Erasure
Imagine you had a book series that was ostensibly about combating fascism. Now, imagine that this series became universally popular. Popular in almost every demographic. Picture that the author introduced a character to that series that a certain fascistic element of his fan base hated, and they petitioned, whined, and threatened until the author decided to remove the character from subsequent entries in the series.
Remember, this book is about fighting fascists.
A few years ago, maybe more than a few now, Illumination Entertainment produced a film called The Lorax based on the Dr. Suess book of the same name. The book has a strong pro-environmental message and is anti-capitalist. The movie is similar and has songs such as “How Bad Can I Be” with lyrics such as “How ba-a-a-ad can I be? I'm just building the economy.” This movie was also used as a vehicle to sell everything from Burger King to SUVs. In such cases, it is a little hard to take the core message of the movie seriously when it is part of a large machine itself selling the very thing the movie is critical of.
I don’t know if there is a word for when the real world context of a piece of art undercuts the art. Meta-demolotio, de-apriorize, or self-castration or some shit like that.
I’m not talking about creators behaving badly here. This isn’t a discussion on whether or not Polański’s Macbeth is still enjoyable despite the director being a child rapist. What I’m thinking of is works of art that are sabotaged by their creators by directly thumbing their nose at a central message they're trying to send.
So, the book series I’m talking about is not a book series but the Star Wars series of films, and specifically the final two films in the new trilogy, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I doubt anybody doesn’t know what Star Wars is, but in case they don’t, I’ll run down the conflict. The story of the original trilogy is two tier. There is an evil Galactic Empire that is highly reminiscent of Nazi Germany in terms of aesthetic, and there is a high ranking servant in this Empire who once, we are told, was a good man, but fell to the rise of this Empire and now serves it. The story follows heroes fighting against both the Empire and the man and the man’s ultimate redemption is contrasted with the defeat of the Empire.
The new trilogy is about a group of extremists, more clearly coded as fascists than the first trilogy, who idolize the old Empire and wish to destroy the fledgling republic that has come about since the heroes' victory in the original series. The heroes are the usual plucky band opposed to these neo-fascists.
Now, the Star Wars fan base has always been contentious, and frankly toxic. The child actor Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best received horrible treatment for their portrayals of their respective characters with Best even saying in interviews that he contemplated suicide over it.
In the modern political climate this aggression has become even more virulent. Even before the new films came out, a certain subset of Star Wars fans had expressed disgust at the lead being a woman. They also had problems with the films having a black stormtrooper as well as man of Latinx origin having a starring role. This pales to what happened next.
The Last Jedi is a deeply flawed film in a lot of ways, however its quality is not what I’m concerned with since events external to the fiction are only tangentially related to the fiction. I relate the fiction for context. That film by necessity of plot split up the main characters and because the Finn character would be by himself, a foil to his worst tendencies was created. The character could be both a romantic interest as well as a catalyst for his character arc. Not the best reason to have a character. I’m deeply skeptical of female characters whose purpose revolves narratively around a man. But for having such a role, she seemed to be a fine character none-the-less.
Many people disagreed. The vitriol directed at the actress online led to her removing herself from having an online presence. Most of this was extremely racist from a small group of fans who are either fascists or so close to being fascists that there isn’t any meaningful difference.
The result of all of this is that the character of this woman was almost completely cut from the following film The Rise of Skywalker. The directors has since said this change came at the editing level while the film was being cut. I don’t believe this, to put it mildly. The scenes she does appear in are blink and you miss her affairs, hardly the treatment you’d expect from having a few scenes cut.
Either way she’s been removed.
This film series is about fighting fascists. Right? Or have I got that wrong? Is there nothing more here than space-shooty-boom-boom? If there is more to it, if Star Wars is about something deeper, then the last thing it should do is kowtow to the very group that its heroes are fighting. When you have a racist yelling things at a minority online, what really is the difference between that and the evil general yelling fascistic things throughout the movie?
The most charitable explanation I can give is that the director of the films, JJ Abrams is a very safe film maker. That is, he never takes risks with his films, so that they’re all good, but never excellent. Star Wars is owned by Disney, which, as a corporate entity, also doesn’t like to take risks. The Last Jedi was criticized on almost every creative decision that it made and a lot of the The Rise of Skywalker is dedicated to undoing the more controversial ones. Which would be fine except for one detail: this film series is about fighting fascists.
If you even appear to give into fascists, they will take that as a win and will become emboldened. So, this film-- that’s about fighting fascists-- has helped fascists. I know from watching Abrams’s Star Trek that he often misses the deeper philosophical underpinnings of franchises that he is picked to helm, and it is entirely possible that he missed this salient point that permeates all of Star Wars, just like the internet hit squads seem to have missed that they’re the bad guys these films’ heroes are always taking pot-shots at, so I’ll spell it out again; these films are about fighting fascists. That they come in bright, neon space wrapping is incidental. The Empire is bad, the First Order is bad, and people who harass women online are bad, and they are bad for the same reason-- they are the same people.
I know the people who made these three films are simply taking what they’ve been handed and trying to make a buck. It’s at the expense of story and plot and morals, but ultimately the dollar is the only thing that matters. And Star Wars will always make money no matter how compromised it is.
Depressed dogs and mentally ill cats. Vomit puke, puke vomit, blaaaarararraggg.
1. There’s some oddities about how these fascists are portrayed in that while they spout fascist rhetoric they do weird things like have women commanders, and people of color in their armed forces, though no alien characters which leads me to conclude that in the Star Wars universe, humans view themselves as largely homogeneous while still holding on to the cliquish tribalism that has plagued every step we’ve taken from the Cradle to Outer-Space.
2. I’ve even seen one reviewer complaining that it is impossible to critique The Last Jedi-- because of the very vocal and racist criticism from certain, ah, “Nazis”-- makes it seem like anyone criticizing the film is a Nazi.