Well said. As I've pointed out before, the SW-PTB are not new to this world. There's no way they--living in this country and being as old as they are--are just happy-go-lucky innocent people. The history of racial stereotypes in the media and marketing have been taught in universities for decades, while the aggressive fight against its use by activists has been a part of the American landscape even longer. Anyone denying the SW-PTB just did not know what they were doing are conning themselves and no one else.
No excuses.
...and again, this is NewLFL/Disney that spent the life of this new group of Star Wars films screaming about how "socially progressive" they were ("the Force is female", etc.), yet the one black male lead boils down to:
- Finn is a bumbling minstrel with no cause or identity of his own.
- Finn could not be a defecting trooper with a plot about his reclaiming his identity. Instead, the most backstory ever presented was that he was the Old Hollywood stereotype a buffoonish black sanitation worker. He had to have a "lowly" position of no respect, as registered on the faces of anyone who learned his occupation. Mantan Moreland reborn.
- The icing on this shameful cake? Like a slave on the run, he is given his new name by Poe, and Finn just accepts it. No protest. No asserting his right to establish his own character / identity. He just accepted "Massa Poe" giving him a name. And before anyone says that was the point, not for one damn minute was a slavery allegory what the SW-PTB had for Finn's past experiences/motives for wanting to defect, as it would have been easy to lay it out--as muc as it was for TPM to do it with Anakin. But a story that would have given Finn a chance to escape the physcial/psychological bonds of hoe who captured him in childhood as that did not lend itself to his being a Black Buffoon. They used the demeaning relationship of the slave not being responsible for himself, because he was meant to be pulled along by others. Says it all. Finn sent an undeniably toxic, intended racial message heard around the world.
Again, no excuses.
The recent controversy over
Star Trek: Discovery (one of the most "socially progressive" shows/staffs on air) and their
"we know best" mistreatment of writer Walter Mosely (regarding his right to self-identify, including how slurs were used in his personal experiences) show just how intolerant the allegedly most tolerant, people on earth are not at all open to perspectives that they cannot control, and certainly do not understand. If it does not fit into their overreaching view of what kind of progressivism is "right," they strike it down and/or ignore it. This is far from isolated to ST
, or the
Star Wars sequel trilogy.
...and the circles of the nation who walk in lockstep with the entertainment business and their most hammered sociopolitical interests--and blacks are not truly among those interests.
..or black characters within the SW film franchise. In 1980, there was some idiotic resistance to Lando (ignoring how he was
forced to betray Han), but he still became an instant hero--a man who did not stand in the footprints of racial stereotypes, but was a man who ultimately asserted himself in the face of an evil (Vader) he only partially understood (like most characters until they got a taste of Vader's threats-into-action). So many black audience members accepted/loved Lando. He was every bit the hero as say, Han (fitting, as he was meant to be a mirror of sorts of Solo), and not a buffoonish fool while everyone else had their moments of heroism and expression, as plainly laid out in the ST.
How they have no idea how dismissive statements of that kind read like a word-for-word transcript of the right wingers they claim to stand above. .
Absolutely. They can deny it until doomsday, but Disney/NewLFL used the same terms and approach as their allegedly ideological opposites. A clear example of the truth coming out when they are "pushed" by those who are meant to happily accept their view of the world, shut-up and empty their bank accounts.
