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.
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