David Chen on the Phantom Menace's racial stereotypes

The racial stereotyping in the Phantom Menace is pretty obvious, I would have thought. The unpleasantness of this is likewise clear, to me at least. But sufferers from prequelitis often overlook or downplay this aspect of the film.

David Chen is understandably frustrated with this and has responded with a worthwhile blog post on the issue. He asks, "Can we please stop pretending that the clearly racist caricatures in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace were a) not racist caricatures, and b) acceptable to our society? Like, at all?" After a review of other commentators' views on the topic, including articles from the time of the film's first release, Chen concludes:

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace clearly invokes imagery and audio from racist ethnic stereotypes. The fact that the recipient of these stereotypical characteristics are non-human aliens does not change this fact (and yes, I realize that in Star Wars, technically ALL the characters are aliens, so no need to point that out). If you want to deny this, we can go back to the movies and do some scene-by-scene comparison. I quite frankly can't believe that I'm still having to even argue this point.

But to me, the question of whether Lucas has invoked these stereotypes (which I think he undeniably has) is much less interesting than the effect of his doing so. Does it make his movie "racist"? Does it lessen the film in any other substantive way? And what are its implications for how we talk about the film with children?

I'm going to try not to ascribe any intentionality to Lucas's actions. I doubt he's a racist at heart. In the above article, Stone suggests that these aliens came out of "suppressed stereotypes" from Lucas's psyche.  What I know is that most of the non-human-appearing aliens are presented as evil, devious, and/or scheming. Their accents and varying demeanors add to their "other-ness," and allow the audience to distance themselves, emotionally, from them.

It's not rocket science, this storytelling method that Lucas employs. There's a long cinematic history of using this type of imagery in this way. But I had hoped it was something that our culture tried to leave behind, not something that we still find defensible. Ultimately, The Phantom Menace is so artistically reviled that most people just throw the baby out with the bath water. Nonetheless, I feel a full accounting of the film's flaws must include this racial footnote.

Having spent a significant amount of time in the past two years studying media and its effect on children, I've learned that there aren't very many causal conclusions that can be drawn from whether or not violent imagery, sex, etc. actually have a concrete effect on child development. But one thing that I can confidently say is this: what we allow our children to watch matters. When they see The Phantom Menace, which features the triumph of (mostly) white characters over those people with the weird accents who talk, dress, and act differently than "us," what message does it send them?

I don't know the answer to that question. But I'm not going to pretend that it's not worth thinking about.

The Life and Times of David Chen: Racism and Ethnic Stereotypes in "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace"

Prequelitis strikes Topless Robot writer

Dr Helmet diagnoses prequelitisChris Cummins has a serious case of prequelitis. This unfortunate condition afflicts a devastatingly large number of Star Wars fans, especially those under the age of 30, whose expectations of quality from the Star Wars franchise plummetted after watching the Phantom Menace and whatever the other two prequels were called. The result of exposure to these cinematic toxins is that anything that involves or refers to Star Wars becomes, in the victim's mind, an object of admiration, or at least toleration, no matter how objectively atrocious it is.

Mr Cummins' disorder manifests itself in an article on Topless Robot entitled, "8 Things About the Star Wars Holiday Special That Don't Completely Suck". The title itself reveals Mr Cummins as a victim of the disease. That diagnosis is confirmed by reading this sad, belaboured exercise in wishful thinking. The unfortunate Mr Cummins tries to persuade his readers (and himself) that Art Carney's performance was somehow valuable, that the occasional cutting-room-floor scraps of previously unseen Star Wars footage were worth seeing despite the opinions of Messrs Lucas, Kurtz and company that they were not, and (predictably) that the Boba Fett cartoon is "pure joy" instead of pure shit. 

Thankfully, Mr Cummins' editor, "Rob", has so far proved immune from the disease. He writes, entirely correctly, at the outset of Mr Cummins' post:

The Star Wars Holiday Special is an atrocity against god and man. You think it's going to be so bad it's good, but it's not -- it's so bad that nothing in life ever seems quite as good again. Despite what this list says, you still shouldn't watch it. It's not worth the suffering.

Topless Robot: 8 Things About the Star Wars Holiday Special That Don't Completely Suck