Asia Article: Asian men deliberately excluded from Star Wars?

I don't mean to offend any one with this article, but I found this while surfing and I hope it's relevant to our discussion; I'll try to find the link for this and post it here : ) <--- edit: found it and linked the article! Readers responses are also present.

Asian men deliberately excluded from Star Wars?

Now that the fifth installment of the Star Wars saga has hit theatres, it's official: Asian men have no place in George Lucas's vision of the future. An Asian female Jedi was glimpsed in the most recent installment, but not one single Asian male has been spotted in any of the five movies.

The absence is all the more remarkable given that Star Wars borrows its themes and fight scenes so obviously from samurai and kung-fu flicks. On a purely demographic level, it's difficult to imagine a distant future in which Asians will not be the preponderance of humanity. Even on a mundane economic level, Asians account for at least a third of today's global box office and video revenues.

The utter absence of Asian men in the latest installment is even more glaring in light of the promises Lucas made in response to Asian protests over the omission of Asian actors coupled with suspicious attachment of Asian cultural traits to unsavory alien grotesqueries in The Phantom Menace. Lucas had even hinted that images of Bruce Lee would be used in the installment now known as The Clone Wars.

In The Phantom Menace Lucas used Asian martial artists both to choreograph and perform the kendo-inspired light-saber sequences. But as if wishing to take back the decision, in The Clone Wars Lucas's PR machine made a point of showing that the fight sequences were choreographed by a white man and performed by the actors themselves. That explains why they were so leaden and lackluster, but raises the question why?

Could it be that George Lucas wants to avoid calling attention to his large debt to Asian action films?

Is Lucas afraid that including an Asian man will invite critical focus on the new movie's sub-par swordfight sequences?

Is Lucas slyly inviting viewers to see wizened little Master Yoda as a winking representation of Asian men?

Despite his avowed interest in Chinese and Japanese martial arts, culture, literature and films, is Lucas a closet racist after all?

 

Although its old news, its still very valid even today. I totally agree that Asians should play a much bigger part in all movies, considering we make up 1/3(or more) of the earth's population.

I think GL dare not include any Asian men in his movies because:

a) He'd have to rework and rethink many many plots/stories/shoots becasue if done incorrectly the Asian community would say "hey we don't do it like that!". or "This Asian guy should know better then THAT! That is totally fake!". It'll involve a whole lot of research into real Asian culture and hiring of many consultants and give them due credit for their work, and for fear that while doing their job the Asia consultants would point out a billion other inconsistancies in the movie thus forcing GL to make further changes. If he does it anyway without giving too much thought about the accuracy then once word get out Asians would probably boycott the movie, and as mentioned in the above article Asian spending make up a hugh chunk of the box office $$$ in America alone. Imagine if the whole of Asia decide to boycott the movie....

b) Some Asian guy once tried to buy the movie rights from him for a rediculously large amount of money, making the billions he have look like small change, thus giving him a serious inferiority complex. This would have made him unable to look any Asian men in the eye, let alone hire one to play a role in his movie.

c) Plain and simple, he's a RACIST REDNECK!

 

I've noticed that myself but I'm not really sure if it could be considered a problem. If the guy has a certain vision in his head of what he wants the characters to look like, then so be it, that's his thing. I mean look at Lord of the Rings, there's no asian people there and nobody's complaining. Look at Harry Potter, look at a million other movies that don't have asian people, you won't find anyone complaining.

I guess the reason why people want to see more asians in Star Wars is because the Star Wars species and cultures are quite numerous with a large variety, so it should be only natural to see whites, blacks, asians, latinos, etc... I personally would have really liked to see more asian Jedi because I think asian people look really good as Jedi.

Lastly, if you really pay close attention, you'll see that asians are not totally excluded from Star Wars. There is an asian pilot in ROTJ, I think a B-wing pilot or something, all I remember is him going, "I'm hiiiiiiiit!" Actually I think Lucas put him there because of many complaints from different viewers. If you notice, all the pilots in ANH and ESB are white, and the only black character at that time was Lando. So in ROTJ he had white pilots, a black pilot, and an asian pilot. In TPM Lucas continued this same trend, except it was so obvious that it was kind of annoying. In the battle over Naboo, first you see a white pilot, followed by a black pilot, followed by a WOMAN pilot! I guess Lucas wanted to prove to the world that he only isn't racist, but isn't sexist as well...not very subtle though :S

Also, I've noticed that there are asian characters in various Star Wars video games, for example there is a character named Yun in Jedi Knight, as well as asian looking characters to choose from when creating a character in Knights of the Old Republic. So asians are not completely excluded, nor are black people...hindus and arabs are a different story but it's all good, nobody's complaining.

So all I can say is that I would personally like to have seen more asian characters in Star Wars, but if there aren't that many, it's not the end of the world.

Oh yeah and there was also an asian guy playing some kind of game in the Outlander Club in AOTC...

 

Well, how can you be sure that a large number of Asian Male Actors who have experiences acting did apply to be in the movies and agreed to be paid as "Extras"?

In TPM, there IS a Chinese Pilot in the line-up of Naboo Pilots when Palpatine arrived on Naboo near the end of the movie.

Hai......the next time we know, some people will start questioning why there isn't any Malays/Indonesian or Indian Male or Thai or Australian Aboragins (Sp?) etc etc in the SW Movies....

 

Don't forget the all-Asian gang on Nar Shaddaa from the sequel. They were criminal refugees from the planet Serocco.

I'm complaining.

 

There were also no Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, German, Russian, or Swahilians either...

 

so much hate