11/02/2021
The ever-harmonious Star Wars fanbase’s discourse is crashing through Twitter again. This time, “#CancelDisneyPlus” is trending, as some call for subscriptions to the streaming service to be dropped after Lucasfilm confirmed that Mandalorian actress, Gina Carano, is no longer a part of the series. It’s the usual story: a controversy, actual or perceived, occurs, and the usual suspects come out to give their “politically incorrect” opinion on the matter.
In short, the “free market capitalists” are trying to cancel Star Wars. Again.
Gina Carano, the actress whose name I didn’t know that plays… a character from The Mandalorian I can’t remember the name of (I’ve only seen the first season, when it came out), has apparently had quite the history of controversial social media posts. From talking about election fraud in the 2020 US election to disparaging comments about masks in relation to COVID-19, her latest – and Disney-career lethal – take comparing modern politics to Jews being attacked in Nazi Germany is unsurprisingly garnering quite the reaction.
By the sounds of it, her views are not exactly great, and the recent (now deleted, I believe) posts are rather abhorrent. These have been, and are being, discussed at length. What I want to touch on is the response from the “right-wing”, which is predictable as it has been their response for about six years now. Yes, The Force Awakens came out in 2015.
I was not a big fan of the sequel trilogy. The first one was just A New Hope but bigger, The Last Jedi I thought was awful story wise, and I never got around to seeing The Rise of Skywalker because I was lazy and don’t really care. Genuine and harmless reasons to say you don’t like a movie, mostly because I am not much of a movie person. There are, however, a myriad of cringe ways to dislike the new Star Wars movies, the most obscene of which was the violent reaction from some towards the actress who played Rose, Kelly Marie Tran.
Rose was a pointless character, in my opinion. She added little to the plot, the entire arc with her and Finn on Canto Bight meant nothing, and the love interest between the two seemed a little forced. Criticism of the story and character is fine. Death threats and racial slurs targeting Tran, who had no control over it, however, is despicable. Similarly racist rhetoric was thrown at Bodega over Finn, and Daisy Ridley received her fair share of abuse for being a strong woman character.
And if they said anything about the final instalment, I didn’t see it because, again, I didn’t care enough to look into that one.
The Mandalorian seems to have gotten quite a good reception, even from the sequel detractors, but even it can’t avoid the outrage machine. Gina Carano being fired has seen the hashtag “#CancelDisneyPlus” trending, with various commentary alongside it. My favourite so far is Dave Rubin’s attempt at a clever comeback.
It’s prudent to note that Carano is not being “cancelled”. She has been fired from her role by a private company (Rubin and others like him are big fanboys of the free market, I thought?) because it would reflect badly on the company to keep her on board. She still has a presence on social media, I am sure she will be able to find work somewhere, and she is not being meticulously suppressed in the same way people who have genuinely been “cancelled” are and have been.
Facing consequences for what you say is not an attack on freedom of speech. But that will never be acknowledged by millionaire grifters who complain about being censored to audiences of millions. There is just too much contradiction in their head to fathom that nuance.
As for Star Wars, this crowd fits into one of two camps. Either they like Star Wars but can’t say so openly because their outward political persona doesn’t allow them to, or they have never liked Star Wars and only pretend to so they can capitalise on the trending hate towards it (i.e. “I’ve always liked ‘x’, but…”) The problem with this is that it’s an old play.
They have been recycling this same outrage act for years, every time something vaguely political is referenced about a franchise that is literally about opposing fascists. I wouldn’t even be surprised if Dave Rubin never had a Disney+ account. All it takes is a bit of critical thought and decent memory to note the copy-pasted script every time this happens. There’s some big “controversy”, it gains momentum then dies down, and repeats after a lull sets in.
Because there’s money to be made by constantly generating outrage over the same topics over and over. Star Wars in the recent discourse has easily become an old faithful – no one hates Star Wars and Star Wars’ fans more than Star Wars fans. I wonder what the next outrage will be?
Liked this? Read The Cheese Is Capitalist, another case of these people being mad about a private company doing what’s marketable.
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