Books Thrawn - New canon Star Wars book by Timothy Zahn (Spring 2017)

GLs Palpatine was never xenophobic nor was Human High Culture ever part of the movies. There was implicit misogyny and racism both in the Empire and the Rebellion (until ROTJ and the Post-Endor EU) because we never saw aliens and women in prominent positions in the military of those organizations.

The idea that the Empire's bureaucracy and government apparatus outside the military was ever overly racist has yet to be explicitly depicted. If George had wanted Palpatine to be a space Nazi whose hatred of aliens was a deep-seated motivation of his actions Mas Amedda, Sly Moore, and Dar Wac would never have been in the movies.

 

But it's in the junior novelization, which has nothing else in common with Stover's novelization (in fact, the junior novelization says that Yoda sensed the aura of the dark side around the clones who received Order 66 while Stover's novelization says that the Jedi didn't sense the dark side in the clones because they were just following orders).

 

Before the Prequel Trilogy was completed, i thought that Palpatine was just hiding his racism until he reached his goal to become emperor.

Especially after reading the Darth Plagueis Novel and later Legends Material it became clear to me that he was just using racistical tendencies in the human population of the galaxy for his goals.

He just does it more discretely in the NEU.

 

The PT is a big part of why I like the new canon's take better. That said, you can't really blame WEG for assuming that the guys dressed like space Nazis were space racists.

 

Aftermath: Life Debt seems to be continuing the "misogyny & speciesism" theme.

 

Palpatine's family background as per DP very much suggests he was raised in an elitist snobbish environment where racism against the Gungans should have been standard. But this whole racism thing never was part of his political agenda. The weird-looking EU stuff today are those books by Zahn and other where the emperor himself was sort of driven by his hatred of non-humans.

I'm not sure the racism is only more discreet now. In any stuff made by GL the racism never even came up explicitly, and the PT very much broadened our view of the diversity that exists in the GFFA, especially in the Republic. If there is a difference it is between the pre-PT EU and Star Wars as it is since the PT.

Glad to hear that. But watching Rebels shows that there isn't really any difference anyway. If they wanted to change things they could have had alien stormtroopers and pilots in the Imperial navy but those are nowhere to be seen.

 

I hope Zahn gives him a better revamping of backstory. Now he'll have to reimagine the character to fit into the exsisting canon of the Disney Star Wars Universe and not so much the GL one. I'm sure he had to meet with the heads of the departments overseeing the SW properties and had to get all the info of where their vision of the universe is going. Based on that, he'd have to reshape Thrawn to what they have expectations for him. He's already part of the Rebels canon now....so that will probably mean somewhere along the lines, he might just pop up into the movies (regular or spin-offs) at somepoint.

 

I predict that Zahn won't change much - Thrawn will still originate in the Unknown Regions and have been exiled by his own people.

 

Or maybe we will get the reveal that he is a pantoran with some kind of eye disease or maybe cybernetic eyes

 

Pantorans don't have that symmetrically lumpy forehead though

 

As a species yes but individual members can most likely have many different kinds of foreheads, just like humans.

 

You're right. There wasn't any information about Palpatine or the Empire being racistic from the PT. That could be the reason they changed it from Palpatine's racism to an sociological problem of the GFFA and put the concept of High Human Culture in the Background of the later Legends Material.

From what i have read the reason for the Empire and/or Palpatine being racistic in early EU Material comes from not being able to use aliens as imperials in the OT because the special effects weren't advanced enough and too cost intensive.

 

Well, the thing is that the implicit or structural racism and misogyny in Star Wars encompasses everything in the first movie. Aside from Leia every major character in ANH are white males, both in the Empire and the Rebellion. The only non-human of note is Chewbacca, and he is not exactly treated as an equal.

Later on things sort of change with Lando in TESB and (sort of) with Mon Mothma and Ackbar in ROTJ (although you have to be a Star Wars geek to know that Mon Mothma actually leads the Rebellion) but we never get the impression that non-humans count as much or are as relevant as humans in this society.

That really only changes with the PT where it becomes clear that most of the representatives in the Galactic Senate are non-humans.

If you now compare the Rebellion, the Confederacy, and the Empire then the Separatists are actually the most diverse organization with Grievous, Trench as non-human military leaders and all the species from the non-human owned/led megacorporations behind it.

The Rebels series clearly makes a mistake making the Rebellion look as 'human' as it did in ANH by making all the officers and soldiers we see basically Alderaanian or humans from other planets. It doesn't help all that much, either, that Hera is quasi-human and Ezra, Kanan, and Sabine are all human. I mean, having two white men as the main characters wasn't very diverse to begin with. Why not make Ezra or Kanan female?

In Rebels they could really introduce the whole gender and racism thing in an educating way by sticking to the Human High Culture thing and actually explicitly addressing the fact that the Empire doesn't like women in high positions as well as the fact that non-humans are second class citizens. That way they could even educate/influence some of the younger viewers in a positive way. After all, if only the bad guys did something like that and it was identified as a bad trait by the good guys then the audience would see that as bad, too.

But I guess that is too complex for a cartoon series...

However, while we don't see any non-humans among the Imperial military/leadership there is really no reason not to assume that this Human High Culture thing has been really dropped. Palpatine's best buddy being Grand Vizier doesn't change the fact that this is a thing. Just as Thrawn being there doesn't change anything.

 

For the speciesism, at least, is not only the enslavement of the Wookiees, but also the brutal treatment by the local Moff.

 

But in some ways, it's worse in Life Debt. It's almost like the Moff is treating the Wookiees like someone would run a dog-fighting ring as well as the usual slavery actions. That's the impression I got.

 

How does one think Ezra and Kanan are white? Kanan's darker skinned than Rex. But yeah, it's a shame neither is female.

 

Yeah, I always read Kanan as space-hispanic and Ezra as space-vaguely-middle-eastern.

 

True. He may have been just an exceptionally cruel Moff.

At the very least, though, the canon Empire isn't nearly as sexist as the Legends Empire. As early as Lords of the Sith, we see a female Moff; then we have Rae Sloane, who's a Star Destroyer captain, then an admiral, then a Grand Admiral (albeit promoted by Gallius Rax and not Palpatine), and mentions of female Stormtroopers. The only female Imperials of note we saw in Legends were few and far between.

 

As far as females in the Rebellion goes, EVERYONE FORGETS about the female Ion Canon Control officer on Hoth!

 

Not just that, but that the Empire has a lot of anti-alien propaganda, and that even "near-humans" are distrusted.

 

I only know Toryn Farr because I recently got an action figure of her.