It’s interesting, how certain factions always see something nefarious in any SW flick, rather than seeing the reality: same old movie, done a zillion times.
Stefan Molyneux, a video blogger popular among the far-right, told viewers this weekend that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” contains a commentary about the persecution of white men and the failure of diversity.
In a video uploaded on Sunday, Molyneux claimed that the newest Star Wars film contains a hidden commentary about the plight of white men as Western countries diversify.
[…]
“Some of you are going to respond and say, ‘Are you sure that’s what the writers intended?’ and the only people who say that are people who aren’t themselves creative writers,” Molyneux said, going on to claim he wrote a short story when he was six and a novel when he was 11 years old. He began his explanation by comparing Luke Skywalker to white men he believes have been marginalized.
And I’m sure your family patted you on the head when you were six and eleven, and reassured you of your spectacular genius. That does not make you a creative writer. It doesn’t make you a writer of any kind. It does make you come across as something of an idiot.
He began his explanation by comparing Luke Skywalker to white men he believes have been marginalized.
“So Luke Skywalker has checked out of society—ha, isn’t that interesting? He’s a white male who’s checked out of society. And we see this all over the place with white males, right? I mean, they’re not happy. Neither is Luke Skywalker happy. He’s got this bitter, gristled, half-homeless kind of determination to survive another day but for no particular purpose other than to watch the slow extinguishing of his own possibilities and his own life,” Molyneux said. He went on to explain that he believed Luke Skywalker’s lack of children was reflective of “the demographic decline among the whites that is happening in Europe and in North America” and foretold a “quasi-extinction” of white people “in the not so distant future.”
A lot of people aren’t terribly happy. That goes across all societal lines. Again with the babies. Why in the hell is always about the [white] babies? Since the SW movies are always populated with mass amounts of people, it’s fair to assume someone is breeding.
Molyneux explained that when Luke Skywalker abandons the Jedi forces in the film, it reflects how white people have abandoned their culture.
“Whites are not allowed to have a history to be proud of, not allowed to have in-group preferences, the religion of the West must be burned—and this, of course, you see the tree and the Jedi texts get burned down and it’s the end of a lineage. It’s the end of a history. It is the end of culture,” Molyneux said.
Oh gods, not again. What culture? Please, point me to explicitly white culture. If you’re talking about confederate flags and remembering slavery fondly, then yes, that shit has to go. We had the war, it’s over. People at large figured out that yes, people who are not white are people. That’s a good thing. Ustates is now, and has been, a great dumping ground for all manner of peoples from all over the world. There’s no ‘white culture’ here. If you’re all that bent on pursuing it, head back to England. Or wherever it is you think your ‘white’ heritage lies.
The trouble is with white people, in particular, men, always being taught and told how amazingly special they are, why they are entitled to all things ever. You are so damn desperate to believe that, that you do seriously stupid shit like point out the short story you wrote when you were six years old. Outside of your particular heritage, which I’m sure has some sort of culture attached, you get American culture, which is just a fucking mess of pottage from numerous sources.
When Luke Skywalker appears in a battle scene and is targeted by opposing forces, it illustrates “the hatred directed at white males,” Molyneux said.
Okay, I haven’t seen the movie, because I don’t much care for the whole franchise, but this is plain old bullshit. I imagine any such scene was to highlight that “Hey, Skywalker, still a hero!” or somesuch.
He explained: “There’s a lot of frustration out in the world. This is why I talk about race and IQ, is that I want people to get along. I want people to understand and to have peace with the way that the world and its cultures are, because there’s this incredible frustration out there in the world that other cultures are just not able to reproduce the former successes of white male culture.”
Goodness, do you ever have that one backwards. There’s a lot of frustration on the part of white men who have never accomplished a fucking thing, but wanting everyone in the world to acknowledged that white dudes are the smartest, bestest ever at everything. Get the fuck over yourselves.
He continued to explain that the more diverse cast in the new Star Wars film was a reflection on the diversification of the Western world.
Molyneux said, “This increased diversity means decreased success. In fact, it’s just one disaster after another for the Rebels and I’m not really sure if diversity is such a strength. Why, now that the Star Wars universe is more diverse, do the Rebels keep losing? Well, because there’s kind of a truth in that.”
Yes, there’s a truth there, cupcake. It’s “we want to keep milking this cash cow until the next century at least.” Amazing you can’t figure that one out, what with you being a creative genius and all. The plot is ancient, and SW is a recycling plant: underdogs vs big evil powers.
Via RWW.
If you want a good laugh, watch his video about Frozen.
Oh gods, no thank you. Reading this summary was bad enough. I can’t imagine a life of such inner poverty that you can’t even manage to enjoy a lightweight, popcorn flick.
The funniest thing of all for me? Let me just put in the obligatory spoiler warning…
***SPOILER WARNING***
The Last Jedi is very clearly setting up at least the potential of a redemption arc for the Kylo Ren charcater. So the father murdering, village burning, galaxy oppressing wannabe tyrant gets a shot at redemption in the form of Daisy Ridley’s Rey despite all he has done (and continues to do, at least for now)? The movie goes out of its way to explain why he is the way he is, and even goes so far as to explain what the specific moment of crisis was that pushed him over the edge into changing from Ben Solo into Kylo Ren -- it was when Luke, tormented by precognitive visions of what Ben might do in the future, experienced a moment of weakness and stood over a sleeping Ben with ignited light sabre in hand, considering killing him as the lesser of two evils. Ben woke up, drew the obvious conclusions, and didn’t take betrayal by his uncle well. It was the rash action of Luke that made Kylo Ren the way he is in no small measure, with the rest accounted for by the warping influence of Snoke. His character is cast probably more as victim than villain, and even when he is unambiguously villainous we are endlessly reminded about how conflicted and tormented he is about his villainy, both in the Last Jedi and the Force Awakens.
That seems like a whole lot of understanding and second (and third, and forth) chance-age afforded to a very white and male villain. Isn’t it odd how the ‘creative genius’ Molyneux seems to miss all that…?
I’m afraid Mr. Molyneux’s ‘creative’ genius deserted him long, long ago.
And, y’know, if old Luke had been an uncle who just hugged Ben and said ‘love you’ (or just chopped his head off), there wouldn’t be a movie, would there? I don’t know why these idiots think they have a point with things like “the rebels keep losing!” Yeah, because if they win, no more movies.
Now, to someone sufficiently creative, a win wouldn’t necessarily be the end, they could cook up brand new plots with the winner rebels at the helm, finding out how effin’ hard it is to run an empire and all that. That would mean no more recycling plots though, so that’s out.
The nitwits are like four year olds who want to be read the same bedtime story over and over and over without a single change.
Yep. And you know, if they want that, they can have that. I haven’t seen squads of enforcers going about forcing people to watch the movie.
Well Star Wars is problematic for a lot of them. They are quite happy to accept characters such as Jabba, Ewoks, Yoda and even Jar Jar Binks FFS, but Lando Calrissian? Blacks in space? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo space must be totes white y’all. Unless the black dude is evil, then it’s OK and we’re down with it.
I know I was brought up short with a black actor in an SW movie, but that wasn’t about him “stealing a role from a WASP”, it was about the “OOOh” here’s something different moment. It was unexpected and surprising. It was what movies should be about, entertainment and education.
I had the same OOOhhh moment when Mos Def was cast as Ford Prefect in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” movie. Sadly, Mos Def isn’t half the actor that Billy Dee Williams is.
Sorry, I am harking back to a time when SW movies were good entertainment, I haven’t watched anything since Ep 1.
I don’t know from ep this to ep that. I saw the first SW flick at the theaters. That’s it.
While true, I also think Mos Def was deliberately playing Ford Prefect as slightly into the uncanny valley of being not quite human, which quite honestly Ford should be. (As another example, the BBC-TV series gave the actor playing Ford purple contacts so his eye colour would be wrong.) It’s hard to judge an acting job when the part being played is supposed to be a bit ‘off’.
So that’s what it looks like when a not very smart person tries to over-intellectualize? Hm. Not that I wondered…
I really don’t care about star wars. It was a standard formulation of the hero with 1000 faces story that I’ve heard countless times, with spaceships and aliens. This Stefan dude is truly a sad specimen of entitled mediocre white dude. I thought he looked familiar, and then remembered that I have personally tangled with him on FB during GG. He did not like having his bullshit debunked but I ended up having to block him and several other MRA’s from MGTOW, and report him for harassment after he took issue with being publically humiliated by a woman. In fact, I think i will pop over to FB and report every one of their hate pages just on principal. Perhaps a few years have opend FB managment team to the idea that they should stop enabling the dudebro faction.
Caine @ 5;
This does seem a tad more credible as an explanation than a conspiracy theory about it all being an allegory for the oppression of teh poor white menz, but then Molyneux wouldn’t have an excuse to get all exercised about his imagined persecution, and then what would he do with his time?
There is no way any writing team in the history of Star Wars would ever be so bold, but that is actually a heck of a good idea. So, the Evil Empire is defeated and everyone celebrates, but now what? What fills the sudden galaxy wide power vacuum? Who takes power? Who loses out? Who wants to maintain a united galactic civilisation, and who favours isolationism? What lurks below the surface of a Rebellion only unified by its shared hatred of the Empire, and what happens when that compressive force is removed? What about those people caught in the crossfire and killed by Rebel action during the rebellion? Who do they place blame upon and seek justice from? What about those who still favour what they see as the security of the Empire to the chaos of the new order? What happens to the many thousands of former Imperial personnel who would still be around after the Empire’s leadership falls? How would people react to the attempted establishment of a new Jedi order, given the incompetence and conceit of the old one?
A few of these avenues were explored in the old Expanded Universe novels, but far from all of them and far from comprehensively, and it has all now been retconned anyway. A more adventurous writing team could actually strive to allow Star Wars to achieve something that all the best sci fi aims for -- some kind of contemporary social relevance beyond selling plastic light sabres and cuddly toy Wookies.
As well as the petition to strike TLJ from Star Wars “canon” mentioned by PZ Myers here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/12/20/snowflakes-snowflakes-everywhere/
it seems the
alt-riechNeo fucking Nazis have been using dirty tricks like bots to shift fan-ratings on sites to attack The Last Jedi too :http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-wars-last-jedi-rotten-tomatoes-score-bots
So, the idea that fan ratings are probably legit -whatever little value that had -- is becoming another casualty in the Neo-Nazis war on reality.
FWIW I watched that movie last week,there were things -- scenes and aspects -- I liked about it and other things & aspects, I really didn’t. Visually awesome of course, plot is, well, I don’t want to give anything away but darker, more complex and with some key holes, unanswered questions that really stick out and things that don’t add up for me anyhow. Shades of the Battlestar Galactica TV series. I mostly like what they’ve done with the new characters & hate what they’ve had happen to the old cast given how ROTJ (Ep. VI) ended. I thought it was better than ‘The Force Awakens’ and it passes my “would I go see it again” test because I would.
FWIW I also don’t have any problem with the Luke milks an alien sea cow scene because it answers the very minor where does blue milk come from mystery present since the breakfast on Tatooine sequence in the first ( or IVth) Star Wars movie; helps explain how Luke is surviving and living and given he started off as a farming kid why not have Luke get his own food and drink? Also, wonder how these supposedly self-proclaimed tough and independent types feel about , y’know, earth cows and knowing where milk comes from!
FWIW the alien cow equivelant also vaguely reminded me of a few extinct animals from the centuries ago extinct Stellars Sea Cow to semi-marine and seal-crossed versions of the millenia extinct Chalicothere mammals shown in the Walking with Beasts series and even the dinosaurian Segnosaurs / Therizinosaurs -- a case of a parallel evolution / inspiration maybe and rather nice to see different alien animals feature in this ‘verse.
If folks are interested, Daniel Fincke has a spoiler free review on his Camels with Hammers blog here :
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2017/12/last-jedi-spoiler-free-review/
as well as a facebook page group to discuss the whole too. Of course, if folks are interested there’s already a vast amount of youtube, blog , etc .. sites to discuss and review itanyhow but still.