During the January 4 showcase of Disney and Lucasfilm’s upcoming series of new projects in the era of the High Republic, Skywalker: Family at War author Kristin Baver took a moment to meet Krystina Arielle, the new host of Star Wars: The High Republic Show. Her a bi-monthly YouTube series delve into the details of the latest installment of Star Wars mythos fans have been waiting to sink their teeth.
Because The High RepublicThe overall novelty to the public, the logic behind launching a series dedicated to its unpacking, made sense – as did Disney and Lucasfilm’s move to establish Arielle as one of the main faces and voices of the larger company. But before The High Republic Showfirst episode dropped out, it wasn’t long before people took to Arielle’s Twitter page looking for reasons to complain about her presence within the Star Wars business venture.
Specifically, a handful of trolls resurfaced and objected to some of Arielle’s June 2020 tweets, clearly stating some basic and easily understood feelings about whites’ relationships with racism – in particular anti-black racism. Black Lives Matter protested at the time over the world began to draw more and more attention to the presence and harm of systemic racism perpetuated by organizations such as police forces, and everyone watched as different segments of society tried in different ways to lend a hand to the subject.
Arielle’s tweets, which some have taken as be racist against white people, explained her view that white people cannot really say whether or not enough has been done to address cases of racism, be it institutional or the actions of a specific person.
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While Arielle’s tweets made a causal generalization about white people as a whole, nothing she said was incorrect or particularly inflammatory given what she was talking about. Like more and more bad actors piled on Arielle racist harassment with deliberately incorrect interpretations of what she said, the long-standing problem of Star Wars That fandom was a toxic mess became clear again.
While this wave of abuse targeting Arielle lasted for more than a few days, it wasn’t long before other people settled around the #IStandWithKrystinaArielle hashtag and numbers associated with Star Wars, Like it Drooling, Cavan Scott (Marvel’s writer Star Wars: The High Republic strip), and Justina Ireland (author of the Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage YA novel) came out to show their support for Arielle.
When the main Star Wars Twitter account similarly came out in Arielle’s defense, the little hope she had trolls trying to harm Arielle’s career had probably gone out. But the bigger problem of massive fandoms hostile to Especially black women – but also women as a whole, people of color, homosexuals, and anyone who was not traditionally thought of as belonging to genre random – still persists. What happened to Arielle is different from, but very closely related to the same types of recoil that John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Daisy Ridley all faced what essentially boiled down to the fact that they were not white men.
In Arielle’s case, the situation is made even more complicated by the fact that her path to working for the Star Wars franchise – covered in an interview at StarWars.com that was released today to bind in the launch of the Star Wars: The High Republic Show– corresponds in many ways to the aspirations of people within the bigger one Star Wars fan base, something that probably played a role in people who felt encouraged to make unfounded accusations of racism against her. Small, jealous ugliness is just as much a part of it fandom toxicity as is a lack of display on the screen. Both things are important pieces of a larger picture of how the fandoms that help define our shared pop culture are evolving in fits and starts, for all to see.
By making clear its position in supporting Arielle, the Star Wars brand has taken a solid first step to addressing this particular case of the toxic part of the fandom poisoning the pit. We reached out to Lucasfilm asks for clarification and comment on what steps they would take to support creatives against attacks like this in the future, but did not receive a response at the time of publishing.
However, it is worth repeating: it is very likely that things like this shall happen again. If so, the brands involved must be willing to do the right thing by firing the bad actors and doing the right thing by the creators working to make those brands more inclusive.
The Star Wars: The High Republic Show is now streaming on Youtube.
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