It's official: the Star Trek movie coming out in July has a canon gay character, Lt. Sulu. Not to bring up old blood between the two, butthis makes me wonder: do you think Star Wars' sequel trilogy will follow through with Abrams' claims of a gay character? I'm really curious as to if and how that'll be played out in Star Wars; obiously SW and ST are very different, but I'm curious if (and only if a "gay character" is introduced) the reaction to the news will be handled in the SW fandom similar to how it'll be handled in the ST fandom. Thoughts?
The franchises have had pretty different attitudes towards gay characters over the years. Gene Roddenberry was very "wink wink nudge nudge" about K/S slash, but George Lucas was super against any mention of slash. I think it's more important to Star Trek's image to have gay characters, since diversity and acceptance is such an important aspect of the franchise. I can also easily imagine Star Wars nerdboys freaking out about gay characters in the movie franchise, whereas everyone seems to be taking the news about Cho's Sulu very well.
i really, really want it to go over in star wars as well as it's going over in star trek, but to be completely, brutally honest, it won't. star wars and star trek and their fandoms have such different mindsets regarding their characters-- for chrissake, people threated to boycott TFA because finn was black, and they came out in 2015! i'm not saying star trek is perfect, but i do think their fan base is accepting this waaay better than star wars' would. maybe it's the contents, maybe it's the fans, but i seriously doubt that star wars is gonna get an openly gay character to begin with, and if they do, there'd be one hell of a backlash.
It'd be nice, but Star Wars is hardly progressive enough for it. The first Star Trek series had a black woman heavily implied to be in a relationship with a white man (a television first!), and featured her as an important central character, as well as gay side characters (a later series even had a trans character as a love interest!) - Star Wars had a racist Rastafarian caricature act as the "comedy relief" in the form of (the much hated) Jar Jar Binks.
So, even with J.J. at the helm, well... It really doesn't seem likely. Though stranger things have happened; Just look at the survival of Poe!
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"Gays in Space"
(Anonymous) 2016-07-08 02:11 am (UTC)(link)Not to bring up old blood between the two, butthis makes me wonder: do you think Star Wars' sequel trilogy will follow through with Abrams' claims of a gay character? I'm really curious as to if and how that'll be played out in Star Wars; obiously SW and ST are very different, but I'm curious if (and only if a "gay character" is introduced) the reaction to the news will be handled in the SW fandom similar to how it'll be handled in the ST fandom.
Thoughts?
Re: "Gays in Space"
(Anonymous) 2016-07-08 03:35 am (UTC)(link)Re: "Gays in Space"
(Anonymous) 2016-07-08 04:17 am (UTC)(link)Re: "Gays in Space"
(Anonymous) 2016-07-08 05:46 am (UTC)(link)So, even with J.J. at the helm, well... It really doesn't seem likely. Though stranger things have happened; Just look at the survival of Poe!