Why there’s no New Hope for Star Wars bigots
I have the same relationship with Star Wars that I imagine any sane, middle-aged man has: I watched the first three as a kid, I took my kids to see the second three and then I stopped watching them.
I was still in primary school whenn the first film landed – just the right age to love it.
I was about 14 when the best Starr Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back,k, came out.
Me and my wee brother went to see it on holiday in Toronto and lost ourr tiny minds.
I was 17 and on holiday with my pals in Blackpool – my first holiday withouthout parents! – when Return Of The Jedi was released.
Basil, Graham and I went to see it,t, nursing Malibu hangovers from a bruising Membranes gig the night before. (Malibu, Star Wars, Blackpool, The Membranes – unpack the 80s referencesences in that sentence, nostalgia fans.)
By the time the second round of films started in the late 90s, I had a youngg son who was just getting to be the rightt age for such stuff and we dutifully wentt along to see The Phantom Menace and Attackttack Of The Clones.
In fact, I can pinpoint for you the exact moment where my love affair with the series ended – right at the moment in the third film in this cycle, The Revengee Of The Sith, where the newly-created Darth Vader is told by the Emperor he wass responsible for the death of his wife.e.
Vader falls to his knees, looks up to the heavens and screams “NOOOOOOO!”O!”
My son Robin (then nine years old) and I looked at each other and burst urst out laughing. We didn’t stop untilil the film had finished.
By which point Star Wars was pretty much finished for me too. I’ve managed to get through the rest of my life without it.
But let’s imagine that you’re still an absolutely rabid male Star Wars fan in middle-age. The kind of person who watches every movie in the series over and over. Who owns all the toys. Who will be standing in line again this week to see Solo for the fourth time.
Obviously, in order to do all this, you’re going to have to imagine a few other things first. You’ll have to imagine that you still live with parents.
You’ll have to imagine that your friendship group is pretty limited and that it probably features no women.
And you’ll have to imagine that, middle-aged as you are, you still refer to your genitals as your “peanuts” or “little soldier”.
OK. Now imagine that how you really get your kicks, what really makes you happy, is spending hours online hurling abuse at female actors who happen to be people of colour who have had the temerity, the sheer nerve, to appear in your favourite movie franchise. Last week, Kelly Marie Tran, the VietnameseAmerican actor who played Rose in The Last Jedi, deleted her Instagram account after vicious online trolling.
Ever since the release of the film last December, she’s been subjected to a torrent of onlineo abuse, about her character, oor about her performance, her gender and her race.
Some “fafan” went so far as to cover all of these bases when he (and, let’s face it, it’s almost certainlycert a he) amended Rose’s entry on WWookiepedia – yes, that’s the Star Wars WikipediaW page – to read: “Ching ChoChong Wing Tong is a dumbass f*****g chacharacter Disney made and is a stupid, retaretarded and autistic love interest for Finn. ShShe better die in the coma because shshe is a dumbass b***h.” If you ddug into some of the darker recesses oof the internet, you would soon discdiscover that this, incredibly, was one oof the milder comments hurled ata the actor. Of coucourse, passionate geeks arguing about ththeir favourite characters and plot holeholes in sci-fi movies is nothing new. ButBut, as one commentator pointed out, the difference between that anand the abuse being directed at Tran is like the difference between being a football fan and a football hooligan.hoolig Like everything else in our blue touch paper, post-Trump, postBrexit,Brexit post-sanity world, the Star Wars films have become a place of politicalpoliti engagement, a place wherewher Incels fight it out with SJWs, wherewher the choice of making a characterchar Asian or black or female is oneon person’s progress and another’sano token white male bashingbas by PC liberals. ThereTh are a lot of maniacs out therethe who are very clear about whatwh they want from their Star Wars characharacters. They want them to be a) white, b) men and c) robots. Women and minoritiesminori need not apply. As I said, it’s been a long time since I watched a StarS Wars film but I don’t recall their overwhelming message being a sort of intergalactic white supremacy with a dash of mad sexism. But you can’t tell a troll anything. Even Luke Skywalker can’t tell a troll anything. Luke – in the form of Mark Hamill, the actor who played him – stepped on to Twitter last week to defend Kelly Marie Tran.
He posted a photograph of the two of them together with the caption “What’s not to love?” and the hashtag #GETALIFENERDS.
His reward? A festival of anger, hatred and abuse from the lunatics who want their Star Wars white, male and robotic.
And then you remember that these guys (and it is all guys) are just afraid. Afraid of women. Of anything new.
And remember, kids, fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to – oh, come on, you know the rest.
Even Luke Skywalker can’t tell a troll anything