Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

No problem with the canon Tholothians, really. I thought it was weird people/the EU ever interpreted the tendrils as being part of a hat rather than alien biology.

I mean, yeah, we can see that it's a human wearing a hat if we look closely (because, gasp, it's all pretend!) but the intent seemed clear.

Chalactans being anything other than human is ridiculously absurd, though.

 

As far as I'm aware canon Chalactans haven't been classified as a species. Yet.

 

Where does the hat end and the head begin? I think when TPM came out I didn't think there was anything super obvious about it not being a headdress, either artificial or a part of some other creature, and I assumed she was the Adi Gallia was human because she looked human and I wanted more POC in Star Wars.

 

Wasn't it the Visual Guide that did so, right after the movie came out?

 

Could well have been. That would explain why it was so firmly entrenched despite going against what was obvious.

EDIT: Yes, there's an arrow pointing at the tendril that says "tholoth headdress" so that's no doubt where it originates. I imagine that's the first time I ever went "Lol wtf it's not part of her head?" as well.

I saw the headdress as a headband and chain.

I certainly didn't think Adi was meant to be hiding hair under there. Especially since they had her skin tone blending in with the tendrils.

 

I never thought it was anything but a headdress.

Can you explain this? I have the visual dictionary in front of me and I don't see how her skin tone blend with the tendrils

 

Spoiler: Image

EDIT, because I was interested:

Head(dress) RGB = 159, 104, 77
Forehead RGB = 165, 108, 85

(Or, wait, was it just a translucent thing? Did the actress have a shaved head? I had assumed not, in which case* it's impressive colour matching on the part of the costuming people. IDK.)

* Remembered Stass. Lol.

 

I thought we had all agreed that the hat was sentient and the body was just a host

 

That is literally the one good argument for the hat being a hat.

 

I thought that was jedi knight K'Kruhk with his group of Whiphid hosts

 

Just watching the movies (and Clone Wars later on), I always thought that they were headtendrils, like Twi'Lek Lekku

 

THANK YOU

 

Is the Forehead RGB taken more or less where the light is reflecting on her skin?

 

I always rolled with the head-tendril theory too. <--- sentences you never expected to type even on a SW forum

Agree on most of the other sketchy near-human classifications, though.

In a sense there's really only scant reason for species with different color skin not to be human, too. Sure, if they have some other odd feature like Zeltrons, maybe, but Pantorans, for example, are pretty much just blue people.

 

I have this theory that humans in SW have a larger spectrum of skin colour and all those green, blue, red and other skinned people we see are not seen/classified as near-humans in GFFA.

 

"What do you mean when you say "they had her skin tone blending in with the tendrils"?"

"Here you go."

"You're trying to trick me!"

No. What is true is that I only spent two minutes throwing it together. I was surprised the RGBs were so close -- I was expecting them to be similar at a glance, alone -- and it may be partially the result of lighting, but the point is illustrated either way. The above is what I mean when I say, "they had her skin tone blending in with the tendrils" and that's why I originally thought "okay, so they're like lekku attached to her head" rather than "oh it's just a hat and we can't see any of her head under there."

Sorry for bothering.

Still, given Iron Lord's point about VD I'll concede that it may not have been TPM's intent, after all, but in that case I'm not sure costuming got the memo.

I feel fairly confident that you gave a random person on the street a selection of character pictures from Star Wars (without annotations that say "THIS IS JUST A HAT", sentient or otherwise) and asked them to be sorted into aliens and humans, Adi would be in the alien pile more often than not.

Agree strongly. I would much prefer SW humanity to be more inclusive in this regard.

 

Right? I mean, "race" as we know it can't be expressed in GFFA terms since there's no Space Caucasia or Space Africa or Space Asia etc. and thus human when visually described are just light skinned or dark skinned or whatever, it's just a visual descriptor, so why not blue people? Hell, we see the same range of colors in otherwise similar Twi'leks (and Calamari, come to think of it, and Nikto, Trandoshans, and isn't there an orange Rodian in Solo?) and recognize them all as the same species... why not humans, too?

 

Because humans in Star Wars are still humans, and that doesn't involve blue people. Twi'leks are completely fictional and defined by us, they're whatever we want them to be, so they can include blue, red, purple, etc. It can be that way because we say so. Not so with humans.

I'm also reminded of the completely idiotic saying, "I don't care what color you are; white, black, brown, yellow, red, blue, or green", or along those lines. It's insulting, insensitive, dismissive, and patronizing. It's phony color-blindness, and I don't want it to spread to fiction.

 

Yeah, I think I’m with CT on this. We all have preferences for how they use aliens—I definitely think they have a role to play in the larger diversity conversation—but there are too many existing issues with representation of actual humans for me to want imaginary ones just because.

 

Yeah, that's how I see it too. And I think we can all agree that they're separate issues --- there are no blue- or green-skinned people on Earth wishing for more representation in film and being insulted when a Pantoran or an Orion is classified as a near-Human. An MCU film starring Vision wouldn't be a groundbreaking Black Panther for people with purplish-red skin. Pantorans being human is a neat thought experiment, but it's not exactly a diversity issue in the same vein as Depa Billaba not getting to be human or the Pike sisters being "Epicanthix."

 

I wonder what it say about me that to me he always felt like a bad rented car salesman (like Pete in Goof Troop) and I never made the Jew connection, people had to point it out. The same goes for my mom.

I'm not trying to say that some of the stuff don't have some unfortunate implications but some of the stuff (like idea that the nemodians were supposed to be based on predatory Japanese big business) felt like that people were stretching (or have a really shallow pool of references).

* Takes a quick look at the different discussions going on on the internet * You know, I think you are wrong here

More seriously, I do know of at least one example of people getting offended by the portrait of a minority group and the minority group telling them that they don’t know what they are talking about. And going by some of the complains I have seen regarding Lucas later movies and Cameron’s Avatar so are people absolute looking for things to complain about.

What are you based that on? The gungans live in a different area then the humans and there is no comment about the humans have taken their land or pushed them away, just that they think they are so much better then the gungans. And the gungans are shown to be naturally amphibian and their city is highly developed and they have huge land areas that they could have built it on instead if they wanted to.

First of: Epicanthix was a bad idea (was their psychic/Force power ever used in story b.t.w.) and I don't know what they were thinking. Second: I don't think all Asian looking people appearing in the EU have been declared to be Epicanthix (please don't prove me wrong here), just the Pike sisters. Which leave us with… very few non-Epicanthix Asian-looking characters, since the EU was rather bad at adding non-white characters

I will have to go against you here and say that the gungans don’t speak broken Basic [English] but a (made up I admit) creole language, something I rely like since we see so few creole language in SF

I know. It also has a very different history, culture, esthetics and language to Japan.

Saying that a bad (non-Japanese) Asian accent and being Businessmen is proof that they are supposedly Japanese is to me like saying that the Lurmen are supposedly Swedish since they don’t want any part of the wars and have a bad European accent.

To my understanding so was the 80’s stereotype of the Japanese (or their corporations) was not as merchants or as practitioners of automation, they were stereotyped as good with electronic on the other hand. If the Trade Federation had attacked Naboo with ninjas; by espionage; or done it in some kind of way that involved them buying Naboo, its companies and/or the companies producing stuff for Naboo and used that as thumbscrews; I would probably agree. I would probably also agree if the TF was presented as inscrutable and with a twisted honour mentality.

To me Trade Federation feels much more like the East Indian Trading Company – a large merchant fleet with oligarch powers and a personal army, that blockade/invade when they don’t get their will through.

Maybe I have missed something here but when in of "Yellow Peril" era propaganda was East Asians presented with big eyes, no noses/ears, pschent like head gear and/or morion helmets?

I did a quick googling to look at pictures of their cities and have to ask: how they are stereotypically Asian? They look like a combination of different styles to me.

Okey, I tell you it’s not a really an insensitive and trivializing joke at the expense of a serious social issue in Japan.

More serious, I don’t think it’s a joke base on that. It feels just like a variation of the “bad guys people make their children fight for their food to weed out the week” trope. To say that it’s based on the problem Japan has with study pressure I feel that the nemoidians horrible treatment of their children should have involved education in some way, not food. Also, as I understand it so is Japan’s study pressure problem in a way based on that their nurturing tradition and academic system is not in synch with their demographic development and how the workplace have changed. So to say that the nemoidians lack of a word for nurturing is a way to hint that they are Japanese feels just wrong to me.

No need to take offence, it was a real question. I was wondering if the Forehead RGB was taken more or less where the light was reflecting on her skin

 

Ok so frankly this will be more or less point by point, but it really comes back to one response to all of that: it is not stretching, and throwing false equivalencies out is empty. Saying "well I think that is stretching" is utterly void of meaning and worth when so much has been said and discussed on this topic and the relationship between the PT and racial stereotypes.

1. the pool of references comes from the stacking, none of the point exist in a vacuum, so while on its own the Niemoidians may not appear to be a play on Japanese companies, it becomes more evident to a hell of a lot of people given the underlining factors.

2. Ugh do I really really need to explain how ethnic groups are not a hive mind and portrayals in media go far beyond merely offending directly but play a more harmful role in terms of normalizing. Avatar, to use your example, is peak white neo-liberal bull about native peoples. It is a part of a trend that has had study after study after paper after paper on how it is a problem. But hey you don't see the issue, so I guess academia is wrong I guess

3. The Creole thing honestly is even worse though, thing is Creole classically developed due to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which honestly plays even further into the "gungans are indigenous peoples pushed away due to colonialism". All this shows is that the Gungans are more and more based on other human races without giving any of the dignity those races deserve.

The film takes classically "other" elements or things associated with nomadic peoples and victims of colonialism and then uses a stereotyped version for comedic effect, ranging to at best racially coding them as just a hodgepodge of whatever they wanted. Appropriation is still appropriation. Brian Blessed referred to it as being partly Jamaican, which frankly shows the kind of reasoning that was used. This was not a very clever well thought out attempt to show a Creole language, it was an attempt to intentionally use a West Indies accent without consideration.

People's cultures, whether you do so honestly out of a sense of benevolence, are not a toybox to be used to make things sound alien or "cool". How many people from the West Indies or who grew up in Louisiana and spoke a Creole dialect where actually asked about this or were in the room? This is the kind of thing that gets caught or at least asked to be defended when you have a diverse group of people present. However all these little things, intended or not, slip through unnoticed for a reason.

4. Does this really have to be spelled out more? We are not just talking about them being Japanese, we are talking about them being stereotypes of Asian peoples. Also fun fact about stereotypes, they often dont consider the cultural diversity and distinctiveness of others. So shorthand for "asian" in the states is defaulted to being the same across the board. Even when the people doing so know differently, they should still be aware that the coding present is none the less disparaging.

Also a racist accent by a person not of that race is still bad. Like you asked if that was a bad thing, YES!!! Yes it very much is and Indonesia being distinct does not change that. They used shorthand to further a stereotype, and even if somehow one decides that is not the case, they still were being racist.

Secondly: here comes the false equivalency. There is a big big big big difference between possible Swedish stereotypes, and having your villains be a collection of things your country has used as racist propaganda and dehumanization towards a specific people within just the past few decades. Lucas loves WWII and WWII era culture, pretty sure he is well versed in what America used as tools to dehumanize the Japanese; he should be aware of why ***** like that is offensive and should be shied away from. If he was aware then that raises even worse questions.

5. Ummm no by 1999 the primary stereotype of Japan was that of them being successful as business, not tech exactly. Sure tech played a role, but more or less it was the ruthless businessman stereotype. This is owed partly to Cold War America being jilted at Japan's thriving economy, and partly by the stereotype of Asians as model minorities which is super harmful in its own way but that is not present in the PT. However the general business stereotype is.

The stereotypes you mention are ones that are outdated. Post yellow peril has seen a change in what Americans fear and dislike about Asia. I mean go around in America and no doubt you will find a boat load of people complaining about everything being made in Asia and making some fuss about how "they are controlling the world and their making our pencils and stoves in order to launch an invasion" so on and so forth. Hell just look at the vitriol Trump spewed about China. In the 80s and 90s Japan was more the target of that kind of fear-mongering. Keep in mind China's economic boom was more recent.

6. The Niemoidians have flat faces and slanted eyes, pretty yellow peril to me. Also it goes even beyond that. A serious amount of TPM's costumes are just stolen from Asian cultures.

Niemoidians have headgear reminiscent of Chinese Imperial court wear


But even more problematic is Padme's costumes being just all over the place taken from Asia.

They never even tried to hide the cultural appropriation
https://www.starwars.com/news/force-of-fashion-queen-amidalas-throne-room-ensemble

And again dont say that "oh it is not Japanese stereotyping cause those are other Asian cultures"; the larger point is the lack of Asian voices in the room and an overall explicit and knowing decision to appropriate from Asian culture. That is not debatable. They intentionally made the costumes and accents based on Asia. That coupled with what most see as a stereotype of Japanese business paints a pretty clear picture of the overall lack of care present.

Not to mention the fact that they are portrayed as cowardly above all else, which is part of the classically impotent Asian man trope. It just keeps stacking and stacking. Sure many villains are cowards, but to make an entire race have that as their trait and always bring it up? Yeah that is too close for comfort.


7. I am not talking about the architecture I am talking about the names. I actually found an old thread from these boards that brought these up while I was researching and since I already saw there your response years ago I will just address it beforehand, so what if some of those words are present in a variety of other cultures? They almost all appear in Japanese, it 9/10 are Japanese, but of those 10 5 of them are present in 5 different cultures one each then that changes nothing.

The point is that is not a coincidence. So what given all the intentional pulling from Asian accents and clothing, and after being accused of being racist, they just accidentally used several Asian words in Neimoidian cities and languages?

8. "" dude that's tasteless. To the point, specifically Niemoidians are portrayed as culling the weak to make them stronger at business and cheating others. It is not a matter of seeing who is strong but rather who will hoard from the others. It goes back to the ruthless business trope.

Just look at this quote from the Wook taken from Complete Locations
"Neimoidian work overseers assigned identical work to two teams of worker drones, with the incentive that the successful team eats the other"
Pretty clearly about specifically being drones and only working. Again this is a pretty freaking common stereotype in the states and if nothing else if it was not intended then someone, anyone on set would be able to say "wait wait wait....if we have Asian culture for the Niemoidians maybe they should not be shown as cowards, and have a racist Asian accent by non Asians, and have Asian words all over their culture, and have slanted eyes?"


Final point: all of these things go back to the fact that it all stacks. Maybe if these are individual decisions for different races I could buy it, but holy **** this is abundantly obvious to those of us who live in a country that literally locked up its own Japanese population less than a century ago cause their genealogical relatives were at war with us. It does not matter if it was done in a way that was not meant to be mean or if there are elements of other cultures, especially other Asian cultures.

The controversy does not live or die on them specifically being racist caricatures of Japanese people, it is about a general stereotype, and even more than that; the public that will accept stereotypes dont care about the specifics of what makes Korea different from Japan. Just meshing all these together for the sake of "exotic" or "alien" is harmful and appropriation.


No offense, you are well meaning and maybe I got ranting, but I really cannot handle a marathon argument again and frankly I saw that old thread derailed by small bouts of whataboutism and false equivalencies so blocking, not cause of you dude, just cause I want to partake in the thread without this debate cause I said my piece and I know I will end up spiraling if I don't

 

Padme and Shmi themselves are based on Indian/Hindu names.

I don't see this stuff as bad, unless you want all characters to dress in suits and ties and blue jeans and T-shirts.

The whole basis of the Force is jumbling together pieces from different Earth religions/philosophies along with some pseudo-science.

 

Something to consider: What if Episode I were released for the first time today? Within the past ten years, social media has played a huge role in letting marginalized voices be heard and forcing people who look like me to consider viewpoints that they had never considered before. Serious attention is being paid to the ways in which minority groups are underrepresented, tokenized, or outright parodied in film like never before. If Episode I came out today, how would people react to the Neimoidians, Watto, the Gungans, and Amidala's culturally appropriated clothing? The answer is: Not well. They would not take it well, nor should they. More people would be aware of how lazy, tone-deaf, and hurtful it is than in 1999, and it would end up being a shadow hanging over the entire trilogy.

 

Why would they have to dress in blue jeans and T-shirts? There is plenty of SW exclusive fashion or outfits that are not a hogepodge of various other cultures. But honestly my point is more to do with the awareness of the film-makers. It is not a moral judgment of the costumes overall, just a point that they knew they were directly basing stuff off Asian cultures.

I do however feel it is badly done when it is for the sake of making something exotic and when you only get a bunch of white people or aliens in those costumes. It becomes a thin line and there are ways to do costumes based on other cultures without coming off like a shmorgishborg. It is also quite different when it is predominantly cultures previously disparaged by ones own. There are ways to make unique and even culturally inspired costumes without doing what TPM did.