Posted on 04/21/2016 3:51:40 PM PDT by lowbridge
So word is trickling out that the next Star Wars movie will be “different” somehow. More daring. Doing things that have never been done in a Star Wars film before.
We know the score. We can figure things out. A lot of us can read between the lines, in light of what has been transpiring lately throughout the entertainment and media industries. It means that there is going to be a homosexual relationship in Episode VIII. Abrams said it was coming. It's the way of things now, it seems, that everything be charged with the LBGT agenda.
And now it will be with Star Wars.
And it will be a disaster.
One of the most beautiful things about Star Wars, even in its worst cinematic iterations, is that it's timeless. It's a fantasy fairy tale. It's about basic absolutes. But it has never been about temporal politics. It has never been something representative of one particular era or another. Star Wars is about IDEAS, and not petty ideologies.
Star Wars has never been about the demographics. And it should stay that way.
When I saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time, as a six year-old, that was Lando on the screen. And not for a moment did I see him as anything but Lando. I thought he was a very cool character stuck in a very bad situation. To me he was not a black man.
He was a man, period. If The Empire Strikes Back was made by too many of the filmmakers and producers and studios today, Lando Calrissian would be running all over Cloud City screaming "I'M BLACK! LOVE ME!!"
That wouldn't have been what Star Wars is, of course. Well, neither is using Star Wars today to advance a political agenda.
This has already been attempted with the saga. Aftermath, by Chuck Wendig, was an atrocious novel. Some have argued that it's the worst Star Wars novel ever written. One of the reasons why (in addition to the cardboard characters, Earth terminology that rips the reader out of the moment and RIDICULOUS concepts like an entire asteroid field being spawned from a single comet) was because Wendig made Aftermath a book about homosexual characters first, and plot a distant second. It. Did. Not. Work. And Wendig took to his blog to make a profanity-filled rant at his detractors, claiming they were giving Aftermath lousy reviews because of the homosexual characters he kept coming one after another after another. He chose to make Star Wars his political platform, and it bombed horribly.
Doing that with a Star Wars movie, any Star Wars movie, is going to be something much much worse. It would wreck irreparable damage to the franchise. It would be turning something meant for all of us, into something catering to the approval of those who identify themselves as LBGT: a segment which represents less than 2% of the population, according to research by the Center for Disease Control.
Am I being a "homophobe" here? A gay basher? A hate monger?
No, I am not. Although I can never approve of homosexuality or any sex outside of marriage, I will never hate any person. Okay, scratch that: there are PLENTY of politicians who have earned my hate. Democrat AND Republican, mind you. George W. Bush once called me an "asshole", and I wear that as a badge of honor. In the course of my career I've had no choice but to have spent some time with the Westboro Baptist "God Hates Fags" nuts. I looked into their eyes, of people from ages 60 on down to 5, and there was no soul there. Just a vacuous space filled with only hatred. Hate for hate's sake. It was one of the most evil things I have ever witnessed and I never want to have to be around anyone like that again. Much less be anything like them. But anyhoo...
If Star Wars becomes a thing that must go out of its way to give special affirmation for one group of people, then it must become something that offers that same affirmation to ALL groups of people. Black. White. Gay. Straight. Jewish. Muslim. Native American. Aleutian Islander. Labor Party. The Bushmen from The Gods Must Be Crazy. Old-Order Mennonites...
How about just let Star Wars be about people? How does everything have to be sexualized in our culture anyway? Star Wars is one of the few things left untouched and uncorrupted by sexual politics. Why can't it remain that way?
So far as the LBGT community goes, if it deserves acceptance, it will have acceptance on their own merit. That community and its supporters are making their situation out to be a struggle paralleling the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties, and they are wrong. The opponents of institutionalized racism in those days did not have the media, the entertainment industry, or most politicians in their corner. They did what they did because it was the right thing to do. They never asked for an agenda being pushed in their favor. The people of India had a little man in a loincloth, who did not further their cause out of hatred. Anger? Yes. But never hatred. Never with threats. Never with intimidation. Never with a bully pulpit in the entertainment industry and media.
If the LBGT community is going to be respected now and forever, it is going to have to earn that respect, and do it honestly and honorably just as those as King and Gandhi did. LBGTers, and their supporters, can not use the entertainment industry to shove that agenda into people's faces. But that is what many are seeing set to happen with Star Wars now. There are just too many indicators that that is going to happen, and soon. If it does, it will destroy the timeless integrity of Star Wars. It won't destroy the franchise. It will always be around in some form or another. But Disney will have inflicted a wound from which Star Wars would never fully recover. Because of choosing to make Star Wars a political platform and not something within the reach of everyone... and that "everyone" does include MANY who can not for whatever reason accept LBGT as morally right. A lot of people won't want to hear that, but it's the truth. Star Wars was, and is now, and always should be about ideals that will survive the ages. Basic good and evil are eternal. The politics of the moment are not.
Disney, and Abrams, and Johnson, and everyone else associated with Star Wars, is going to have to take a higher road than they may want to take. But it has to be this way. For the sake not just of Star Wars but for that of generations to come who will need a legend of basic ideals from which to be inspired by. Making Star Wars fit a political agenda, would diminish that... and it may never recover from it.
Just my .02
Didn’t jar jar get the fruit thing out of the Force enough?
The gay culture, nearly invisible in most of America is way over-weight in touchy Feely businesses like politics, media, arts, music, dance etc. Now that they’re out they can’t help themselves. Since half the people they know are gay they don’t understand their rubbing everyone’s nose where they don’t want it rubbed.
LGBT politics destroys EVERYTHING it touches.
It’s called “convergence.”
“For the sake not just of Star Wars but for that of generations to come who will need a legend of basic ideals from which to be inspired by. Making Star Wars fit a political agenda, would diminish that... and it may never recover from it.”
A movie is this important?
Nowadays, you literally cannot turn on anything without seeing some sort of homosexual bit stuck into the plot, scenery or dialogue.
I didn’t see the last one and don’t give a #####.
Not since I was 12.
The wookie got so upset by the death of Hans Solo that he begins self-identifying as Jaba the Hut.
No a movie is not that important.
But I think the point is, we see homosexuality creeping into movies and TV nowadays.
I think he sees Star Wars as a classic series of.movies.
Against that backdrop, imagine if a classic such as The Wizard of Oz were made today. Would the tin man have been homosexual? Just to say they had a gay character???
The death star needs to come back an level any studio who puts this kind of leftist fertilizer in entertainment memes.
They need to think outside the box. Leia & Luke. Or maybe Darth gets a sex change operation - he always wore something that looked like a dress.
They already had the cowardly lion. That would be a better fit.
Gender neutral or hermaphrodite aliens is a well established trope.
I agree that the concern is homosextric entertainment (golly, I think I just made up a word) but my point is that to the extent that gayness injects itself into our lives, non-involvement in our rotten popular culture is a choice easy enough to make.
This is Lucas's way at getting back at the bullies that taunted him for his disturbingly small chin.
I was O.K. with one gender-bending episode. I was even cool with a second one. But at least half of the episodes had a gay theme or a homosexual/ homoerotic encounter. And by the end of the first season, only two of the 8 or so characters had been completely straight. It was as if strict heteros weren't welcome at the Torchwood Institute.
Yes, one of the chief creators was a gay activist. Idiot.
Then there was that film a few years ago about Alexander the Great with Colin Farrell. Yes, Alexander was bisexual. Make one mention and move on. But don't turn the film into a gay lib piece more than a film about one of the great conquerors of history.
If you ever get to a sci-fi convention with a lot of fan fiction, the sheer amount of "Slash" fanfic with homosexual themes is simply overwhelming. I am sorry, but these people are over-obsessed with their sex organs.
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