In the aftermath of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, we’ve seen a clear and deliberate attempt to improve diversity in front of and also behind the camera in Hollywood. But like nearly all forms of change and progress, this movement has been met with a virulent backlash, attacking such efforts of “social justice warriors” (SJWs) as misguided, anti-white, anti-male, and also bad for the box office.
The backlash has been so intense that it has forced various actors from Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran of the latest Star Wars film to Leslie Jones of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters fame completely off social media due to vicious racial and gender-based harassment.
The worst part is that where there may be valid criticism of some of these projects on the merits, the entanglement of social justice issues clouds the validity of that criticism while also granting cover to the virulent bigotry and racial paranoia that is behind much of the backlash.
First, there’s the issue of the all-female Ghostbusters reboot. The film failed at the box office, and some argue that failure was the result of the so-called “SJW agenda” pushed by former Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal and director Paul Feig, and their battles with original director Ivan Reitman.
There was the allegation that non-disclosure agreements were used to force the cast to present the movie in only a positive light while things were going completely sideways on the set, along with a huge backlash against the idea of so-called “hyper-feminism,” or making the entire main cast female and portraying all men in the film as fools and dopes.
This resulted in a direct attack on star Leslie Jones by troll armies led by Milo Yianopoulos, who was ultimately kicked off Twitter for his vile rhetoric.
It appears that the invective directed at Jones began as part of a wave of antipathy towards the reboot of the "Ghostbusters" franchise, of which she is a star, but then metastasized into something arguably even more insidious — a sustained misogynist and racist attack on her character and physical appearance.
If some of the most prominent architects of the anti-Jones campaign are to be believed, the actress herself is to blame for calling out her haters on social media. But for advocates for victims of cyberbulling, some of whom have been subjected to cruelty online themselves, the attempts to tear down Jones reflect an all-too-common intersection of hatred directed at women who are also people of color called "misogynoir."
This following video series goes behind the Hollywood scenes to argue that the failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story and the not-exactly-glowing reception of Star Wars: The Last Jedi falls directly in the lap of Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy and her attempts to broaden the cast and scope of the Star Wars universe. It maintains that changes to the core franchise—creating a black Stormtrooper in the character Finn, portrayed by John Boyega, and the “Mary Sue” lead character of Rey, portrayed by Daisy Ridley—are somehow “attacks on the fanbase.”
[In full disclosure, I met John Boyega in 2011 during a promotional screening for his previous brilliant film Attack the Block, where he played the controversial role of a teenaged, hoodie-wearing London gang leader who in the opening scene terrorized a nurse while robbing her, but then becomes the hero fighting to save his neighborhood and the very same nurse from an alien attack. By the way, that nurse was played by Jodi Whittaker, who is now the new Doctor Who.]
Getting back to the point, this particular video series claims to be “apolitical” but goes on to claim that they will “call out” signs of a political agenda and that the “identity politics foisted onto the Star Wars brand” have put audiences off. Hmm …
Although they claim to be non-political in their views, their arguments happen to exactly match those of the Daily Caller.
Given all the money Disney spent to acquire these male consumers, it’s weird to see how intently executives want to alienate them.
“Solo: A Star Wars Story” made just $83 million over the weekend, an absolute a failure by Star Wars standards. Disney publicists will chock it up to competition from “Deadpool 2” or franchise fatigue, but they won’t admit that Social Justice Warrior (SJW) politics are to blame.
Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has been systematically injecting feminist identity politics into Star Wars to its detriment. She refuses to cater to male fans in the historically male franchise. She put a female lead character in “The Force Awakens,” “Rogue One” and “The Last Jedi.” She’s mandating more female creators. And she’s famously adopted the sexist phrase, “The Force is female.”
Piggy-backing on that last one, one shill reporter wrote that “The Last Jedi” proves the franchise’s future is female!
Except, of course, it isn’t.
“The Last Jedi” made $300 million less than “The Force Awakens,” and the previous year’s “Rogue One” made $100 million less than that. A Star Wars movie almost always finishes no. 1 at the yearly box office, but with “Black Panther,” “Avengers” and “Jurassic World,” “Solo” won’t even medal this year. (And the franchise has utterly failed in China, a country with zero patience for SJW politics.)
[Just for the record Solo: A Star Wars Story’s Rotten Tomatoes Score is 76 percent for critics and 64 percent for the audience, whereas Rogue One, which also had a fairly diverse cast, scored 85 percent and 87 percent.]
This has even become a fairly heavy debate among the sci-fi world, as the alt-right attacks these newer projects.
Members of the alt-right's anger over The Last Jedi has been stoked by the leading voices of the reactionary nationalist movement. Rants about the movie from InfoWars broadcaster Alex Jones (who called it "a social justice warrior mess" and a "giant social engineering experiment") and white nationalist Stefan Molyneux have racked up hundreds of thousands of views and gone viral on Twitter. And though they represent extremist voices, their objections filter up to somewhat more mainstream outlets, purveyors of conservative opinion.
Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro lamented director Rian Johnson's focus on a casino subplot with Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), calling them "useless characters." He also called the subplot, which takes the characters through a Monte Carlo-style world of excess, "social justice warrior crap about income inequality and animal rights."
[...]
"If you made the entire movie white and male, like the late seventies Star Wars, I think 90 percent of the critical analysis from guys on Twitter without avatars just ceases to be a thing," says Jason Ward, editor of the site MakingStarWars.net and its sprawling podcast network.
We also have seen a similar sexist and racist backlash among some Star Trek: Discovery fans (which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86 percent from critics, 56 percent from fans), and although there are other complaints about maintaining the continuity with Star Trek: TOS, the reality is that contractual and copyright issues between Paramount and CBS essentially require that any new programs are rebranded and stylistically different from the older Star Trek merchandise. Essentially, since the 2009 J.J. Abrams-directed reboot film Star Trek, things are now permanently different and due to contractual requirements, they will remain that way. However, that hasn’t stopped the anti-SJW forces—or Antisocial Injustice Wimps, (AIW) if you prefer—from expressing their displeasure and taking it out quite personally on the cast and crew of the show.
“My racist ass is not gonna watch that Liberal agenda bullshit Star Trek:Discovery.”
And as bad as that guy is — this dude Dave Cullen takes the absolute cake.
Cullen is someone who argues that including the black female background character of Uhura in the original Star Trek series during the ‘60s was important because of the racial strife of the time. But by the time that a Star Trek show finally had its first black male lead in Commander Benjamin Sisko, portrayed by Avery Brooks on Deep Space Nine, he didn’t care so much—even though the year that DS9 debuted on the UPN network in 1993 was one year after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles and only two years before the O.J. Simpson trial polarized the nation.
So race was supposedly not a problem then? Like Hell.
The idea that it really didn’t matter that Avery Brooks was the lead on a Star Trek show is flat-out bullshit. It did matter, and Brooks himself knew it.
This model may have continued through DS9 had they hired any other actor to portray Captain Sisko. However, Brooks — a Shakespearean trained actor, graduate of Oberlin College, and the first African-American to earn an MFA in acting and directing from Rutgers University, where he was also a professor — brought much of himself to the role, and that included an emphasis in the importance of the African-American experience. Even nearly three hundred years in the future. Whether Star Trek fans were ready for it or not, DS9 brought he topic of race closer to home.
While I suspect that direct tone is one of the reasons DS9 isn’t as popular as its’ predecessors — along with the heavy emphasis on backroom politics instead of “seeking out bold new worlds” — If you didn’t like TNG chances are you’re going to love a show that goes out of its way in the first episode to distinguish Sisko from Captain Jean-Luc Picard. In the premiere we learn Picard (while under control of the alien species The Borg) has killed Sisko’s wife.
[...]
Cullen doesn’t object to the identity politics of Uhura as long as she’s a background character, and he doesn’t object to Sisko as long as the identity politics issues he presents are so subtle he doesn’t even notice or recognize them. But when it becomes as obvious and blatant as Star Trek: Discovery, which features a black female lead, an Asian female captain, and a gay couple among the crew, that’s just too in-your-face for him.
All the things he complains about in the first two episodes ultimately pay off in the end of the season, particularly the obvious mistakes that the characters make as they go through gradual changes and understanding about themselves, their roles in relation to each other, and their duty as Star Fleet officers. The ending doesn’t work without those first two episodes.
Another major complaint from many was the Klingon redesign we see in Discovery. Most of the haters go on and on about it, and then they start up again and whine about it some more. But here’s the thing: that wasn't really a new redesign. The fact is that the Klingons we see in Discovery are essentially the same Klingons we last saw five years ago in J.J. Abrams’ sequel Star Trek: Into Darkness from 2013, as shown below.
We can’t have the old Klingons anymore because their image is owned by Paramount, and we can’t have the old costumes or the old look of the Enterprise bridge for the same reason. CBS isn’t contractually licensed for those images because Paramount is still making money selling the old-styled merchandise. CBS has to build its own merchandise brand, and that requires redesigns of the old look. This is how things are going to be going forward, Kelvin timeline or not. It’s this or not Star Trek, period.
The whining about having to read subtitles as Klingons speak in Klingon is also bullshit. That was also the deal in Star Trek: Into Darkness. They didn't have them magically speaking English for no reason. Many people watch Netflix shows like Narcos, and almost the entire show is in Spanish with subtitles. Almost nobody ever complains about a foreign language show being translated with subtitles and demands that it be dubbed into English, because we all know how that goes in real life, where the dialogue no longer matches up with the mouth movement. So stop it, alright?
Cullen then goes on to attack Hollywood as being anti-Trump, pro-progressive, and “out of touch” with everyday Americans, some of which is true and some of which isn’t. Hardly anyone in Hollywood is actually from Hollywood. They are nearly all from “flyover country,” and they certainly do understand that part of the country because they grew up there. The reason they left is that that part of the country doesn’t understand or tolerate them and never has. Other than second- or third- generation stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, most stars who get railed at for being SJWs like George Clooney (who was born in Lexington, Kentucky) didn’t start out in Hollywood. Neither did Martin Sheen (Dayton, Ohio), Meryl Streep (Summit, New Jersey), Barbara Streisand (Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York), Debra Messing (Brooklyn, New York) or Ellen Degeneres (Metairie, Louisiana).
So he claims that because these shows have a deliberate goal of having racial diversity, this is somehow “anti-white” or “anti-men.” He also equates Black Lives Matter with white nationalists and calls NFL players taking a knee against racial police violence “bullshit.”
These guys are so normalized into white-male dominance they just can’t handle it if there isn’t at least one major white male character somewhere in the cast, just to make them feel good about themselves?
Now Cullen knows how the rest of us have felt for a century waiting to get just a glimpse, just a hint of someone who might be even slightly like ourselves and isn’t a maid, or a butler, or some kind of disgusting lowlife bad guy that the white and pure heroes have to chase down and vanquish. Now he knows what it’s like to be treated like an irrelevant minority and geez, is he pissed off.
For the record, season two of Discovery starts off with a new white guy in command, Captain Christopher Pike, as portrayed by Anson Mount. I will allow it.
Even with all this, I can say that the cast of Discovery has taken this really really well and responded quite directly to these criticisms during the panel at this year's San Diego Comic Con.
Question from Indira: I just want to say I real love Doug [Jones who plays First Officer Commander Saru] and Sonequa [Martin-Green who plays Commander Michael Burnam], their characters have like really helped me a lot to be stronger and you guys are some of my favorite actors. My question is : I’ve noticed that every time there’s a new Star Trek series is released there’s a lot of backlash because, I guess, people don’t like change…
[Crowd laughs]
So my question is have you overcome the negativity from others that ilke to judge your acting and ideas presented in the show?
[Applause]
Host: Who the hell is judging all of these actors?
Doug Jones [Saru]: Get on twitter.
Host: Then I’d have to see what they’re saying about me.
Sonequa [Burnam] : Thank you for being you and saying that and for your question. I mean think it’s just because of how profound it is, just what we’re doing. I know that I speak for all of us and definitely for myself, we consider it to be a gift and we take it — we just hope that it changes us as we share it. And we hope that we then give gifts as we’re giving the gift. Right? it’s like the cycle of gift giving. When you’re focused on that, and your focused on the story at hand and you’re focused on the amazing people you get to work with, and when you’re focused on how it’s changing you as an artist, as an actor, as a story teller, and how it’s changing you and hopefully the people that are seeing it. When you give those gifts to your family, we give them to each other, that’s what I do — give it to my son, my husband. When you think about that… It don’t matter.
[Laughter.. applause]
The negativity just kinda become very tiny, it just, it dissipates.
Doug: It’s also quite possible to untag people from twitter arguments. if you guys want to do that, please.
Mary Chieffo [Klingon Captain L’Rell]: I will also say the SciFi is our modern mythology, and mythology and the allegorical stories and they’va always challenged us, they’ve always been there to make us reflect on who we are and what we’re doing and sometimes it takes people a second to evaluate their challenge. “Why am I having such a adverse reaction to that? Why am I rejecting that?” And it turns out that it has do with some demon that you haven’t worked out within yourself, so my hope and my prayers is that the people who are having the most extreme reaction are eventually able to digest what they’re dealing with in the process and bring some more positivity into the world.
That’s a lovely sentiment, but I’m not holding my breath when it comes to someone like Cullen or Alex Jones. Some of these guys are too far gone.
Still, the person who’s so far responded best to this may be Kelly Marie Tran. The Asian actor had her first movie role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi turn sour as she was relentlessly pummeled online with racist slurs and attacks so vicious that she retreated completely from social media and deleted her Instagram account.
It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them.
Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories.
And those words awakened something deep inside me — a feeling I thought I had grown out of. The same feeling I had when at 9, I stopped speaking Vietnamese altogether because I was tired of hearing other kids mock me. Or at 17, when at dinner with my white boyfriend and his family, I ordered a meal in perfect English, to the surprise of the waitress, who exclaimed, “Wow, it’s so cute that you have an exchange student!”
Their words reinforced a narrative I had heard my whole life: that I was “other,” that I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t good enough, simply because I wasn’t like them. And that feeling, I realize now, was, and is, shame, a shame for the things that made me different, a shame for the culture from which I came from. And to me, the most disappointing thing was that I felt it at all.
This is exactly why people fight for social justice. It’s not as simple as a battle to put down white men: it’s an internal fight to change the normalization of white male dominance and supremacy, to recognize that those of us who don’t look like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck still have value.
Life is difficult for nearly all of us, but it becomes infinitely more difficult when you’ve been systematically taught by media—including Hollywood—to hate yourself. To think of yourself as not beautiful, not desirable, not strong, and not heroic.
White men don’t have to be denigrated and placed into second-class status for this to happen. We don’t have to tear anyone else down to repair or rebuild ourselves. But If they happen to feel like they’re being stepped over and pushed into the background because they may no longer be dominant when others of equal or even greater talent are now having a chance at center stage—that’s just too damn bad. Welcome to the party pal, now you have to compete on your own merits with everyone, not just the other white guys. Good luck with that.
John Boyega, Oscar Isaacs, Kelly Marie Tran, and Sonequa Martin-Green wouldn’t have been considered for major leading roles unless someone made an issue of it and pushed specifically for that to happen. It wouldn’t have occurred without producers and directors like Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, Brian Fuller, and Akiva Goldman working behind the scenes to make it happen. If not for this effort, Boyega would likely still be playing gang members and Jodi Whittaker would still be playing frightened nurses, even if they both clearly have plenty of talent to go much farther.
This point was made abundantly clear 31 years ago in 1987, by Robert Townsend’s movie Hollywood Shuffle.
If you’re still nostalgic for the old days where the only kick-ass characters were white dudes, there’s still plenty of Jason Bourne, John Wick, Tom Cruise in Mission:Impossible, Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder, Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow, or Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai, plus more than 100 John Wayne movies, 119 Bruce Willis projects, over 70 Clint Eastwood movies, 69 Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, 61 Jean Claude Van Damme movies, and 60 Mel Gibson movies to get your white-boy rocks off. Then there are reruns of Kung Fu with David Carradine (a show which was originally slated to star Bruce Lee, but he was considered too freaking Asian to play a leading Asian character on network TV). Or perhaps you could watch Chuck Connors in red-skin makeup portraying Geronimo.
It was not a small thing when Kevin Costner went out of his way to hire actual members of the Oglala Sioux tribe to play Native Americans in his film Dances With Wolves. He actually fired them at one point because they didn’t know they own native language anymore and decades of being “Americanized.”
Whether it’s in the future with Star Trek, or in a galaxy far, far away in Star Wars or in our own American past as with Dances with Wolves, the attempt to present a full and accurate representation of the real diversity of our world is not minor little “agenda item.” We see ourselves reflected back through our media, both factual and fictional.
When those reflections are distorted either by white male privilege or resentment, it leaves a mark on our society and on our soul. Sorry to say, even today in 2018 white male dominance is our standard and neutral starting position. It takes an effort to shift beyond that. It requires taking risks, taking a chance, and potentially facing a backlash and or abject financial failure.
Costner took a risk with Dances With Wolves and was rewarded with a Best Picture Oscar in 1991.
Last year Hollywood took a risk with the majority non-white cast of Black Panther, and was greatly rewarded at the box office. This year saw the first majority Asian cast in a major Hollywood movie since the Joy Luck Club 25 years ago with Crazy Rich Asians, which topped the box office last weekend with $24.9 million in ticket sales.
The latter film also stars Michele Yeoh of Star Trek: Discovery in her first big Hollywood film hit since Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon 18 years ago. If there’s no audience for these films, why exactly did these do so well?
Some of these projects will work, some of them won’t, but waiting another two decades for another major Asian movie project is unacceptable. Times change, and movies and TV are also going to change. New voices will be heard while some old voices may be muted, although they will never completely fade away. Case in point: there is yet another new Jack Ryan TV series out now on Amazon, because white guy CIA analysts never stick out at all in the middle of Yemen, do they?
Either way, we’ve come a long way since the original Star Trek in 1968 and Hollywood Shuffle in 1987. We’re not exactly there yet, but we certainly aren’t going back to the way things were before. The box office has responded well to non-white male-dominated movies, and it will again if they’re done well enough, regardless of so-called “SJW” agendas.
Yes, there will continue to be a racist, sexist backlash against change and progress, but those voices—as ridiculous as they are—are losing their influence and power. And that’s what scares them the most.