*whispers* this post isn’t really about a star war

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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