The Acolyte: A Fight Against Media Illiteracy

I have been a lifelong and dedicated Star Wars fan, not only because its just a fun time to watch space wizards fighting, but because of how relevant its message is in our daily life. While its all too common for people to applaud colonial and even genocidal regimes in the real world, its hard to find someone who exclaims “but what about all the innocent stormtroopers on the death star” when Luke’s proton torpedoes strike true.

The newest live-action show The Acolyte has been entertaining me for the past several weeks. This opinion has not been shared among many so-called fans that have spent every week finding more ways to pick apart the story with increasingly ridiculous arguments. With the penultimate episode having just released this week I thought now is an opportune time to share my thoughts on the experience before the finale drops next Tuesday. To any viewers of the show, there are only very minor spoilers for the first 7 episodes.

Legends vs. Canon

The first Star Wars content I ever engaged with outside of the original and prequel trilogy was the extensive collection of books now known as the “Legends” stories. Even before Star Wars was sold to Disney and all “Legends” material (at the time referred to as the Expanded Universe or EU) were officially labelled as non-canon stories, I understood that these books were somewhat unofficial.

Even though the major plot points and characters were coordinated across all the books, just the nature of being written by dozens of different authors made these stories somewhat standalone.

Each author had slightly different perspectives on the characters, the galaxy at large, and what was important to focus on. As a 10 year old I understood this and even had fun coming up with my own head canon to deal with some of the disparities that existed from book to book. Once The Acolyte’s first episodes aired however, I learned this skill was not shared among a large portion of the “fans” watching the show alongside me.

The Fandom Menace

The show has faced a huge outpouring of criticism for what people claim to be inconsistencies or contradictions with previous Star Wars stories. The incident that caused the biggest firestorm of online hate was the inclusion of a character, Ki Adi Mundi, who fans claim was not born at this point in the timeline.

The tiny issue with this complaint is that the only existing “source” for the characters birth date up until this show was from a digital trading card that was sold alongside some Star Wars DVDs in the early 2000s.

For a franchise as big as Star Wars that announced very publicly that all “Legends” content would officially not be considered canon back in 2015, it should be fairly easy for a fan to understand that some of the tiny details they remember could be incorrect. Even as a huge fan myself, I will occasionally have to correct myself because I was remembering a “Legends” story as a canon one. The news of Mundi’s birth date was, to my surprise, received by a lot of so-called fans with anger and hatred. Some people were so angry with the situation that they ended up sending death threats to the volunteer fans that run the Star Wars Wiki because they had updated the characters birth date to the newly canonized one.

The Chicken or the Egg?

These extreme levels of anger surprised me, even though I’ve grown used to being disappointed by this fandom. The fact that it had escalated to sending death threats to the widely loved and informative volunteer editors on the wiki was something I couldn’t have ever imagined. The more hateful posts and thoughts I came across the more I saw a unifying element: a complete and total lack of media literacy. To borrow from a tweet I saw (and have since lost), these people were so incapable of understanding the show they have negative media literacy.

The communication professional in me immediately wondered which came first, the anger and hatred or the media illiteracy? Is it that some people are so deep into their hatred that the message of the show is going completely over their head or do some people (perhaps due to a poor education) have such bad media literacy skills that they genuinely can’t understand the show and get angry about it. And most importantly, how can the media literacy crisis be addressed?

Since I have neither the time (nor the patience) to conduct a rigorous research study into the behaviour and education of the toxic elements of the Star Wars fandom, I offer simply a few of the best guesses I’ve come up with from more than a decade as a fan myself

Overall, like most things in life the answer isn’t simple enough to be one or the other and there are elements of both options at play. Ironically the first Star Wars movie offers a great quote that illustrates the core of the problem:

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. - Master Yoda, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

There are many online personalities and content creators that seem to rely on stoking people’s anger and turning it into hate against the franchise they claim to love. Anger is an easy emotion to tap into and it often feels really good to express your anger, whether you’re ranting about a horrible coworker to your best friend or complaining about your favourite TV show online. The problem, at least in my opinion, is when you aren’t able to take a step back and recognize there is no sense in holding on to anger about a fictional universe.

If you watch a movie or an episode of a TV show from a franchise you love and it doesn’t meet your expectations, you’re allowed to feel however you feel. Sadness, anger, disappointment, frustration; these are all things I’ve felt when a story I’m invested in doesn’t go how I hoped. Especially as a Star Wars fan myself I’ve been super disappointed by various choices made in certain stories or character arcs. I didn’t think I would ever get over Centerpoint Station becoming non-canon, but I did get over it and life goes on.

Many prominent people online however, take those negative feelings and double down on them with online rants that spread their anger and hate as far as they possibly can. These content creators are trying to spread as much anger and hate as possible because they know they are strong emotions that garner a strong response. Much like how the Sith corrupt people in the Star Wars universe. With the way social media site work these days, this is a win-win for the creator. Either someone who shares their anger has their feelings validated and strengthened, or someone who disagrees will be angry about how hateful they’re being and comment something to that effect, which still boosts their content in the site’s algorithm.

To me it is clear that many of these content creators are being purposely obtuse in order to make stronger claims and get more views by riling people up. While I believe they are not as media illiterate as their content would suggest, they definitely rely on their viewers having poor media literacy skills. Almost every video or post I’ve come across falls apart within a few sentences for anyone with a primary school level of media literacy. The arguments being made are self-defeating or have nothing to back them up other than personal opinions. Not to mention the fact that so many of the arguments being thrown around are being made as if the show is over. Common sense should tell you that complaining about the lack of character development when the show isn’t even half way over is silly, yet that is exactly what many have complained about.

While there are definitely some who already believe in the same hateful conclusions that some content creators are coming to, there are certainly some people who wouldn’t have fallen down this line of thinking on their own. It cannot be ignored the ways that racism and misogyny are making this problem infinitely worse, as most people have some level of racism and misogyny still to unlearn that these content creators hope to prey on. Since the main characters of the show are all women, people of colour, or both (the horror!) many “fans” go beyond their regular complaints into full discrimination and hatred.

This whole situation is upsetting not only because it results in hatred being sent to the actors, writers, and creators who put so much care and effort into the show but also because so many fans are getting robbed of enjoying what should be a fun show about laser swords and robots in outer space. The ultimate message Star Wars is supposed to send is one of rising above hate, anger, and division but abysmal media literacy skills and bad-faith content creators lead people to the exact opposite.

I can’t say for certain which came first, and it isn’t clear to me if it makes a difference, but what is clear is that anger and hate go hand-in-hand with the lack of media literacy. This is true for the Star Wars fandom, but also for very real problems in the world. Just as the stories told in Star Wars mirror real life, the fan reaction to this show illustrates the problems we face with understanding and appreciating media. As media literacy skills decline there will inevitably be people who seek to exploit that in order to foster more hatred, and hate leads to suffering.

I know I will be excitedly tuning in to see how the show ends, and I will continue hoping for an end to all of the unfounded anger and hate.