So since we have nothing specific to write about for our substantive post this week, I thought I would comment on something that my friends and I were talking about recently. As I mentioned in my last post, last week during the snowpocalypse I watched Episode I of Star Wars. During the movie, my friend pointed out something that I'd never considered in great deal. She noticed that a lot of the characters and races seem to be fairly racist stereotypes of certain ethnicities. One obvious example is the Trade Federation.
All over the web, there are debates on this topic and it is surely a controversial one. But it got me thinking about our class and our discussion of the "other." In general, we discuss how the "other" is situated within the story and how humans' interact with the alien characters. In this way, we look at what these character interactions say about human nature. What I realized while watching Star Wars is that the relationship between the creator of the aliens (the writer, director, etc.) and his or her creation can also tell us a lot about human nature. Whether or not you think that The Phantom Menace shows clear signs of racism, you can infer a lot about humanity's feelings towards an unknown "other" by George Lucas's presentation of various alien species.
This debate is a complicated one. One could argue that by seeing certain races within the stereotypical characteristics and actions, we are ourselves being racist. In other words, we are projecting our own stereotypical ideas onto Lucas's characters. I don't know that I would go along with this because of the fact that the mannerisms and characteristics of the various races in Star Wars had to come from somewhere. And honestly, it's pretty much impossible for me to look at the race making up the Trade Federation and not see a crude representation of Asian stereotypes. It seemed pretty offensive to me, but if you disagree let me know why. Like I said, there are tons of debates on this topic and I'm sure many of them are very heated.
If you want to see some of the arguments online, check here, here, and here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As we have all probably been Star Wars fans from our youths, we probably all dismissed the concept of Star Wars as racism. Truthfully I was not immune from this initial dismissal. however, after reading your post and the other blogs, I would agree that something could be awry. The dress, accents and manerisms of the Trade Federation species was very reminescent of Asians. Also, the character of Watto was indeed reminescent of a Middle Eastern or Jewish person. Lucas could have taken steps to prevent a stereotypical representaion of another group this as he was only bound by his imagination and it would not have difficult to conjure up another form. However, perhaps he was so innocent in his intentions that he never would have considered that he was being offensive. In Lucas' defense, his films generally portray the protagonists as color blind while the anatagonist is typically racist. Even the Empire is portrayed as xenophobic and anthropocentric.
ReplyDelete