Listeners of the BBC World Service’s World Have Your Say programme were treated to a bizarre analysis of the Star Wars franchise today by a caller who claimed that “Dark Raider” was a “racial stereotype” who listened to rap music and “the only female character ends up in a gold space bikini chained to a horny space slug.”
Godfrey Elfwick is a student from Sheffield who regularly fools observers with his parody Twitter account, an off-the-deep-end “social justice warrior” persona that tweets bizarrely and hilariously about racism, sexism, misogyny and other favoured topics of the political Left.
Elfwick attracted the attention of the BBC World Service today, when he tweeted that he had never seen Star Wars. A World Service presenter who was producing a segment in the wake of the recently-released trailer for Star Wars Episode VIII: The Force Awakens took the bait, inviting him onto the programme.
Because of course the BBC can’t tell the difference between an outlandish, obviously fake social-justice obsessed parody account and a normal member of the public.
I’ve never actually seen #StarWars but the fact that the bad guy was all black and ate watermelons was unbelievably racist even for the 70’s
— Godfrey Elfwick (@GodfreyElfwick) April 17, 2015
@GodfreyElfwick hi looking for guest who has never seen Star Wars 2 talk on radio – wd u be interested? DM or email angela.sheeran@bbc.co.uk — Angela Sheeran (@Sheerzee) April 17, 2015
Elfwick proved to be just as convincing in real life as he is on the net. Maintaining a serious voice throughout the segment, he unleashed a wave of mock “concerns” with the Star Wars series that wouldn’t have been out of place on some of the more extreme social-justice communities of Tumblr.
“There’s a lot of social problems with [Star Wars], rooted in casual racism, homophobia,” he claimed, before asserting: “Star Wars reeks of misogyny.”
Darth Vader, the primary antagonist of the original George Lucas trilogy, came in for special criticism: “The main bad guy, what’s he called, Dark Raider. He’s all black. He listens to rap music. He’s just a real bad racial stereotype.”
Here are a few of Elfwick’s recent tweets, in case you’re thinking, hey, maybe the BBC can be forgiven for this one.
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/588047439174721536
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/588605873125097472
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/586863029658198017
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/586232249290518528
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/589038197226745856
https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/588741740284289024
Poe’s Law, named after the author Nathan Poe, states that without clear indications, it is impossible to tell the difference between genuine extremism and parody extremism.
Trolling is a art, as they say.
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