Doe Star Wars promote Racism and Sexism

Although the gungans aren't Uncle Tom Foolery, Jar Jar is (according to most people anyway, I never managed to see the connection). Literally every single other member of the gungan race is portrayed as "normal". Case in point, Capt. Tarpals acts like your standard no-nonsense general leading the troops and Boss acts like a...weird leader.

Jar Jar was clearly meant to be the idiot of his species (notice Tarpals immediatelly reacting with "Oh God, not him again." when Jar Jar returns), which he actually flat-out says a few times in the movie.

We can at most have an argument on the llittle number of minority characters in the movies. That we can argue because myself? I've never really got that thing of Watto being a Space Jew and Neimodians being a metaphor for the chinese. That said, I CAN see the problem with the murderous sand people.

@Watto, check out some more anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. Watto's big nose, scruffy neckbeard, and obsession with money are right out of that. Plus, he was voiced with a Yiddish accent.

Well, I've seen many people talking he was talking with a "clearly" Yddish accent, but I've seen just as many (if not more) people saying his accent was italian (even on this very wiki), so I'm far more willing to bet on What the Hell Is That Accent? backfiring than anything else.

And eh, I still don't see it. Which is odd because I'm very familiar with the Nazi methodology, but all I see in Watto is a random greedy alien with a bug-ish design. The fact he has wings and weird feet/hands incline me to think his character's objective was more akin to "A flying greedy bug" than anything [hence why the nose].

Jar Jar does act like a black stereotype but a stereotype atypical to any I would expect anyone in the USA to actually be familiar with. Among the people who are traditionally assumed to fit his mannerism the attitude ranges from mild annoyance to indifference with possible laughter or confusion as the extremely negative response he gets in USA and Western Europe.

As for the Gungans as a whole, it is mostly lost on me. I suppose Me-sa is Gullish or whatever that creolish language is called and Bombad is an(outdated) Carib term but did anyone besides Jar Jar use them?

Nazi caricature of a Jew.◊

Watto.◊

Starting to see it?

Who's Doe Star Wars?

And why do we care about him? Doe's a dick if he supports that.

Yeah. The minstrel/Uncle Tomfoolery stereotype is pretty specifically American. I'm Australian, and it didn't immediately make sense to me—I didn't realize Jar Jar was (interpreted as) racist until I read about it online. I could see it once it had been pointed out, though.

The Gungans themselves are OK, but the ebonics/pidgin Basic makes it hard to take them seriously.

There are also the Neimoidians—the shrewd, villainous Japanese stereotypes.

However... I think the stereotypes in Star Wars are more unfortunate coincidences than actual, malicious racism. In trying to make the aliens culturally unique, Lucas unwittingly drew parallels to offensive cultural stereotypes. It may not even be his fault... Maybe he wrote a memo to cast Watto as a "greedy car salesman" (what the character was supposed to be) and the casting agent interpreted it as Space Jew. But given the number of people that worked on bringing the character to life—animators, etc.—I find it hard to believe that nobody found it questionable... Then again, in the interest of keeping their jobs, I'm guessing they kept that shit to themselves.

As far as I can tell, the supplementary material is less questionable. I'm reading the Thrawn Trilogy, in which Lando is a permanent attachment to the cast.

Watto's case, at least, is doubly suspect because Lucas already demonstrated in the original trilogy how familiar he was with Nazi imagery - the Empire scenes make liberal use of the cinematic tricks used in Leni Riefenstahl's films, for instance, and that's before we get into their uniforms.

All stereotypes have some element of truth in them and saying those character types are off-limits is giving too much power to the audience. Using stereotypes is not a problem in and of itself, it's using stereotypes to approve of stereotypical behavior that the problems come into play.

Yes, Watto is a Space Jew but Anakin mentions he is treated well and Watto expresses some sadness that he is leaving. Yes, Jar-Jar is a black stereotype but is also portrayed as friendly and mostly harmless (his clumsiness doesn't cause serious problems for the main characters). If either of them had more flat characterizations then that would be a problem but they are, believe it or not, fairly rounded characters.

I don't think Star Wars promotes either of them. Does the series have (possibly unintentional) instances of them? Yeah, I think so. I think the series is more guilty of promoting racial stereotyping than out and out racism, given that the stereotyped characters are depicted as mostly weird rather than inferior, necessarily (Jar Jar is seen as mostly incompetent, which he is, but I don't recall any instances where he's seen as intrinsically inferior).

One of Lucas's big points, in the first trilogy at least, was to show that the Empire consisted entirely of humans (as far as I can remember, white humans). The Rebel Alliance had folks from a wide variety of species. I think that's the only conscious allegory to racism he was making. Still, while we see in Return of the Jedi that the Rebel Alliance is run by a woman, we don't see, for instance, ANY female fighter pilots. One of Lucas's production assistants during the first trilogy apparently accused him of being a big chauvanist, which by all reports hurt him a great deal. He apparently just really doesn't like female characters, and so Leia often felt like a bit of a tagalong (Lucas even said once that he characterized her as an annoying little sister during "A New Hope").

Well, there was ONE female pilot we see at Endor, but she was overdubbed, and the character gets shot down anyways.

We might be able to write the surface features of a female character, but it's difficult at best for most male writers to get beneath the surface. There's a reason lots of men keep winding up in the "doghouse" when it comes to their wives.

We're working on that. Bit by bit, I think we're coming to understand women better. We still have a long ways to go.

As if women are a monolith to be tackled and not individuals with as many different ideas as reflected colors under the sun.

Even if a character is modeled after racial stereotypes, so long as they are not a member of the stereotyped race, it's not racist. If anything, it serves to weaken the stereotype, since it treats the "stereotypical" behavior as not being unique to any one race.

We might be able to write the surface features of a female character, but it's difficult at best for most male writers to get beneath the surface. There's a reason lots of men keep winding up in the "doghouse" when it comes to their wives.

We're working on that. Bit by bit, I think we're coming to understand women better. We still have a long ways to go.

Dude, women are people, not some enigmatic alien race. Doing an acceptable job of writing them is not nearly as hard as you make it sound.

On the contrary... I can think of a few instances in both the prequel films and the CG Clone Wars cartoon in which Jar Jar's clumsiness becomes a combat skill or somehow causes an important plot development. In the Blue Shadow virus eps, he "accidentally" trips over a manhole in the swamp which leads to the mad doctor's lab/base. REALLY?!

If Jar Jar Binks hadn't been an alien with long floppy ears but instead had been just a black man, would you cut Lucas any slack with the way that his character was portrayed?

Are the rest of the Gungans black?

That is not the point and you know it.

If you think I was defending Jar Jar Binks or Lucas's terrible decisions as a writer, you are sadly mistaken. To be clear, bringing up Jar Jar's clumsiness as a positive or plot-significant trait was not meant as praise, but an example of weakness in the writing.

And to answer, no. But Jar Jar isn't a black man, he's an alien. I doubt it would be as insensitive if Jar Jar was a white human; somehow his being an alien makes all the difference.

In any case, Jar Jar is the least of the examples of Unfortunate Implications in Star Wars, IMO. His behaviour and speech can be interpreted just as easily as general foolishness and gibberish. Watto and the Neimoidians are less ambiguous.

edited 5th Mar '13 6:03:15 AM by Alma

Yeah . . . they're people, but biology DOES make a difference. Even when women follow the same actions as men, it's often for different reasons. While we're all people, and have different motives, there's commonly a divide between which ones men will follow and which ones women will. Otherwise there wouldn't be any divide at all between stories written for women and stories written for men. Newsflash: There is one.

There aren't any monoliths. Just trends.

I'd be hesitant to chalk too much of that to biology rather than exaggerated cultural divisions, though. Otherwise you're getting into 'women like pink because berries are pink and women are biologically hardwired to gather whilst men hunt' territory (spoiler: pink was considered a masculine colour in Western cultures until around the end of the nineteenth century).

There are differences in most cultures between the things men are supposed to like and the things women are supposed to like, but separate cultures rarely employ the same distinctions.

edited 5th Mar '13 8:12:56 AM by Iaculus

-Shrugs- Very well, the other side of the Nature vs. Nurture divide. Either way, there are divides, and while we're the same species our minds don't always work the same way. Of course, given that most other animals, including the ones we've evolved from, DO have biological differences that dictate their behavior, I'd say biology plays a big role too. All I know is that one week you hear about a study that says we're not very different at all, the next you hear about one that says we are. The people studying this topic haven't made up their own minds.

People underestimate the powerful influence of society and its customs on gender identity. It goes far beyond the traditional, now nearly obsolete "roles" of the sexes and affects our psychology on a fundamental level. And it isn't just something that each gender thinks about the other; we believe these things about our own genders. Usually, it's subtle, but such beliefs tend to snowball, and they can add up to some wild misconceptions.

One example of this I always remember is from when I went with my class on a week's camp in the bush. I was about 13 or 14, so not a child. At one point, the students had to fill a wheelbarrow with logs. I joined in, while the other girls sat nearby. It wasn't especially hard work, but when the girls were asked to help, they just said, in a confused tone, "But we're girls." The idea that they could help out with physical labour was inconceivable to them. They'd been indoctrinated in the belief that work wasn't something that girls did.

Simply put, it's brainwashing: both men and women are taught from the earliest age to behave a certain way. It's led us to believe there are inalterable differences between the sexes that don't really exist. Whatever actual chemical or psychological differences there are, they're marginal, IMO.

Funny, as I was reading this thread I was watching the episode of Frasier where James Earl Jones guest-starred as a resident at a nursing home Roz was volunteering at.

Re: Watto - I can see both sides. My initial impression of his voice was Italian, then came his behavior and while I mostly saw him as "generic slave-trader" I was also thinking "but a lot of people are going to see Yiddish in this, and I can't blame them". Ditto Jar Jar despite the good point about him being an idiot among his people. The only one I immediately was like "Oh, George, George, no" were the Neimoidians, who screamed "NOT-YELLOW-BUT-GRAY MENACE!", though at least we didn't get a scene of them lusting after Padme/Amidala. Still I side with those who see it as Unfortunate Implications due to Lucas's devotion to the old serials and not having anyone around with enough Midichlorians to say "Hey, George, you don't mean it to be seen this way, but some people might think..."

@KJ Mackley I can agree with that on Watto - probably why he didn't stick in my mind so much re: this debate, and why I liked his return in Attack of the Clones (my most hated of the prequels) - given what a moody prat Anakin is by that time his interaction with Watto is actually heartwarming (not Crowning Moment material, but still a highlight). Maybe it's bad writing, but given the entire "looking for Mama Skywalker" sequence is the only non-action piece I enjoyed in the movie I want to believe it was intentional, if just because I have never thought Lucas was a hack, just a deeply flawed writer.

edited 18th Mar '13 8:13:43 AM by TheNthTroper