PT The Phantom Menace - Is It Racist?

http://sciencefiction.com/2015/10/19/voice-darth-maul-voices-displeasure-star-wars-phantom-menace/

“It reminds me of, if you’re watching Channel 4 during the day and there’s an old black-and-white film on, and someone’s in blackface, and they just bought this film for eight pounds to show and nobody’s checked it. It was like, the most racist film of the twentieth century”​

What a complete jackass. I'm glad they killed him off.​

 

I don't understand who he thinks is wearing metaphorical blackface in that analogy. Jar Jar? He's a black actor "wearing" digital orange-face, which is the exact opposite of what Serafinowicz is accusing TPM of. The same orange-face that white actors, including Brian Blessed, also "wore", somehow without inviting the same complaint. And if Serafinowicz genuinely thinks TPM is "the most racist film of the twentieth century" then he clearly hasn't seen Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind, Song of the South, or any of a number of actual anti-black or anti-Semitic films.

 

Now stop making sense like that!

It gets in the way of those people that want to create their fantasy argument.

Watto is obviously an Italian Arabic Caucasian Black Jew (or whatever else they want him to be) who is blue with wings.









Oh and Anakin is Pinocchio.

 

Fred Sanford + the Blue Fairy = Watto

 

All that Serafinowicz stuff comes from Simon Pegg, I suspect. They're pals. I remember an interview with Pegg from '05 when he was making the same complaints. I don't think it's any coincidence. Serafinowicz actually criticises the OT for the same thing in that podcast - specifically with the Jawas. But it's all revisionary. I highly doubt Serafinowicz was sitting in that original screening with these exact criticisms. It's often the case that people don't like the films due to very basic issues and then look to establish what are perceived to be much more intellectual reasons to back themselves up. As can be demonstrated, many of the elements people criticise in the PT can be found in the OT and this is no different. I would urge anyone who claims to dislike TPM "because it is racist" to look at their film collection. I would imagine you could make very similar criticisms of many of their favourite movies.

I think there is a subtle difference between something being racist and it tapping into the prejudices of an audience in order to sell a character(s) to them. Star Wars characters are all fundamentally archetypal and there is a lot of that at play in these examples. But it goes beyond race: why must Obi-Wan be old, have a beard, and a british accent? Because he's playing a wizard and that's what we have come to expect of wizards. Why do the Imperials all have to have British accents? As explained by Eddie Izzard, because of the American Revolutionary War. To be honest, I wouldn't have been surprised had Palpatine had a german accent... in fact, come to think of it, there is something Germanic about the voice that McDiarmid adopts to voice Sidious and that's probably no accident either.

Star Wars is not about heavy exposition and character development.... never has been. Lucas has always utilised common archetypal qualities to very quickly establish who a character is and what he stands for, be it visually or otherwise. It's part of the craft - no different to using red to signify evil and green/blue to signify good in the lightsaber colours. It says more about us as an audience, if anything. People think Watto is anti-semitic? I like Watto. I think we're all meant to. Forget his occupation for a second - he is a good character at heart. Misguided of course, but undeniably likeable. For one, he has a great care for Anakin - you can see that when he fights long and hard for him to remain on Tatooine, and you can see how excited he is when he returns 10 years later.

However, I find Jar Jar to be the craziest criticism because at no point that I can see was he written with a black man in mind to play the part. It's hardly as though the other gungans are all played by black people. Ahmed Best was hired to basically be a stand in, and he got the voice because he was reading the lines on set and Lucas ended up liking what he did with them... no different to Anthony Daniels' involvement in Episode IV. The only story I've heard of there being any actual racism in the production of the films (aside from the fact that ANH is populated only by white people), is the one where Glynn Turman claims he was told the only reason he didn't get the part of Han Solo was that there was a fear an audience might struggle to accept an interracial relationship between Leia and Han in the later films, had he been cast. Again though, that goes back to an audience's expectations and preferences (however unjust) that filmmakers will always keep in mind.

 

My God, how PC is this world coming to? Pretty soon we won't be able to even sneeze in public without someone accusing us of harboring some bigoted agenda.

Grow the **** up, overly-sensitive people. >:[ TPM was never, nor is it now, a racist film. This is finding a problem where none exists.

 

If the film was racist, which it isn't, the ones who should and would be complaining the loudest would be Amhed Best and Sam Jackson, since they're both black! They would have gotten offended and told George off long before the movie ever came out. And if it was anti-Semitic or something Ms. Natalie Portman would have been offended, 'cause she's Jewish!

 

Not to mention George Lucas's BFF Steven Spielberg is also Jewish, and he visited the set.

 

If anything, I'd say TPM makes use of archetypes that are more about people than the nature of stories. I don't really consider this 'racist'. That word implies a negative context and/or intent on the part of the creator, and I don't think there's anything especially negative about the way the Federation, Watto, Jar-Jar, etc. are portrayed as far as their archetypical behavior goes. My guess is, Lucas just didn't want all the aliens in the movie to sound like white people. So, I am pretty well 100% certain the intention wasn't to be racist - if anything, it was George trying to add some form of diversity to the portrayal of the aliens, but obviously in the process there are going to people who recognize this as a form of stereotyping.

 

Did Lucas intend to make a racist movie and/or character (specifically Jar Jar), no I honestly don't think so. Did he maybe play into some old school black stero-types......ya maybe. So I can understand people seeing it that way, but you do have to take intent into account. I watched the Disney Peter Pan cartoon a few days ago, is the song "what makes the Red Man Red" racist......ya a little. Were the Sherman brothers TRYING to make something offensive when they wrote the song? Probably not. I can understand something saying Jar Jar belongs in that catagory.

But did Lucas set out to make a racist movie with racist characters......no. Just because its bad doesn't mean its racist.

 

This just about ranks as one of the most idiotic videos I've ever seen (or listened in this case). I don't know how this guy (and anyone who shares his opinion) can have so much negative to say on something as uplifting as TPM. Maybe he's doing it for the comedy or maybe he's just an extreme cynic.

Compare that kind of criticism to a positive outlook of someone like Freddie Prinze Jr (go to 17:57 for the bit about Jar Jar):



I know I'll never **** on Star Wars the way Peter Serafinowitcz does.

 

When looking at the dialogue, accents, costume design and casting, I feel that one is hard pressed to find any evidence of racism, or the promotion of stereotypes in TPM.

 

There was an old stero type, mostly in American film and literature of black people being clumsy, not very smart but very nice and lovable - sounds a lot like Jar Jar. His voice sounds like a Jamaican accent (some have said he is speaking ebonics) and his ears at times look a bit like dreadlocks. On top of this, the Gungans as a race are shown to be proud, fierce warriors but ignorant of the world around them, which are attributes which you can link to stero types of African tribes. And their weapons seem very......space aged versions of African Weapons. When you put all this together.......

Now, as I said above, I don't believe for a second that Lucas did anything racist intentionally. I think anyone who thinks Lucas sat down and created the Jar Jar character and the gungans to make fun of black people is crazy and overly sensative. However that doesn't mean there aren't any ........ lets call it racially insensitive elements there. Another example would be Randal in Clerks 2, at one point in the movie he uses a racial slur very casually. His character doesn't realize that the term he is using is a racial slur. The character is not racist and is not meaning to cause offense, but that doesn't mean its not a racist comment.

 

I can see your point. I also think that people look for things that weren't intended to be there. For example, Batman comics came under fire in the 1950's because of the "innapropriate" relationship between Bruce Wayne and his teenage partner Dick Grayson.
Without getting into specifics, I can think of a way to make Luke, Han and Threepio into racial/cultural stereotypes, but I don't want to do so.
I've always loved all of the SW aliens and their idiosyncrasies and never tried too hard to correlate them with real Earth cultures.

 

No that's just irrational anti-racism.

Racism is: thinking people from other races are inferior to your own, disliking people from other races, or treating them worse than your own.
Unless a depicted racial/ethnic stereotype is saying "this is how they really are", it's not racist - in some cases maybe pretend-racist or ecapist-racist, but per definition alone, that is not racism.


Making fun of outgroups, i.e. the tribe next cave, isn't racist - had this movie been making fun of Asians, Jews or Caribbeans, it wouldn't have been racist, but I don't even see that - I think it's really just "hey, isn't it funny that an alien is like an ethnic stereotype we all know?", and probably referencing some vintage pulp material as well - I wouldn't be surprised if Fu Manchu was somewhere in the area of influences, but probably some other "yellow peril" character from some other movie.

 

To say TPM is racist is just ludicrous. I mean if you don't put different ethnicities in the movie you're a racist... If you do you're a racist. It's a no win situation. The next Star Wars movie JJ has put the 2 main characters in because one of them is a ...... and the other is a ...... That to me is both sexist and racist. Anyways... George Lucas and his movies are by no means racist. However an argument can be made about him being homophobic

 

For me, Star Wars is about as much about heavy exposition and character development, as it is about visual storytelling. If it wasn't, I would have never developed an interest in the Saga in the first place. For me, the story and characterization always come before any visual style.

I don't know about the rest of the aliens, but Jar-Jar Binks' voice was the creation of Ahmed Best. He wasn't originally hired to serve as Jar-Jar's voice, only to do the character's motion. It was Best who not only came up with Jar-Jar's voice and speaking style, he was also the one who talked Lucas into allowing him to serve as the character's voice.

A bit like Obi-Wan's attitude toward Jar-Jar and Anakin in "The Phantom Menace".

 

Nah.

 

A bit like Obi-Wan's attitude toward Jar-Jar and Anakin in "The Phantom Menace".

Obi Wan doesn't think Jar Jar is inferior. Obi Wan just happens to be superior. This naturally renders Jar Jar and his kind inferior.

 

Obi-Wan's attitude in TPM bugs me a little.
It's unintentionally funny when Qui-Gon is trying to spare Jar Jar an execution and Obi-Wan can only remind him "Master, we're short on time."

But on-topic I think there are a lot of bad possible stereotypes in the movie, but I never got the impression Lucas was directly or intentionally racist.
He isn't an insensitive guy, and while you can easily draw parallels to certain race stereotypes, you can just as directly draw parallels to a lot of other archetypes/styles/whatever as well. It isn't meant to offend, but that really falls on the individual viewer if they choose to be.

 

It could be interpreted as Obi-Wan pointing out that they don't have time for one of Qui-Gon's long side missions, so just make it a quick one. No long speeches about how we are all worth something and have a place in the Force.

 

Valid interpretation.
Either way, I get the impression he sees what Qui-Gon is about to do coming a mile away, and is not keen on the idea of Jar Jar coming, which seems harsh to me.

 

It's either that, or it was some misguided attempt to evoke a "Conan morality" there - he also frees that guy in exchange for something, you can expect that sort of behavior from stern, anti-heroic "wandering knights" or whatever.
Could also be ideological non-interventionism like TNG.
A lot of archetypal tropes thrown in there, not all of them fit together.

 

Obi-Wan doesn't have time for Jar Jar from the outset. To be honest, I never felt as though any of the characters did, except Anakin. Much like Threepio in ANH, I always got the sense everyone in the film was irritated by him - even the other Gungans... which made the "I find Jar Jar annoying!" complaints from fans all the more amusing to me. Kids asise, I pretty much thought that was the point. Yes he's an idiot, yes he's annoying... but despite all that, he's useful. He contributes. He matters. And therein lies the message.

Anyway, I realise this is a bit of a tangent.