Ladies, gentlemen, and people of any and all non-binary genders, I have come to you today to talk about the gravest and most heart wrenching issue facing our generation today. It is a problem that cuts across cultural borders, over our world’s vast oceans, and impacts everyone from the high rises of Manhattan to the palaces of Tibet. It is an issue that, if not dealt with immediately and with utmost urgency, threatens to tear the very fabric of our global society in two.
Is it climate change? No. Income inequality? Far from it! The systematic discrimination and killing of unarmed black men? Well… actually the opposite. I have come to talk to you today about the harrowing racism white people face every day, as personified by the upcoming movie Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.
You see, Disney, that evil, insidious corporation that just so recently made an appalling move by celebrating gender nonconformity and allowing little boys and girls to dress in whatever Halloween costume they want, has decided to use this despicable film as a thin veneer for their agenda to completely discredit and destroy the white race. How did they do this, you might ask? Did they use this sci-fi fantasy blockbuster as a means of promoting anti-white hate groups, like some kind of Bizarro World version of Birth of a Nation? No. Disney decided to cast (gasp!) British and noticeably black actor John Boyega in one of the central roles! Black! As in, not white! J‘accuse!
This intolerant and barbaric casting decision has not gone unnoticed. A few brave heroes have came out of the most wretched hive of scum and villainy (and by that I mean Twitter) to publicly denounce this savage film and plan a boycott of Star Wars VII. They have decided that by casting Boyega, director J.J. Abrams is pushing a sinister “multicultural agenda” by implying that a fictional universe full of sentient robots and alien teddy bears could maybe, possibly, have a couple people of color in it.
Never mind that every previous Star Wars film has cast black actors in lead roles, from James Earl Jones to Billy Dee Williams to SAMUEL MOTHAFUCKIN’ JACKSON. Or that most of the cast, from newcomers Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley to returning cast members Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, are all white. This is, apparently, the last straw.
These courageous, outspoken, and totally not racist moviegoers are not merely upset that Disney has cast a black actor in a movie (whose character we know literally nothing about yet, and whose race may not even be relevant to the overall story). No, they righteously believe that “Jewish director J.J. Abrams is an anti-white nut” (even though he himself is white), which is totally legitimate and doesn’t at all reek of anti-Semitism. They also feel that this multi-million dollar blockbuster is promoting “cultural Marxism”. They fail to explain what the hell that even means, but I did watch a History Channel documentary on the Soviet Union once, so I guess that means that J.J. Abrams is going to try and lead a coup against the United States government and put Lenin’s mummified corpse in power. Scary!
But using racist rhetoric and comparing a movie about spaceships and lightsabers to the most controversial political movement of the modern era is not enough to convey the sinister motives of Star Wars VII. No, a handful of true believers even will go so far to say that this movie is “propaganda” to promote “genocide”. Because as we all know, this:
Is really the same thing as this:
For some reason.
Now, a couple of you may object to the way these valiant internet protesters (who have a totally legitimate cause and are not just a bunch of racist adult children using the same sense of entitlement that leads to the epidemic of mass shootings among other things) are conducting themselves. You may say that casting a person of color in a major movie is ultimately harmless. Or that it may, in fact, be beneficial for the many black actors looking for work, or for the countless black moviegoers (many of them children) who can finally see an action hero that actually looks like them on screen. You may note that the people complaining about the new Star Wars are the same people that threw a hissy fit when they found out that the new Captain America would be a black guy, or that a character in the Thor movies would be played by a black actor, or that one character in one of the many, many Star Wars novels out there would be *gasp!* a gay person. And you may even insinuate that these people making Internet headlines would probably have said, if they lived in another time, that women shouldn’t get the right to vote or that black people shouldn’t get to eat at the same restaurants or use the same bathrooms as white people.
But you would be wrong! Because despite everything you may have been led to believe, though a combination of facts and real life experience, it is white people who are the disenfranchised minority when it comes to representation in film. Never mind that over three quarters of all speaking roles in Hollywood go to white actors. Never mind that directors frequently cast white actors in roles meant for people of color, even when the resulting portrayals make no sense. Never mind that white people (and especially white, straight, cis men) have never had a problem finding people in film and all other sorts of media that can represent them, while the representation of women, people of color, and the LGBT+ community has been rare to practically nonexistent throughout our history. No, we white people are truly the disadvantaged ones. Maybe some day we will get to have a movie where every single actor is white and we don’t have to worry about racists on the internet complaining about its casting. But that day is not today.
Boycott Star Wars Episode VII!
marissatheterrible 