Jodie Turner-Smith (center) with Lauren and Leah Brady in ‘The Acolyte.’ Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. / Courtesy of Disney+
The conservative Christian scolds of One Million Moms (OMM) have their torches and pitchforks out for Disney once again, this time over the queer space witches on Disney +’s Star Wars drama series, The Acolyte.
“Alerting all parents!” a petition posted July 2 on the anti-LGBTQ+ organization’s website warns. “Currently available to stream on Disney+, Disney’s latest series, Star Wars: The Acolyte [sic], pushes the LGBTQ agenda and witchcraft.”
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The latest Star Wars streaming series from out showrunner Leslye Headland (co-creator of Netflix’s Russian Doll) centers on a pair of “Force sensitive” twins played by out actor Amandla Stenberg. Response to The Acolyte has been polarized: Reviews from critics have been largely favorable, while the franchise’s most toxic fans have blasted the show for its revisionist take on Star Wars lore and its centering of non-white, non-male characters.
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Flashbacks in the third episode of The Acolyte reveal that Stenberg’s characters, Mae and Osha, were raised by an all-female coven of witches who wield the supernatural power of The Force like the heroic Jedis knights, but the witches take a very different approach to it.
As them writer Abby Monteil noted in an essay on the show’s queer themes last month, one episode also reveals that from the space witches’ perspective, the traditional Star Wars heroes represent a “colonialist and anti-queer” religious authority. To the witches, the Jedi are “threatening monks with laser swords who trespass into their village and wish to indoctrinate their Force-sensitive children into their all-encompassing religion, never to be seen again.”
It’s not that upending of usual Star Wars status quo that has OMM clambering for a boycott. The show’s third episode further reveals that Mae and Osha were conceived via Force magic by the coven’s leader, Mother Aniseya (Jodie Turner-Smith), and carried by another member of the coven, Mother Koril (Margarita Levieva).
According to OMM, “This exclusively gay moment makes it apparent where Disney+ stands in the culture war – if parents were not already aware of the media company’s cultural stand.”
“Parents presume that a streaming platform such as Disney+ is designed for children and is the last place parents would expect their children to be confronted with content regarding sexual orientation and sorcery,” the petition continues.
That assertion, of course, is absurd on its face. While the company’s vast library of children’s content is front-and-center on Disney+, the platform has for years also streamed films and TV series aimed at adults. And Disney’s animated films from Snow White to Frozen have depicted witches and “sorcery.”
But logic and common sense aren’t exactly hallmarks of One Million Moms’ cultural crusades. The offshoot of the anti-LGBTQ+ American Family Association routinely directs its outrage at completely innocuous depictions of LGBTQ+ people in cultural products. One recent example is the organization’s campaign against Netflix’s animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous for featuring a same-sex kiss. In the past, they have targeted Parents magazine for featuring a same-sex couple, Highlights magazine for acknowledging gay people, and Scholastic for its LGBTQ+-inclusive children’s books, as well as ads for Bounce dryer sheets, KFC, Jackson Hewitt, and TurboTax.
One Million Moms’ latest campaign asks supporters to tell Disney that they “disagree with the LGBTQ agenda and witchcraft” the company is “pushing on families” in The Acolyte. According to the organization’s site, the petition has so far received over 15,000 signatures.
