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J.J. Abrams On "Star Wars" Cast's Racial and Sexual Diversity
Yesterday at Comic-Con, director J.J. Abrams held forth on the racial and sexual diversity of the actors portraying the characters of the Star Wars franchise. From CNET's article:
For Star Wars, it's a complex debate. The franchise has included prominent and strong female characters, like Princess Leia, as well as central characters played by black actors, such as Cloud City administrator Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams, and Jedi Mace Windu, played by Samuel L. Jackson. On the other hand, Jar Jar Binks, a computer-generated alien in 1999's "Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace," drew fire from some critics, who said he called to mind demeaning black film characters such as those played by Stepin Fetchit in the 1930s.
(Not to mention other cultural stereotypes that pop up in Episodes I, II, and III.)
I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. Nor has that ever occurred to me. Seriously how long is the bow they are stretching?
Jar Jar Binks made me sick to the stomach because of how he represented the complete destruction of something I loved with a character that I wanted to die in many many horrible and painful ways.
Getting extremely tired of this overanalytical pussification of society. Time for the rude assholes to take charge again and kick these SJWs to the curb.
I once was a big Star Wars fan, then I took a these just suck now to the knee.
Let us recall his previous shitty TV shows and movies:
What do these all have in common? Yes... pushing the viewer's buttons, setting up interesting premises, promising to reveal answers to unexplained events, but never delivering on those promises (Lost, ugh) and leaving us viewers hanging. In general, Abrams' material is nothing but a thinly veiled vehicle for pushing advertisements designed to entice people to tune in for the next episode, with a complete absence of any actual substance or meaning.
Fringe was especially horrible. Every time the protagonists got in trouble, Dr. Walter Bishop would pull something out of his "from a project he worked on the 70s" and mumble a lot, and things would sort of just drag on.
So... thanks but no thanks, Mr. Abrams. Please eat a bowl of warm shit, and retire from Hollywood.
...given his track record of helping build a diverse cast as director of the "Star Trek" reboot films
Uh, was Abrams really going to have white people play Sulu and Uhura? And the only other major female character I remember were the green chick in her underwear and the blond chick in her underwear, so Abrams didn't exactly help along the fairer sex in his films. I think the writer had no clue about the history of Star Trek.
The cast's "Racial and Sexual Diversity" is more important than having a plot, hiring good actors, making a good movie.
The funny thing is that people that bitch about such things aren't even the target audience for this kind of media. They aren't going to go see the movie anyhow, they are just going to post to tumblr and youtube about how "fair or unfair" it is and ignore it's content.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
For me, one of the most interesting (yet seemingly ignored) cultural component is the droids.
...and don't me started on restraining bolts.
In the Star Wars universe, Droids like Artoo and Threepio and, presumably, millions of others, are self-aware and intelligent. They appear to feel physical pain and have emotions like happiness, fear and sadness.
Yet as near as I can see in the canon, droids have no rights whatsoever. They can be bought and sold, ordered to their death, kidnapped by Jawas, melted, sent to the spice mine of Kessel or smashed into who knows what.
Get a grip. It's a movie. It's fantasy. It's not reality.
Sheesh.
The FUD spewed by the "discrimination" crowd is just mind-boggling sometimes.
WTF would it take to satisfy you all? Vader cross-dressing in his apartment?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The franchise has included prominent and strong female characters, like Princess Leia
And...? You make it sound like that's just the start of a long list, so let's hear the rest of it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's starting to creep into TV shows as well. Penny Dreadful, an otherwise reasonably competent show, has the characters spewing feminist screeds - "if men didn't control women with corsets, women would rule the wold" - no, a "feature" of corsets was the fact that women wearing them could afford servants to do the manual labour, they were status symbols. A bit like how pale skin was considered more beautiful at the time because it showed you didn't have to work outside all day long.
Then we have the painful efforts in shows like Flint, where the most notorious pirate in literature comes out as gay; it felt as though the entire show was leading up to that, all that was missing was the triumphal choir in the background. Contrast this with say the Game of Thrones series, where guys are sucking dick left and right but nobody cares - it's not the point of the show, just window dressing, neither good nor bad, just there.
What pisses me off most about these thinly veiled propaganda pieces is that they detract from the interest, beauty and genuine wonder of the rest of the production, they stick out like a sore thumb, they jar and disrupt immersion. Masterful works such as Salem have plenty of empowered women and whatnot without ever having to spout Dworkinisms.
I dunno, maybe I'm just hypersensitive to it what with the SJW plague doing the rounds these days.