opportunities if you apply this "rule". This only would only benefit those evil white actors who, being the "vanilla favor", could play almost any other character not falling into one of your pet categories. So identity politics -as usual- kind of shoots itself in the foot.

But what really scares me, is the fact that stupidity, like this, is being pushed by people in "high culture". It is being talked about in NYT, WaPo, whatever, as if it was a worthy ideal to live up to. It is one of those "the emperor is naked" cases, and if people can pretend that the simple and obvious flaws do not exist... well, what else are they pretending about? And even scarier yet: do they actually believe this? Is our "intellectual elite" really that limited intellectually? Are they really this stupid?