Well this is a first......TPM in college

Here's a link to the story about the "racism" in AOTC.

Like Roland said, people see what they want to see. They also see what they are directed to see. I imagine that the students in this particular class will see the stereotypes in TPM they have been directed to see by the textbook.

They'll see Jar Jar's "big lips," when he doesn't have lips at all. They'll see his "wide, flat nose" when he has no nose, just nostrils. They'll see his "bulgy eyes" when he has smallish eyes on stalks. They'll hear "mesa" as "master," although the two words are completely different -- "mesa" is how Gungans say "me." They'll see him "getting his tongue stuck in an electrical socket" when in fact he accidentally puts his face in the power couplings of Anakin's pod racer, causing his tongue to go numb. They'll see his long, floppy ears as "dreadlocks." They'll see Boss Nass (who, by the way, was voiced by a white actor: Brian Blessed) as a caricature of an African chieftain. They'll see the Nemoidians' "slanty eyes," when their eyes are oval. They'll see Watto's "hooked nose," when he's got a trunklike, dangling nose.

I hope at least some of the students don't buy into this and speak up.

 

This is actually really great guys! When the time comes to watch and discuss the film, if the professor decides to bring up the stereoype issues, I will bring your arguements up. In fact, I may even print out the thread, because that last post was really good as far as completely shutting up the author of the book.

 

WHAT? That is the biggest load of *explative* I have ever heard.

It's out of no where.

Jar Jar's floppy ears resemble dreadlocks? Mesa sounds like Master?

 

Here's some more ammo, Captain_Typho, courtesy of the Donald Trull (aka the Lard Biscuit). I've asteriskized the swear words:

"Jar Jar Binks is a racist caricature that is offensive and demeaning towards African-Americans. The Trade Federation Neimoidians are racist toward Asians. Watto is racist towards Jews/Arabs/Italians."

(Several swear words pertaining to bovine excrement)

That really ****** me off more than just about anything else people have had to say against The Phantom Menace. All I should really have to say in response is this: anyone who seriously believes that Jar Jar Binks is a racist caricature must be racist himself.

But I'm just inviting more contempt if I leave it at that, so I'll elaborate. The same thing happened to a different degree back when the original Star Wars came out. There were people who protested against the movie because there were no black actors in it, except for James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. Crackpot conspiracy theories got concocted out of this, proposing that Star Wars was a white supremist allegory about an ideal world in which black people have been eliminated -- except for the evil Darth Vader, who, in his black mask, his black robes, and his menacing voice provided by a black actor, represented the inherent wickedness of the African-American race. Some protesters even believed that Vader was actually a black character, unaware (as we all were then) that caucasoid Anakin Skywalker was under the mask.

Undeniably, it was an unfortunate oversight that A New Hope had no minorities in its visible cast, which Lucas corrected in the subsequent episodes. But all those accusations about the Vader character being an anti-black emblem in a racist story were all a steaming load of horse crap. Much more than being an insult against Lucas, these charges of racism were a slap in the face of James Earl Jones.

In essence, the protesters were saying that Jones should not be allowed to perform the voice of a masked villainous character, because Jones is black. By that rationale, Jones should limit himself to portraying virtuous African-American characters who reflect in a positive manner on his race. Of course, that's a total crock. There is no other actor on the planet who could have done a better job as the voice of Darth Vader than James Earl Jones. The fact that Jones is African-American is completely irrelevant. And yet some people couldn't get past Jones's race and think of Darth Vader purely as a fictional movie villain. The way I see it, raising objections to the Vader character on any racial grounds is itself an act of racist discrimination.

I think it's just the same situation with Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar is not black, he's a fictional alien being called a Gungan. George Lucas never imagined the character being African-American when he scripted his dialogue, and no one at the Lucasfilm art department or ILM ever thought about the character being African-American when they designed his amphibian appearance. The actor chosen to portray Jar Jar, Ahmed Best, just happened to be black. Furthermore, Lucas originally planned for Best to provide only the physical modeling for the character, and a voice actor would dub the dialogue. But just as Anthony Daniels won himself the voice of C-3PO (whom Lucas first intended to sound like an American used car salesman), Best's vocal characterizations on the set convinced Lucas to let him do the speaking part himself.

Any African-American essence that exists in the Jar Jar Binks character is wholly the contribution of Ahmed Best. So logically, it would seem that if you detect derogatory African-American stereotypes in the portrayal of Jar Jar, it's not George Lucas's fault -- you'd have to blame Ahmed Best. You are therefore saying that Best was wrong to portray a clumsy alien buffoon who speaks pidgin English, because buffoonery and poor language usage are qualities that cast the people of Best's race in a negative light. You are insulting Best's skills as a performer, and telling him he is incapable of p

 

They'll see Jar Jar's "big lips," when he doesn't have lips at all.

LOL! Excellent point, Shelley. Typho, you should bring this up in class when discussing that chapter. I command it!

 

Guys....I got an update for ya! Last class session, the professor did a poll, how many people prefer widescreen over pan and scan. Almost everyone raised their hand for widescreen. Then the professor attempted to influence the class on why pan and scan is better, saying that it focuses on individual actors expressions better. Then today, one day after the session, I received an e-mail from my professor with an article written by Mark Cousins this June about why the close up is better. And guess which film he disses on...yep you guessed it......TPM

Widescreen
June 2004
Cinematic truth lies in the close-up
Mark Cousins
 
The whole point about cinema, surely, is the close-up of the human face. Huge images such as the Sphinx, Mount Rushmore and the colossal statues in Greece and Rome established the sense of wonder to be had in gazing at magnified physiognomy, but until the movies, such depictions were rare. Even in vast paintings - of battles, landscapes, coronations - the human beings tended to be no more than twice or thrice our size. But Greta Garbo's inscrutable face was hundreds of times bigger than that of those who read their own thoughts into it. Therein lies the wonder of the movies.

It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that cinema is currently undergoing a flight from close-ups. It does this every now and again, as if bored with the effortless way in which macro-imagery can enrapture. Instead of bringing the camera close, as Alfred Hitchcock did in Vertigo, Nicholas Ray did in Johnny Guitar, Sergei Eisenstein did in Battleship Potemkin, Ingmar Bergman did in Persona and Carl Theodor Dreyer did in The Passion of Joan of Arc, movies today are retreating to the apparent splendours of the wide shot, the panorama, the spectacular vista intended to make us say "wow." This was the Lord of the Rings trilogy's technique, and is that of the Brad Pitt-starring Troy, and the eco-disaster picture The Day After Tomorrow. The forthcoming Boudicca movies and the Alexander the Great biopics in the pipeline - Baz Luhrmann's, starring Leonardo di Caprio and Oliver Stone's, starring Colin Farrell - are likely to do the same, and even that barometer of US cinema's artistic ambitions, Martin Scorsese, has been framing more widely recently, as Gangs of New York showed.

This trend towards wide shots is in part explained by the landmark technological changes which cinema is undergoing. Those who doubt that the digital revolution is significant should consider the fact that the two previous occasions on which film "went wide" and turned to stories set in classical times were the 1950s - after the switch to the various widescreen processes such as CinemaScope - and the very first decades of filmmaking, when audiences were still agog and directors such as Cecil B DeMille presented frieze-like tableaux of classical excess. Both were formative moments, and so is the present one. In each of these three periods, producers and directors who were faced with a new technology fell back on primitive, likeable, pre-cinematic ideas of showmanship. At times of great change in cinema, it seems, the movie world abandons its unique selling point, the close-up, to impress audiences in more conventional ways. In retrospect, Titanic - still the most commercially successful film ever made - was e-cinema's declaration of intent.

What makes me approach multiplexes with a heavy heart these days is that every filmmaker wants a go at computer generated imagery (CGI). I like landscape and cityscape cinema, but the current tableau filmmaking is a digression. The moment when it dawned on big budget directors that the computerisation of the movie process meant that they could show all those things they couldn't show before was probably an exciting one in Hollywood. Loads of dinosaur/cyborg/city-destruction movies were submitted and green-lighted. But as is often the case with adrenalin rushes and creative stampedes, good old-fashioned inventiveness got lost in the process. For those of us on the receiving end of the movies which resulted, there was a l

 

OK, seriously, this class is a joke.

 

My professor will love reading this thread.......maybe I should wait til after the final to show it to him...

 

Dude, seriously, you can quote me on the following:

Pan-and-scan does not equal a close up. This is a fact. Does watching a movie on a larger screen equal a close up? Does leaning in closer to your TV equal a close up? A close up is determined by how a shot is made. If the lens is zoomed into a person, that is a close up. If you pan-and-scan an image, you're only loosing image from an existing shot, not gaining a new shot. You loose the perspective in which the shot was made and your misframing the shot.

In addition, close ups should only be used for emphasis and/or to capture intemacy. (It can also be used purposefully "hide" information from the audience, though this technic is less common.) To rely on close-ups as a technic is to lessen the two intended effects and to limit the scope of your surroundings. In short, it's lazy filmmaking.

 

The Pan and Scan version of TPM is absolutely atrocious.

Example: There's a scene taking place in Amidala's royal starship where the camera is focused on her sitting in a chair. The widescreen version has her dead center, with a handmaiden on the left and right side. In the Pan and Scan version a handmaiden (who isn't Padme) is the focus of the shot, while Amidala is all the way to the left with part of her body cut off from the screen.

It doesn't help that there a many scenes where an actor's face takes up a good portion of the screen, and that's the WIDESCREEN version. In the Pan and Scan version you can almost literally see what's up an actor's nose. It's not a pretty sight.

I would agree with the all of the professor's complaints towards GL's directing if the Pan and Scan version was the only existing version of the movie. However, it's not. The widescreen version is always the director's true vision of the movie. The Pan and Scan version is only for people who either can't stand black bars on the top and bottom of the screen or can't afford a Widescreen TV, so they just get the Pan and Scan version and then later complain about the framing of the shots........

 

This guy is teaching a college level course about cinema, and he prefers pan-n-scan?! Dude, drop the class and get a refund because I can tell you right now, it's a waste of money!

 

In two short, succinct paragraphs, you just owned that professor, Darth-Stryphe.

 

Thanks


I would agree with the all of the professor's complaints towards GL's directing if the Pan and Scan version was the only existing version of the movie.

What, you mean if SW was shot in 4:3?


However, it's not. The widescreen version is always the director's true vision of the movie.

I guess it would only be fair to say Kubirk preferred and filmed in 4:3 and trimmed the image for theaters, but he was the exception, not the rule.

 

I agree 100% that the characters in Star Wars are absolutely NOT racial sterotypes. If someone happens to think that Watto's trunk resembles a hooked nose, so what? Lucas and his design team cannot and should not conciously try to avoid such likenesses just because someone might label them racists. That would leave them with so little room for imagination that we wouldn't get a Star Wars movie - we'd get Spaceballs.
If I really wanted to, I could find racial stereotypes in every film I see. For example, I could point out that Terminator portrays Austrians as stiff people, though that would be like accusing JRR Tolkien, the guy who wrote a book about several races working together to liberate the world, to be a nazi, just because he says that elves are beautiful.
Oh wait, they already did that!

 

Example: There's a scene taking place in Amidala's royal starship where the camera is focused on her sitting in a chair. The widescreen version has her dead center, with a handmaiden on the left and right side. In the Pan and Scan version a handmaiden (who isn't Padme) is the focus of the shot, while Amidala is all the way to the left with part of her body cut off from the screen.

Don't forget the part where Amidala and her troops freeze and surrender to enemies we can barely see.

//takes scissors to a photo

Look, I made a close-up!

 

Darth-Stryphe

I guess what I was trying to say was that TPM has by far one of the worst Pan and Scan transfers I have ever seen. Atleast with the Pan and Scan versions of the OT the camera would pan or 'jump' to what's supposed to be the focus of the shot. With TPM, it's almost like the ILM or Fox staff who were creating the Pan and Scan transfer just fell asleep on the job. The camera doesn't often pan or 'jump' when it should, so allot of times we're left with akward looking shots that focus on absolutely nothing while an actor talks halfway across the screen.

 

Ok, in defense of the professor here, he has said nothing yet about TPM to the class. All he's said is we'll be watching the film. He did say he liked pan and scan because you get a better view of facial expressions and emotion on the actors.

However, he is using a textbook written by someone who I personally, and I think you all agree with me, was written by an absolute moron. I only showed you the snippet dealing with TPM. I don't want to print the entire book here online due to copyright issues but from the other sections I've read, it appears as if the author of the textbook is approaching film completely from the wrong angle.

Also, my professor did in fact e-mail the class that article on pan and scan. It doesn't reflect his personal view on TPM, but someone else's (the dude who wrote the article)

Like I said, as we get closer to watching the actual film, then I'll probably know what my professor's true feelings and opinions are about the actual film, although I'm sure they won't be positive....

 

That he would choose that particular text book and endorse an article regaling the virtues of pan and scan is enough to show me that he probably shouldn't be teaching a class on cinema. This guy sounds like one of those armchair directors who thinks he could do better but never actually does.

 

i think amidala is mocking the white race when she dresses up in white makeup then acts all "white girl". Then takes it off and acts like a normal girl.

 

That he would choose that particular text book and endorse an article regaling the virtues of pan and scan is enough to show me that he probably shouldn't be teaching a class on cinema.

Pretty mucn, yeah.

 

Typho, great thread! If the author of the text is saying the lack of cloesup shots in the film hurts the drama, I absolutely agree with him; however, if he's saying pan and scan, which is a result of distribution and marketing, is the same as a closeup shot, then he is a moron.

If your professor goes on and on about all this crap, tell him you agree and that his class is the TPM of film classes.


As for the racial stereotype question:

Professor, stick that post-modern dribble up your ***!

 

I think you mean "politically correct" and not "post-modern." Not to put words into your post or anything.

 

Wow......I'm beginning to wonder if it's such a good idea to show this thread to my professor......I may end up flunking the course!

 

[Watto]...and has acquired a small fortune in currency, slaves, and other possessions through shrewd deal making and well placed wagers...

I don't see any support for this take on Watoo, neither in the films nor the novelization. I always had the impression that Watto is fairly poor and got his slaves through luck. He is, after all, a junk dealer.

Seems like the author of this book is really looking for sterotypes in TPM, but not backing his claims up with real facts.

Its easy to find sterotypes when you want to. I could make arguments for Solo, the clones, Leia, Artoo, just about anyone.

Maybe your teacher is demonstrating the sterotypical idiot?