Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

While I haven't watched it, and for all I know he could make some compelling arguments, I am tempted to reject the argument that Samuel L. Jackson was cast to appeal to the "urban" market out of hand. It's Samuel L. Jackson. He's a household name, one of the most widely recognized living actors. The Batman films weren't trying to cash in on the hip-hop crowd by hiring Morgan Freeman.

While Mace Windu came off as a very flat character (though everyone did, save perhaps Obi-Wan and Palpatine), I think Lucas at least had the right intention: like with Lando, he cast a black person in a position of power, and never called attention to it. He was the essential second in command of the Jedi council, and his skin color didn't enter into the equation in any way.

 

I definitely agree that Plinkett should be thought of as Stephen Colbert. I don't take his stuff too seriously but if you watch his videos as a whole he does know and understand an awful lot about film making and the art of story telling. I'm not taking him too seriously but he made a pretty valid point when he pointed out that there are several black actors with more versatility that could have done more with Mace Windu's role. Then again that's my opinion and I don't want to turn this into an argument.

Well, yeah but the Batman films aren't constantly criticized as being terrible movies, either.

 

We did have George Takei do some voice acting work for TCW.

I'd be more than happy to have *anything* SW done by Gail Simone. She's amazing. I'm a big fan of her Birds of Prey run, too.

 

Samuel Jackson is a huge star, and a household name. My dad is an old racist redneck, and he's a Samuel Jackson fan. I think there was a choice for Mace to be reserved and stoic, and he played that well.

 

As much as I agree with you, and as much as I am slowly backing away from the huge can of worms what I'm about to say represents...I would put forward the thought that Samuel L Jackson is much more "urban" as white America sees it than Morgan Freeman, who is white America's "safe" black man.

If anyone watches the comedy duo Key & Peele, this would basically work as Freeman being Obama to Jackson's Luther the Anger Translator.

 

Thanks Contessa, I did forget about Takei doing an episode of the Clone Wars.

 

I love Key&Peele! They're bit with Lando Calrissian was hilarious.

I don't see why a can of worms has to be opened, though. If you watch the video what Plinkett says is that George Lucas hired Samuel L. Jackson exclusively to attract the attention of black people, who would be bigger fans of Samuel L. Jackson than someone like Forest Whittaker. While I don't want to dive too deeply into this discussion and risk offending anybody I do say that he kind of had a point. Why would you cast Samuel L. Jackson in a role where someone has to be reserved and stoic? Samuel L. Jackson has never done reserved and stoic.

I think this problem was addressed in Shatterpoint where we got to see Mace Windu being much more of a badass. It was easier for me to see Samuel L. Jackson in that role because I can envision Samuel L. Jackson kicking ass and taking names. That's just not something that we see in the prequels. The role doesn't play to his strengths. So why cast him?

As far as the LGBTQ situation is concerned I don't see that problem being resolved until America collectively pulls its head out of its own ass. We've barely escaped the "one black man per sci-fi movie" or "damnsel in distress" trope.

Karen Traviss may have taken a step forward in LoTF (even though I generally disregard that series as being truly awful from all angles) but why couldn't she have Boba Fett's buddy get married in the series instead of his granddaughter? That definitely would have been pushing the envelope. Instead we get a "blink and you'll miss it" reference.

 

I'm guessing that Traviss was possibly afraid to push things too far. It was controversal enough at the time when she brought in gay characters subtly as she did. A gay wedding at that time probably wouldn't have been allowed by the editors I'm guessing. At the time Traviss had more SW books planned and may have pushed the envelope further if her relationship with the publishers hadn't gone bad. Whatever else people think of her work, she's still broke a lot of new ground for diversity in SW.

 

At the time? This was only a handful of years ago. I literally could not care less about her gay character. She only devoted a handful of sentences to the guy's sexuality and I honestly did not care. Nobody is making a substantial effort for equal representation while we have characters who have a serious case of the furries dating back to the nineties. It's just silly.

 

Even 6 years ago was a different climate, as gay equality has been moving pretty fast in real life since then.
I could see the new fiction post VII going one of two way: pretty much business as usual, but perhaps with more openness towards diversity, or so safe and sanitized that old school readers will abandon the line in droves, which is what happened with Doctor Who novels when the new series came out. They replaced the very mature and edgy (and high quality) novel range with much safer and simplier novels aimed at younger readers.

 

ISTR some pretty...strong reactions...especially among some of her biggest Mandalorian fans who had simply made assumptions about her beliefs since she was writing tough men. There was some heated discussion and certainly some fans who identified with the Mandalorians felt betrayed since they assumed she was conservative in the American sense of conservative (reading reviews of her works is hilarious as she's been called everything from a liberal vegan man hating hippie thanks to Wess'har Wars to a right wing fanatical war lover) and assumed that her views on homosexuality would align with their views.

There were Mando fans who were insisting that the textual evidence wasn't valid and that Goran and Medrit were just men who happened to live and sleep together and who had simply adopted children and the fact that they called the other person their "partner" and "mate" was just cultural misunderstand that certainly didn't mean they were having hot man on man action.

 

Discussion of why white America doesn't feel comfortable with powerful black men and the difference in how they react to Samuel L Jackson vs Morgan Freeman and how "urban" is applied is a pretty massive topic and I didn't want to derail the thread.

The implication was that Goran and Medrit WERE already married, although I forget how it's worded in A PRACTICAL MAN.

I know everyone who read that assumed Medrit was female and Goran's wife though.

 

They should have just cast Idris Elba as Mace Windu.

This is just a conversation I'm sick of having. I'm sick of people having to be apprehensive about opening a big can of worms. This is exactly the kind of thing we need to talk about if we want things to change.

As far as that is concerned what I will say is that I was talking about acting talent and not necessarily the social roles that these actors play as African-Americans. That being said Samuel L. Jackson is beloved by white people because he's their gateway to quoting the n-word everytime they see Pulp Fiction.

Wow, my apologies. Time certainly does fly by fast. I wouldn't say that I've always been an open-minded liberal person (more like I just didn't care and figured people could do whatever they wanted) so I doubt I was truly aware of the social climate back then. I'm still pretty young as it is.

I honestly don't know. However, from what I've seen of Star Trek and JJ Abrams' work it looks like it's just gonna be another blockbuster. I honestly don't have much faith in anything changing.

 

There's nothing to apologize for windu4. It does seem like change creeps up faster than you'd think. There's still a lot of progress to be made, but changes seems to keep happening. And real life changes are reflected in fiction, so I expect over time an increasing normalization of non het, non cis characters in all fiction including Star Wars as people in real life as attitudes about gay people are steadily improving. Most people these days will have an openly gay person in their family, or at least know a gay person, which is a huge issue in people being accepting of LGBT people.

 

Oh totally, no worms about it. Morgan Freeman is old, generally soft-spoken, gets parts as mentor figures, etc and these translate to "safe". Sam Jackson does action movies where he gets to kill people and say **** a bunch, he's more physically imposing and more direct, and that's intimidating. White America definitely sees Freeman as non-threatening, but Jackson's a black badass, which shakes up a lot of perceptions and scares people.

No problem.

Because they were already introduced as married before the plotline of Mirta's wedding came up?

I don't think she was afraid of pushing, it's just that they were just supposed to be so common that they weren't considered special. They're there, they're gay, but their stories were about other things, like rebuilding their world, being in leadership roles, being fathers and grandfathers to their family. Everything you'd kind of want queer characters to be without the classic "queer struggle" because there's no basis for a struggle in the setting.

This really can't be stated enough. Traviss' collective body of work is the *most* diverse in SW novels. Jon and Jan have comics, but Traviss has no competition in novels.

Toxic fandom ruins everything. Never fails.

That's like my favorite thing. The whole point was that it's supposed to be beyond normal. So you don't really want to make a huge deal about how new and different this is or you set up the idea that it is different and weird for the SW universe. We just get Beviin talking about his spouse Medrit in the same way you always see characters refer off hand to their wives in SW books and stuff, and then we actually *meet* Medrit. Who's a man. And it doesn't get any clearer than that. Male spouse for male dude. They're gay. Point made and so much love for everything about it!

 

Considering Star Wars was among the host of films that originally defined the concept of a blockbuster, yeah, I'd say that's a safe bet

 

Stephen Sansweet!

Did you guys miss this fantastic blog post last year?

 

I'm pretty sure she doesn't identify as bi. This response on her tumblr account clarifies that she's not gay, but I'm almost certain I've seen her answering broader questions about her orientation to the effect that she is straight, though I can't currently place any. My impression of her personality is that if she identified anywhere on the queer spectrum, she would have included that in her response above. Also, this post is in response to a discussion on the way the term "ally" often co-opts and takes attention away from the actual oppressed groups involved, and has Simone clarify that is why she does not identify as one. That post is general-purpose, so she could be referring to the fact she's white, but I've seen her make similar comments with regard to LGBTQA issues, and that's not a label she would be making a choice about using if she didn't identify as straight.

I follow her online presence pretty closely, but a tumblr is hellish to search through, so I'm sorry for the incompleteness above. Also, obviously, the decision to be out professionally is not a simple one, and while it's my instinct that Simone would be comfortable talking about that in public if she were bi, I don't know her personally, and what she chooses to share is her business.

That said, my impression is that she's straight and that it's important to her not to take visibility from queer writers, so I thought it was worth posting this.

In other news, she recently tweeted that she came very close to doing a Leia mini series last year. OH WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

 

beccatoria - since you seemed to be replying to me, I should clarify that Simone wasn't the one I was saying I had a feeling about. I pay very little attention to DC so I'm not very familiar with her beyond her excellent reputation.

 

Coop - cool, I actually wasn't replying to you specifically just sort of...making a more general comment because a couple of people had mentioned it and that post had nested quotes. She writes things other than DC now, though! READ RED SONJA. It's only like 6 issues so far and it's basically a reboot, you don't need to know anything and it's awesome.

 

This is the lady with the loincloth? And the chainmail bra?

 

What about Afro in Afro-Samurai? Or have I misunderstood what reserved and stoic means?

I say because he is a good actor with excellent presence and have a wonderful voice

Jackson is Windu to me but I think Idris Elba would have done an excellent job. Hoping we can will see him in VII

I thought we liked him because he is a good actor with excellent presence and have a wonderful voice, but what do I know

Maybe he was showing his original personality from before he lost his memory

It is Red Sonja of corse it is going to be awesome. Just because she dresses a little more sensible than Conan don't make her any less epic

If that was his metaphor he did not do a to well job to show it. Neither I or any of my friends that I have asked got and I still say that all the smal clues that showed that Xorn was Magneto do not outweigh all the other things that point to him not being Magneto.
So we will have to agree on disagreeing on New X-Men

 

...yes. No, really, it's pretty good. I mostly tried it out because I like the writer, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Like, I get the skepticism, and the outfit is ridiculous. So I'm glad that in the first arc, she basically changes into several other outfits and spends the bulk of it in something a good deal more practical. But while I don't think the chainmail bikini is the equivalent of Conan going around in a tiny loincloth, the way its written definitely allows me to consider it more a part of that continuum than I would if she were escher-posing. Plus, as I said, she does get to wear other clothes throughout the story. Which was nice.

 

What would you consider the equivalent of Conan's loincloth? And what would you consider the male equivalent of Sonja's chainmail bikini?

Can you explain what you mean, bitte, I don't get it

 

I take it to mean the universe functions in such a way that the outfit seems like a plausible thing for the character to wear, rather than fanservice with no logical explanation.