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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.)
Watch again, he's obviously a (bad) Jamaican stereotype. That said, that's not the reason I disliked him either.
Unless there's a short-haired lesbian wookie I'm boycotting. We need to stand strong for tolerance.
from Episode I is clearly mocking every horrible child stereotype. It is because of these kinds of caricatures that birth rates have been dropping.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
He is Atepin Fetchit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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.
...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.
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?"
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.
I just want to know how "ganjadude" was still available to a 30-year-old with a user id pushing 1 million.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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.
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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.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Let me guess, you are offended if someone calls you “straight” instead of “normal”. Or white.
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.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
Saying "It's Inuit" is like saying all Native Americans are Sioux.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
And the bad guys were always white men with British accents. Oh noes.
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.
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.
Yoda and Ackbar were white? And displaying their sexuality onscreen?
Wow, I must have been hammered when I was watching those movies...
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Oh BS. On all counts.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
> 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.