Rose Tico, Kelly Marie Tran and toxic fandom
A short examination of Star Wars tumblr fandom
*Note: All posts that I link to are for receipt purposes, and the receipts themselves usually contain more links to more receipts so you better click on them. Also they are there for evidence, not for the harassment of the bloggers.
What I find interesting in the wake of Kelly Marie Tran deleting her posts off instagram after months and months of abuse has been the responses on here from those who have virtually made a personality out of dislikng Rose Tico (and TLJ and Rian Johnson, etc.) and who have in the process perpetuated a form of racial misogyny while simultaneously theatrically disavowing White Fanboys. After all, they’ll tell you, we weren’t the ones calling her slurs.
Posts like the one above are telling: it does something interesting, which it completely drops the woman part in favor of narrative solely of racism, and racism only that of White Fanboys. But contrary to the blogger’s opinion, the harassment and, crucially, the response to Rose Tico, was not only about racism it was about sexism as well.
It’s convenient to omit this fact because it makes it easier for certain people to slip through the cracks and bypass any blame or self examination as possible players in a larger endemic of modern social media driven fan culture. The ways in which White Fanboys have been racist and sexist is pretty well documented, which is why it’s a little baffling why the above blogger seems to miss the latter entirely. Kelly and Rose are not simply a person of color but a woman of color - women of color do not experience racism and sexism separately.
I for one do not believe we can understand the backlash to Rose Tico without seeing it as animated by specific forms of racial misogyny - whether it’s a white male calling Kelly a “fat ch*nk” on Instagram or the broader reception of her character on places like Tumblr. I want to talk particularly about the latter.
Consistently those who have critiqued Rose Tico’s character on Tumblr have resorted to depicting her as a harridan, hyper aggressive towards the male character, arrogant and unsympathetic. You may recognize this tactic: it’s one of the oldest sexist tricks in the book. Tumblr being what it is adds a unique spin to this, sexism being mobilized in the name of anti-racism, ostensibly to protect her love interest, Finn.
This leads back to why I think it is very convenient to omit the gendered aspects of the perceptions of Rose’s character. Doing so portrays the problem with fandom as the property of those with certain identities saying outwardly racist things, and not people with other identities we consider marginalized saying things wholly compatible with the sexism or racism of whiter, maler fanboys.
As I’ve argued before, this very gendered understanding of Rose Tico is shot through by racism the - consequence of which is that she is held to a double standard compared to Rey, a White woman, while also victimizing Finn in a way that reduces him to simply a proxy for his race. Since Rose is an Asian woman she is duly penalized for stepping out of the box of feminine virtue. Asian women are stereotyped as docile, primitive, sexually available and hyper feminine. The flip side of the docile Asian butterfly, is the Dragon Lady, the aggressive, deceitful, prickly and seductive Oriental female waiting to unman the hero.
Rey, a white woman who is more conventionally beautiful by Western standards, enacts a more acceptable femininity, especially towards Finn: she does not challenge him nor hold him responsible when she finds out he’s been fibbing to her about the Resistance. Rose does, and in doing so pushes both him and herself to grow and change.
Now I’m not saying that to dump on the Finn-Rey dynamic. It works for them and is fairly justified in universe (Finn comes back to help Rey, there’s no time for chit chatting anyway).
But the double standard is astounding: Rose tasing Finn when she rightfully deduces that he is trying to leave the Resistance after she believed he had joined, which is her job anyway, after her sister sacrificed herself for the Cause, is considered “anti-Black” despite racial connotations in text and in real life being thoroughly averted. But when Rey, a White woman, wrongfully assumes that Finn is a thief and knocks him down with her staff, having never even spoken to him before, it is considered a “meet-cute”. I was around when all we had was TFA in the fandom and I know that there was no such discussion surrounding Rey’s seeming aggression toward Finn, certainly not to the degree we are seeing with Rose, despite the implications of a White woman hitting a Black man because she believes he is a thief being far more problematic. When this is pointed out to some fans it is either ignored or sidestepped completely.
Make no mistake that shipping is a primary motivator for Rose Tico’s treatment by those who proclaim themselves to be Finn oriented fans on tumblr. The fact that these stances are possible relies on privileging White women and Men of Color and even White men, over the Woman of color. That this leaves Rose Tico and Kelly Marie Tran high and dry, similar to how White Fanboys have left her high and dry is no coincidence. Even if they are not hurling slurs they are maintaining radio silence on the harassment Kelly has received or are finding other bullshit ways to problematize her.
Some attempt is made to argue that these “anti-racist” sections of fandom are objecting to what they believe is the stereotyping of Blacks and Asians in The Last Jedi, but as I explain here these attempts are faulty and incoherent.
So how does this tie into the harassment KMT received directly. Well, it’s a part of the same toxic highly manipulative entitled and reactionary fan culture that nurtures that very type of harassment and rewards it with legitimacy and avenues for diversion of bigotry and terrible behavior in general. They are not separable phenomena diametrically opposed to one another, but wholly compatible, as I pointed out in this post:
You all are part of the problem of toxic fan culture as the White dudebros, even without being their moral equivalents, because you helped normalize racializing and gendering characters in specific ways AND shitting all over creators and actors, in order to justify fixating on a movie you didn’t like. Not surprisingly this will always trickle down to the more marginalized like Kelly (if she was not already the immediate target).
And again here when Rose Tico and Rian Johnson “critics” were trying to divert any complicity they may have had:
Our whole argument isn’t that every anti/FinnRey person was responsible for hurling slurs or being exactly like the White dudebros - it’s that the criticism of antis/FinnReys is the other side of the coin of White dudebros.The criticism that comes from antis/FinnReys relies on very particular ways of racializing and gendering that nonetheless uphold racial misogyny and are incoherent under scrutiny.
The difference is that script is flipped. Instead of framing it in racist terms, it’s framed in anti-racist terms; instead of the complaint being Forced Diversity, it’s Bad Representation; instead of it being Kelly’s fault, it’s Rian’s; instead of the problem being that the women tell the men what to do, it’s an Asian woman not treating a black man in an acceptable fashion.
Basically the good majority of what passes for criticism in the anti/FinnRey community is appropriating the argument of White dudebros and redressing it as anti-racist and anti-sexist - but repackaging these ideas instead of discarding them means they end up reifying the same thing.
We are holding you lot as responsible in your own right not because we believe these two groups are moral equivalents. But because we recognize the common well that they both draw from. We are holding you lot responsible because of your role in nurturing racial misogyny in fandom that allows this behavior to reproduce itself, while mystifying it through layers of identity and abused anti-racist, anti-sexist rhetoric turned upside down.
You don’t need to say outright that Rose is a downgrade for Finn; that’s already implicit in your demonization of Rose and the double standards you hold her to.
Moreover there are entire tags dedicated to hating on Rian Johnson - not respectfully critiquing but actually impugning his person. Similarly so with Adam Driver - to the brink of lies being spread about him. There is an entire blog dedicated to hating on one fucking movie (unironically made by someone who said they would leave tumblr if R*ylo became canon).
Many “TLJ criticals”, anti FinnRose and anti Reylo people - all of whom have a strong overlap with one another - participate in this hate and so bear direct involvement in the producing and reproducing of a culture that says it’s ok to shit on people (and on other fans because *gasp* they ship this thing you don’t like). The more marginalized, like Kelly Marie Tran, will always bear the brunt of this so long as we allow it towards any actors or creators at all, and especially if we allow it to don the disguise of progressive sounding political-cultural critiques and monopolized identity.
To finish up I advise checking out these insightful posts pertaining to Rose and Finn that I think does more justice to The Last Jedi, Finn and Rose Tico than 99% of people in fandom, whether on Instagram or Tumblr, have done.
I hope the wider fandom can learn from this, lend their support to Kelly Marie Tran unconditionally, and stop making a personality or a Cause or even a substantial presence in fandom based off something they disliked - and relying on racialized sexism in the process.
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