Firstly, we’re sorry for another Star Wars story, but you just can’t make this stuff up. As we know Disney recently cancelled The Acolyte and it’s all because of racism. It had nothing to do with low viewership or crappy writing, it was all because of the racists. And the sexists.
One of the main stars of The Acolyte, Jodie Turner-Smith slammed Disney for not defending their own actors. In a recent interview with Glamour Magazine, she said:
“They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting fucking dog-piled on the internet with racism and bullshit. It’s just not fair to not say anything. It’s really unfair.”
“It would just be nice if the people that have all the money were showing their support and putting their feet down. Say this is unacceptable: ‘You’re not a fan if you do this.’ Make a really big statement and just see if any money leaves. I bet you it won’t, because people of colour, and especially Black people, make up a very large percentage of buying power. They might find that it’s actually more lucrative for them, but everyone’s using ‘woke’ like it’s a dirty word.”
“We’re gonna get there at some point, to that place where people stop having a stick up their ass about people of color being a part of IPs that were created by white people. You know why? Because we’re never going to fucking stop participating.”
Wow, there is a lot to unpack there.
Disney Don’t Care about Color
This is not true, Disney do care about color. Ask John Boyega, a main star of The Force Awakens whose character was shrunk down for the Asian poster.
Moses Ingram, the star of Obi-Wan Kenobi series, went through exactly the same. Her character, Reva, was badly written, a Mary Sue, and didn’t work. It wasn’t that the fans were racist, they just didn’t like the character.
Funny how Turner-Smith says that “Black people make up a large percentage of buying power”. The Reva lightsaber sold so badly that Disney took it off the market. It seems that the “large percentage of buying power” didn’t translate to sales.
In the same respect, The Acolyte viewing figures were just bad. Again, that “buying power” just didn’t seem interested in the product. The figures were some of the worst seen at Disney, so they pulled the plug.
Where Were the Racists Then?
Obviously, there are racists out there, posing as Star Wars fans, who are having a field day slamming these actors. This is horrible, these people are assholes and no one, including us, is defending them.
But where were the “racist, toxic” fans when Mace Windu was cast as a Jedi? OK, we are going back 20 years or so, but when Samual L. Jackson was cast, the fans went nuts! Samual Mother-F***ing Jackson as a Jedi…hell yes!
The climate now is very different and people are called “ist” or “phobe” for the slightest thing. This is exactly what is happening here, we recently posted about Star Wars Theory being called racist because he didn’t like The Acolyte.
Theory never mentioned color or race, he just thought the writing was bad. It’s almost as if Disney is using their actors as human shields and hiding behind them with their crappy products.
Blame The Fans
Let us not forget that the other cast member of The Acolyte, Amandla Stenberg, recorded a diss-track. I was going to post it in here, but it’s not a good song, and definitely not my kind of thing. Which I know makes me racist now, but that was bound to happen sooner or later.
Disney was perfectly OK with Stenberg making a diss-track about fans. They got Ewan McGregor and Simon Pegg to do the same. Most of the “defence” of the PoC actors happened before the series even came out.
It was almost as if Disney knew they had a stinker of a series on their hands, and so started to run interference, in the process putting certain actors in the line of fire.