Who cares if a handful of racists don't want to see 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'?
LatestJohn Boyega and Daisy Ridley are two of Star Wars: The Force Awakens lead actors. They are also a black man and a woman, respectively.
When it was first announced that Boyega and Ridley would be starring in the franchise’s seventh installment, many Star Wars fans were overjoyed to hear that one of the most influential, mainstream sci-fi epics of all time would finally make a more concerted effort to represent women and minorities in central roles.
Unfortunately, though unsurprisingly, there were also people who weren’t exactly on board with the pair being so heavily highlighted in the film’s first trailer and the new poster released today.The hashtag #BoycottStarWarsVII began to pick up in popularity today after a handful (like, less than 10) of people took to Twitter to express their displeasure.
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/656071066746384384
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/656107591995494400
SJWs complain about White artists “misappropriating” culture created by blacks but then celebrate a non-White Star Wars. #BoycottStarWarsVII
— Captain Confederacy (@2partyhoax) October 19, 2015
Almost immediately, fans of the new film clapped back at the tiny cadre of bigots with tweets of their own calling them out on their racism. In fact, if you actually click through to the #BoycottStarWarsVII, you’ll find that most of tweets with the hashtag are people responding to a “movement” that isn’t really all that much of a force to be reckoned with.
On the one hand, it’s understandable that people looking forward to The Force Awakens would want to defend the movie’s merits from weak critique of a vocal, racist minority looking to destroy its chances of success. On the other hand, who cares what they have to say?
Even if thousands of middle-aged white people refused to see the movie because of its leads, it’s not like Disney (who owns the rights to the franchise) would ever dream of changing The Force Awakens or its upcoming sequels to assuage the mob’s concerns.
Earlier this month in an interview with V Magazine, Boyega responded to some of his critics with a very simple fact that we should all bear in mind. “I’m in the movie, what are you going to do about it,” he questioned. “You either enjoy it or you don’t.”
Let that sink in for a second.
Regardless of how anyone feels about John Boyega or Daisy Ridley, The Force Awakens is coming out in a few weeks. There’s no getting rid of the actors at this point, and if Ridley’s multi-film contract and Boyega’s grueling audition process are any indication, Disney has gone all-in on the actors.
In fact, even though we all make fun of Episodes I-III, we forget that they were all wildly successful financially, so it stands to reason that this new movie is going to do just fine even if it’s not a particularly good film. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the third film in the widely reviled second trilogy, grossed more than $848 million, making it the 42nd highest-grossing film ever.
As a rule, Star Wars films are solid investments no matter who is in them. Film studios don’t axe films because their actors are women or black people, they axe them because they don’t make them money.
It should be pointed out that often minorities and women aren’t cast as leads because executives mistakenly believe that those movies won’t make money, but that’s not the issue here.
Rather than focusing on the whiny complaints of a few out-of-touch trolls, there are so many other things that deserve the attention of the Star Wars fandom. The continued success (and existence) of Lando, the comic book about Star Wars’s first black hero, is contingent upon people actually buying and reading it instead of just talking about it.
The inclusion of more LGBT characters like Sinjir Rath Velus, the openly gay, AWOL Imperial officer introduced in Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath, also need more mainstream attention to make them the new normal rather than the exception.
In the same way that the Force is an ever-present constant in a galaxy far, far away, trolls are an eternal fixture of internet culture. Rallying against them when they’re on the losing side of a battle may feel good in the short term, but the only way to ever really shut them up for good is to focus on ignore them and just keep on keeping on.
Disclosure: Fusion is partly owned by Disney’s ABC network. Disney also owns Lucasfilm and Star Wars.