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.)

Comments

Never heard that one before

[Harlequin80]

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.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Anonymous Coward]

Watch again, he's obviously a (bad) Jamaican stereotype. That said, that's not the reason I disliked him either.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Crashmarik]

He is Atepin Fetchit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Never heard that one before

[MightyMartian]

Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way blacks were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time. I don't think Lucas is a racist, and I've long given him the benefit of the doubt that Jar Jar was yet another iteration of the whole Ewok concept, cute funny talking things that can be made into toys that say things like "E-chooda!", because in Lucas's mind, the kids love them.

The problem with Lucas's theory is that, at least the kids of my generation (what I'd call the Star Wars generation, who were 5-10 years old when the first film came out), we had no interest in any silly characters. The most desirable action figures were Darth Vader (because he was bad ass and could crush peoples' throats with his mind), Chewbacca, Han Solo and Obiwan, because they were the fighters who kicked ass.

I was eleven or twelve years old when Return of the Jedi came out, and I found the Ewok scenes to range from fucking insipid to, in the final battle scenes, be utterly improbable.

But I don't think Jar Jar was any more intentionally racist than the Ewoks (who, so far as I can tell, were heavily modeled on African bush people). It's just that Lucas has so little capability to portray nuance that you end up with broad caricatures that you have to forgive some for confusing with rather well known racist imagery.

Re:Never heard that one before

[garyisabusyguy]

Yes, Jar Jar had a vaguely Jamaican accent, but his antics brought to mind the worst of Jerry Lewis, Jim Carey, Lucille Ball or any number of physical comedians, who in my recollection were mostly white. But then, I am too young to have been exposed to any of the black-face BS that the article refers to.

I always found the self-debasing form of 'comedy' to be profoundly embarrassing, and decidedly un-funny. The Star Wars arc was smeared with the use of such techniques. I suppose that if they same techniques were used to debase people along racial lines, then Star Wars deserves a few dings for that as well.

Re:Never heard that one before

[myowntrueself]

Agreed, Jar Jar was awful, but anyone trying to make this into any kind of race issue should be tied and quartered. Really, nothing better to think about? Fuck them.

Can Jar Jar please be transsexual?

Re: Never heard that one before

[MightyMartian]

When you couple it with the mock Jamaican patois, it's not exactly an impossible correlation to make. I don't personally agree that Lucas wrote in a racist character, but I can certainly see why some people would see it.

Frankly, the character is so awful and out of place that accusations of racism only add an additional layer on top. Obviously Lucas thought so himself, as Jar Jar's screen time is greatly diminished in the last two prequels, and his most significant contribution to the third film was to be the asshole who stabbed the Republic in the back. I often wonder if that was Lucas's way of demonstrating mea culpa.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Anonymous Coward]

If you see jar jar as a black stereo type, maybe you are a racist who sees black people as annoying assholes who can't speak properly?

Re: Never heard that one before

[Noah Haders]

You're intentionally missing the point. there's a cultural history found in movies, tv and books that portray black people as subservient and uneducated stereotypes. This portrayal reinfoced class and racial structures of the day that served to keep black people "in their place". Long tradition of this. summary mentions stepin fetchet. uncle remus. blackface comedy. jar jar is a direct decendent of this line of humor. either you're being purposefully obtuse, or maybe you're from iceland or something and completely unexposed to american culture and history.

Re:Never heard that one before

[russotto]

Yeah, Jar-Jar was definitely based on Jamaican stereotypes. But there's disagreement over whether Watto was Shylock or an Arab stereotype; I tend to think the latter.

Re:Never heard that one before

[NicBenjamin]

You would have been 14 or 15 when Episode I came out. Of course you don't remember what us slightly older people meant when we said it sucked. You were busy watching the podracing scene.

One of the major criticisms of Jar-Jar back then was they thought he was speaking with a Jamaican accent. It's so universal that everybody my age or older (and I'm only 34) knows precisely what the phrase "Jar-Jar racist" means. The flying dude with the nose was also widely considered to be a reference to either Jews or Arabs. And I believe there was at least one other group of aliens Lucas put in there that had everyone going "What the fuck George Lucas?"

Re:Never heard that one before

[ganjadude]

oh no i saw the movie the day it came out and i thought it was a waste of 5 bucks (matinee)

its fantasy... i dont to this day think about real life when watching fantasy. those who do IMO are wasting their time because whats the point of fantasy if you are going to do nothing but complain about how its close to X, if you squint real hard and spin around 3 times, it could be taken as racist

these people need to get lives

Re:Never heard that one before

[Antique Geekmeister]

Jar Jar Binks rolling, ungrammatical voice sounded like a caricature of a beach living, laid back, ganja smoking Jamaican. And yes, the parody was so horrible that it made me think of the remnants of the last of hte "blackface" shows and minstrel performances from when I was very young.

                              http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fil...

Re:Never heard that one before

[NicBenjamin]

Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way Pot Smokers were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time.

Fixed it for you.

Has anyone ever noticed that the black stereotypes are also the stereotypes applied to pot smokers?

Dude, don't go down this rabbit hole. There is a black stereotype that matches every single bad thing you could say about people. More then you can count. They range from perfect servant (who should be trusted with your beautiful daughter), to rapist who can only be stopped by vigilante justice (who should be trusted with your beautiful daughter, but only after Dylan Roof has shot him in the head).

The bad black Jamaican stereotype is related to weed, but if Lucas had wanted to make a bunch of weed jokes he didn't have to give the dude an accent. And if he had to pick an accent he could have used almost anything but Jamaica. Make it British, and not cockney, make it fucking Received Pronunciation. That contrast would be hilarious. Dude talks like the queen, acts like your buddy from High School who can't quite function in society. What we have with Jar-Jar is just a sad mix of annoying and anti-Jamaican racism.

Re:Never heard that one before

[MightyYar]

I just want to know how "ganjadude" was still available to a 30-year-old with a user id pushing 1 million.

Re:Never heard that one before

[McGruber]

I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. Nor has that ever occurred to me.

The racist nature of the Jar Jar character was a big story back in 1999, when the movie came out. Here's an opinion piece from the late Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane, that was published back then: Seeing racism in Jar Jar is seeing phantom menace, June 5, 1999

Re: Never heard that one before

[MightyYar]

No, no... he's not black. George Lucas simply cast a Caribbean-descended (Barbados and St. Thomas) voice actor to give him a Jamaican-flavored accent. To the most ridiculous character in the movie, who's behavior just happens to strongly resemble the blackface minstrel characters.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Shadow of Eternity]

He's blatantly a jewish stereotype. Greedy, yiddish accent, huge hook nose, and in later movies they even give him a round black hat and beard.

Re: Never heard that one before

[MightyYar]

I hear you, and if it was just Jar-Jar I would probably write it off. But the Jewish/Arab caricature in Watto and the Japanese caricature in the Trade Federation just makes it hard to ignore.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Harlequin80]

Jar-Jar Racist is a term that I have never heard before. And I'm 37, so old enough to have come across it.

Here is a review from our most left leaning publication that would have pointed it out if it was noticed by them. http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...

Re:Never heard that one before

[myowntrueself]

Agreed, Jar Jar was awful, but anyone trying to make this into any kind of race issue should be tied and quartered. Really, nothing better to think about? Fuck them.

Can Jar Jar please be transsexual?

Why do you think they are not?

George Lucas wouldn't have had that much imagination.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Gavagai80]

According to Lucas himself, the neimoidians were speaking with a transylvanian accent. Jar Jar was speaking in an accent Ahmed Best could do. Lucas felt it would make aliens seem more alien if they had accents, and actors only know how to do human language accents so he picked some of those. In retrospect it was a stupid decision, but it wasn't intended racistly.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Swave An deBwoner]

Shylock is a character in one of Shakespere's plays. Not "Jewish culture" but the (very early 17th century) "European culture" with which you claim to be so familiar.

Was this the Wikipedia article you say you read?

Re:Never heard that one before

[Jason Levine]

And why didn't Lucas do what he did for aliens in the original trilogy: Either make them speak some alien language with subtitles, or give them some not-easily-identified accent? Jabba didn't speak like an Italian guy - he spoke in Huttese. Greedo spoke in his own tongue. Chewbacca had his growls that Han and C3P-O translated. Aliens that spoke English (Yoda, Ackbar, etc) did so without any obvious dialect. You didn't have Ackbar shouting "It's a trap!" with a French accent. Yoda didn't speak with a stereotypical Indian accent. The original Star Wars trilogy did alien-speak right, why couldn't the prequels? (Not saying that this would have fixed all of the prequels' problems. Their issues go far deeper than offensive alien accents. Still, it would have been one less thing to cringe at.)

Re:Never heard that one before

[Hussman32]

I don't know if Star Wars needs diversity, but Episode I was rude.

It seemed to me that Watto the Slave Owner on Tatooine was a Jewish stereotype (look at his nose and listen to the accent), the Trade Federation were Japanese stereotypes (look at the eyes and accent), and Jar Jar was a Jamaican stereotype.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Iconoclysm]

The character was mostly a creation of the actor playing him...a black man from the Bronx. If there's a way that can be made racist, someone will find it.

Re: Never heard that one before

[I'm New Around Here]

Saying "It's Inuit" is like saying all Native Americans are Sioux.

Re:Never heard that one before

[BoberFett]

And the bad guys were always white men with British accents. Oh noes.

Re:Never heard that one before

[gl4ss]

jamaican creole is overwhelmingly spoken by black people + couple of backpacker hippies.

only thing missing was jar jar smoking a big 'ol fat joint, really. even his ears are meant to flow around like rastas and he goes around as if he was high all the time.

watch some grittier travel shows sometime..

note: this is not why episode 1 sucks though or why the jar jar character sucks.

Re:Never heard that one before

[quenda]

Watch again, he's obviously a (bad) Jamaican stereotype.

Not obvious to me. If anything, I thought he was vaguely Italian, maybe because I meet a lot more Italians than Jamaicans.
But really, he is just meant to sounds foreign to the others.

The worst negative stereotype in American cinema is the villains all having English accents.

Re: Never heard that one before

[bickerdyke]

You're intentionally missing the point. there's a cultural history found in movies, tv and books that portray black people as subservient and uneducated stereotypes. This portrayal reinfoced class and racial structures of the day that served to keep black people "in their place". Long tradition of this. summary mentions stepin fetchet. uncle remus. blackface comedy. jar jar is a direct decendent of this line of humor. either you're being purposefully obtuse, or maybe you're from iceland or something and completely unexposed to american culture and history.

So, if you see a subservient and uneducated non-human character on screen, that makes you think of black people?

Interesting. But with such a mindest, I wouldn't complain about other peoples "racism".

Re:Never heard that one before

[Rei]

Aliens that spoke English (Yoda, Ackbar, etc) did so without any obvious dialect.

And they all appeared too white, too male and too heterosexual.

Yoda and Ackbar were white? And displaying their sexuality onscreen?

Wow, I must have been hammered when I was watching those movies...

Re:Never heard that one before

[Rei]

I think whether people were offended really comes down to their level of familiarity with the minstrel show portrayal of african-americans. Because Jar-Jar was a classic example, every last bloody detail except being an alien (and even at that they made sure to style him with a big bottom and lips). Actually, they went even further than a typical minstrel show, adding in your standard "spear chucker" stuff as well. If a person has little familiarity with that past presentation, then I can see why they wouldn't find the Jar-Jar performance offensive. It's not about a character being intelligent or not.

Then again, we have a candy here called Sambó, so....

Re:Never heard that one before

[tburkhol]

its fantasy... i dont to this day think about real life when watching fantasy.

Then you are uniquely incapable of appreciating metaphor. You see, many writers build their stories around symbolism in order to convey a message that may not be explicitly stated. This makes those stories richer and more meaningful for an audience not simply waiting for the next explosion. Aesop's fables are an extreme where the moral is explicitly stated by fantasty talking animals at the end. These metaphors depend on fictional or fantasy elements within the story bearing recognizable similarity to real world people or structures, and stereotypical caricatures are a millenia-old mechanism for that. Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, The Tempest or Adam and Eve: if you can't see that these stories say more than what is on screen, then you are missing the fucking point.

those who do IMO are wasting their time because whats the point of fantasy if you are going to do nothing but complain about how its close to X, if you squint real hard and spin around 3 times, it could be taken as racist

It's an effect of sensitization. If you wake up every day and someone calls you a lazy moke, you get much better at recognizing subtle comments. It's the reason it's ok for Peyton Manning to slap Marvin Harrison on the ass, but not ok to slap cheerleaders. Stereotypes, like the one about autistic computer geeks unable to recognize metaphor, are propagated by repetition.

Re:Never heard that one before

[jafiwam]

And why didn't Lucas do what he did for aliens in the original trilogy: Either make them speak some alien language with subtitles, or give them some not-easily-identified accent? Jabba didn't speak like an Italian guy - he spoke in Huttese. Greedo spoke in his own tongue. Chewbacca had his growls that Han and C3P-O translated. Aliens that spoke English (Yoda, Ackbar, etc) did so without any obvious dialect. You didn't have Ackbar shouting "It's a trap!" with a French accent. Yoda didn't speak with a stereotypical Indian accent. The original Star Wars trilogy did alien-speak right, why couldn't the prequels? (Not saying that this would have fixed all of the prequels' problems. Their issues go far deeper than offensive alien accents. Still, it would have been one less thing to cringe at.)

The target audience of the newer movies is a lot younger.

The folks that buy toys and games and collector cups and all that.

Do you think Star Wars (a new hope) was targeted toward kids originally? It wasn't, but it turned out to have tremendous appeal to kids. One they couldn't count on reproducing.

So they had to put in some slapstick comedy to keep the interest (or so they thought), they couldn't use other languages and count on the audience reading subtitles fast (because they aren't that good at reading), and they had to put in obvious game leading sequences like the robot factory and the pod race to kick off the video games.

Those awful aspects of the newer movies were put there because Lucas thought he could make more money with them there. Why risk being accused of racism by doing racist stuff? What we are seeing is incidental changes as the result of making the movies more marketable to KIDS because kids will spend more MONEY on the stupid shit.

Re:Never heard that one before

[dywolf]

Oh BS. On all counts.

Re:Never heard that one before

[Jason Levine]

I think the main problem happens when people (movie directors, studio execs, marketing, etc) decides that "gearing X towards kids" means "adding lots of bodily humor, inserting slapstick everywhere, and dumbing everything down." There have been a lot of very successful "kids" movies that don't pander to kids and are quite watchable by adults.

A recent one that comes to mind is Inside Out. Disney/Pixar could have easily made the imaginary friend character (Bing Bong) a Jar-Jar Binks-esque disaster. They could have inserted tons of scenes of the emotions slamming into things. They could have had Anger release gas every time he got furious. They did none of this. Instead, they made a movie that my 8 year old loved, my 11 year old loved, my wife loved, and I (pushing 40) loved. They didn't assume that Kid = Only Appreciates Crude/Low Brow Humor.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for crude humor. Sometimes it works just fine. However, shoehorning that stuff into a movie because "this will appeal to kids" is a recipe for disaster.

Re:Never heard that one before

[cfalcon]

> Unfortunately, that really limited the ability of the producers to pick inoffensive accents

Didn't stop them with Yoda.

Also, I guess someone should have mentioned that to the guys who did the Vulcan accent and speech mannerisms, the Klingon accent and speech mannerisms, and frankly almost every Star Trek race gets a speech pattern that is both distinct and not just a copy of something from Earth.

Also, there's a pretty big difference between "we chose an accent" and "we fitted a greedy merchant fly with a hat and a huge nose... you'll NEVER guess what accent he ended up with!"

Anyway, no, it being filmed in the real world didn't stop anyone from doing anything they wanted. This is obviously what they wanted, and it truly is a bit silly.

Who gives a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[MightyMartian]

Because being an anti-social prick is so very superior. If it's gone too far in one direction, it's because it started too far in the other. It's time for the PCers and rude assholes to take a seriously needed chill pill. Being civil is what decent people do, and spurning hysterical people, whether because they are overly sensitive, or overly sensitive to overly sensitive people, is what decent people should do.

Grow up. Racial stereotypes, like farting in public, is just plain bad behavior, and it isn't "pussification" to call out incidents of either.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Navel gazing about cast ratios isn't going to make people to respect one another. It's just grievance mongering and if the Star War franchise wants to indulge all the little hates you've been trained with that's fine, but the audience walk away. I know I'm not paying to be lectured to.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[cfalcon]

Anyone who has to make up a word for "someone who doesn't want to change their sex (with surgery/hormones and/or gender presentation (with behavior/dress/etc)" is pretty clearly demonstrating a rather fucked up brand of intolerance themselves.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[walterbyrd]

> Because being an anti-social prick is so very superior.

No because enough already. PC mush heads are making BFDs out of nothing. They are straining as hard as they can to find something victimizing in every innocent thing people do. And it really is insanely annoying, and people get along less, not more.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[Tranzistors]

Let me guess, you are offended if someone calls you “straight” instead of “normal”. Or white.

Re:Who gives a fuck

[Noah Haders]

obvously, minorities would get much more respect if only they stayed in their place

Boycott it for tolerance

[Kohath]

Unless there's a short-haired lesbian wookie I'm boycotting. We need to stand strong for tolerance.

Young Anakin

[tgibson]

from Episode I is clearly mocking every horrible child stereotype. It is because of these kinds of caricatures that birth rates have been dropping.

J.J. Abrams is a fucking idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us recall his previous shitty TV shows and movies:

• Lost
• Fringe
• Mission Impossible 3
• Super 8
• Need I go on?

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.

Re:J.J. Abrams is a fucking idiot

[Shadow of Eternity]

Star Wars is unashamedly a space opera. It doesn't have to be high culture, it just has to be grand, sweeping, and theatrical.

Abrams and diversity in Star Trek???

[superdave80]

...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.

Droids?

[CohibaVancouver]

For me, one of the most interesting (yet seemingly ignored) cultural component is the droids.

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.

...and don't me started on restraining bolts.

Re:That wasn't the featured point

[Karmashock]

We have a lot of progressive idiots that like to make everything into a gender/race issue.

Get a grip

[msobkow]

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?

Are there any... women here?

[wonkey_monkey]

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.

J. J. Abrahms needs to stop making movies

[kheldan]

Quite frankly he's totally fucking up everything he touches that isn't television. Don't get me wrong: The TV shows he's responsible for are pretty damned good. But his movies make me want to stab him in the eye with a very large knife. I don't consider his 'Star Trek' movies to be legit, they're 'Star Trek themed movies' at best (at least that's the only way I could even begin to stand them), and quite frankly I'm not going to pay a single penny to see any of his 'Star Wars themed movies', and I don't recommend anyone else does, either.

Posted as Anonymous Coward because I'm certain there are enough JJA fanbois out there that will flame me to the point of being subatomic particles, regardless of being flat-out wrong, and I just don't need to put up with that sort of bullshit.

Re:Why does Star Wars still use Kung Fu fighting?

[Chrisq]

Why does Star Wars still use Kung Fu fighting?

Man, those cats were fast as lightning.