I mean, Padme IS played by a Middle Eastern, Ashkenazi Jewish woman, but she’s white-passing, and there’s a whole kettle of fish that, frankly, Kylo Ben stans don’t give a shit about when it comes to parsing the ethnic and racial complexities of an Israeli-born, Ashkie, white-passing Jewish woman like Natalie and HER complex relationship to her ethnic, racial, and cultural presentation in America, so like… the difference between Padme’s Jewish coding (“because this character is played by a Jewish actor and is scapegoated by Space Hitler for all of the problems that he is causing in the Galaxy, also she’s murdered by Space Hitler and her children have to be hidden for their own safety,” among other things) and Ben Solo’s Jewish coding (“this character is the son of two characters who are Jewish-coded and played by Jewish actors, but he himself is not Jewish and IS A FUCKING NAZI HIMSELF, BY CHOICE, AS AN ADULT”) is… incomparable.
Adam Driver is just a WASP, he’s not fucking Jewish, and assuming he is because of how he looks is antisemitic and gross. And in terms of his character coding… like… not an accident that JJ didn’t cast a Jewish actor as their son. There… are Jewish actors who could have played Kylo if JJ had wanted him to be played by a Jewish actor. But JJ intended Kylo to be a dude who full-on rejected his Space Jewish heritage and became a full-on Space Nazi, so… he cast the WASPiest goy of all goyishe WASPs. And “Ben Solo” IS NOT Jewish-coded… because “Ben Solo” isn’t ANYTHING-coded. He exists for about 10 minutes in the very finale of the trilogy, and he doesn’t say anything besides “ow,” and he basically has one fistfight and then gets thrown in a pit and dies. That isn’t Jewish coding. That’s nothing-coding. And Kylo fucking genocidal rapist Ren? IS NOT JEWISH-CODED. HE’S LITERALLY. A NAZI. HE’S A GODDAMN SPACE NAZI. HE’S NOT JEWISH-CODED, HE’S A MOTHERFUCKING SPACE NAZI PLAYED BY A GODDAMN WHITE ANGLO-SAXON PROTESTANT BAPTIST.
When people argue that Ben Solo is Space Jewish because Leia and Han are both Space Jewish characters played by real-life Jewish actors: fine, that’s fair, and it can be written about in fic or meta if you want to in an interesting way, if that’s what you want to do. BUT ADAM’S FACIAL FEATURES… ARE NOT WHAT “CODES HIM AS JEWISH,” BECAUSE ADAM’S FACIAL FEATURES… ARE THE FACIAL FEATURES OF A NON-JEWISH MAN WHO LOOKS LIKE RICHARD III, A NON-JEWISH BRITISH MAN, WHO IS THE GENERIC TROPE FACE-INSPO FOR VILLAINS LIKE KYLO REN (And Snape, and Loki, and the king in Shrek which I’ve never seen, and Richard III, and… like, a lot of villains in Anglo-Saxon cultures.)
And “Ben Solo”/Kylo Ren’s CHARACTERIZATION? Is 1000% NOT coded as Jewish. The only canon characterization that exists so far for Ben Solo is as a baby, as a toddler, when he’s just attacked Luke, and in the last ten minutes of TROS. Nothing he does in any of those moments is Coded As Jewish. So if you’re just saying that you think Adam’s nose is big, just fucking say Adam’s nose is big. And if you’re talking about Han and Leia both being Space Jewish, then talk about THEM, not their wayward son who intentionally threw away every value either of them ever taught him and became a fucking Space Nazi. And if you’re not Jewish, and you’re talking about Ben Solo as a Space Jew who decided to become a Space Nazi, then stop, because I guaran-fucking-tee you’re being antisemitic and disgusting because you don’t have the cultural or religious knowledge to be talking about that.
tl;dr REAL Judaism is complicated enough with regard to race, let alone the Skywalker-Naberrie-Organa-Solo family’s Space Judaism. And it doesn’t fucking matter in this particular argument because ADAM DRIVER ISN’T FUCKING JEWISH. HE’S JUST WHITE. And wrt Natalie, Shit’s Complicated But When She’s Working She Chose To Pass As White Whenever Possible And That’s Why She Uses A Stage Name, but. Whatever. It’s complicated and the answer to whether Natalie is white or not is “…sometimes? In some contexts?” The answer to whether Adam is white… IS FUCKING. YES. HE’S JUST WHITE.
tl;dr tl;dr Also, Hayden and Mark are… like, the #2 and #3 of Very Not-Jewish Men In Star Wars after Adam lmao so… ::general gestures of being annoyed with this argument::
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