Lit Ignorance is Bias: The Diversity Manifesto

Raddus and Ackbar in the same show, oh man.

 

The competition cannot repel awesomeness of that magnitude.

 

lol this thread is such a rollercoaster

 

I can't believe Gamiel beat me to that joke.

 

I mean, Nick's not wrong.

 

Would that mean Erdogan is the rightful heir to both the Islamic Caliphate and the Roman Empire?

 

I feel like all newbies with a hot take on how representation is forced and color blindness is optimal should have to read all 600 past pages of this thread and write a book report.

How is Galaxy's Edge doing with alien representation?

 

Funny you should ask... I'm really keeping up with GE info and that's genuinely my one beef with what looks like a really cool experience! All of the preview art made it look like the place would be chock full of cast members as classic aliens, but the real cast looks like a bit of... erm... a human-wash? Will be interested to see if that changes.

In legit representation news, though, their flagship non-film character (albeit established in canon) is Vi Moradi, being put on basically equal footing as a "lead" with Rey, Kylo and Chewie, which is kinda cool.

 

And their next two biggest characters are Hondo and Dok-Ondar.

But yeah, I was actually thinking yesterday that if I ever got to talk to a cast member in-character I would 100% ask them why there are so few aliens around. I think if ever it were understandable it's there (especially since Black Spire is just one town on a planet with bigger population centers) but I wonder if anyone has come up with an IU reason for it.

 

They will call a first order trooper on you and drag you out. Along with the families who stayed over 4 hours.

 

They probably have a trained answer for it at the very least...I talked to a friend who used to be a Disney employee and there is extensive training for in character cast members and how to handle those sorts of tricky questions.

But the nice thing about theme parks is that they are constantly updating and if there is a big enough outcry that might add more alien characters as the months pass.

 

Well that's just what I'm wondering--whether that's something they foresaw people mentioning.

I can't think of a better reason to get thrown out.

 

Definitely will be interesting....Like I'm sure that they have answers in place in case you know something happens to Kylo in Ep 9. According to the friend who was a former employee she assumes that if you ask Kylo say...."Didn't you die" or "Didn't you get redeemed" he'd probably just look down at you under his mask and then walk away.

But again, maybe over time they'll add more aliens as part of the cast.

Granted i wanna ask any FO officers what they thought of Grand Admiral Thrawn ;p

 

What's funny to me is that by all accounts it's vastly immersive, and any kind of explanation, from Coop's idea on down to "ah well, they can't do it all", would have been fine by me, it's just that the early promo art really seemed to set up the whole idea that you're just gonna be rubbing elbows with random quarrens and dodging GNK droids and stuff. And I didn't see that as much of a leap since I've seen SW Disneyland parades where they've gone to the trouble of making pretty decent costumes for relatively deep-dive characters like Kit Fisto and Shaak-Ti, so it seemed likely to me that that's one of the key things they were going for.

 

I'll be curious to see what this place is gonna be like in a Year because A.) The reservation system will be over so more guest and B.) The parks do update and tweak what they have over time so I'm curious if they'll be able to work out the bugs.

I know Nein Numb will be in the Rise of the Resistance ride and be voiced by the original actor.

 

Which is kind of interesting because GE is a sort of canonical "Groundhog Day" in continuity, so each tweak makes it in a sense a sort of "SE" of itself. Although talking of Rise of the Resistance, I think we can assume that whatever story beats that ride contains will be the real final piece of canon lore about what happens on that "day".

Until the tweaking begins. And while one can sort of understand how over time it will start to seem odd that the land is stuck between TLJ and TROS, but I do hope they don't give up on it and turn it into a random cluster**** of eras just so you can have Vader and Maul walking around in there. I just adore the idea of time and place they're setting up -- and it's actually both ballsy and fan-centric.

 

Oh I think they have a long term idea for this land and it will remain a groundhogs day scenario...Just when they tweak you know...Add more aliens.

 

Absolutely.

It looks like the land's set to be pretty successful, but there certainly have been times when less successful rides or lands or theming have ended up being retooled, and when that happens it's always "slap the greatest hits of a reliable property on this stuff"... in SW terms that means throwing Vader in there regardless of whether or not it makes sense, as in the Jedi Training Academy thing. But you're right, we're safe for now. Just, more aliens.

 

I know that "we can want both" but I do want to stress that the fact that Vi Moradi is essentially the "face" of Galaxy's Edge is so much more important (in terms of its effect on OUR world) than the presence or absence of aliens. Her presence is thrilling.

 

Also--walking in a parade for an hour is one thing, wearing full face makeup and lekku in CA/FL heat for eight hours a day is another. It'd be neat, but it might be expecting a little much of the CMs.

 

They would definitely have people switch on and off from being aliens though. That's how Mickey/other costumed characters work; you do a shift of 20-30 mins or so.

 

One of my favorite iterations of the Jedi Training Academy show they had at Disneyland was that there was a day I went where both the role of the Jedi Master and the Jedi Master's Impulsive Apprentice were both played by women, including a woman of color. It seems the show really was designed so anyone could play either the Master or the Apprentice, which is pretty cool.

 

Absolutely. I'd consider her a breakthrough as a "live action lead" at this point, or at least somewhere close to the leads in the films and animated shows, well above the videogame/comic/novel level of prominence. (Yeah, that's arguable, but I'm going with GE being for the GA in ways that only the films and TV shows are designed to be).

 

It really does seem like the Disney era has had a decision to replace species diversity with real-world diversity. Which is preferable, but odd insofar as, like you said, there's no reason not to have both.

 

Well, for starters, it's not as if real-world diversity is that great now--it's better than the OT/PT and most of the EU but it's hardly the promised land.

Secondly, the strides that have been made are likely because of conscious effort on the part of some key creators (and Kennedy on some level), whereas I think the alien situation is the absence of effort rather than a deliberate choice to dial back. Each of the new films has had one big Mos Eisley-style alien showcase so clearly they see that as a vital component of the franchise; they're just forgetting that aliens can be major characters themselves rather than set dressing. Their bias is one of ignorance, in other words.