Can we read that a little more closely please, people? Here, I’ll make it bigger:
No one here is saying that Jar Jar is like a real, actual Jamaican, or a Neimoidian is like a real, actual Asian. If someone were to say those things, then clearly he or she would be a racist. Mike Woo is waaaaay off base when he says that anyone who sees a stereotype in these characters is a racist. Now, I don’t see a Jamaican caricature in Jar Jar, but the Neimoidians sound a hell of a lot like Charlie Chan.
As for the article, those people are a bunch of idiots.
And one more time, for those of you who weren’t paying attention: The statement “X seems like a stereotype of Y group” is NOT eqivalent to the statement "X seems like a member of Y group."
Was anyone besides me struck by the sheer pomposity of this statement? “The hoi polloi are much too dimwitted to realize when they’re being insulted! It’s up to us, the Intellectual Community (insert trumpet fanfare here), to guide their underdeveloped sensitivities to the understanding that a Hispanic playing a bad guy in a schlocky over-budgeted over-hyped sci-fantasy flick is stereotypical and offensive! He’s Maori? Who cares! What’s important is he LOOKS Hispanic, and that’s just WRONG!”
How is Mike Wong way off base? If one sees a stereotype where none exists, then they have major issues.
Knowing about a stereotype doesn’t make you racist. But saying the Neimoidians are making fun of Asians is racist because one must believe the stereotype to be true representation first. So, with that, if one is to believe that the Asian stereotype is acurate to how Asians look and behave, then they are most definatly a racist.
For example:
"Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips"
The Japaniese represented in this cartoon are based on the stereotype. (Protruding front teeth, 45 degree angle squinted eye lids, round glasses, small round heads.)
Seeing the racial overtones in this is rather easy. They were purposly making fun of the Japaniese.
But that is not what is happening in the Star Wars movies. Some people just want to think it is.
It’s ‘Victim Syndrom’…everyone wants to think they are getting picked on.
Waitaminute, are you seriously calling all of us that noticed this shit racists?
The nemoidians are acurate to how “yellow menace” villains in old movie seriels behave, they have nothing to do with real life Asians. In fact, they look as much like real life Asians do as the old WW2 propaganda caricatures do; not because Asians look like green skinned fish monsters, but because they don’t look like buck-toothed slant-eyed monkeys either.
I’m going to see episode two in about an hour, and I hope I will enjoy it. I doubt I’ll see what the article in the OP was talking about, but I do have some worries about Jar-Jar. I know that J-J is the Gungan senator, and that apparently he fucks up somehow; A dumb ass geek that I work with said “That just goes to show you, Gungans will vote for anyone.” I’m sure he was attempting to make a joke, but if that attitude does come up in the movie I can guarantee I will cringe in my seat.
Can you not accept that some people will interpret things differently than you without calling them either brainwashed or bigots?
So? I love Samuel L., but just because he liked being in the movie really doesn’t mean anything.
pldennison, I was watching a news magazine show (20/20 or something like that), I thought I remembered the reporter saying that Best had Jamaican roots. But you might be right. I could be wrong.
Let me fulfill a stereotype by saying, “Right on!”
If Monstro is this bent of seeing racism and stereotyping in an alien race, she’s probably going to go supernova when she sees Undercover Brother.
I can just see a Jamaican Jar-Jar:“Anakin, mon, I and I tink slaughterin’ dem Tusken Raiders wasn’t very irie. Forget about de Force, and get with Jah Rastafari. Coruscant is Babylon, don’t you know, and de Greal Lion o’ Judah, Emperor Haile Selassie is goin’ to lead de people to de Promised Land. Have some jerk pork and smoke some sinsie now while I look for me Yellowman CDs.”
Only if you believe the Nemoidians are a representation of Asians . When I saw TPM, I never saw any racial stereotypes at all. Mind you, I don’t have a PC mind set and go looking for things like that.
This, it seems, is how people came to the ‘racist’ conclusion:
1.) Nemoidians have their way of talking, their manorisms, and their way of life.
2.) These characteristics, apparently, resemble an Asian stereotype.
3.) Therefore, Nemoidians represent Asians.
This is bullshit! The only way that one can say that Nemoidians represent Asians is if they believe that the Asian stereotype is true. (IE: That Asians really ARE shifty…that Asians really DO talk like that…etc…)
I’ll admit that I fall into the “Had To Have It Pointed Out” catagory, but I just quickly dismissed it as bullshit. Even watching the movie again after ‘Having It Pointed Out’ it still never jumped out at me.
Having not seen a movie with “Yellow Menace” villans, I can’t comment on that, but I agree whole heartedly that Nemoidians have nothing to do with Asians. That is my point. My gripe is with folks that saw the Nemoidians as Asian.
Not to mention that Asians have round pupils and noses and the Nemoidians don’t.
You’ll love the movie.
Yeah…you’ll love what Jar Jar does…and he’s just his goofy old self in this one. Not much screen time, and it was nice to see Padme put him in his place.
Yes and no. I can accept that people will interpret things differently, but if the interpretation is bigoted I’ll call them on it.
I will not just give in to someone interpretation, because I think the way I want…not the way others want me to think.
So for me it would really depend on what they are interpreting. I personally believe folks are seeing racial stereotypes in these movies because they want to.
This comment is in regards to:
“Can you not accept that some people will interpret things differently than you without calling them either brainwashed or bigots?”
Way to give into conformaty Monstro! Gawd forbid you ever queston someone’s interpretation of something.
:rolleyes:
Of course he isn’t an accurate representation. He’s a ridiculous and offensive stereotype. That’s exactly my point. The Neimoidians sound to me like an offensive stereotype of Asians. Go read my earlier post more carefully.
That last statement is false, and that is why I say that Wong is off base. (I apologise for calling him Woo earlier.) I don’t believe either Charlie Chan or Neimoidians to be a true representation of Asians. I do believe they are both stereotyped, offensive representations, and that they have elements in common. If you want to disagree about Neimoidians being an offensive and inaccurate Asian stereotype, fine, be my guest. But don’t call me a racist because I don’t agree with you. Your logic in drawing that particular conclusion is faulty.
The Neimodians DO NOT sound even remotely Japanese. Watch some WWII movies and judge for yourself. What’s more,the Neimodians lack any of the racial attributes associated with Japanese stereotypes: buck teeth, glasses, lemon yellow skin. Sorry, it just doesn’t hold up. You people need to bone up on your racial stereotypes.
Lucas wanted to convey these guys are, you know, ALIENS, so he gave them accents to emphasize that they are are not native speakers of Galactic. Now, if you want to say that Lucas is anti-Neimoidean because he shows them speaking with accents, go ahead. :rolleyes:
That’s not to say there are no Japanese influences in Star Wars. In the original series, the Empire’s soldiers wear military uniforms similar to the uniforms worn by the Imperial Japanese forces in WWII. I noticed that when I first saw it in 1977. Moreover, Lucas has acknowledged that he borrowed the plot of Ep IV in part from Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, The Hidden Fortress.
What really confuses me is that these people who are intnet on seeing racism, however tenuous, in Star Wars, pay no attention to racist stereotypes that are far more blatant, like Eddie Griffin’s entire movie career.
I’m not so sure why everyone’s ganging up on monstro in this thread. To recognize the existence of a stereotype doesn’t mean to subscribe to it. Stereotypes exist. Anyone who would think that noticing them is inherently racist probably has sensitivity issues of their own.
In many old Hollywood films, and some TV shows, you’ll see the “sissy” character, obviously meant to be gay, and often wiolent or a villain. Watch The Celluloid Closet, and you’ll see dozens of these – they were practically a stock character for about 30 years of Hollywood history. If I saw one of these in The Star Wars – say in Episode III – I would be offended, too. And I’m certain if I said so here, I’d get piled on, and people would I was homophobic just for noticing it.
I noticed the Niemodian-as-Japanese and Watto-as-Jewish stereotypes immediately. I don’t think it was intentional, I think it was just lazy. Relying on stereotypes isn’t just insulting to the people they’re meant to portray, it’s also bad art – it betrays the lack of creativity that was rife in The Phantom Menace.
As for Jar Jar, I think he was meant to be a stereotype, but Lucas’s real miscalaculation was thinking he would be a sympathetic character. I don’t think he was meant to be portrayed in a bad light, he just completely failed.
As for why people care, a question raised by Guinistasia, Star Wars is just a series of movies, but like a lot of the better science-fiction movies, it’s become a sort of replacement for mythology in modern society. This is, quite consciously, one of Lucas’s aims. Attaching lazy stereotypes to characters means that those stereotypes also become part of that mythology.
Also, Lucas obviously wants to make a statement about racism as a bad thing in his movies. The Jedi council is made up of a number of different species, and so is the Senate. So when Lucas falls back on a stereotype, it’s very noticeable.
I just got back from episode two, and it was a thousand times better than Phantom Menace. I still cringed at parts, and I thought the effects were awful (Padme’s ship looked like exactly what it was, a CG image), but I don’t think the Fetts were hispanic. I never even considered Boba Fett evil, he was simply a mercenary like Han Solo.
The portrayal of Jar-Jar was cringe inducing, as were Watto and the Nemoidians. The Nemoidians seemed worse this time around, even.
A common trait of bad sci-fi (as opposed to science fiction) is to give all aliens a racial charachteristic, rather than a culture. Read the Ender novels by Orson Scott Card to see an example of good SF which gives the aliens cultures rather than saying all of X species are warmongers, all of Y species are logical etc…
In reference to reading into the movie, another good example would be Rebel Without a Cause. I am not a homophobe just because I can see that the character of Plato was gay. It is never stated, and you have to read between the lines, but the screenwriter has said it was intended.
I’m not quite sure why this thread is getting so heated; I must have missed something along the way. ::: shrug :::
I am firmly on the side of those who do not believe that the Neimoidians or Watto are based on stereotypes. My reasons for my impressions have already been laid out–notably, the fact that so many different cultures/races/whatevers have been selected as the sources of those stereotypes.
On the other hand, one does not have to be either overly PC or anything to have received an impression of a stereotype. I don’t know what led any individual to perceive stereotypes, but I would not presume to insist that they are deliberately looking for things to be mad at.
Of course, stereotypes exist–duh–but to see them where they don’t exist is a sign of racial paranoia. To think that a character with negative charcteristics must be a sly reference to non-whites says more about one’s own racial self-hatred than it does about the film in question.
If you want to see a Chinese stereotype, see The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). In it, Boris Karloff plays the evil character written by Sax Rohmer as a total stereotypical “Yellow Peril” villain–cunning, ruthless, cruel, lusting after virginal white girls.
To see Asian characteristics in gray-faced aliens with no more justification than they kinda, sorta, somewhat, maybe sound “Japanese” is based on absolute pig-ignorance.
Based on the logic exhibted this thread, I think i’ll start a boycott of Franch’s mustard. After all, it’s yellow, right? Blatant racism! and the name–French’s. The French colonized Indo-China, so Calling the mustard “French’s” is claiming that Asians belong under French domination, obviously another neo-imperialist assault on Asians, too. Kraft foods are saying that Asians are soft and spreadable and taste really good with ham and cheese!
Makes about as much sense as the piffle spouted by the posters here.
Plato’s character isn’t a stereotype. Hs love for James Dean’s character in the film is an important motivation for the plot. His gayness is part of his character’s personality.
A gay stereotype would be the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs–a prissy, mama-worshipping sissy who really wants to be a woman. “It puts the lotion in the basket!”
Yet another gay stereotype would be Jack on Will & Grace–flighty, self-absorbed, trampy, bitchy, and effeminate. That show treats being gay as just a cheap punchline.
I’m not bent on seeing racism and stereotyping, gobear. For you to say this really hurts my feelings and shows that you really haven’t been reading anything that I’ve been posting.
I’m the least sensitive person I know. And like I said, I didn’t even see most of the stereotypes in the PM the first time around. When someone pointed them out to me, I was like, “Wow, you might have a point there!” But I wasn’t outraged. I wasn’t playing the “race card” (I’m thinking about white picket fences again). I don’t think the movie was racist.
Goodness! I don’t know how many times I have to say it!
No, you’re wrong. I HATE movies like this. I HATE Eddie Griffin, Orlando Jones, and Marlan Wayans. And I’d venture to say that more black people would have negative things to say about these actors and the roles they play than stereotypes on Star Wars.
You just aren’t hanging around black people enough, gobear.
Oops. I read the sentence wrong. I guess I’m not good with those negatively worded questions.
Who has said they believe the Nemoidians represent Asians? You might be setting up a straw man because I don’t remember anyone saying that. But maybe I missed it.
What I have heard is people saying they are very similar to the “Asian stereotype”, whatever the hell that might be.
The argument that characters can not represent stereotypes if they look “non-human” does not hold up. I don’t look like a crow, but I sure as hell know the crows in “Dumbo” were playing on “black” stereotypes. Does noticing this make me bigoted or overly sensitive or a player of the dreaded “race card”? (I’m falling out of that window now…)
I felt sorry for Jar-Jar in the same way I feel sorry for kids who are picked on at school. But I still thought he was annoying.
Uh-huh. And you’re the same person who wrote this:
As I pointed out earlier, this is hogwash. Jar-Jar, for example, is about as Jamaican as the Dalai Lama. He’s just a goofy, dimwitted alien. Now this might be a horrible slur on aliens, but until they land their starships and register a complaint with LucasFilm, there’s no point in getting agitated on ET’s behalf.
I didn’t know there was a quota.
I think of skin color as eye color or hair color–pretty, but not relevant to character. If you want me to start hanging out with friends because they’re black, and not because they’re fun, do let me know. :rolleyes: I’ll be sure to do the same with my red-haired and brown-eyed friends, too. Oh, and thanks for the heads up that black people share a hive mind and have identical opinions on every subject. Dumb ol’ me thought black folks are individuals.
Monstro, I adore you, but on this point you’re being exasperating.
The crows in Dumbo are obvious black stereotypes of the Rastus and Sambo minstrel show variety, but seeing the same thing in Jar Jar is just nuts. How can anybody strain to see ethnic stereotyping in Jar Jar and ignore the presence of the awesome Samuel L. Jackson as the noble, wise, and heroic Mace Windu?
gobear, no offense, but you are missing the point. I doubt the aliens in Phantom Menace were intended to be offensive, monstro has said the same herself.
My own pet theory is that the aliens in episode one were inspired by old movie serial characters- the aliens in the original movies were inspired by and large by mythology. To bring up my earlier point; Yoda may have been inspired by the Degobrah, but he did not have any ethnic accent- he spoke like Yoda.
There is nothing wrong with not noticing it, but to personnaly attack those of us who did makes it seem like you and a few others have your own issues. I was most certainly not looking to be offended when I saw Phantom Menace on opening night, and I certainly hadn’t heard any talk of stereotypes in the movie, yet somehow I saw them. As I said, it was enough, when compared to TPM’s many other flaws to keep me from seeing episode two on opening night. After all, who wants to pre-order tickets and stand in line for hours to be insulted.
The rediculous thing is I can’t understand how someone could not see the aliens as stereotypes, you can’t understand how I could see them as stereotypes. Only one of us sees this as a character flaw of the other.
Ok, how about this example. The gym boys in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, they certainly represent a stereotype, and are never explicitly referred to as gay. They act as a throwaway joke in the film. Does it take a homophobe to notice?
How about Donkey, in Shreck. Am I a bigot for noticing that the character is the standard issue “funny” black sidekick that has been in use since Eddie Murphy played the role in 48 Hours?
