The Precious Dark Side of Fandom

The Precious Dark side of Fandom.

The Market Place of Ideas.

The official Star Wars Twitter account came out in defense of Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram this week due to

The actress receiving hundreds of hate messages from fans displeased with her role on the show. Seduced by the Dark Side, some fans have reportedly targeted Ingram with racist messages, including  claims that she was just chosen due to a diversity move by Lucasfilm.

Ingram plays the  role of Reva, an Inquisitor who dedicates her life to exposing the titular Jedi Master (Ewan McGregor) and bringing him before Darth Vader (Hayden Christensen).

Though Obi-Wan Kenobi’s first two episodes premiered only just last week, it didn't take long  for the Fandom Menace to rear it's ugly head. On the Monday following this year’s Star Wars Celebration event, Ingram took to her personal Instagram account to share a few choice cuts from  the sludge of insults she has faced.Most of them were your standard fare of ,anti-Black, misogynist messages. Ingram has stated she is grateful to fans who have more then two brain cells to understand that actors are not the characters they play on television.She also feels like

“There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate."

Hours after Ingram’s post, the official Star Wars Twitter account shared a message "There are more than 20 million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy, don’t choose to be a racist."

There are always a number of reasons — like racism — why people who love these franchises ,feel compelled to show their asses like this. But the response to Ingram feels at least almost like De ja vu it was just a few years ago that John Boyega was famously met with  racist hostility in the wake of his casting as Finn, as was Kelly Marie Tran after she joined the franchise as Rose Tico in Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi.

Heck we can go back all the way to the Seventies and Eighties when Star wars was just entering into the social consciousness.

There where accusations that Chewbacca

Was insulting to Mexicans.

Comic Hector Navarro stated On twitter

"Like, I love joking that Chewbacca is Mexican. (He's a mechanic, he's hairy, nickname is "Chewie", etc.)

"But there's a real issue at the heart of that joke. For 38 years there was no major Latin representation in that franchise. Jimmy Smits is the man, but he wasn't the lead."

However the most damaging and dare I say heartbreaking issue of racism in Star Wars is the infamous character of Jar Jar Binks voiced by actor Ahmed Best.

The vitriol of his portrayal of the character of JarJar Binks nearly drove him to suicide.

The intense hatred directed at Jar Jar had such a horrible effect on the actor Ahmed he contemplated suicide. In a recent video interview, the actor opens up about his experience: “I faced a media backlash that really made me feel like my life was over.”

It wasn’t just the hatred, though — it was where it came from. “There was just so much hate and anger and venom directed at me, and I took it personally…I put a lot of me into that work, and if you talk to any artist who really cares about their work, you’re talking about them,” Best said

“It hit me. It came right for me. I was called every racial stereotype you can imagine. There was this criticism of being this Jamaican, broken dialect, which was offensive because I’m of West Indian descent — I’m not Jamaican. It was debilitating. I didn’t know how to respond.”

The hardest part for me in that entire situation was all of the criticism that came from a racially motivated point of view. Growing up, being black, and wanting to be an artist — which is a very challenging and brave thing to do, it’s not easy — we’re always faced, as black artists, with this idea of being a sellout. We have our guard up when it comes top being portrayed as an Uncle Tom, a racist stereotype, or anything that makes you, as a black person, look less than".

The modern day fan of these epics can be possessive of their cherished properties.

So much so that the mere hint of a race or gender swap of a Legacy character can bring down a torrent of filth and hate.

Just look at another storied universe that came out with ads on Amazon Prime for the new Lord Of The Rings inspired series

Rings Of Power. Amazon’s ambition to embark upon crafting such an original story must certainly be applauded.

The initial wave of reactions to Vanity Fair’s first reveal is telling of the enormity of this undertaking.

While most of the cast, such as Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel, Owain Arthur’s Prince Durin IV, and Robert Aramayo’s Elrond were generally enthusiastically well-received, the reactions to the rest of the diverse cast was rather dismantling, We got to see Sofia Nomvete as the Dwarven Princess Disa standing in her regal garb at the entrance of Khazad-dûm .

However rather than gush over the fact we get to see this fabled Dwarven realm when it was still rocking and rolling.

All that fans where capable of so my was shouting at their computer screens that there where no black people in middle earth

Ismael Cruz Córdova’s Arondir was also trashed for his ethnicity and for his portrayal of a Silvan Elf,

The hate is based on the fact that Tolkien’s works were geared to creating the world of Middle Earth, and many if not all of his influences were based off of  Norse, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon folklore, groups typically were you don't find a lot of brothers.

There’s a  weird sense of a fan’s identity being tied up in something make-believe.

So any criticism of their favourite story is  a criticism of them. For a great  example, despite Tolkien’s anti-racism stance there are issues with his mythology (his equating the Dwarves with Jews – including linguistically. So if you point this out it becomes an personal attack. As if by showing flaws in the Amour of your favorite stories your childhood is now null and void.

The funny and interesting thing about all of the pop culture movies and television  properties of the 80's and 90's. Is unless your last name is Spielberg, Lucas, or Rietman

You didn't create or make it any if it.

If you happen to be over the age of 35 you had the pleasure of coming of age before the internet.

A time when these great stories and characters where still in their infancy.

We didn't know if we would get anymore Star wars or if Lord Of The Rings would ever see the big screen.

What we, as a society have now is a selfish and entitled fan base,where we feel a unearned right to speak about characters we have no ownership of.

To quote Empire Palpatine "Your arrogance blinds you".

So here we are,at this very point and time in history we have some of the most obscure IPs gracing the big screen and streaming services.

The level of Fantasy,Sci-fi and horror that you literally have access to within two clicks of a mouse,or remote control is staggering.

So rather than whine and complain the modern day fan should get on their knees and thank whatever God they serve that we have this abundance of riches, in what one of my favorite YouTube pundits Robert Myer Burnett says is the Post Geek Singularity.

Hopefully going forward studios and production companies will live by that age old Star Trek maximum.

Taken from The Wrath of Khan (1982),where  Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

Let the few work themselves into a hate fueled lather in the basements and under their bridges.While the rest of us bask in the sunlight enjoying the our Precious.