Gays in Space: Does Disney Have the Balls?

[greedoinheels]

This post is more or less for my own sanity. I mean, I've been hoping that Poe would be gay for so long and so hard that I would honestly be disappointed if that didn't end up being canon at this point. However, I don't think anything could actually ruin my experience for VIII (unless I get spoiled again), so this isn't a make or break issue for my relationship with Star Wars. But I just have to get the facts in order. Not the speculation. This time I want to be clear. These are the facts when looking at this nonsense through a gay lens.

Here I list the facts leaning for and against Stormpilot, Gay Poe Dameron, and/or LGBT+ representation in VIII.

AGAINST

As with anything, let's get the bad parts out of the way first. These are all the reasons why Star Wars is going to stick to a heteronormative climate.

I. It's not actually in a galaxy far far away. It's here on dumbass Earth where Brexit won and Donald Trump is a serious candidate for president. Much more importantly, it's created by corporations. Big money corporations. Corporations that had a lot to gain from Brexit and more to gain from President Trump.

Now, it's impossible to satisfy everyone. Disney and Lucasfilm gets that. But the fewer boycotts it has in sales, the better. Not like Star Wars is by any means going to go into the hole. VIII is probably going to bring in more money than even VII managed to do, now that it's gained more fans and people around the world realized that it's not like the prequels after all. But what about DVD sales? What about merchandise? Comics? IX? People are going to still buy it, of course. Even the homophobes. But there's a possible margin for less money and, fuck, how are they supposed to keep up those diamond studded swimming pools like this?

II. There's something out there much bigger than your typical rebel flag flying asshole. That's just an individual. Star Wars is a beloved franchise world wide and some countries won't like LGBT+ representation. There are 76+ countries where it is illegal to be part of the LGBT+ community. Punishments include life in prison and the death penalty. China, home to 1.4 billion people, has banned LGBT+ representation in media. Russia, home to 143.5 million people, is trying to expand upon anti-gay laws to prevent public displays of affection with same sex couples. Sure, it's legal to be LGBT+ in Russia, but they don't fucking like it.

So besides the bare minimum of political backlash, you can forget being able to (legally) sell a gay movie, even Star Wars, in any of these countries unless you want to literally put fans in danger. So if they don't sell them in these countries, that's a pretty damn huge hit to their projected sales, assuming the LGBT+ community everywhere else doesn't flood in and wrap up that margin out of sheer excitement.

III. Okay, let's forget about sales figures for a second. Let's say that nothing in the world would bring a backlash onto gay representation in Star Wars. Let's say there wouldn't be anything to hold it back. We cannot forget about homophobia from within the companies themselves. There's always been a lot of hearsay about whether of not Disney is for or against LGBT+ representation.

But Lucasfilm? Remember that time a BioWare dev said that "some terms don't exist in Star Wars"? or when R2 called Threepio a gay slur in MAD? Okay, neither are Lucasfilm directly, but there's a lot of rumors that George Lucas is homophobic. But these are rumors. Some people have claimed that he's homophobic because he's threatened in the past to file a lawsuit against gay fanfiction. Except it's not strange for a creator to get a court order demanding that there be no creation of fanfiction of their media (no source says he's against the gay part). I mean, Anne Rice did the same shit. And who cares what George Lucas thinks now anyway? He doesn't own those kinds of rights to Star Wars anymore. Unfortunately, the new owners of Lucasfilm is still a little too new (and extremely careful about leaks) to tell how they really feel on the matter.

IV. On Jan. 8th, the stupidest reporter I've ever seen released a tidbit about an interview with John Boyega about 20 days before the interview was officially released. Not only did he not monopolize on that interview because he literally handed it over to EVERYONE, but he put Boyega on the spot and made him look like the bad guy.

Nonsense aside, the reporter asked Boyega in the interview if he had heard about Stormpilot. John replied that "It's so not true" and "It's a brotherly love, a bromance". That effectively put a halt to all Stormpilot hope for at least a little while.

V. Queerbaiting is a very real and unfortunate phenomena in media. Supernatural's Destiel and Captain America's Stucky are the world's worst for this shit. They love to drag fans of all ranges through a storm of "will they Will They WILL THEY" while never approving or denying anything, making tons of money off the backs of hungry fans begging and dying to know WILL THEY. But they don't. They never do. It's just a marketing ploy. And, honestly, if Stormpilot isn't canon then Star Wars is going to be guilty of this as well. Even in more recent merchandise, Finn and Poe are often seen standing next to each other. It's not even making me hopeful. Just preemptively disappointed.

FOR

Now here I'm going to make the much longer list of reasons why LGBT+ stuff is going to actually happen in VIII. While these don't really hold as much weight as a fucking death penalty for a guy kissing another guy, these are still pretty damn teasing.

I. Let's start with proper reasons before I get along to the evidence bit. First and foremost, being as inclusive as possible in media - especially in a franchise that celebrates an entire galaxy - is extremely important. I mean, let's not forget that C-3PO is here and queer and beautifully splendid, but it would be nice to have actual canon confirmation for something like this.

II. Star Trek did that. They did that. Which REALLY doesn't say anything, actually. People have argued that Star Wars has to one-up it (which won't be hard, let's be real) but they forget that VIII was wrapped before news of Sulu ever hit the mainstream. So, that's out the window.

But oh wait, Game of Thrones did that, too, didn't they? Oh and so did The Walking Dead. And Supernatural. And The 100. And Legend of Korra. And Steven Universe. And Sailor Moon. And Adventure Time. And Orange Is The New Black. And Sense8.

Point is, it's happening. They just have to keep up at this point.

III. And now we get into the evidence bit.

16 Dec 2015, Oscar Isaac jokes around on Ellen and says that he "was playing romance" and that it was "very subtle." Most of his scenes are with Finn.

8 Jan, John Boyega says in the same interview where he discredits Stormpilot rumors that it's just "all in Oscar's head" confirming that Isaac ships it or has at least brought it up in conversation.

13 Jan, Rian Johnson tweeted a fanart picture of Finn and Poe kissing. I still don't understand the numbers or whatever game he and his friends are playing, so this could have been tweeted for a number of reasons. He never considered taking it down, though.

18 Jan, the scripts for VIII got a complete rewrite. This dramatically shortened Kelly Marie Tran's character's scenes down from two separate characters to one smaller character in order to focus more on Rey, Finn, and Poe. This was due to fan reaction from VII. Apparently they didn't expect fans to really like the big three all that much, but these rewrites were so important that it backed up the release date for VIII from May 2017 to December 2017, effectively grabbing that Christmas market while they were at it.

14 Feb, Boyega wins BAFTA's Rising Star award. While in interviews, he's asked again about Stormpilot rumors. "As far as I’m concerned, when J.J. sat us down to go through the script, it was a bromance. But now I’m learning what Mark Hamill said before when he didn’t know that Darth Vader was Luke’s father: you never know what they’re going to pull. I’m looking at the director Rian closely so he can get me involved early, so I can prepare myself. So who knows?" This interview was done the day before Boyega left to start filming VIII, so I'm not sure if he had seen the script or not at that point. Considering how locked down they are this round, to the point of shredding scripts every day, I'm guessing he hadn't.

26 Feb, J.J. Abrams was asked if there would be a gay character in the future for the movie franchise. "Of course! When I talk about inclusivity it’s not excluding gay characters. It’s about inclusivity. So of course... To me, the fun of Star Wars is the glory of possibility. So it seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world." He also said, "We all need to do better to represent this world. It’s something that is important to me, and is something that we’re focusing on at Bad Robot."

11 May, Oscar Isaac attends the critic's screening for X-Men: Apocalypse. He's asked by a reporter if he was aware about what people were saying online in regards to Poe's relationship with other characters in Star Wars. He replies, "Poe has a lot of love to give."

13 May, John Boyega wins the Chopard Trophy at the Cannes Film Festival with Bel Powley. In an interview with Variety, he's asked about the budding romance between Finn and Rey. "Yes, Finn and Rey – they’re just friends. Finn is a Stormtrooper, so he doesn’t really know what’s going on. So the romance thing is something that’s going to be interesting in the next installment. It’s not going to go the way you think it’s going to go."

To add to these: I can't find the source for it right now, but someone on Twitter once jokingly posted a picture of what they thought the VIII title would be "Finn and Poe Kiss." Pablo Hidalgo singled it out and personally responded to it, saying that this wasn't the title.

IV. Okay, this one is a bit off the cuff, but I felt the need to put this here. In issue #3 of the Poe Dameron comics, Charles Soule, the writer, responded to some fan mail. One person asked if the comics were going to get into Poe's personal and romantic life. We got a confirmation on the personal life, but- "That said, it's definitely an action book - not a lot of downtime in the Resistance these days!" So that's a negative on the romance stuff for now.

Which is only half odd, since we are getting a romance with Snap/Karé even if it's not exactly wine and roses but it is a thing. But it's not totally shocking that Poe wouldn't have a romance, though. Yeah, he's the main character, but this is still a very new story. To have him be in a romance would give things away for VIII and IX. Which means the companies are MORE than aware of the Stormpilot/Gay!Poe speculation. People have been complaining that the Poe Dameron comics aren't breaking boundaries and stuff, but they kind of... can't. Anything they give up could be a potential spoiler for Poe's character that they aren't willing to give up yet, especially in a comic book and not on the big screen. So even the probable fact that there will be no Poe/??? romance in the comics still means that there's probably things being hidden in the love department.

V. And now I come to the most important piece of evidence. The movie itself. They can talk all they want about how hetero Poe is, but no one can deny what's being shown to us. Poe "dies" on Jakku, so Finn keeps his leather jacket while walking through a desert planet and begging for water. They run to each other when they meet again, hugging, freaking out. All just this side of platonic, right? Then there's The Lip Bite. The looking Finn up and down, tugging his own jacket back on his shoulders, biting his lip, "it suits you," "you're a good man, Finn." And let's not forget that Poe waited while Starkiller was imploding until he had direct visual of the Falcon taking off before leaving the planet himself, OR that Poe ran after Finn when he was being taken away to medical.

Totally platonic. Not. But okay, Oscar Isaac knew what he was doing, and of course he's talked about it with Boyega considering that's the first thing the other man says when it's brought up in an interview. But the crew, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J. Abrams, the editors, cameramen, that guy holding the boom mic, they all let him do it. And maybe it was queerbaiting. Or maybe it was a shot in the dark. Maybe when fans lit up, they were all over the rewrites because they had already prepared for the rewrites. And this isn't something that just die-hard fans are seeing, either. They're being asked about it in interviews. And yeah, everyone's craving news on VIII but C'MON.

This is a whole lot like Harry Potter now that I think about it. Remember when it was all over and Rowling announced on Twitter that Dumbledore was gay. That's nice but it don't count for shit. It wasn't shown to us and that's Rule 101 in storytelling. SHOW, don't TELL. And this is what we saw in Star Wars. We saw a fully grown man check out another man. Millions of people saw it. You can't just say "um nah" because it's THERE. Whether or not it will continue to be there is the mystery.


So the future of our gay flyboy is literally up in the air. Let's not forget that the Star Wars galaxy is NOT actually hetero-exclusive, so at least there's that to nibble on. But for a lot of people the movies are the only canon that's out there. And yeah, we still got Threepio being fabulous. But, man... wouldn't it be so sweet?

Oh and that image up there? It's art by Phil Noto, the artist for the Poe Dameron books. I'm just saying.