Publisher Electronic Arts has taken a bit of flak lately over the fact video games let you be, or even be around, gay people in space. Said flak has mostly come from homophobic assholes, but still, flak is flak.
Itâs an argument other media has had to deal with for years and will for years to come, but the finer points of the struggle arenât what I care about today. I only care about Charlie Brooker (former game journo and he of the amazing Gameswipe) and his latest piece for Britainâs The Guardian, called âSome people are gay in space. Get over itâ.
Itâs a wonderful piece, not because it tackles an issue that almost anyone can tackle (given the oppositionâs weakness towards images of clashing genitalia), but because it tackles it by, in part, providing the single greatest summary of the plot of the original Star Wars I have ever seen.
They also claim âthere were no LGBT characters in any of the Star Wars moviesâ. I donât know which wacky re-cut version of Star Wars theyâve been watching, but I saw the original when I was about six years old and even then I was struck by how outrageously camp C3PO is. He was a gilded John Inman in space. And what about Luke Skywalker? Apart from briefly kissing his own sister, he shows no interest in women whatsoever. The first film is a tender gay parable in which Luke falls in love with Alec Guinness and gradually âcomes outâ as a Jedi. The final scene oozes symbolism: having penetrated the Death Starâs trench in his phallic spacecraft, he closes his eyes, submits to his true inner instinct and triumphantly blasts his X-Wingâs seed into an anus-like aperture, causing an orgasmic eruption that changes his universe for ever. Itâs hard to see how they could make Star Wars any gayer, unless they gave the Millennium Falcon a handlebar moustache.
I will never watch those movies the same way again. Ever.
Some people are gay in space. Get over it [The Guardian]
