The eagerly awaited seventh installment of the popular space opera series Star Wars, subtitled “The Force Awakens”, is set to hit theaters later this month. But earlier this fall, a small group of racist Twitter trolls set off yet another skirmish in the culture wars by launching a new hashtag in response to the film’s third official trailer, released in mid-October: #BoycottStarWarsVII. These internet crusaders asserted that the film is “anti-white propaganda” and promotes “white genocide.”[1] They also referred to J.J. Abrams, the film’s director, of being a “Jewish activist”– a clear anti-Jewish smear on top of the already reactionary tinged allegations.
But what was the “evidence” for these claims? Well, the trailer for the movie prominently features black British actor John Boyega (playing a character named Finn) and white British actress Daisy Ridley (who plays Rey), implying they both will play lead roles in the movie; Boyega even wields a lightsaber, appearing to be only a second away from a duel with Kylo Ren, a character believed to be the main antagonist in the film (played by another series newcomer, Adam Driver).
The first two trailers had already made clear that the film would also include several of Star Wars’ fans’ favorite characters from the classic trilogy, most particularly Leia Organa-Solo; Han Solo; Chewbacca; the dynamic droid duo, C-3PO and R2-D2; and of course, Luke Skywalker. But the third trailer and the first official promotional poster for the movie released just after it both made it clear that Boyega, Ridley and another person of color, Latino singer/actor Oscar Isaac (as a pilot named Poe Dameron), will be central to the action, with the old-school characters likely providing mostly nostalgic sparks. It’s that simple: the fact that the most visibly heroic characters of the new film will likely be both two men of color and a woman (in what appears to be a much more active role than Leia, a bad-ass in her own right, to be fair) is being seen as another indisputable sign that we are on an inevitable march towards white (male) extinction.[2]
The hashtag and its accompanying tweets generated an immediate ruckus (or “disturbance in the Force” as Yoda or Obi-Wan might say) throughout the geekosphere, which quickly rippled out into more mainstream media, resulting in discussions by several commentators online and in print. John Boyega himself responded, saying, “I’m in the movie, what are you going to do about it? You either enjoy it or you don’t. I’m not saying get used to the future, but what is already happening…People of color and women are increasingly being shown on-screen. For things to be whitewashed just doesn’t make sense.”[3] Eventually, many fans of the series hijacked the hashtag to counter the racist fan faction and talk back to them through Twitter, pointing out the ridiculousness of their ability to accept so many different alien races as part of this ongoing story, but not being able stomach a black man or a woman as a central character.[4]
This response was fairly heartening, displaying a growing community of lovers and producers of popular culture committed to challenging the influence of whiteness and misogyny in the narratives we tell, share and celebrate. But only a few folks dug a little deeper, below the hashtag and the racist eruption it ignited as symptoms, to something deeper. I think it’s crucial that such deeper discussions happen – particularly at the level of culture – if those of us who believe in a more liberated world are going to substantially change anything. Because I think these eruptions aren’t just instances of fan-boys defending a cultural text (one with an established mythology which has to this point been dominated primarily by white male heroes), but fully-fledged, material acts of oppression, which must be countered more intentionally as such.
The analysis gesturing towards this more useful understanding of #BoycottStarWarsVII that I’ve seen is a piece written by Chauncey Devega that appeared in Salon entitled, “Now white people are trying to ruin ‘Star Wars’: Racist reaction to new trailer is part Gamergate, part Donald Trump.” While noting that the new film is hardly as “diverse” as is being claimed (noting that all the main decision-makers and producers of the movie are white men) and that Hollywood itself is similarly white-dominated (citing estimates that “at least 85 percent of the producers, directors, show runners, executives, writers, and other leading creative positions are held by white men”), Devega also pushes beyond the basic questions of “diversity” and inclusivity in media/entertainment, and suggests that something deeper is reflected in this trolling.
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Devega situates this controversy in the context of a movement of racist and sexist backlash that has grown more and more vocal in society over the past few decades, and more visible in both pop culture and politics over the past several years. These include the upsetting (and ongoing) misogynistic cyclone of #GamerGate[5], the labeling of the latest Mad Max movie as “emasculating” (for centering around the story of a powerful female character with a disability – Imperator Furiosa – as the hero in a story of resistance to male control of women’s bodies), the men’s rights movement, and the unapologetically racist and nativist rhetoric of the political right, particularly Donald Trump.[6] As such, he recognizes that what is being fought over here is not just the issue of more major film roles for folks of color or women (or even whether such inclusion “works” or “makes sense” in a particular film’s fictional universe), but the continuation of straight white male dominance over the narratives that make up our cultural, political and imaginative landscapes. And that the explicitly open nature of virulent racist and sexist outrage and action—harassment, death threats, doxing and SWATTING[7], and yes, actual violence[8] — among white men of late reflects some degree of desperation and unease over the solidity of their social power.
Most pointedly, Devega says, “The White Right’s childish and petty protests about ‘Star Wars’ are a reminder of how cultural politics reflect deeper social anxieties, worries, and concerns about power in a given society,” and that, “The ‘reverse racism’ and ‘anti-white’ complaints about ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens, are part of a larger pattern of ‘white male victimology’”.[9] And further – as any oppressed person in our society understands – this “victimology” doesn’t reflect social reality:
Of course, not all white men are rich. Nor, are they equally advantaged financially, politically, or economically relative to one another. There are many examples of individual people of color and women who are far more successful and powerful than a given white man in American society. But as a group, white men control almost every major social, political, economic, and cultural institution in the United States and West.
In total, white male privilege is an absolute, one with degrees of relative advantage and disadvantage in American society, as compared to other groups, all things being equal…
White identity politics and toxic white masculinity-fueled complaints about “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” are not really about a film; they are a reflection of the anxieties felt by the dominant group about losing their real and perceived power to people of color, women, gays, lesbians, and other groups. This power is in no way substantively imperiled; nevertheless the anxieties about losing it are an obsession.[10]
Like Devega, I believe that the noxious extremism many whites and white men are acting out both online and in real life can be seen as reflecting a fear of “losing their real and perceived power” to people of color, women, queer folks and other oppressed folks. And I agree that white supremacy and male supremacy aren’t “substantively imperiled”— but to a point. While white male fear and backlash is mostly based in their seeing everyone who is not them as an abstraction in general, I don’t think that they are simply afraid of an abstract, insignificant threat to how they see and experience the world (through story), but because they also see the power of whiteness and straight white male hegemony increasingly being challenged and disrupted in material terms in our society—again, however limited those challenges might be. Because I also believe that resistance to white and male supremacy – however limited and provisional it may be – is very much a reality, across both cultural and political dimensions, and I want to believe that these oppressive systems aren’t invincible. (White supremacy and patriarchy may seem as inescapable as gravity, but we’re still fighting to fly). But why is this “victimology” so attractive to folks with so much power?
This persecution myth among many whites (but particularly straight white men) isn’t really anything new: it’s been a frequent response to most struggles towards liberation and autonomy by people of color in this country. White supremacy and patriarchy are built upon racial and gender hierarchy, the notion that power is about domination vs. collective strength/agency (“power-over” vs. “power-with” as discussed by political philosopher Hannah Arendt[11]) and the resultant belief of scarcity of this power (some must have power to dominate and some must lack it in order to for that power to have meaning). This system renders many whites and men incapable of seeing a world where folks of color, women, queers and trans*folks gaining any social power means they don’t lose power. Seeing this shift as one towards shared power means giving up belief in racial and gender hierarchy as norms, and thus it’s strangely easier to assert an identity as “oppressed” when such gains are achieved. This new identity (which is exposed as a total fallacy when pesky reality is brought into the picture) can then be used to justify WHATEVER they do to maintain white supremacy. Same with men. Or right-wingers bemoaning the “liberal media.” Or Christian reactionaries, in the guise of protecting “religious liberty”.
What’s new now is that the growth of the Internet and social media over the past decade and a half have given racists, misogynists and all types of bigots a new tool to vent their this resentment over having their power (and their stories celebrating that power) challenged, one that enables their bile to penetrate more visibly, pervasively, and invasively in the lives and experiences of oppressed folks, no matter how hard they try to avoid it. Blocking someone means nothing if they can sort out how to hack your personal information or even the personal information of people close to you, reveal it online and claim you are fair game for whatever comes your way as result. Or if they can enlist dozens, if not hundreds of like-minded others to harass you through a simple post.
This newfound capability of reactionaries to penetrate into the lives of oppressed folks through the Internet is why I believe racist or misogynistic trolling and other similar acts need to be recognized as actual acts of oppression in and of themselves, not simply treated as expressions (symptoms) of backward-, immature or misguided thinking. Not only do these acts work to reinforce whiteness and the satisfaction of the straight male gaze as the “normal”, default frame for how we all experience the world—thus reinforcing oppressive systems in all of our minds—but they can also cause actual harm (whether distress or fear on the part of those targeted, loss of quality of life such as secure work or housing, or actual physical injury if taken to the extreme). And the perpetrators of such acts usually face little or no consequences for whatever harm they may cause; this ability to avoid consequences for actions is precisely what power (to dominate) and privilege are all about.
Defenses of trolling are usually made through arguments evoking the principle of free speech (without how harmful speech used by those with power becomes another tool of oppression). “Political correctness” (a nebulous term) is increasingly used by folks with social power to obscure who is really being harmed in situations where oppressive dynamics are playing out. Or even that now, with all the progress we’ve made (including a black President!), white men really are now the most oppressed among us, and that as oppressed folks, they are justified for any behavior/act/speech defending themselves and any and all the spaces they inhabit and move through from the new oppressors—women, queers, people of color, etc., now labeled “feminazis”, “the PC police”, “the Gay mafia.” Or even that “it’s just a joke” (“Can you take a joke?”).
But it’s clear that at their base all of these defenses are about maintaining freedom of expression and freedom from consequences for that expression for CERTAIN types of people (whites, particularly white men). In a world of multiple oppressions, freedom of speech means oppressed folks likely will never escape harmful speech or bigoted beliefs. Treating all speech as effectively equal or defending the right of oppressive speech without recognizing the power dynamics at play in our society simply reinforces oppression.[12]
In my mind, trolling and other forms of online harassment that attack oppressed folks are not simply acts of expression, to be protected however fucked-up they are and what damage they cause; they are a form of terrorism, meant to maintain a status quo through frightening the non-compliant into submission. Freedom of speech should not mean freedom from any and all consequences for that speech, and we need to stop treating trolling – particularly that targeting folks of color, women and other oppressed folks – as simply a nuisance or unfortunate by-product brought to life by the Internet. We need to call it what it is: the tug on the leash around so many of our necks, one that many of us fight every day, but that’s there whenever those with power feel it necessary to get us back in line. The fact this tug isn’t physical doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel real, or leave marks. Naming of racist, sexist and other types of trolling as oppression is essential as all of us targeted by it struggle to end oppressive systems and create more liberated spaces and lives.
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Yet another way that folks with oppressive views – not just trolls – deny the fact that oppression is playing out in a particular situation is to claim that the person identifying the situation as such is playing a “card”. This can be the “race card”, the “women-” or “feminist card”, and on and on. The implication is that the person playing the card is unreasonably identifying the situation as oppressive, so as to gain an unfair advantage in a discussion of the situation. But again, like “political correctness” this phrase is primarily used by folks with social power – usually whites and white men – to shut down conversations and silence folks naming racism, sexism, and other oppressions.
A writer of color that I know did a lot of writing around #Gamergate, which unfortunately resulted in her becoming the target of lots of online harassment herself. But she persisted in writing and fighting, connecting the threats of violence against women like the feminist blogger and critic Anita Sarkeesian and actress and writer Felicia Day to rape culture and sexism. After continually being told she was playing the woman card, the feminist card, the rape card, she stated she wasn’t playing any card, she was asserting reality. This sparked two things in my mind, which we discussed later: 1) that only those who suffer under white supremacy and patriarchy are accused of playing “cards”, meaning it’s never flipped back on folks making the accusation as to what card they are playing, and 2) the idea of playing the “reality card” may be a useful way for folks challenging oppression to begin countering these accusations and disrupt this tactic.
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What is encouraging to me, as I said above, is that more and more folks are doing this naming. Alongside these necessary acts, however, is the continued need for the creation of more stories, more characters, more perspectives that “disrupt” (in Devega’s words) and even reveal the lie of the neutrality and universality of white male experience and the straight white male gaze in pop culture. It’s not enough to simply include folks of color, women, queers and other folks of other identities in the mix in popular cultural narratives[13]; we have to create and share stories that center them and their experiences as well, that enable us to celebrate their journeys.
Thankfully, we have a legacy of both well-known folks – such as Afrodiasporic writers Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, among many others from various cultures – and not so well-known folks to drawn from as inspirational examples, as well as an increasing number of creators of such narratives and experiences (through fiction, TV, film, video games and comics). And the Internet – even while it remains a venue where oppression can and does thrive – is proving a valuable tool in the spread of such stories. But as more and more disruptions of racism, sexism and other oppressions occur, both in real life and in popular culture – there will likely be more and more reaction.[14] Again, this is anything but new, even if the mechanisms for how such reaction plays out might change. And so we need to be ready for it.
We need to recognize the potential value of popular culture, of speculative art in disrupting and challenging racism, misogyny and other forms of social hierarchy. At minimum, these disruptions can serve as refusals by oppressed folks to allow themselves to be erased – a form of survival and resistance. But they can also offer up possibilities for new ways of thinking, living and being that aren’t dominated by straight white male experience and desires, challenging the idea that the only narratives worth celebrating in our society are those dominated by straight white male characters, spotlighting their experiences while relegating all others to secondary status.
This is why culture matters in struggles for liberation from oppression: because the stories we tell and share, particularly when we dream (as with science fiction, fantasy and other speculative fictions) dictate the boundaries of the imaginative landscape in which we live in real life. Pop culture stories are one of the main ways we as a society talk about and explore ourselves, our fears, our dreams, our aspirations, our flaws, our potential futures. This exploration feeds back into our understanding of social reality, what we see as possible in the world we share, and WHO we see as capable of acting in that world. In other words, who is worthy of having power to engage and act in the world, who can be the active agent of their own lives, instead of just a powerless spectator or secondary character in the life story of others who have power to act. The struggle to expand the scope of pop cultural stories beyond the historically straight white male experience has to be understood then as the struggle to expand the imaginative possibilities for oppressed folks under oppression.
Whiteness, masculinity and heteronormativity require stories where straight male power and experiences are celebrated over that of all others. They construct worlds where oppressed peoples’ power and experiences have to be constrained or even erased. But as we dream, we need to bring the reality card to bear to disrupt these erasures, even as we know that doing so will likely lead to backlash from those at the top of social hierarchies. Because those who refuse to see oppressed folks as capable of being heroes or protagonists in movies like Star Wars or Mad Max are refusing to imagine a world where we can be equal, if not equivalent in social power and agency to white men, as well as new ways of creating and using power-with, instead of just power-over. When they attack stories we all share for proposing that such a world could exist, they are also working to deny the rest of us the ability to imagine that world as well. We can’t afford to let them take that from us; they’ve already taken (and continue to take) so much.
I want a world where liberation is about more than whether a black man can be elected President of the United States, or the legalization of same-sex marriage, or even an end to police violence against black bodies; I also want a world where folks who look like me can be celebrated as heroes, for saving the world or even the galaxy. I don’t just want the White House; I want the Millennium Falcon. Not just by any means necessary, but by every means imaginable. Because it’s hard to see how we can end oppression without having wilder, wider dreams than those we currently have. We need dreams that make space for all of our stories – ones where folks of color are more than just sidekicks, where the most memorable female characters aren’t just the obligatory “hot green chick”, and where queers, trans* folks, folks of different abilities can choose their own adventures and create their own lives.
Thanks to Sara Brickman for many thoughtful suggestions and assistance in shaping this essay.
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SOME SUGGESTED READINGS
- Chauncey Devega, “Now white people are trying to ruin ‘Star Wars’: Racist reaction to new trailer is part Gamergate, part Donald Trump.” Salon, October 20, 2015.
- Kyle Buchanan, “This Major Female Villain in Star Wars: The Force Awakens Was Originally a Man.” Slate, December 8, 2015.
BOOKS
- Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Anthology, edited by Sfé R. Monster (2015) – http://www.beyondanthology.com/
- Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne marie brown (2015, AK Press) – http://www.akpress.org/octavia-s-brood.html
- So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan (2004, Arsenal Pulp Press) – http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=192
- Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas (2000, Aspect/Warner Books)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
NOTES
[1] When I first heard about the boycott, I was glad, figuring that it would make it easier for me to get tickets. I also thought how wonderfully subversive it would be if the movie actually turned out to be everything the trolls claimed it was. We already have plenty of movies celebrating the genocide of so many other folks; a story of “white genocide” might actually be a pleasant change.
[2] Please note that my focus in this piece is not in-depth racial or gender analyses of the Star Wars movies or of specific characters, but more the social and political context around how these movies are experienced and celebrated. As such, I won’t get into discussing non-white humanoid characters like Lando Calrissian or Mace Windu, the question of Leia Organa’s agency or lack thereof in certain moments, or the strange racial coding of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. Such discussions might appear elsewhere, or may even be taken up at a later time, but not in this essay.
[3] Some recent prominent cases of white-washing of characters of color includes that of Katniss Everdeen (described as having “olive skin” in the Hunger Games books) in the movie adaptations, as well as a few of the main heroic characters in Avatar: The Last Airbender, who are Asian. And let’s not forget the racist response of many moviegoers to Amandla Sternberg’s portrayal of the character Rue in the first Hunger Games movie; they clearly either hadn’t read the book clearly – she’s described as having “dark brown skin and eyes” – or simply defaulted to thinking of her as white after reading that description.
[4] By the way, I can accept some acts of white-washing might actually prove pretty interesting in their audacity, such as that of Brooklyn in Lena Dunham’s Girls; it’s indicative of the degree to which folks like the main character Hannah and her friends still live segregated lives, even in a relentlessly multicultural city like New York.
[5] For more background on #Gamergate, see Eliana Dockterman’s “What Is #GamerGate and Why Are Women Being Threatened About Video Games?” Time, October 16, 2014. – http://time.com/3510381/gamergate-faq/, and Natalie Walschots’ “Gamergate: The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled,” The Establishment, November 18, 2015. – http://www.theestablishment.co/2015/11/18/gamergate-alison-prime-trolling/
[6] Other obvious manifestations of this could include pop-cultural related controversies like Penny Arcade’s dickwolves garbagefest and the SadPuppies/Hugo Awards campaign and political/cultural backlash like #AllLivesMatter, defenses of rape culture and the nationwide plague of murder of transwomen of color, and on and on…See “Dickwolves”, Geek Feminism Wiki, http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Dickwolves. And for more on the Sad/Rabid Puppies, see Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, “How the ‘Sad Puppies’ Internet campaign gamed the Hugo Awards,” The Daily Dot, April 5, 2015 — http://www.dailydot.com/geek/hugo-award-nominees-sad-puppies/.
[7] See “Doxing”, Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing. And on SWATTING, see Alex Hern, “Gamergate hits new low with attempts to send Swat teams to critics,” The Guardian, January 13, 2015 — http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/13/gamergate-hits-new-low-with-attempts-to-send-swat-teams-to-critics.
[8] As for a misogynist troll escalating to actual violence, see the case of Elliott Rodger, who killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of the University of California-Santa Barbara on May 23, 2014 before committing suicide. His “manifesto”, sent to numerous friends and family members shortly before his killing spree, is rife with racist rants against interracial dating and descriptions of various types of violence he wished to inflict upon women – including some Nazi-style death-camp extermination fantasies – simply for not “giving” him sex.
[9] Devega, “Now white people are trying to ruin ‘Star Wars’.”
[10] Ibid.
[11] Arendt talks about these conceptions of power, as well as violence, strength, authority and other similar terms throughout her work, but most extensively in her essay On Violence (1970).
[12] There is, of course, also the defense based on intention (“I didn’t mean it that way”). But oppression isn’t just about intention, but also about impact/outcome. Sorry, thanks for playing.
[13] Such as George Lucas’ clumsy and offensive attempts to create some sense of diversity in Star Wars Episodes I-III through the minstrelesque Jar Jar Binks, or the broken Asian English accented speech of the Trade Federation officials. Many folks denouncing the racism behind the Episode VII boycott noted that Lucas is married to a black woman as a way of suggesting the boycotters are themselves out of step with the creator of the space opera series’ beliefs and values. But the truth is harder to accept: Lucas is just as capable of trafficking in racist story-telling as the next person—his being in an interracial marriage doesn’t enable him to magically transcend whiteness.
[14] I’m finishing this in the aftermath of the University of Missouri/ConcernedStudent1950 protests, which successfully pushed to get the university to address a history of racial incidents, resulting in the resignation of the university president and chancellor and promises by the new president to take substantial action. Instead of seeing this as a win for racial justice and step towards racial reconciliation, a few whites—authorities aren’t even sure they are Mizzou students –took to several social media and other online forums to threaten violence against black students. Again, a win for folks of color is seen as a loss for whites, one which needs to repaid with hostility and threats. Other similar protests and actions at several other universities are being met with increasingly ugly threats and intimidation, with the shooting of five Black Lives Matter protesters in Minneapolis on November 23 by unapologetically white supremacist thugs. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/three-men-who-shot-black-lives-matter-protesters-emerged-internets-racist-swamps