The overwhelming call for the redemption of Kylo Ren on tumblr is very much reflective of a culture of toxic white male privilege that I would venture to say most users would probably claim they reject. Ben is a wealthy white boy, the son of war heroes, the son of a princess/senator/general. He came from a loving privileged background. He had the best opportunities. He had an uncle who trained him to be one of the only Jedi in the universe. That wasn’t enough for Ben, so Ben becomes Kylo Ren.
In America, we see it one week after the next. A white suburban guy in his early 20s decides to take his resentment out in the form of murder. “He was such a nice boy, such a quiet boy.” The smiling childhood picture. His mother cries on camera, rather than the mothers of his victims. He gets a sensitive instagram picture on the cover of newspapers and magazines rather than his mugshot. “Bring our boy home.” How many innocent people has your boy killed?
So the desperate clamoring for this white boy who had it all and chose that he preferred the path of mass murder is a very profound, very deliberate choice of villain in a movie with a very deliberate lead cast – a woman, a black man, a latino man. I think this is a really fascinating subject, but it’s not the conversation that’s happening here on tumblr. Instead we talk about his fabulous hair and his absolutely essential redemption arc and his “temper tantrums” as if they’re not completely real and completely representative of something very sinister in our culture.
It’s not just a movie. Good science fiction never is. We all know that, otherwise we couldn’t care so much.
Reading through the notes, I see fan after fan basically saying “it’s not the color of his skin, it’s that he is worthy of sympathy.” They talk about brainwashing and abuse toward him in great detail as if it’s been established in canon.
What they don’t get is that they’re doing exactly what the OP is saying. They are able – almost desperate – to empathize with Kylo Ren, but it’s rare to see such empathy toward Finn, who we know was brainwashed and abused, starting with his kidnapping as a baby. Rarely do fans talk about Finn’s deep fear of the First Order in terms of his being a survivor – no, he’s a coward.
Even if one says nothing about Finn either way but displays great empathy for Kylo, it demonstrates the point of the OP. You don’t have to explicitly say you want redemption for the white guy because he’s white. That’s not how it works. White guys getting more empathy isn’t about conscious racism, but seeing as it happens continually both in the real world and in fandoms it’s very real and clearly does have something to do with race.
@osunism RELEVANT
Finn is literally on the redemption path these white bitches so desperate for Kylo Ren to have, but they can’t empathize with a Black man.
Exactly. They see him as the threat. The potential rapist brute who will corrupt the innocent white and thus fragile Rey. Nevermind he was taken from birth, brainwashed, abused, trained into a system to be the perfect killing machine and HE REJECTED IT ALL FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
Joined the Rebellion and actively works to atone and bring peace to the galaxy.
But he’s Black. So therefore there’s ‘just something not right’ about him.
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