Satire

The Only Problem with "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" Is the Lesbian Kiss at the End

And this has nothing to do with my personal hang-ups, so stop thinking that

Horrifying

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

People will tell you a lot of bad things about Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker.

They'll say things like, "The pacing is jarring. It spends too much time undoing the events of the last movie, and has to cram its own action into rushed exposition that dominates the dialogue, and the sandwiching of multiple connected MacGuffins does not provide enough of a framework for a satisfying plot." Wrong.

The people who tell you this are allowing themselves to be distracted from the real issue. Yes, when I was watching the movie I thought many of the same things that you will read in these foolish reviews. What they are overlooking is that all of these problems—even the way J.J. Abrams erases death, undermining the stakes of the film entirely—could have been easily resolved in the mind of the audience if only we had not been distracted, in the film's final moments, by the lingering site of two women lovingly sharing a kiss. Disgusting.

This is what is ruining Star Wars! I've been saying it since 2015, along with every other cool guy on the internet. Not the way insane new force powers are magically introduced so that none of the strictures of storytelling apply anymore; the problem is the feminist SJW culture wars.

Imagine what amazing insights I would have had to come up with in order to reconcile the confusing mess I just watched with the conviction that it all actually makes sense and is a great movie. I probably would have uncovered hidden significance in the endless mundanity of moments that comprised The Rise of Skywalker's runtime. But instead I spent my whole night distracted and obsessing over the sight of two mouths mashing into each other, with a lady attached to each end. The horror of it kept me up all night, researching on dark corners of the internet.



If it had just been a flash on the screen, perhaps I could have chalked it up to a figment of my overactive imagination. I could have told myself that they had kissed each other by mistake, while attempting to walk past each other, toward their strong important husbands. Or maybe it was just a slender man with long hair kissing his teenage son. But no, they lingered on the shot of this lesbonic couple's physical manifestation of unholy lust for a full three seconds. That's longer than even Tom Brady kisses his children on the mouth.

How am I supposed to remove this image from where it's seared in my memory. Each time I close my eyes in the shower, I see it again. These are images too graphically sinful to watch in a room with the lights on or the door unlocked, yet I was watching them in a theater with children who probably intend to one day engage in kissing of their own. How are their parents supposed to explain what they witnessed?

And if they're fixated on that formidable task, how are they supposed to also explain why beads and helmets can teleport through space? How the force can heal all wounds and conjure spaceships from nothing? Or why normal people now have very convenient force hunches that arrive just in time to save the entire galaxy? If it weren't for that kiss, we all could have done it. But now we all have no choice but to be swallowed up by the hideous sarlacc mouth of two women's lips smooshing all over each other. Cruel fate.

FILM

"Cats" Is the Worst "Star Wars" Movie Yet

If you were hoping that Cats would be a great Star Wars movie, you're in for a disappointment. It's a bad one.

As a huge Star Wars fan, I've spent months looking forward to the latest entry in the saga: Cats.

I wish I could say that all the anticipation was worth it, but I honestly think it's the worst Star Wars movie yet—and yes, I'm including the prequels. While I understood the backlash to The Last Jedi, I didn't expect J.J. Abrams to so thoroughly retcon all of Rian Johnson's contributions to the Star Wars universe. It was like starting over from scratch.

Perhaps that's why he also felt the need to throw in such a huge cast of new characters we've never heard of before. New characters appear and are introduced so quickly that it's hard to know who we're supposed to care about, which really saps the energy out of all the intrigue and interpersonal drama. Leaving aside the introduction of new elements like the Heaviside Layer—which promises new life, erasing the stakes of mortal danger—I just didn't find myself invested in any member of the Jellicle tribe (who seem to be the new faction of the Resistance).

Early in the film it seemed that Rum Tum Tugger—a rebellious character with a lot of sex appeal, in the mold of Han Solo—was going to be central to the action now that Han himself has been killed off. But as things progressed, I was less and less sure. Was I supposed to be looking for some conflict to arise with the new Jabba the Hutt character—an imposing plutocrat named Bustopher Jones? Or is the true villain the kidnapper Macavity, played by Idris Elba, who steals away the sage, Obi-Wanesque Old Deuteronomy, as portrayed by Judi Dench?



And can we please talk about these new names? Star Wars has always had some weird ones—I'm not going to defend Jek Porkins—but Munkustrap? Skimbleshanks? Bombalurina? Do all the new characters have to have dumb names like this? Obviously I'll make an exception for the bright spot that is Mr. Mistoffelees—whose name is almost as cool as his mysterious new force powers.

Speaking of force powers, it's great that there are so many new force-users performing acrobatic Jedi moves, but does it have to be such a focus? The newest installment was so obsessed with showcasing these impressive abilities that it seemed to forget entirely about Star Wars staples. With very little in the way of training montages, characters seem to be able to perform superhuman feats the likes of which we've never seen before, but I don't think I saw a single light saber battle.

Speaking of Star Wars staples, did John Williams drop out of this one or something? The music in this one was fun at times, but it lacked the thrilling, epic scale of Williams' orchestral sound. And all the characters singing about themselves and each other didn't really help. I also thought it was a strange decision to make the switch back to CGI from the practical effects that have dominated in the sequels so far.

That said, replacing all the characters with sexy anthropomorphic cat people was a great call, and made me really excited for the future of Star Wars. Go see this one with your parents.

Adam Driver'White Noise' premiere, New York Film Festival, USA - 30 Sep 2022

Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

With all the Golden Globes hype surrounding Netflix's Marriage Story, a familiar argument has once again resurfaced on social media: Is Adam Driver hot?

Normally, I'm not a fan of these Twitter circlejerks dwelling on the attractiveness of a particular "not conventionally attractive" celebrity. To be perfectly honest, these conversations strike me as deeply hypocritical, typically propelled by the same woke Twitter personalities who promote body positivity while simultaneously delighting in picking apart an (almost always) male celebrity's physical features.

But one Tweet amidst the recent Adam Driver fervor stood out to me, and I think it's worth discussion.

The Tweet comes courtesy of sociology professor and acclaimed author Tressie McMillan Cottom, who writes: "Straight men don't want Adam Driver to be hot because he is hot for reasons they could also be hot but aren't because they're lazy. He is interesting and has a personality. It's easier to think hot is just genetic symmetry because that lets them off the hook."

Cottom follows up with two subsequent Tweets, stating: "Although he is also tall, which yeah," and "Also, it is rumored that he is *signal drop*."

So first things first, let's address the fact that Cottom's follow-up Tweets do undermine her initial point (at least to some extent). Adam Driver is 6'2", and the suggestion that a tall, well-built, and allegedly well-hung man is not hitting a lot of conventionally attractive benchmarks is, well, just outright false. Adam Driver has a lot of features that do play into conventionally attractive standards, and I imagine life is a good deal harder for men who don't have any of those features.

I still think Cottom's original point mostly stands on its own. Judging by our celebrities, Western culture has certainly seemed to prop up symmetry, along with sharp, defined facial features, as a prerequisite for beauty. So when someone like Adam Driver––who, regardless of whether or not he's deemed "hot," is certainly not "symmetrical"––becomes a prominent object of women's desires, men who never balked at women drooling over Brad Pitt suddenly dig in their heels. "How could Adam Driver possibly be hot?" they wonder. There's subtext: "And if Adam Driver is hot, how come I'm not?"

But as Cottom points out, in spite of popular myth, there's a difference between "symmetrical" and "hot." In truth, there is no universal beauty standard. Different pockets of different cultures lean towards different aesthetics at different times, but by and large, there's no magic combination of features that will make a person attractive to everyone. That also means that, statistically speaking, there are some people somewhere in the world who will find you attractive, regardless of whether or not your features adhere to any culturally prevalent beauty standards.

So if we know that we're stuck with the bodies we have (give or take a little self-care) and that someone out there will find our features attractive, then it follows that our best course of action––if we want to be "hot" like Adam Driver––is to maximize our personalities and our interests.

Do women find Adam Driver hot because he's their perfect representation of the male form? Possibly. Does him being a talented actor who seems to have an incredibly deep appreciation for his craft and a solid sense of humor add to his attractiveness? Almost definitely.

And while we might not all have the potential to become an award-winning actor like Adam Driver, we do all have the potential to become really good at something. Almost all of us are capable of practicing something meaningful to us, or honing our skills pertaining to a particular interest or inclination. We're all capable of improving ourselves by some measure, be it how much weight we can lift or how funny our jokes are or simply how confident we are in our own skin––and improving yourself in any way will likely help with the latter.

The reason so many straight men are afraid of Adam Driver being hot is because if Adam Driver is hot, that means most of them can be hot, too. But being hot like Adam Driver requires hard work. It means not looking at your face in the mirror, deciding you don't meet whatever arbitrary standards of attractiveness you've decided to hold yourself up against, and then giving up on being a decent person worthy of being deemed attractive. And perhaps there's nothing quite scarier than the realization that your own "hotness," at least to the degree to which you'd be hot to a specific subset of people, hinges on your own actions and efforts rather than luck or genetics.

Of course, I'm speaking generally here, and general terms are never a catch-all. I'm sure that there's someone out there who truly is so physically unappealing that literally nobody else in the world would be sexually attracted to them. But at the same time, I've browsed through enough incel forums (out of curiosity) to know that for the vast majority of people who self-identify as being the lowest of the low on the totem pole of physical beauty, their self-assessment is almost always incorrect. The vast majority of them are totally normal looking guys who, I imagine, suffer from some degree of unchecked body dysmorphia.

But I'm not just talking about incels. Almost any guy who secretly struggles with his own self-image and wonders what it would take to be viewed as hot can learn a thing or two from Adam Driver. Cliches exist for a reason, and your personality counts for a whole lot. With some hard work––and the hardest part might be admitting there's work to be done in the first place––you, too, can be hot like Adam Driver.

MUSIC

Baby Yoda Is Emo, and We Love That

Thanks to the Twitter account @emo_yoda, our favorite galactic infant now comes with your favorite sad tunes.

Photo by: Maksym Tymchyk / Unsplash

By now, we've already discussed in detail why internet celebrity (and my ideal offspring) Baby Yoda is so great, to a degree that he should probably run for president.

A lot of us haven't even watched a single episode of The Mandalorian, the Disney+ Star Wars spinoff that gave Baby Yoda a platform to steal our hearts, but that doesn't mean we can't participate in enjoying memes of the robed green creature. Naturally, many such memes have centered around music, whether little Yoda is bumping "Get Low" from the cockpit of his spaceship or proudly holding Charli XCX's Pop 2 mixtape.

This week, a Twitter account by the username @emo_yoda joined in on the fun for a specific lane of music lovers. In the wake of viral Instagram accounts like "Chandler Holding Ur Fav Album" and "Drake Loves Ur Fav Album," where different album covers are edited into the hands of either Chandler from Friends or Drake from Drake and Josh, @emo_yoda is where your favorite emo, pop-punk, and indie records are all beheld by the baby himself.

It all started a few days ago when Baby Yoda started listening to Modern Baseball's Holy Ghost. While he certainly enjoys the classics—the header photo is Baby Yoda superimposed over the cover photo for American Football's 1999 debut—he enjoys many newer records, as well, like Joyce Manor's Never Hungover Again, Snail Mail's Lush, and PUP's Morbid Stuff. The latter band responded, saying, "Just noticing your profile photo, which is totally f**king unhinged." The photo is unhinged, indeed: a shot of Pope Francis lifting a chalice, except the Pope's face is edited over with PUP frontman Stefan Babcock and the chalice is—you guessed it—Baby Yoda. Imagining Baby Yoda would headbang to PUP or cry to American Football is a true delight, and we're thankful for all iterations of the meme to keep him alive in his adorable glory forever.

CULTURE

Did Billy Dee Williams Really Come Out as Gender Fluid?

The man who made Lando Calrissian a household name may not be a "man" after all

Billy Dee Williams'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' film premiere, Arrivals, Los Angeles, USA - 16 Dec 2019

Photo by Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Billy Dee Williams is a sex symbol.

The deep silky tones of his voice. The sly smile that invites you to be as comfortable and cool as he is. He has sexual chemistry with literally everyone, literally all the time.

So when Donald Glover took over the iconic role of Lando Calrissian—essentially playing a younger version of Williams for Solo: A Star Wars Story—it should hardly have been surprising to anyone that Glover and the film's writers would refer to Lando as pansexual. And yet, it did. Just as people of a certain stripe will find cause for outrage in women being allowed to bust ghosts and hypersexualized videogame characters wearing slightly more clothing than they used to, Twitter commentators began attacking this addition to a classic character that they had rigidly defined according to their own narrow views.

According to them, both Billy Dee Williams and Lando Calrissian were consummate cis, hetero, norm-conforming, masculine males. Look at his jawline! Look at his mustache! Look at the way he flirts with Leia! This is a man's man who drinks malt liquor, objectifies women, and makes capes look badass. According to this assessment, the suggestion that Lando Calrissian could even be attracted to anyone outside of the traditional, heteronormative structure of romance was an affront to manhood itself. Anyone that cool and manly could only be into women, and pretending otherwise could only be a part of the SJW attack on civilization.

Those same commentators must be having some complicated feelings today, with the news that Billy Dee Williams, at the age of 82, is not at all hung up on these old ideas. In a recent interview with Esquire, Williams—who is reprising his role as Han Solo's frenemy in the upcoming film, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker—refers to himself/herself with both sets of the traditional gender pronouns, saying, "I think of myself as a relatively colorful character who doesn't take himself or herself too seriously." In case there was any question about the sincerity of that usage, Williams followed up with some clarification, "And you see I say 'himself' and 'herself,' because I also see myself as feminine as well as masculine… I'm a very soft person. I'm not afraid to show that side of myself."

Many outlets are reporting this as a straightforward story of the actor "coming out" as "gender fluid." While that's an understandable interpretation of events, Williams does not actually use that term within the interview, which begs the question of what it really means to be gender fluid. If you relate to traits of both the traditionally masculine and the traditionally feminine role—e.g. you are biologically male, but value your feminine side—does that mean you're gender fluid? Does it require a direct declaration of a fluid identity? Or regular use of pronouns other than the one you were assigned at birth?

I don't have an answer, because I don't believe there is one answer. Coming to terms with the fact that gender is largely a social construct means coming to terms with the fact that the definitions of terms around gender are subject to societal standards and norms that are currently—if not permanently—in flux. I personally think many in the media have jumped the gun in declaring Williams to be gender fluid without getting direct confirmation that he/she defines himself/herself in those specific terms. But what's way more important than knowing exactly how to navigate new questions and concerns about gender as culture changes is recognizing the problems with the old strictures—problems which Williams' interview highlights beautifully.

Put simply, there are no superficial signifiers that define who a person is supposed to be. Just because Billy Dee Williams projects a public persona that conforms to traditional ideas of masculinity doesn't mean that he/she is beholden to the rigid role that entails. In Williams' own words, "I never tried to be anything except myself." If even someone who seems to have such a natural aptitude for the gruff, cool confidence of old-school masculinity can—at the age of 82—recognize that aspects of his/her identity fall outside the prescribed norms of manhood, then we should all feel a little freer to question the roles that are set out for us.

If all that means for you is letting yourself cry when Sam Smith comes on the radio, changing up your grooming habits, or expanding your wardrobe to include some badass capes, that's great. And if it means using a different pronoun, a different name, or taking more permanent measures to match your gender presentation to your gender identity, then maybe a figure like Billy Dee Williams referring to herself as feminine can help give you some license to defy expectations.