During the January 4 showcase of the upcoming projects for new Disney and Lucasfilm projects defined in the High Republic era, Skywalker: family at war author Kristin Baver took a moment to introduce Krystina Arielle, the new presenter of Star Wars: The High Republic Show. it is a bimonthly YouTube series investigating the details of the last piece of Star Wars mythos fans are waiting to sink their teeth.
Because of The high republicAs a general novelty for the public, the logic behind the launch of a series dedicated to unraveling it made sense – as did the initiative by Disney and Lucasfilm to establish Arielle as one of the important faces and voices of the larger enterprise. But later The High Republic Showthe first episode went down, it didn’t take long for people to access Arielle’s Twitter page in search of reasons to complain about her presence on Star Wars business enterprise.
Specifically, a handful of trolls have resurfaced and had problems with a series of Arielle tweets from June 2020, in which she states very clearly some basic and easy to understand feelings about white people’s relations with racism – anti-black racism, in particular. At the time, Black Lives Matter protests across the world they were increasingly drawing attention to the presence and harms of systemic racism perpetuated by organizations such as police departments, and everyone was watching how different segments of society tried, in different ways, to approach the issue with one hand.
Arielle’s tweets, which some caught Like being racist towards White people, explained his view that whites do not have a real place to say whether or not enough has been done to resolve cases of racism, whether institutional or the actions of a specific person.
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Although Arielle’s tweets made a causal generalization about whites as a whole, nothing about what she said was incorrect or particularly incendiary, considering what she is talking about. As more and more bad actors accumulated in Arielle racist harassment with intentionally incorrect interpretations of what she said, the old problem of Star Wars the fandom being a toxic mess became clear again.
Although this wave of abuse against Arielle lasted for more than a few days, it didn’t take long for other people to start demonstrating around the #IStandWithKrystinaArielle hashtag and figures associated with Star Wars, to like Baver, Cavan Scott (Marvel’s writer Star Wars: The High Republic comics), and Justina Ireland (author of Star Wars: The High Republic: A Test of Courage YA Romance) came out to express their support for Arielle.
When the main Star Wars The Twitter account also came out in defense of Arielle, the little hope of trolls the attempt to undermine Arielle’s career was probably extinguished. But the bigger problem of massive fandoms acting hostile towards Especially black women, but also women as a whole, people of color, queer people, and anyone else who is not traditionally considered to belong to gender fandoms – still persists. What happened to Arielle is different, but it is closely linked to the same types of blowback that John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Daisy Ridley all faced by what essentially boiled down to not being white men.
In the case of Arielle, the situation is further complicated by the fact that her path to work for the Star Wars franchise – covered in an interview at StarWars.com that was launched today to tie at the launch of Star Wars: The High Republic Show—In many ways it maps people’s aspirations within the biggest Star Wars fan base, something that probably played a role in making people feel encouraged to make unfounded accusations of racism against her. The petty and jealous ugliness is part of fandom toxicity as lack of representation on the screen. These two things are important pieces of a broader picture of how the fandoms that help define our shared pop culture are gradually evolving, for all to see.
By making clear his position in supporting Arielle, the Star Wars brand took a solid first step toward address this specific instance of the toxic segment of the well’s fandom poisoning. We Reached for Lucasfilm asking for clarification and comments on what steps they would take to support creatives against attacks like this going forward, but received no response at the time of publication.
However, it is worth repeating: it is very likely that this type of thing go happened again. When that happens, however, the brands involved need to be ready to do the right thing, dismissing the malicious actors and doing the right thing for creators working to help make these brands more inclusive.
The Star Wars: The High Republic Show is now broadcasting on Youtube.
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