Last week, Lucasfilm Ltd. released a new trailer for their long-anticipated upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." This will be the seventh installment in the "Star Wars" saga, a fandom spanning almost 40 years. The teaser generated a lot of buzz, mostly excitement, but some criticism.
Among the nay-sayers were two internet trolls who caused a bit of a stir by creating a hashtag, #BoycottStarWarsVII, calling for a boycott of the film. Film boycotts are nothing new; just this past summer there was an internet movement to boycott the film Stonewall, on the basis that it was a whitewashed rendition of the actual Stonewall riots.
But this call for a boycott was different.
Because it wasn't founded on anything but pure ignorance, racism, and the goal of causing conflict and annoyance from behind the mediated window of the internet.
The boycott was called because a select few individuals saw the inclusion of a multitude of race in the film as inherently "anti-white," racist against white people, and "promoting white genocide."
This is obviously, painfully problematic for a number of reasons.
Obviously, it is overtly racist. Plain and simple. There is nothing, in any of the trailers released for the film, that indicates any sort of white genocide is part of the plot of the film, or the motives of the filmmakers.
This wave of "social media white-out" was initiated by the Twitter user shown above, who started it to simply start trouble and to get the liberal side of Twitter fired up. Aside from being annoying, this started something terrifying: people who actually believed these things took up arms beside this bigot.
Under the guise of supporting a pop culture "cause," racism poured from the vestiges of the internet like the stuff of nightmares.
For as long as forums have existed, trolls have wormed their way into the internet, hiding behind screen names and avatars in order to say sh*t that's generally unacceptable. It feels like when people get onto the internet, they feel like they have some supreme power that allows them to open their mouths and say whatever they want.
True, this is one of the beautiful things about the internet: a vehicle for the freedom of speech. But there is something, if not a lot of things, to be said about the kinds of things that are being said, simply because they don't have to face anyone when they say it.
And, as I said, the whole "movement" was incited simply because people wanted to cause a problem on the internet.
The "Star Wars" saga has always, in some form or fashion, been inclusive of race. This inclusion of non-white characters does not mean that there will not be any discrimination against white characters.
This needs to stand for a grander message: not every movement for equality is directly attacking the people in power.
