During the January 4 and 4 showcase of Disney and Lucasfilm’s upcoming new projects set in the era of the High Republic, Skywalker: Family at War author Kristin Baver took a moment to introduce Krystina Arielle, the new host of Star Wars: The High Republic Show. It is A bi-monthly YouTube series delve into the details of the latest part of Star Wars mythos fans waited to sink their teeth.
As a result of The High RepublicThe overall novelty for the public, the logic behind the launch of a series aimed at unpacking it, made sense – just like Disney and Lucasfilm’s quest to make Arielle one of the most important faces and voices of the larger company to establish. But before The High Republic Show‘s first episode dropped, people did not go to Arielle’s Twitter page looking for reasons to complain about her presence in the Star Wars business enterprise.
Specifically, a handful of trolls have reappeared and tackled a number of Arielle tweets from June 2020, in which she states very clearly basic and easy to understand feelings about white people’s relationships with racism – especially anti-black racism. At the time, Black Lives Matter argued around the world drew increasing attention to the presence and damage of systemic racism perpetuated by organizations such as police departments, and all watched as different sections of society tried in different ways to address the topic hand.
Arielle’s tweets, which some took as be racist towards white people, explained her view that whites have no real place and stated whether enough has been done to address cases of racism, whether it is institutional or the actions of a particular person.
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Although Arielle’s tweets made a causal generalization about whites as a whole, there was nothing wrong or particularly contagious, given what she was talking about. As more and more bad actors piled on Arielle racist harassment with deliberately misinterpretations of what she said, the long-standing problem of Star Wars fandom is a toxic mess, has become clear again.
While this spate of abuse for Arielle lasted longer than a few days, it did not take long before other people around the #IStandWithKrystinaArielle hashtag, and figures related to Star Wars, as Baver, Cavan Scott (author of Marvel’s Star Wars: The High Republic cartoon), and Justina Ireland (author of the Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage YA novel) expressed their support for Arielle.
When the principal Star Wars The Twitter account also appeared in defense of Arielle, who has little hope troll the attempt to harm Arielle’s career was probably extinguished. But the bigger problem of massive fandoms hostile to Especially black women – but also women in general, coloreds, strangers, and anyone else traditionally not considered genre fandom still persists. What happened to Arielle is different, but very closely linked to the same kind of setback as what John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, en Daisy Ridley everyone was confronted with what actually comes down to the fact that they are not white men.
In the case of Arielle, the situation is further complicated by the fact that her path to the Star Wars franchise deals in an interview on StarWars.com it was released today to be equal in the introduction of the Star Wars: The High Republic Show—Map in many ways the aspirations of people inside the bigger Star Wars fan base, something that probably played a role in people feeling encouraged to make unfounded accusations of racism against her. Petty, jealous ugliness is just as much a part of it fandom toxicity such as a lack of representation on screen. Both of these things are important pieces of a bigger picture of how the fandoms that help define our shared pop culture fit in and start evolving so that everyone can see it.
By clarifying his position in support of Arielle, the Star Wars brand has taken a solid first step in the direction of address this particular case of the toxic segment of the fandom that poisons the pit. We reached out to Lucasfilm asks for clarification and comments what steps will they take to creatively support such attacks in the future, but did not receive a response by the time it was published.
However, it is worth repeating: it is very likely that these kinds of things shall happens again. When that does happen, however, the brands involved need to be ready to do the right thing, by firing the bad actors and doing the right thing by the creators working to make the brands more inclusive.
The Star Wars: The High Republic Show stream now on YouTube.
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