So it goes without saying that if you are unable to differentiate a character from the actor or actress playing them, then you really shouldn’t be watching TV, reading a book or playing a computer game. Of course, this doesn’t seem to stop Star Wars ‘fans’, and I woke up several times in the last week to find that yet another example of Star Wars fandom ripping itself apart on Twitter. Didn’t take long for me to find posts from the official Star Wars page, basically pointing out that you don’t really need to be racist.
I dug a little deeper, didn’t take long and found that the latest trouble relates to a character in the new Kenobi miniseries, no idea who the character is, she has a new one that Disney have created. Never heard of the actress either if I am honest. But it appears that she has been receiving racist and death threats which is completely unacceptable. It’s inappropriate. It’s pointless. It’s stupid. Look, just don’t do it.
The problem is, the Star Wars fandom has become completely and utterly toxic. In fact, it’s probably beyond toxic now. It’s probably into the radioactive death level now. I’ve been a Star Wars fan since 1997 When the special edition was first released, and my late father took me to the cinema. In fact, it was one of the first films I was taken to see (I think it was maybe the fourth) and I loved Star Wars from that moment and collected huge amount of the books, games, music, you name it. I’ve collected it at one point or another; with the possible exception of costumes. That said in the last 12 months or so I completely stepped away from the fandom and the series. It just didn’t have the magic anymore. I’ve written about the reasons for this on my or the page but that’s not really the purpose of this blog.
This blog is intended is to have a bit of a discussion of my theories on why things have become such a mess in the online community. And despite what some people on Twitter think it’s not just racist fans. There are some deeper systemic problems here and a lot of that has to be placed at Disney’s door. Yes, there are plenty of racist fans out there. And I use the term fan in its loosest possible sense. But it’s covering up a lot of other issues just to throw the current problems at that at their door
in my opinion, the first problem with the Star Wars franchise now is the narrative choices that Disney have made. Originally, you had three Star Wars films, episodes four, five and six, and that was it. But the franchise was kept alive by the expanded universe novels and the computer game world. Now it’s fair to say that some of these early novels haven’t stood the test of time particularly well. The original three that people remember the dark force trilogy in particular have not aged well, particularly with the Clone Wars saga that has been released through episodes two and three, and also the excellent animated series. But over time, the books certainly improved became much more stable, though, it still makes me cringe when I think of the Callista arc.
A lot of memorable characters were introduced. And these became immensely popular in their own right. Disney however, decided pretty much from the get go that none of that was going to matter and they were going to take all that work and make it the Legends series. At the time, this struck me is a little bit odd as there was plenty of scope for expansion, though, I will be the first to admit that it had started to creak a bit under its own weight. There were there are plenty of stories and possible spin off characters such as Kyle Katarn, Corran Horn and Mara Jade.
And there was lots of scope for moving forwards and backwards in the timeline. What Disney seemed to want to do was got the entire house but then realised a little bit later that they didn’t actually have the material to redecorate completely, and instead kind of cherry picked, altered and morphed little bits of the old lore to try and put some sort of homogenous storyline together. I’ll be honest, I think the new canon timeline they’ve created is a bit of a mess. The position wasn’t helped by the choice of some of the authors that they made. In particular the Empire’s End author who has entered notoriety for describing Tie fighters as ‘wibble wobbling’
“The TIE wibbles and wobbles through the air, careening drunkenly across the Myrran rooftops – it zigzags herkily-jerkily out of sight.”
Frankly this still makes me cringe and I put the book down at that point (and never picked it up again) but he is also famous for his views on the Lord of the Rings novels. Will agree to disagree on that assessment.
Suffice to say he was booted from the franchise for his views on fandom, which to be fair weren’t necessarily out of order, and I certainly didn’t like the personal attacks he received. Equally his attitude and response frankly sucked so it was not a surprise when Marvel comics booted him. He may be a popular author, I don’t know as had never heard of him before his Star Wars books but when stepping into a franchise as established as Star Wars you cannot just dump on the fandom and then accuse them of being homophobic just because they did not like your book. Again, anyone who did criticise it on those grounds is a fool but literary criticism due to the quality of writing should not be abandoned because of the writer’s personal views. Suffice to say things like this caused the Disney era to have a rocky start and for me it never really recovered.
The mess continued with the new films. I have watched Seven, eight and nine I don’t think they are bad films as individual works. Seven was a bit of a rehash of four and nine was probably the ultimate exercise in playing it safe and doing a mishmash of plotlines. I actually quite enjoyed Last Jedi . I thought it’s took the series to some interesting places and it’s set up some potentially interesting story arcs. Rose, and then the suggestion of Ray’s heritage being irrelevant, but all of that then got thrown in the bin and dumped. Disney have made some odd choices with the narrative, and there’s never been a clear overarching structure. They’ve tried recently with the High Republic book series, but that just doesn’t seem to have any magic for me and it just feels very cold and very box tick. Indeed, it was the first High Republic book that made me drop collecting. I’d stuck with it a long time, remembering the mess of the early Star Wars, Expanded Universe novels, but then it just wasn’t improving. So I called time.
The problem is when you don’t have a clear narrative, and you don’t have a clear roadmap plan and structure is you get these little gaps. It seems at the moment that every minor character who gets a little bit of fandom for whatever reason, is suddenly being given a book or a series. And this just creates a massive breeding ground for disagreement, discontent, and also letting the pond life that inhabit any deep community come out and cause problems. There was always plenty of criticism of the narrative in episodes four, five and six and indeed the expanded universe. The New Jedi Order series in particular was very divisive at the time. But that divisiveness was in relation to the narrative plot rather than the characters. Indeed, there are now so many different arcs and storylines flying around in the Star Wars universe. That for me to even attempt to catch up would be a massive effort and a lot of them I just don’t see the point of it.
I think it’s fair to say that Disney have created a rather odd environment with some of their choices though that doesn’t excuse some of the behaviour that we’re seeing. But equally, I do think that if Disney were not just pumping out a storyline for every minor two bit character, it would be much harder for these people to latch on to some of the things that they seem to do. T
hat leads me on to the second issue on the Disney Side. It just feels now that characters and storylines are aimed at demographic box ticking and marketing wet dream. As I said earlier, there were plenty of Expanded Universe characters that had massive amounts of fan support and back story; Mara Jade, originally a character in the dark force trilogy, became monumentally popular, and a main character by the end of the Expanded Universe series. It was common to see her portrayed at cosplay, and there were other characters such as Corran Horn and Kyle Katarn, who again, were really really popular (and I still think Jynn Erso is a really poor alternative to the original death star story featuring Bria Theren and that story linked Han Solo in as well!)
it seems now though, that any character that gets a bit of a positive reaction in a Nielsen rating is given an immediate series or a book I’ve lost count of the number of series that have been proposed. And that constant milking of the franchise irritates a lot of people. It’s something similar with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The number of characters that are out there and and now having series is insane. I’ve seen recently that there is a show called Moon Knight, portrayed by the excellent Oscar Isaac, superb actor, but it’s a series about a character I’ve never heard off and I read a lot of comics growing up. Certainly it was not as mainstream as most of the others they have done.
In Star Wars now it seems that any character that gets a little bit of online popularity is now gets a series and it just makes it feel cold. It’s a marketing strategy where they’re saying, “Oh, this is popular. This could sell a subscription or an action figure or a tie in.” It just feels like Metaverse marketing. I have seen some of the new Star Wars stuff, the Mandalorian and it was okay. Wasn’t bad. wasn’t great. Felt a little bit flat but the whole hype around the baby Yoda was insane. I don’t know who came up with that idea. But I hope that the marketing and merchandise department gave you one hell of a pay rise; but it proves the point. Baby Yoda became a bigger character than the series itself and the toys/collectibles spin off gives people with axes to grind more ammunition. They don’t need an encouragement to attack in the echo chambers of social media.
Now of course the original trilogy was hardly small. The original series had quite a big cast, but the main core was kept tight and it became a cultural icon. If you keep expanding it and add more and more characters in though, you will find people that dislike them and you can’t police everything. So by trying to diversify the market so much with the product range. What Disney have actually done is expose a greater volume of product to a greater volume of people. And you don’t need to be a mathematical or statistical genius to say that this extrapolates to more noise on social media and such noise invariably leads to more abuse.
It has to be said it’s not all Disney’s fault. In fact, I would say that a large amount of the current issues are not Disney’s fault at all. Disney may be responsible for creating the environment. But the attitude of a growing number of people is on said people and not on Disney but you can say that Disney has been rather selective implying its morality. I don’t have any issue with a company having a sense of morality, making statements and ethical decisions. It’s to be lauded but with Disney, it feels like morality is employed when it becomes marketable. After Last Jedi there was a torrent of vitriol in relation to the character Rose and her hinted at romance with Finn. I can well remember the few message forums I was still on at that time. The torrent of abuse that flowed and it wasn’t just racists not liking Finn being black or Rose being of Southeast Asian descent. We had the LGBT community kicking off because they felt that the Rose/Finn romance was wrong and instead Finn/Poe romance/bromance would be a better thing. Then we had others wanting the Rey/Finn romance. It just becoming a complete mess.
Indeed, the actress for Rose, Kelly Marie Tran, spoke out about the harm and pain this caused her. Now I actually quite liked the idea of the character of Rose. A non force sensitive, normal person just doing her bit, I think it has massive story potential. But it got dropped. By the time of Rise of Skywalker, Rose had been dumped into such a minor part that I don’t even think she was on the poster. Same for Finn and almost all of his storyline was dropped. And again, in many of the Rise of Skywalker posters he wasn’t present at all. You cannot deny that Disney have not exactly played it straight when they have made so many edits to Star Wars films to accommodate the Chinese market. Indeed, with the current statement they’ve made calling out racism; more than one person has pointed out that “hang on, you’re calling people criticising this new actress racist, which you are right to do but you cut out one of your lead actors from the marketing in the Chinese posters.”
Now had Disney cut turned around and said we were wrong to do that and we’ve learned this lesson, which is why we’re now calling out racism. I’d have a lot of respect for them. But to do one thing a few years ago, and another thing now and not only highlights your own inconsistency, it comes across as rank hypocrisy or supporting a social justice card because you think it’s going to garner a positive reaction. Now I don’t actually care that that probably is the reason. In fact, I’m pretty sure it is, this is business after all, but at least have the balls to come out and say it or at least make a passable excuse for why you’ve changed your stance.
Something similar happened when the actress Gina Miller was dropped from the Mandalorian series. Now, her views are equally reprehensible. But the way that was handled i.e. completely cancel her does seem at odds a with the fact that Disney’s founding father was somewhat nasty in his views and there are other actors who Disney have employed who have behaved in a very poor manner and have been given carte blanche. I stress Disney are right to call out the racism. No problem with them doing that but they need to be consistent in their morality. You cannot turn it off and on when it suits because if you do, it’s not morality. It’s marketing and it will piss people off but it has to be said there were problems here in the community as a whole. There always has been. But in recent years, it has become nuts.
I can remember posting on the forums after Last Jedi, saying that the problem I felt was that there was not a clear narrative arc. And I can remember some Twitter clown kicking off trying to be a smartass pointing out that “Oh, well. There were problems with the original trilogy.” To which I pointed out that had he read the post, I would have said and indeed did say the original series had its problems, but it had a clear narrative arc. Pretty clear. This clown though, was determined that everything Disney did was wonderful and anybody who opposed it was either racist, a dinosaur or a variety of slurs that I can’t really remember. I blocked him. I just couldn’t be bothered and I could see was attacking other people and I think most people actually did block him on that thread. That was around four years ago. And things have only gotten worse.
The problem as with all science fiction, and anime type fandoms is that for many, many years, they were not mainstream. I can certainly remember at school in the late 90s That you didn’t admit to being a sci fi fan. You’d have been mocked out of the building, particularly in an all boys school (like I was). People knew you had that interest, but as long as you didn’t advertise it, it was fine. Like the d&d community geekdom was basically underground and that basically made people quite possessive of their interest. They defended it because it was them and they’ve never been able to be open about it. The world has changed and now it’s perfectly acceptable to be an anime or a science fiction fan. Indeed, it’s become very mainstream but that pain and that memory lingers in a lot of people. And then when new people come into the community with different views, and in their own way, absolute views, it promotes a backlash.
Now I have to say that I am in no way, a fan of the massive amount of cultural revisionism that is currently happening. Social justice causes seem clever on paper but for me, it’s the intention that matters and you do not combat intolerance by being intolerant. And Star Wars has become a vehicle for this culture war. The reason is simple. It’s nothing to do with Star Wars. It’s that Star Wars is a massively recognised brand, and that if you basically link in with that, you’re pretty much guaranteed on a social media algorithm to get boosted up the charts. Star Wars is usually trending in some way shape or form. So using a hashtag relating to it, get you seen in a way hashtagging based on a minor character in a Sci Fi Channel independent series does not. There are plenty of people who are determined to look for a cause even when it is based on a story set in a make believe world. Star Wars as a reality doesn’t exist, never existed. It’s the fever dream of one man that people latched on to and yes, it borrows a lot from cultural, spiritual sources, but it’s a fundamentally a story. But people have stopped being able to see that and they’ve stopped being able to recognise that you can criticise something without having an ulterior motive. Criticising a character portrayed by a black person, because the character is rubbish does not make you racist. Criticising a character’s actor or actress based on their skin colour. That is racist. There are plenty of fictional characters I cannot stand. Harry Potter is the one that springs to mind immediately. I cannot stand it because it is an awful character. I find it irritating. I find it flat and one dimensional. That is a literary criticism of a character who for me, has just nothing to offer.
I don’t criticise the actor for playing him and I don’t criticise the actor the character’s appearance. I don’t hate Harry Potter because he wears glasses. I hate Harry Potter because he’s a crap character. In my opinion. Star Wars is similar. There are plenty of Star Wars characters I dislike; and no not just Jar Jar Binks. But disliking the character because it’s poorly written, doesn’t fit or seems a token gesture isn’t a problem. You should not be criticised for that. But in a growing number of communities there are people who cannot recognise that; and that’s the problem that we currently have. There I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who criticise this new character because they thought that the character was poorly written, didn’t fit or made no sense. That is a valid criticism if that’s what they think and they’re prepared to back it up. If it’s just straightforward, I don’t like this character because it’s changed then that’s pointless and achieves nothing. In the current climate though any valid criticism has now been drowned out by the torrent of abuse coming from the other side saying you’re criticising that character because it’s a black woman; ergo you are racist? No. This is stopping Star Wars growth, and I don’t mean it’s commercial growth because it’s a cash cow. It’s stopping it’s literally growth. If a character is poor, then they can be redeemed. They can’t be improved. There are plenty of Star Wars characters in the expanded universe who were pretty poor at the beginning. Some of the Rogue Squadron characters didn’t make a great deal of sense and were bloody annoying. Corran Horn was a pain in the ass at the beginning I did not like the character. But over time, he was improved and became one of my favourite characters. There is nothing to stop that happening in the new fandom but if Disney are only seeing that criticism is being framed in racist terms, even when it isn’t, but the noise is suggesting that it is they’ll have no reason to improve things. So things will stay as they are and that characters flaws will continue. And then it will continue to annoy people but now they will be afraid of speaking up because they don’t want to be labelled as racist. They’re not racist. They just don’t like a character.
So where does Star Wars go from here? Well, the roadmap is pretty clear that they’re determined to throw out as many series as they can and for me I think an awful lot of these are cold, sterile marketing exercises. But more and more and more I am seeing sensible fans who just want to enjoy a good exciting fantasy and science fiction show turning away. They watch it for a bit but they don’t engage. They might watch a series, on a long weekend, but they’re not buying into it like they once did. It will continue to make Disney huge amounts of money. There’s no doubt about it. But it will increasingly polarise opinion. More and more people will take one side or the other. That’s because echo chambers inherently grow. As people say Star Wars is woke, those who dislike woke will flock to that banner and vice versa. The only people that this ultimately hurts are the fans themselves, because they won’t get the quality of content that they deserve. And the Star Wars franchise deserves solid stories. It deserves solid characters but it can’t get them if there is no room for criticism and growth. So Disney face a difficult choice. They can continue down this current road and become constantly embroiled in social media storms and chaos; or they can perhaps take the more moderate view that yes, we want to call out racism. But we also need to hold up our hands to the fact that we’ve been bloody inconsistent in that ourselves the past; but we also want to encourage valid criticism.
That means doing something that they ought to now have been reluctant to do; and that is challenged the white knights who feel obliged to tackle what they perceive as society’s ills, without recognising that in the process, they’re actually causing harm. Now, I suspect that my half thought ramblings above will not be 100% accepted by everybody and that and that’s totally fine, because that’s the purpose of opinion and criticism. And indeed, I’d be interested in hearing from people what they think about the current position of Star Wars under the Disney banner, and do they think it’s going in the right direction? So drop a comment below. Let me know your thoughts and stay safe, and I’ll look forward to catching up with you soon.
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