ABSTRACT
These various types of reactions to women-strong films are not merely aesthetic evaluations, as ill-conceived as they might be, but flashpoints into an ongoing vicious defense of white supremacist patriarchy that offer a blend of toxic nostalgia and 21st-century male anxieties as they reveal fear of a perceived end of real men and a (white) male-dominated society. Through analysis of the racist and misogynistic commentary surrounding the expanding (and more inclusive) Star Wars Universe, this chapter unveils the ways (mostly) men in the online manosphere embrace toxic nostalgia, using a jeremiad rhetorical strategy, to launch an assault on improved representation while claiming the positionality of victim.
