ST Finn/John Boyega Discussion Thread

Systemic racism is a descriptor of a phenomenon; it isn’t an independent force that makes decisions or that forces others to make decisions.

Finn was deliberately demoted because he was black. DLF knew Finn was black. They knowingly and deliberately did not want him as the lead or as the white girl’s love interest because he was black. It wasn’t apathy. It wasn’t unconscious bias. It was flat-out “we can’t have a black guy in this role.” There is PLENTY of apathy towards inclusion and unconcious bias in Hollywood. That’s not what’s going on here.

I’m not sure why it’s hard for many to grasp that a lot of folk - including powerful old white in Hollywood - are consciously and unapologetically racist. If the racist vitriol spilled online (including against John and Finn) and the real-life violent hate crimes committed against black folk aren’t convincing then all I can say is that denial is a powerful drug.

 

Shame he wasn't white. Then he might have been demoted for other reasons outside of his skin color. But alas it wasn't to be.

 

Genuine question- (so if you reply I'd appreciate not being accused of harboring racist sympathies) where is the proof for the bolded? I can respect this line of thought as an interpretation for what happened (one that I somewhat agree with but not 100%), but that's all it is, an interpretation based on very limited information

I don't think most good faith actors would dispute your first sentence here nor that the racist vitriol towards Finn that does exist. But how do you square such explicitly racist vitriol with the fact that it's the same LFL that cast Finn in the first place in TFA and made one of the biggest, most high-profile movies ever with him playing the leading role?

And yes, Finn's story in TLJ is bad. But he still does have tons of screentime and his own plotline that RJ and KK clearly thought was substantive. Did LFL direct RJ to make sure Finn's storyline was bad and inconsequential? LFL hated Finn so much they wanted to make sure he was relegated to a plotline that had no broader significance?

I wonder why there's such a refusal to acknowledge that there are (IMO) clearly other factors that played a role in what went down. While I do agree with much of the spirit of your argument, you run into clear limits and contradictions when everything is viewed through such a racially deterministic lens

 

Firstly, I’m not sure what you mean by “proof.” If you mean “1,000 certainty that can only be obtained through an explicit, detailed confession by the perpetrators or actual mind-reading” then I’d note that of course there’s no “proof” but folks get sent to prison for life without “proof” so I’d say none is needed.

If by “proof” you mean “strong evidence” then there’s plenty of bts information along with what John himself and other folks with direct knowledge of the ST production process that makes this conclusion clear. But it requires one to actually have followed the bts coverage, and not many fans seem to have bothered.

To be clear - I think your question is a fair one unless you happen to be asljng as a way of arguing that without a higher standard of proof than needed to lock someone up we can conclude nothing. I see this so often that I’m naturally suspicious.

@godisawesome, whose posts I always enjoy and whose opinions I respect, seemed to be struggling with the notion expressed in my first sentence, specifically. That’s why I brought it up.

JJ cast Finn. Not Disney. Not LFL. Remember that JJ has Bad Robot.

Overlapping production schedules. TLJ was written before TFA was released, and the decision to demote Finn was as well. Changes were made to TFA to accommodate TLJ but considering the time constraints only so much could be changed (vs, say, TROS).

As for TFA’s BO, once TFA came out….not every decision-maker thinks every element of a successful movie was a pre-requisite for its success. As surprising as this sounds, many fans think Finn was irrelevant to the success of TFA. Doubtless the decision-makers at DLF who wanted Finn demoted didn’t think that would hurt TLJ’s BO.

The issue isn’t that his story was bad. All the characters had bad stories in TLJ. The problem was that he was demoted and stuck in a side plot irrelevant to the main plot ie the one Rey, Kylo, and Luke were in.

Finn had almost half the screentime in TLJ that he had in TFA. How is that a “ton of screentime,” as if DLF/RJ did him a favor by not cutting out his character altogether?

What evidence is there that RJ and KK thought Finn’s story was “substantive”? His arc was merely a repeat of what he did in TFA so objectively it clearly wasn’t.

I don’t think you understand how racism works. You ask those things as if you think they’re absurd. While black SW fans get *daily* death threats for saying impossibly innocuous stuff on social media.

Remember that bigotry is deeply, profoundly irrational and unjustifiable. If you (general “you”) can only accept as true things that make sense to you, then you will be blind to bigotry as it’s experienced by marginalized groups every day.

Clearly? What “other factors” played a role in Finn’s sidelining/demotion? I don’t recall any bts info that pointed to anything else and you don’t seem to have really followed it yourself so I’m curious what I’m missing. It sounds more like you’re just having a hard time grasping how racism operates.

We’re like….a year out from a white cop literally torturing a black man to death *in public* and folks still have a hard time imagining a far less extreme example of racism occurring in Hollywood.

 

But in some cases that's not exactly a good thing.

 

I don't know why you had even bothered to argue your case. A lot of people do not want to admit that racism and other forms of bigotry are still prevalent in this society, let alone in Hollywood and among the executives with the Disney and Lucasfilm organizations. The bigotry is obviously apparent. But . . . as usual . . . a lot of people like to pretend that bigotry is a thing of the past and that underprivileged groups are complaining about nothing.

 

A lot of people are raised to see racism as what other people (bad people) do, but no one wants to think of themselves as a bad person. So when someone points out that what someone may be doing on a day to day basis actually has a strong foundation in institutionalized racism, they're first reaction (since they are a good person) is to deny that what they have been doing could be bad.

 

Except no where do I dispute the existence of bigotry, its prevalence in society, or imply anything that you are suggesting....I actually acknowledged the role of racism in how Finn was treated, but I can't help but think you ignored that so as to give your post the veneer of a higher moral ground

Literally obviously racism has played a role in how Finn was treated, it's not exactly subtle. This is a very mean spirited mischaracterization of what I even said and you do not know me

The other factors are the same factors that led to this trilogy being a mess in general. Inconsistent visions for each of the main new ST characters, the ST story at large, where Finn was supposed to fit in as the "non-Skywalker" character, corporate priorities...etc. These are circumstances that affected all the characters IMO, not just Finn.

For Finn, is racism intertwined with all these reasons in many ways and are actors at LFL deeply conservative and motivated by racial biases? I woudn't deny that and never did. But I think the ST and Finn's treatment is a mess in general for a multitude of reasons, not simply because they were guided by the invisible hand of racism.

I actually think you might be denying the systemic context racism operates in, in favor of a more individualized, interpersonal understanding. On a wider level, LFL was full of dysfunction and this undermined each of the ST character's stories, with Finn's displacement standing out as particularly vitriolic due to the historic way black characters have been treated on film and tv (...etc).

When we talk about "systemic" ________, we're talking about the way institutions are designed so as to perpetuate -isms beyond simply the intentions/actions of individual actors. Racial disparities in education, for example, can be traced to the way schools are funded by property taxes, the way underfunded schools are less likely to attract good teachers, are more likely to overlap with low-income neighborhoods that are largely BIPOC...etc. These dynamics affect ALL students, but their effect on black students is clearly VERY especially damaging due to how racism has shaped our society as it exists today. It's not just because individual teachers are mean and more likely to be racist towards minority students. But of course that doesn't mean those types of teachers don't exist or don't play their own role. But they exist in dialectic with a larger systemic dynamic.

I mostly just don't think Finn was sidelined because of the individual executives/directors being explicitly, intentionally racist. I do think Finn's treatment was racist, I just don't 100% agree with your specific characterization of it. I think Finn's treatment was the product of a wider dysfunctional dynamic at LFL. The end result was a Finn that was sidelined, in part motivated by storytelling incompetence, also in part motivated by racism. The result is the sidelining of SW's first black main character, which is clearly racist. I can understand why for some these distinction doesn't matter and come to the same thing, but I think these dynamics are important for arriving at a better understanding of how racism actually operates beyond the purview of individuals.

 

I think racism exists totally. Never denied that ever. I just think people end up seeing it everywhere after a while. Even places its not actually there.

And thats kinda the issue. There is no innocent till guilty. Where racism is concerned, if you shout it to the hills, then someone is clearly already guilty. And i do think that word gets used to defend people of color but also berate white people.

Its abit like if a white guy and black guy went for a job interview. The white guy has better qualifications and so gets the job. But it would be so easy to come away from that and say well they were racist because they chose the white guy. Then go through the history of how appressed black culture has been in years. I mean Sure there was a good reason for why the guy got the job, but it doesn't matter because you didn't choose the black guy. That company that didn't hire the black guy is guilty. And that word is so freely used now that they can be called racist. They can be labeled as racist now.

 

I am going to steelman this example a bit, because this is the type of thing that is often said by racists to discredit anti-racist work. It's inevitable that employers might find themselves in a position of having to maybe choose a white candidate over a black one, because that's life. However, even if that employer is the most perfect example of a nonracist person ever (whatever that looks like lol), their choice to choose the white candidate inevitably plays into a racist systemic dynamic where black people are less likely to get hired and face poorer socioeconomic outlooks.

This is what we mean by systemic: the actions and intent of the individual employer don't matter so much as the context they operate in that gives their actions a racist meaning. The end result of giving the job to the white candidate over the black candidate IS racist in the way it perpetuates systemic dynamics, even if on the individual level it's not motivated by racial sentiment.

It's confusing and not a 1:1 relationship. I think it's naive to act as though racism doesn't exist among TV/film executives and directors, but I also think it's naive to point to that as explicit, guiding motivation on the individual level. If the individual executives at Disney are all simply racist and hated the idea of having a popular black character in SW, then why make a movie like Black Panther? Why use "diversity" as one of your main selling points for the MCU lately? Disney is obviously quite willing to exploit and capitalize on existing social movements for racial equality for their own financial gain. The MCU is a quintessential example; they're products that ultimately shore up a racist system, monopoly capitalism, and are designed to mold public opinion in favor of the US military industrial complex and the US's terrorizing of nonwhite populations around the world.

Likewise, Disney weaponized these dynamics with SW by acting as though racist sentiments on the parts of individuals was the main thing motivating people's dislike of TLJ, which is obviously ridiculous.

 

@dogprivilege

You seem to be skeptical that powerful rich old white men who make decisions behind closed doors would be overtly racist ie consciously make decisions that knowingly disadvantage a character/actor because they know he’s black.

It doesn’t matter if *they* think they’re being racist. Racist folk like to define racism very very narrowly to exclude their own views and behavior. But if one doesn’t think that, say, to point to an obvious example, minimizing Finn on the Chinese poster was an explicitly racist decision, or if you think it was but nothing else was (as appears to be your view) or that such decisions were not conciously made by individuals than I don’t know what to say.

Systems are still composed of people, and the idea that powerful execs are somehow being “accidentally” racist or simply products of a system as if they have no individual agency is naive at best.

This is, btw, how your words come across to me, whatever your intentions. Feel free to clarify.

 

Well in my analogy the white guy was infact more qualified. That was kind of the point.

 

If you think that then you clearly didn't even get what i was saying. You just see me undermine a black person over a white person. When that was not the point to my analogy. And if that is infact what you see. Then i feel like that validates my post somewhat when i say that sometimes people see racism where there isn't any.

 

@Daxon101

 

Ok fair, I appreciate being pressed on the point because I do think it is important. It's not that I think folk are "accidentally" being racist or that there aren't individual execs exercising individual agency in a racist way. I just think it's limiting to evaluate these phenomena solely through the lens of individual behavior/intentions/sentiments, as I think it misses the forest for the trees and causes one to run into clear contradictions. Contradictions that don't diminish the very salient role racism plays throughout our entire society, but ones that ultimately demand a more systemic, thorough analysis of how institutions navigate our political/social/economic moment so as to maintain their power. What happened to Finn IMO was not the result of any one particular moment/group of individuals over the course of making the ST.

When it comes to Finn throughout the ST, I believe there were individuals at LFL that loved Finn purely as a character, individuals that loved the character for what he represented in terms of racial progress, individuals that were indifferent towards the character with some that were motivated by unconscious/conscious racism, and individuals that hated the character and were consciously racist about it. The wider, systemic context is about understanding what institutional factors led to the more racist sentiments winning out in how Finn was portrayed. This helps us arrive at a stronger analysis of the forces of power & racism and their relationship to each other.

I think you can acknowledge the role of racism in Hollywood while also acknowledging that the people making these decisions are motivated by a multitude of other complex factors. Understanding the specific and unique ways in which racism interplays with these other motivations helps us arrive at a more complete and thorough understanding of what actually happened. Basically: I think that even if we could have somehow eliminated absolutely any racist sentiments on the part of these LFL officials we keep alluding to, Finn's character STILL would have ended up a mess.

I'm gonna go back to the Black Panther example. If Finn's treatment is solely the result of "powerful rich old white men who make decisions behind closed doors would be overtly racist ie consciously make decisions that knowingly disadvantage a character/actor because they know he’s black", then is Black Panther the result of rich old white men behind closed door being overtly motivated by a desire for racial equality? I think both you and I would say of course not, given the nature of a company like Disney, the type of people who historically have run it, and the MCU's propaganda function. But that's not to say there weren't individuals primarily motivated by progressive ideals and racist individuals who were against BP because they didn't want a "black" Disney/MCU film. The institutional/systemic factors caused the former to win out.

Disney made BP in large part cause they knew it would be a HUGE commercial and financial hit in the social/political climate of 2018. The idea that folks at Disney are motivated one way or another solely or (IMO) even primarily by their individual racial sentiments isn't quite consistent with this dynamic and in fact falls short of being able to fully explain Disney's politics in 2021. That's why I say that framing these decisions solely through the lens of individual racial sentiments runs into clear limits in explaining the behavior of these institutions.

And again, Disney was happy to put on the public persona of a racial equality advocate when they smeared TLJ haters as racist/sexist. Disney is happy to co-opt and emphasize the language around racial equality/progress when it suits their bottom line.

I can understand why my language maybe comes across as me trying to excuse/downplay the racism that Boyega/Finn experienced, which really isn't my intent at all. I'm trying to understand why the racist optics and sentiments around Finn won out in this particular case while in other cases Disney demonstrates that they're perfectly capable of playing into current norms of antiracist language/visibility in a way that is embraced by progressives.

 

I don't. from the sound of it they were not even going for a certain type of person. it ranged fromTom Holland who was what 18-21? or actors in their 30s playing Finn. In the long run, with the same script as TFA, it was never gonna happen. I always use Holland as an example because if had been cast, i don't think he would have been a love interest. infact i think he could have been treated the exact same way and i doubt anyone would have noticed that he was undermined in the role.

The comspiracy theories around Adam Driver i just think is ridiculous. Finn suffered from one issue and one issue alone. He structurally worked as 2nd underdog character next to Rey in TFA, but for the next film, the Luke skywalker stand-in was gonna have to step up and the the 2nd underdog probably wasn't gonna be following. Which is why TFA put him in a Coma in the first place so Rey had to go alone. I fault that JJ Abrams didn't give Finn anything beyond being a 2nd underdog and in the end that is how he was left. It has nothing to do with Driver being attractive or white, or being in a popular tv show. Which in itself its weird because apparently all these shallow motives only apply to the casting Driver and nothing else in the Star Wars universe. Almost like Driver is the hottest thing around.

 

Looking at Holland back in 2015... No way. He would have looked more like her younger brother. And going by the ages they were looking at. they didn't have a particular idea in mind. They were not going for actors around Daisey's age because they had it planned Finn was gonna be a Love interest for her. Lets be honest Finn wasn't straight up planned as a love interest.

Oh Finn would have mattered. But he was likely to get the role closer to what he ended up getting. Basically in the Han and Leia role in the OT. And no one berates their importance do they? Probably not standing next to Rey constantly through every step of the way. Just like Han, Leia and Luke didn't hang out as much as they did after Episode 4.

That shallow aspect of writing around an actor apparently only applies to Adam Driver. Not seen any other mention in Star Wars that bigger names are given more to do. Only Adam Driver apparently. With Adam Driver they apparently had no other reason to write for Kylo beyond his looks and skin color.