The Last Jedi came out in December 2017 and almost overnight there were predominately two schools of thought:
1.
Crybaby fanboy losers (mostly ⚪️) were Big Mad that women and people of color were in THEIR Star War and therefore the film sucked and was the worst Star War EVAR.
2.
It was groundbreaking and subversive and unprecedentedly brilliant in every way. Flawless. A masterpiece. THE BEST Star War. Nothing will ever surpass it. Permanently at the top of the Star War rankings for all time.
The discourse around TLJ rapidly became less about the movie itself and more about what side you were on politically and socially according to how you felt about it.
• Racist and misogynistic assholes accused anyone who liked the film of liking it only because it was woke.
• Performative progressives accused anyone who hated it of hating it only because obviously they were racists and misogynists.
This was happening less than one full year into Trump’s presidency, so tensions were already running extremely high and nobody was happy, not even the people who voted for him.
“I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
—Crystal Minton, Trump Voter, 1/7/19, article in the New York Times
There was little to no room in the conversation for people who had zero problems whatsoever with their Star War characters being something other than cishet ⚪️ men, but who disliked the film for a litany of other arguably valid reasons.
(Quick aside — of course there’s an endless variety of genders and ethnicities in Star Wars — we are talking about entire galaxies here — but for boring ass cishet ⚪️ men, the universe being dominated by their mediocre ilk is their ultimate wet dream)
If you said you didn’t like it, people who were quick to demonstrate their liberal cred jumped all over you and no matter your explanation, you weren’t intellectual enough to “get it” at best and you were a racist and a misogynist at worst.
The opposite even happened to people who liked the film for reasons entirely unrelated to its inclusion of women and people of color — the asshole fanboys couldn’t conceive of someone simply enjoying a Star War for it being a Star War.
No, obviously you’re just doing what the woke media is telling you to do!
It was ridiculous and painfully stupid.
And of course, in the end, it really wasn’t about Star Wars at all. Not one bit.
Everyone felt completely powerless to do anything about the constant insanity happening all around them at breakneck speed, so the film became a super lame litmus test for which side you were on.
Arguments about who Star Wars rightfully “belonged to” may as welll have been arguments about who America rightfully belonged to, and who did or didn’t belong *in* America.
In the end, the Last Jedi was just another piece of brilliantly marketed entertainment tossed to us by one of the richest, largest, most powerful companies in the world, like a piece of raw meat tossed to two dogs chained up in the yard.
For just a little while we were enthusiastically going to bat for or against a film that did what it was ultimately supposed to do despite however we felt about it politically and culturally: It made a lot of people involved with it a lot of money.
And, regardless of how the lovers or the haters did or didn’t make those people feel about their part in it, at the end of the day, they still all got to go home to their mansions and millions and relax and enjoy luxuries most of us can only dream of.
—emily duchaine
Flommist Emily Duchaine lives in the Pacific Northwest. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and listen to the Talking Heads. She pretends to be a professional businesswoman most days. Copyright © 2024 Emily Duchaine. Image sources: The bloody internet.
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