The Problem Of Racism And Misogyny With Fandom
We’ve all had to sit back and hear about a reboot or a remake or a prequel/sequel to a beloved franchise. Pop culture news will never stop flowing speculation from all the content sites online. Before the story can even be reported on local news, the outrage has already lifted off.
Examples include:
“How dare this big company — that bought another company that originally made a thing that I liked when I was 13 – ruin my childhood with this new product?! I think the fans should have input.”
Or:
“Why are they even making another one? It didn’t need it. It was good to end where it ended!”
And:
“The books aren’t even that long! Why the hell are they butchering it with stuff that isn’t in the book!?”
Sound like the insufferable crap you’ve heard from someone you probably know. Even worse, it might be something you’ve said before. It’s not that bad, but when it starts to spread into sending people newsletters about it, you should probably tap the brakes or turn the car into a light pole to prevent pointless rage over products.
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That “product” can be anything – McRib, Kool-Aid, Ghostbusters, video games like Fortnite and Overwatch, and STAR WARS. The bigger the impact on generations of fans, the more the fans will think they have the right to have a say in what they like about it. Sure, the company might look at what the fans have to say for help, but it’s ultimately their decision to make.
This leads us to a galaxy that’s probably down the street from your house.
The Star Wars Franchise
A great starting point for all of this can begin with Star Wars. No franchise has ever had fans turn against their content creator more than the Star Wars fan. Do I enjoy Star Wars? Yeah, it’s a fantasy tale that follows a classic protagonist’s adventure: “The Hero’s Journey.”
If you think your favorite book or movie was first to the plot, check this out:
So many stories have used that as a plot, but it takes a lot of work to transform that into a huge universe like in Star Wars. Since the franchise has gone on, like a band, the later albums may not be as good as the first few.
Star Wars started as an indie film, then blossomed into this global phenomenon. What was a great thing for fans to come together to enjoy has warped into something that fans think they own. That is never how anything has ever worked. Comic Book Guy can’t seriously send notes to the production crew.
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Since the prequels were generally considered awful and retroactively changed portions of the history of Star Wars, fans started turning on George Lucas. It wasn’t even the prequels, but the Special Edition versions of the films that ignited and pissed fans off.
Lucas made odd choices like adding in CGI Stormtrooper animals on Tatooine, changing who shot first in the Han Solo blaster fight at the Cantina, and constant unfunny attempts at humor that made fans question why Lucas chose to do this.
Fast forward to the internet.
Oddly enough, fans now look to Lucas to save the franchise after they bullied him out of his own creation. After the anger from the revised versions of the original trilogy, a prequel trilogy that was a storytelling disaster, and a new sequel trilogy that made fans wish for more prequels or Lucas’ original sequel trilogy ideas.
Old fans wondering if Lucas can right the ship while simultaneously directing their hate toward Kathleen Kennedy, JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson is now a thing.
Look at this letter written by the fans. This is real:
If you sift through the childish call to arms to defend the sanctity of glowing space swords and blasters making cool noises, you get to these quotes start to reveal a lot of it:
“You have used your characters as toys and tools to push and agenda of masculine inferiority.”
“You have shamelessly attacked anyone who voiced a negative opinion, calling them racists, sexists, misogynists, telling them that they must have a problem with strong women, telling them that only overweight white males and members of the alt-right dislike the direction you are taking with the Franchise.”
Reminds me of simpler times when Leslie Knope had to shut down a Men’s Rights protest in Parks and Rec.
“You have refused to acknowledge any complaints as legitimate from the fans, and do not even recognizes that people who are not male or are not Caucasian dislike your modus operandi as well.”
“TO THESE ENDS, WE PLEDGE OUR MERCHANDISE, OUR HONOR, AND OUR WALLETS.”
This is the call of the white privileged
Any attempt at diversity or focus on a strong female character has male fans losing their minds. A black Stormtrooper switched sides because of morality to help the righteous side? “That isn’t Star Wars!”
Why? Why isn’t “that” Star Wars? Oh, I hear that dog whistle.
Han Solo shot a weird fish looking alien in the first movie who wore high heels, but let’s flip out because t
To boil it down: MAKE STAR WARS GREAT AGAIN!
More truthfully: MAKE STAR WARS ABOUT STRAIGHT WHITE MEN AGAIN!!!
Gamergate Arrives
From the extreme fandom of things like Star Wars, led to something called Gamergate. But what the hell is Gamergate?
“Beginning in August 2014, a harassment campaign targeted several women in the video game industry; notably game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, as well as feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. After Eron Gjoni, Quinn’s former boyfriend, wrote a disparaging blog post about her, #gamergate hashtag users falsely accused Quinn of an unethical relationship with journalist Nathan Grayson. Harassment campaigns against Quinn and others included doxing, threats of rape, and death threats.”
A pissed off ex wrote a gross blog about his ex. A childish thing to do, but the toddlers grabbed hold of it and started harassing people. They sent death threats to women because apparently the Incel’s felt bad for the broken heart of a video game developer.
Odd how it always seems to be a bunch of pissed off internet men going after women for something so silly that it led to death threats. “But it’s about the ethics!” It really isn’t. It is the same case of those who call “claims of racism” to an undeniably racist event. It’s another attempt by misogynists to hate on women. It’s all a different medium of fandom, but most of it leads to what the Star Wars letter claimed to be untrue when it’s completely true: Racism and hating women.
Social Justice Warriors And Politics
The same grift that misogynistic fandom has for bringing down women who star in Ghostbusters or any other SJW (Social Justice Warrior) has for inclusion, will ultimately make the majority think their entire world is on fire.
The SJW is the common target from the very religious, very white, very angry, and unbelievably biased. I never thought a bunch of racist white people would care about being called racists before, but that’s because in the past few decades, a great many people don’t tend to like listening to some A-hole in a grocery store denigrating a Hispanic woman speaking Spanish to her kids at the check-out.
It’s the feeling of being marginalized that scares these people. When they think certain groups of people are teaming up to destroy what they love, they look at alternate theories or “Alternate Facts.”
Without going too far into the current political nightmare we all must live with, it all seems like all of the fandom and misplaced sense of belonging to a brand that brings out the true vitriol bubbling under the surface.
It’s fine to say that the thing we used to like isn’t as good now, even if others still enjoy it. What’s dangerous is turning that into something else. Believing you’ve been marginalized because you think the bigotry and hatred have turned on the once powerful who will cling to power for as long as possible.
Is it really a war from these people on political correctness or is it more so an argument on being allowed to say the worst things imaginable, then labeling someone as “too PC” when the leader of a country imitates a disabled person or calls another country a “sh*thole.”
It’s the same people using something else to get their hatred through. Is the problem with a franchise changing things up a bit? Not really. The problem is fans taking ownership of something they say they love whole disregarding everything else. It’s why you can’t go on YouTube and see fan videos saying how much they love their favorite things.
A fan may or may not turn on what they love, but if they do, it’s how they do it that says more about them than what they’re desperately clinging on to.
Feature Image by Yu Chou from Pixabay
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR, and ScreenRant.