Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Need Defending

[unspeakablehorror]

Anakin is one of the most beloved characters in the Star Wars series, if number of fanfiction stories written about him is any indication. Yet people get so mad if someone just doesn't really care for the character.   While I don't have as much of an aversion to him as I do to Kylo Ren or Hux,  I do get tired of the extremely badly argued defenses of him, and if anything were to ever push me into being unable to read or write about the character in a positive way, it would be those.  I'm tired of people never talking about metatextual implications ever and treating works of fiction like fact and acting as if the circumstances of a character's life are not carefully chosen by the author.  George Lucas chose to make a white character a slave.  Furthermore, Anakin is enslaved by aliens.  He's also mistreated by the only significant black character of the prequels (Mace Windu).

If you think about the metatextual implications of this at all, it is extremely ugly.  There's just...no way around that.  Stars Wars is filled with racism, and the construction of Anakin's character is one of the most front and center parts of that racism.  I am not going to criticize anyone for liking or loving the character. But it would be nice if people wouldn't spend so much time ignoring this metatextual racism so they could defend an extremely popular, beloved character who cannot be hurt because he's not real against people who are very much living and breathing human beings.

Comments

[sl_walker]

Heh. Preach.