In the fourth episode of The AcolyteOsha (Amandla Stenberg) meets some new Jedi and Jedi friends. One of them is a small, otter-like creature named Bazil. Bazil and Pip, Osha’s fussy robot companion, keep sniffing and beeping at each other, interrupting the mission briefing that Osha is trying to follow. Afterward, Osha approaches Jecki Lon (Dafne Keen) and has an awkward exchange that will be all too familiar to queer people who have been watching on TV for the past few years:
Osha: Who is that?
Jecki Lon: This is Bazil.
Osha: Is he [dramatic pause]… or you… with us?”
This is the latest example of what I call the Globby problemskilfully parodied on The other two: well-meaning writers and showrunners—some of whom are queer themselves—attempt to awkwardly introduce nonbinary or genderqueer representation into their show, usually through the show’s obligatory “weirdo” character. The result is often quite exclusionary instead.
In The AcolyteOsha only asks for Bazil’s pronouns, not those of the other people she meets. That reveals more about Osha than I think The Acolyte‘S writers intended; the exchange implies that she is actively ostracizing Bazil, assuming that he (yes, it later turns out that Bazil uses the pronouns “he” and “him”, which makes the whole thing even sillier) must be gender-variant because he looks weird in her eyes.
I understand that the attempt is to remind the viewer that not everyone accepts a gender binary, and Osha tries to be open-minded about that. To be clear: I am not requiring that every character ask every other character what their pronouns are when they first meet them. That would be extremely boring television! It is very easy to establish characters’ pronouns by having other characters use those pronouns when talking about them. It happens all the time. (“This is Bazil, they will help us on the ground” is the easiest thing in the world to bring into a conversation, in a world where Bazil uses they/them pronouns.) But The Acolyte going to so much trouble just to ask about the character who looks the most different is pretty weird (and unfortunately kind of makes Osha look like an idiot). The end result is that no one is happy – toxic Star Wars fans are mad for the usual bigoted reasons, and I’m mad because it’s so inconsiderate.
Because it is not only The Acolyte! Even Star Trek: Discoverya series that, for the most part, had thoughtful and committed queer representation and characters, stumbled upon it in its recently aired final season. As Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) approaches an alien planet, she turns to a crew member and marvels in awe that the planet has three genders. Aside from Captain Burnham’s ship, the Discovery, has (at least) three genders on the board!!! In this context, Captain Burnham sounds like a captain who, at best, forgot that she has a nonbinary crew member on board, and, at worst, does not respect that crew member’s gender identity. There is no chance that this will have the intended effect of the discovery writers room, but that’s the only way to read that line in the context of the show.
These examples clearly seem to be the result of showrunners and writers who mean well and want to be inclusive but stumble along the way. It ends up marginalizing nonbinary and genderqueer people even more, considering which characters are put in that position and when other characters ask for pronouns. Ultimately, while broader representation of more genders is good, a show asking for pronouns on your television show isn’t necessarily a net gain. When characters only do this to characters who are clearly and visibly different—in Bazil’s case, even real animals—that’s weird! It doesn’t feel like an honest attempt to accurately reflect gender and its many different variations and contexts, but more like they view representation as a checklist that can be achieved through language alone.
In the case of The Acolyteit feels like an empty gesture and empty pandering to queer fans at best, and at worst like Disney weaponizing the most toxic fans in the Star Wars fandom to start conversations by making sure they’re predictably angry about nothing. Personally, I don’t entirely buy this latter theory, but I think it’s notable that if Disney wanted to design empty gestures that make toxic fans angry without actually being boundary-crossing in any meaningful way, it would look exactly like this scene in The Acolyte.
On a positive note, the recent Doctor Who The episode “Rogue” is a good example of how to do this naturally. While discussing a past love, Rogue (Jonathan Groff) simply says “I lost her,” without it being a grand performative gesture that he deigns to use an “unconventional” singular pronoun. And hey – maybe the person he was talking about doesn’t use they/them pronouns and Rogue just didn’t want to be too specific. The important thing is that he said it like a human, not like he just won a GLAAD award for allyship. More shows that want to address broader gender representation should try this.
