The trailer for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” gave people a “simultaneous nerdgasm,” according to “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah on Tuesday, but it also awakened the dark side of the Internet. A social media campaign suggested boycotting the film because it stars a black Stormtrooper.
“Listen I don’t want to diminish the importance Star Wars has in your life,” Noah said. “But growing up in the ‘80s in South Africa was, let’s just say, the Dark Side meant something totally different.”
The racist vitriol has become commonplace as more people of color are cast in science fiction movies, including Amandla Stenberg in “The Hunger Games” and Michael B. Jordan in the 2015 reboot of “The Fantastic Four,” who played Johnny Storm aka the Human Torch. That same dark side of the internet took issue with a black man playing a character created in the 60s, who was originally a blond white man.
“Yeah, the Flame had blond hair and blue eyes, but he can also set himself on fire. What’s more black than that?” Noah asked with a photo of Michael Jackson and Richard Pryor next to him.
Watch the video, from Comedy Central, below:
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Meh.
I hear your “Meh” about the presentation and maybe about Star Wars itself which now has a string of four terrible movies sequentially, but the racism here is really grotesque. Black man can’t play a soldier? Blacks served under Ulysses S. Grant for heaven’s sake!
Everybody knows that the proper role for a black guy in a sci-fi film is to be a secondary character with a quirky, sardonic personality who’s really good at computers or fixing stuff or just killing people who saves the lives of the leading white characters and then dies in a spectacularly grotesque manner. The perfect templates for this are Samuel L. Jackson’s iconic, “Hang on to yo’ butts” role in “Jurassic Park,” Bill Duke and Carl Weathers in “Predator,” or Yaphet Kotto in “Alien.” This enables white viewers to indulge in a temporary fantasy of brotherhood—hey, the black guy loves the white guys so much that he’s willing to sacrifice himself—while simultaneously getting rid of the presence of a non-white person in their fantasy world. It’s a win-win!
It’s much worse than that. Apparently, a black guy with a prominent role in the distant future is a sign that white people are being exterminated. I guess the thinking is that if the future soldier is some kind of high ranking commander then it must mean there are no white (aka more qualified) people available.
Not to mention non-white Stormtroopers are hardly new. The Clonetroopers that became the Stormtroopers were played by a couple of actors of Maori (sp?) descent.