Amala Ekpunobi

Star Wars: The Acolyte Was Canceled Because Of…RACISM?

After news of the cancellation of Star Wars: The Acolyte dropped, lead actress Amandla Stenberg took to social media to rant for several minutes blaming the show’s demise on racism, bigotry, and the alt-right. Is this really the case, or is it perhaps that the show just wasn’t good? Let’s talk about it.

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 04 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

This podcast is supported by FX's English teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of what we do in the shadows and baskets English teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English teacher is now streaming on Hulu all new Mondays on FX. So that's why I'm hopping on here to talk about this, which is that our show, our Star Wars show has been canceled. I'm going to say, Emily Transparent and say that it's not a huge shock for me. Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who aren't aware, there has been a rampage of vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced. When it was still just the concept of no one had even seen it, and that's when we started experiencing a rampage. I would say hyper conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudiced hatred and hateful language. All right, guys, so Star Wars the Acolyte has not been renewed for season two, shocker. And now we have the lead actress, Amanda Listenberg, blaming the show's cancellation on a hatred bigotry and a targeted attack from the alt-right. Yep, you heard that correctly. Let's talk about it. Guys, before we get into today's video, please like and subscribe. We're back to talking about Star Wars the Acolyte, the show that just won't die, even though it is effectively dead. It's not been "Greenlit Four" as season two. I've watched the show. I talked about the dynamics leading up to the show. The director Leslie Hedlen talking about how this would be the first queer Star Wars story, and she was going to tell her story through season one. And she did exactly that alongside lead actress Amanda Listenberg, who is now responding to the show's cancellation in a new video where she addresses fans of Star Wars the Acolyte. But she also addresses the alt-right that led a hateful, bigoted campaign to get the show canceled. Let's hear it from Amanda. I thought I would get on here and just speak candidly. I hate doing this, but I'm going to do it. Honestly, I don't use social media very much anymore, and I'm so happy about that. But there are many folks out there that I want to acknowledge. Folks, point one. We talked about this. We did a little leftist lesson. When somebody says "folks," f-o-l-x, they're referring to all people, because apparently saying ladies and gentlemen or men and women is bigoted, and you have to refer to large groups of people as "folks," because you don't know how they identify. Anyways. And I want to show appreciation and love and support for. So that's why I'm hopping on here to talk about this. Which is that our show, our Star Wars show, has been canceled. And I'm going to say, and we transparent and say that it's not a huge shock for me. Of course, I live in the bubble of my own reality, but for those who aren't aware, there has been a rampage, a vitriol that we have faced since the show was even announced. When it was still just a concept, and when no one had even seen it, that's when we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudiced hatred and hateful language. Whoa! Take a drink for every leftist buzzword if you just heard "come out of that girl's mouth." And you know what? I am a fan of Amanda Stenberg. Even though, you know, I didn't like this Star Wars project, I loved her in Hunger Games, I loved her in everything. She's a good actress, she's been in many other projects. However, I do not support her world of view, and you guys know, it's a world view that I used to share with her, so maybe we would have been best buds back in the day. But now listening to this, I'm just thinking, what a victim of mentality in regard to your show. I think your show is cancelled for more reasons than just vitriol and bigotry from the alt-rights. And even that, if we went and analyzed what people were saying about this show, it's not rooted in bigotry or hatred, it's rooted in actual criticism of the storytelling and of the concepts that were created and brought into the Star Wars IP. Leslie Hadlam before the show even came out was talking about how this was going to be a queer story and how she was inspired by Frozen to make this Star Wars story, and it's just so weird to comment something like Star Wars from the angle of injecting sexuality into the plotline. And people had very valid criticisms of that point, but now it's being called hateful bigotry. I guess it's homophobic to say that sexuality shouldn't be at the forefront of something you're creating, especially when you are taking beloved IP from a franchise and trying to tell a new story. But I digress, I want to let her talk more about this vitriolic rampage. That's a little bit dramatic, a rampage, a violent rampage. Okay, let me calm down, let's watch. Or it's us. And you know, this really affected me when I first got the job, because it's just not something, even though I anticipated it happening, it's not something you can fully understand what it feels like until it's happening to you. However, I feel like I've kind of moved through those feelings in various ways, including being vocal about it myself. And I have to wonder, you know, mixed inside of a million different, you know, ex comments or Instagram comments or YouTube comments and dislikes, mixed in there might be a few people who are using racist rhetoric towards you and towards your involvement in the show. But is that the bulk of why people were criticizing Star Wars the Accolite? Is that really what you think that it was rooted in bigotry? Or did these people have actual concerns that they wanted to express and maybe yes, negative concerns about the show? That doesn't make them bigots, doesn't make them racist, it doesn't make them homophobic. In fact, you had many gay, lesbian, trans, black people of color who were giving the very same criticism towards Star Wars the Accolite. Are they also bigoted racist? I don't know, I guess so. For me, it just became a situation where there was no option but for me to honor my sense of ethics and my belief system and my value system while being in this very unique position. It was kind of like I had this very unique experience of experiencing the world at large, which is, of course, hyper divisive right now, through the lens of this very, very unique opportunity of being in Star Wars. And it brought up a lot for me, a lot of socio-political dynamics, a lot about my own value system, how it responds, that kind of hatred, how I move through the world at large. And it just became an arguable for me at a certain point that in order to continue to be myself, I would have to honor my value system, my being vocal even within the context of working for Disney and working within the large, if I can. Yes, this does seem to be the mindset of every single employee working at Disney, at least the leftist employees, they must bring their own morals, values, mindsets into their job and injected into everything that they're doing. And when you do that, sometimes you fall off course, sometimes you call things hateful and bigoted that aren't hateful and bigoted at all, and it's because that is the lens through which you are looking at the world. And when people come to criticize you, criticism becomes a microaggression or a macroaggression, I guess in this case she's directly accusing people of racism, sexism, and homophobia in their treatment and response to this show, and it's just not correct. But we see this happen time and time again in Hollywood, we watched it with the woman king movie, which when it came out and flopped at the box office, the director blamed racism with the movie bros, which was about a gay relationship. The writer and creator of that movie blamed homophobia for it flopping at the box office, then with rings of power, when Lord of the Rings fans had actual valid criticisms of the show, they were accused of being racist towards this idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion. When we actually strip away the layers and the names and the isms and the phobias that you throw at these people, what you're going to find is just people who value storytelling. And you can do a good storytelling while also weaving in your diversity, equity, and inclusion. But when the storytelling falls in the back burner and is secondary to your own woke agenda, people are going to realize that and they're going to call it out and it doesn't make them evil people for doing so. Within the large massive IP that is Star Wars, on that topic, I just have to say it has been an incredible honor and dream for me to be in this universe. It still feels, even though, of course, I'm very sad about the show being canceled and I'm sad about us not being able to give people who are invested into it more. People just feel a lot of levity and joy around the fact that I got to experience it and that people loved it and that people were so responsive. They poured through a lot of different iterations of band art and ship art and fan theories and things that were just so beautiful and filled my heart with joy. And I just want to let those people know out there who supported us in that way and supported us vocally, despite and in the face of all of the betrayal that we received and the kind of the targeted attack. I would say we received by the alt-right. I want to like what she's saying. I want to like, you know, this moment where she comes in, you know, despite all this, I had a brilliant time and a great experience in creating this show and I love that some people loved it, which is just going to be the case for anything. Especially if you're creating a piece of art or media or entertainment, there are going to be people who like it and there are going to be people who don't. And instead of focusing maybe on the people who like it and leaning into a positive, you know, mindset towards what you've created, you veer towards the people who dislike it and attack them for their own opinions and label them with a pretty heinous label for simply having their own opinion. And as soon as she, you know, veers them the direction of positivity, she has to go right back to saying that they somehow withstood an attack, a targeted attack from the alt-right. I gotta say, there's a lot of people who did not like a Star Wars and millions and millions of people who did not like this new Star Wars the acolyte. Are they all alt-right? Like, what does it even mean at this point? You don't like a woke show and suddenly you're your alt-right. I need an actual detailed definition of what it means to be alright because I guess I fall under that category in her eyes simply because I didn't like the show. I don't know. Just that you were deeply loved and appreciated and it made this job all the worthwhile for me and it made all of the challenging elements of it completely worthwhile for me. And so that's personal love of sci-fi and fantasy and being able to be a part of the legacy of something that I so deeply value and something that means so much to me and I've looked up to for so long. It's so funny because she doesn't have a lot of sweat here. She's the lead actress. I'm not sure that she's really driving the plot forward or anyway and is maybe a key part in how the plot of Star Wars the acolyte played out. But you'd think if you really had this deep reverence and appreciation for Star Wars IP and the source material that you would let it play out on the screen and that's just not what happened. She's really not to be blamed because she is an actress, you know, she is the canvas that is painted on by the people who create the storyline, but she's also reinforcing the ideas that they injected into this story and defending what ended up being a pretty negative iteration of Star Wars In theory, instead of blaming the people who didn't like it, we should look internally and we should look at the storyline that we presented to people and ask ourselves "Am I somehow responsible for the reaction that I got? Is there any piece of accountability that I should take in how people did not like this show?" But instead of doing that, we look at the people who did not like it and say there must be something wrong with you. Not only is there something wrong with you, but you are like evil, you are morally evil and reprehensible for not liking this thing that we created so full of our own agenda and our own personal biases and our own realities. She even states at the beginning of this video that she's living within the bubble of her own reality. That's for damn sure. That's for damn sure. I also just want to say thank you to Lucasfilm. It was just everybody that I worked with in Lucasfilm, particularly Rain Roberts, my producer, was just had such like vision and hope and such a mission for what we were going to continue bringing into the sci-fi universe and into the Star Wars universe. And it was a really beautiful, energizing, life changing experience to be a part of. And I have to thank Leslie Hedlund, who just, I just fucking love that bitch. She just, excuse my friend, she's just one of the best people in the world. And I think she's so incredibly talented and unique and kind. And I love her forever. And I love this experience with her forever. But at the end of the day, I also just want to thank everybody who watched it. Thank you for being... Not everybody who watched it. She definitely doesn't want to thank everybody who watched it. Also loving and supportive and excited and nerdy and awesome. And I'll continue to process this for a long time. But maybe the last thing I want to say on the subject is that we all exist in the context of all of which we were. You know, well, I know that was a joke, but it makes total sense that she just weaved in a Kamala Harris girlfriend. It makes total sense given the states of our world right now that Kamala Harris slipped in there a bit. But I'm serious. It's not lost on me how the way that these events have unfolded is also due to the hyper-device address of the time that we live in that is driven, I would say at this point, by echo chambers of thought and an algorithms that reinforce our biases. You know, I want to agree with her on that point, but it's also driven by people stepping out of their echo chambers to receive something, a piece of entertainment, and they're analyzing it from your perspective as well as theirs, and they're just not vibing with it. In order for somebody to even have the criticism of the woke ideology that has been injected into Star Wars and other Disney projects, they do have to have an understanding of it. And I know the left doesn't want to admit that, that there are people who stand on the other end who disagree with their belief system, but also understand their belief system. And the very nature of that is stepping out of the echo chamber, which was what many did to consume Star Wars, the acolyte, and they wanted to watch a good Star Wars show. There's nobody that's going into watching a piece of entertainment for the most part and not wanting it to be a good experience, not wanting it to be something that they can accept and add on to a franchise, a beloved franchise, that has been, you know, very formative for them throughout their lives, but you just didn't hit the nail on the head, and we can do all this like skirting around the issue and beating around the bush. But in there, in the center, in the heart of this discussion, is you miss the mark? And that's okay. And it's not even wholly a mandala Stenberg's fault, as I hope I've made clear through my analysis of this video. There's, you know, administrators and executives and directors who are working at places like Disney in Lucasfilm and pushing forward this ideology. Despite people telling them time and time again, we don't want it. It is reinforced by the Academy and other larger institutions within Hollywood and media. And despite, again, people saying, "Maybe this is not what we want in storytelling." They push forward, and they push forward, and they push forward, and you know what? You're gonna meet an equal and an opposite force. And that's what happened with Star Wars the acolyte. And whether you like it or not, the show just didn't get the numbers to be greenlit for a season two, even with millions of people who disliked the show, watching it. So, there's not much more to be said. She still has more to say, though. Let's finish with the mandala. And I think that applies to everybody. But I think that in a particular sect of people, it manifests as a lot of fear for what is changing, a lot of hatred for anything that is other. Fear and hatred. Carl, we're not scared. We don't hate who you are or what you're doing. I can't speak for everybody. Of course, there are people who lie in the extremes of all of these different ideologies and mindsets. But I can say, "I don't hate you. I don't hate your sexuality. I don't hate your skin color. I don't hate your ideology even. I can very much understand why you believe the things that you believe." However, I don't want to be force-fed the things that you believe when I'm going to be entertained. And I don't want to have stories that I've loved and characters that I've loved and lore that I've loved be shifted into something that is no longer representative of the original source material. And I say this as somebody who wasn't even a Star Wars fan. The acolyte was my introduction to Star Wars, sadly enough. So y'all can sit with that. But I can only imagine having watched other franchises that I love or other storylines that I love be destroyed help people who love Star Wars feel. And that is valid. I'm going to pull the left just thing. Your feelings are valid. And I would challenge us all and challenge myself to continue questioning what it is that I digest and think critically about what shapes it. But if you do think about the things that you digest and you think critically about it and you get on the other end of thinking critically and have criticism from the things you digest, you're going to be called a racist bigot homophobe. So just make sure you bear that in mind because she's talking about really wanting to look internally and analyze the things that she's consuming in life. But when people do that and come to a different conclusion than her own, they are racist bigots. Let's vote y'all. Let's vote. Let's vote. I think that's all I have to say. Well, it's just 10 minutes long. We'll see if I post this. Bye. So she closes out by saying let's vote y'all as if the left does not already have dominance over virtually every single major institution in this country now, especially Hollywood and entertainment. There's no amount of voting that is going to change really the stronghold that the left has in Hollywood at the moment, which is why we're getting projects like Star Wars, like Rings of Power, like Bros and Woman King and all these different things that we mentioned throughout this video. Don't worry, girl. The stronghold still exists. Yet the public is making their voice heard and they're making it heard at the box office, they're making it heard on Twitter, they're making it heard in YouTube dislikes. You can only exercise so much control over what you force feed people because we still have the option to engage with it. And when we do engage with it, we have the option to disagree and criticize and more and more people are starting to exercise that. And I think these industry titans like Disney+ and Lucasfilm are either going to realize what people are asking for and start to move in that direction and maybe usher in another golden era for media entertainment, or they're going to fall again on the back burner because they refuse to listen to what the public wants. We can only do so much of the pointing fingers and calling people that don't like our projects racist. How long is that going to last for? Before these people altogether either A, stop wholly engaging with your content, B, continue down the path of engaging with it and criticizing it or C, start creating their own media entertainment, which is happening slowly but surely. And I mean, what are you going to do that? You can't call us racist big. It's if nobody's watching. That's really it. You know, I said at the beginning, I like a medal stepper. She's on a path, hopefully, to stepping out of the bubble of her reality as she referred to it and maybe seeing that there are some real reasons why people disliked Star Wars. The acolyte, real storytelling reasons, real agenda based reasons, and just an overall, maybe lackluster experience that they had in taking in this show. And that's really all I got to say. Those are my thoughts on Amanda Listenberg and her response to Star Wars the acolyte not being greenlit for a season two. I'd love to hear what you guys think. Do you agree with her? Do you disagree with her? If you do, you're a racist bigot, but I guess you're welcome on this channel. If nowhere else, guys, leave your thoughts in the comments down below. If you liked this video, like, subscribe, click the notification bell to be notified every single time I post a video for you guys, which is every day, and I will see you tomorrow. Bye, guys. ♪♪♪