Anghus Houvouras writes: It’s a Trap: Why ‘The First Gay Star Wars Character’ is a war on common sense »
Interesting article.. Worth the read. Anghus may be very familiar to those who have been long-time HORROR REPORT fans, he used to pen a little bit of a column way back when we were nothing and now he is a profoundly important writer and director, plus a genius columnist at FLICKERING MYTH (not being paid to write any of that, but I sincerely believe it) ..
And his point is taken ..
The money quote:
Up to this announcement, any of the characters could have been gay. Admiral Akbar. Boba Fett. Hell, even, Lando Calrissian. Would it matter if Lando Calrissian was gay? Not at all. His role in the story wasn’t impacted by his sexual orientation. If I had read the headline ‘Lando Calrissian revealed as gay’, all I would have thought was ‘that makes sense: those overtures to Leia were overcompensation.’ Lando ran Cloud City, betrayed Han and friends, and redeemed himself by blowing up Death Star 2.0. Gay… straight… it didn’t matter.
And:
We live in a time where everyone is desperate to label everything. To define what something is or isn’t because saying nothing somehow implies intolerance. To me, the Star WarsUniverse feels far more intolerant because they’ve flat out told me there’s been no gay characters in canon until now. I liked it better when there was ambiguity to it, because it had no impact on the story I was watching or comics I was reading.
He does make a good point near the end of his article: There really is no need for STAR WARS, a movie that will already have lots of attention, to get more attention.. And really, the sexualization of STAR WAR never really occurred.. though by THE RETURN OF THE JEDI I was coming of age, so I figured Princess Leia may have been Jabba’s sex slave. But, since it was gross, I never tried to determine how that would have even worked..
And Anghus is right: We are seemingly desperate to label everyone in our current time. Every single person deserves a label, an acronym, or a bandwagon to jump on. What happened to just being an individual? Daring to be different? Just having a light saber and destroying the Empire?
This is a trap..
And people will fall for it.
George Lucas gave us a number of political commentaries in STAR WARS when you study it.. Seems like DISNEY would rather give us pop culture than generationally important messages..
And anyway.. JAR JAR BINKS was gay, right?