People who Cry Racist At the Screen

[NateSean]

The biggest offenders in this regard are usually Star Wars fans and the target is typically Jar Jar Binks, the Gungans or whatever the hell those aliens on the droid command ship are supposed to be.

The Prequels weren't perfect. I get it. But when I first saw Jar Jar, Boss Nass and the Gungans I really didn't think "racist". But when I look at it from the point of view of people who do cry the term I can kind of see it. Okay, so, the aliens vaguely resemble African tribes or in the case of the Trade Federation aliens, Asians.

What I don't get is what's specifically racist about it? Now, lets go even further back to Star Trek: TNG in an episode where the evil aliens were all human looking actors and black. Okay, that's a teensy bit racist, especially when a similar episode prior to this featured a benign race as being equally human actors who were all white.

But Jar Jar is purely alien. There's nothing readily human about him if you don't count speaking English and walking upright. So he says a line or two and stretches a word like "mesa" or "whosa are yousa" and people immediately link that to Africans?

I just don't get it in the long run. It seems to me that people are applying their own stereotypes and then building a straw man to attack and prove to other people how above the steretypes they are.

Discuss.

[HYHYBT]

Part of it, at least, is that it's virtually impossible to come up with something totally new, yet identifiable. All right, you want a character who's a little on the slow side and who speaks in a silly but understandable manner. Where do you go with that? Meanwhile, you're designing a somewhat humanoid species for a certain environment. What features (including skin or fur coloring) make sense and look good? If Jar-jar had been bright orange, he probably wouldn't have been as strongly identified as a racist stand-in for certain humans. But orange would have been hard to watch for a different and more obvious reason, and so wasn't a likely choice even without getting to the point of putting words in his mouth.

[bara]

I think people need to spend more time trying to watch movies for enjoyment rather than pick them apart.

[Jaden]

I didn't immediately identify Jar-Jar as a racist caricature when I first watched the movie either, but that's because I was 9 when it came out. I began to realize it as the years went on. Honestly, it's the things like "massa" and him becoming a slave essentially which make it difficult for me to watch him (in addition to the difficulty of watching Jar-Jar because he's stupid and annoying)

The other Gungans, other than the way they spoke, didn't really seem to be nearly as bad as Jar-Jar in my opinion.

The Federation dudes just spoke in a strange way that was reminiscent of the way a Chinese person with English as a second language might speak. I mean, I guess one could read racist undertones into that along with their entire goal with trade routes and such, but I think it's stretching more than a bit to be honest.

Honestly, the most blatant and indefensible one, in my opinion, is Watto, who is basically every bad Jewish stereotype rolled into one, from the accent, to the way he carries himself, to the obsession with money.

So, Jar-Jar bothers me a bit and Watto bothers me a lot, is basically what this boils down to. I wasn't told any of these things, I just sort of realized them and then found out later that people thought this way as well. As for the "I think people need to watch movies for enjoyment rather than picking them apart", well, sorry, but these things jumped out at me and I noticed them without looking deeply. I'm not going to just ignore that.

I'm not the type of person who will just bring any of these things up in any discussion of a movie, though. Do I think certain elements on Episode 1 are clearly racist? Yeah. But unless people are already talking about that, I'm not going to insert it into a discussion, nor do I really count it as a flaw in the movie - I prefer to talk about other, geekier flaws in Episode 1 anyways

Now, Skids and Mudflap from Transformers 2, they were blatantly and obnoxiously racist and they did seriously detract from any enjoyment I got out of that movie, among many other things.

[mikoyan29]

On the flip side, apparently there are some people bitching because a couple of the characters in the "Hunger Games" are black. I guess that is how they are portrayed in the books as well. So whatever.

[Andara Bledin]

There were so many people displaying their lack of reading comprehension and some who were subtly and even overtly racist about it, that a tumbler page sprang up over it and was subsequently featured on a number of sites, including CNN.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

On the flip side, apparently there are some people bitching because a couple of the characters in the "Hunger Games" are black. I guess that is how they are portrayed in the books as well. So whatever.

In the books, they are portrayed as "dark skinned" which means really tan to seem people. And I can understand how people think that way. It's just those who let the fact that it can also mean black bother them that bothers me.

[Gravekeeper]

In the books, they are portrayed as "dark skinned" which means really tan to seem people. And I can understand how people think that way. It's just those who let the fact that it can also mean black bother them that bothers me.

What exactly were they expecting? Its pretty damn telling when you've whitewashed a fictional world in your own head to the point where you're upset and horrified to discover the dark skinned people in it are actually, you know, dark skinned.

"I'm not racist, I just imagine everyone white"? -.-

[Lace Neil Singer]

I have to say that I didn't overly study Jar-Jar to that extent due to the fact that I find him extremely irritating and the first time I watched that movie, I was hoping for his gruesome death. -.-

[SongsOfDragons]

I've heard similar claims for the rabbits in Watership Down.

...

They're BUNNIES. BUH-NEES...

-_-

[draco664]

What exactly were they expecting? Its pretty damn telling when you've whitewashed a fictional world in your own head to the point where you're upset and horrified to discover the dark skinned people in it are actually, you know, dark skinned.

"I'm not racist, I just imagine everyone white"? -.-

It's apparently a common thing to imagine a newly introduced book character as your own race unless it's specified otherwise. I think there's even a scientific word for it, but I'm buggered if I can remember what it is.

[Andrew B]

Now, Skids and Mudflap from Transformers 2, they were blatantly and obnoxiously racist and they did seriously detract from any enjoyment I got out of that movie, among many other things.

They were, but not in the way you'd think. Their VAs pointed out that the characters were a mockery of white guys acting like "stereotipical black" guys, aka, wiggers. That didn't get through as well as it should have due to being a pair of technicolor robots.

[Ginger Tea]

"I'm not racist, I just imagine everyone white"? -.-

It isn't here, so must be in the racelifting thread where I posted something along those lines, if you are not going to hint in the introduction of a character what they kinda look like, well I'm free to choose.

Same as I am free to imagine the school marm as a buxom mid thirty hottie rather than the middle aged spinster you imagined her as when writing, but never actually described to the reader.

Some fantasy books skirt on race by saying those from <fictitious country> bla bla bla but never telling the reader that the country is prdominantly black or asian or middle eastern.

[firecat88]

Saw this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1353281/...read/199544035 today and it made me think of this thread. Double-whammy of 'Looking for stuff that's not there' and 'I don't watch this show all that much, but...'

[Hyena Dandy]

It isn't here, so must be in the racelifting thread where I posted something along those lines, if you are not going to hint in the introduction of a character what they kinda look like, well I'm free to choose.

Same as I am free to imagine the school marm as a buxom mid thirty hottie rather than the middle aged spinster you imagined her as when writing, but never actually described to the reader.

Some fantasy books skirt on race by saying those from <fictitious country> bla bla bla but never telling the reader that the country is prdominantly black or asian or middle eastern.

The description to me seems pretty clear that she's black. Or at least hispanic*. However, I'll admit, I rarely really pay attention to a physical description in the book. That doesn't seem the most important part of a character to me. And I've frequently been wrong about what someone looks like. I remember when the first Harry Potter book came out, I was shocked that Draco Malfoy was blonde. I pictured him with black hair.

So, I went back and looked over the story and, what do you know, Draco Malfoy WAS blonde. I just skipped over that part in my head.

The thing that bothers me isn't people thinking she's not black (though the NUMBER who thought she was white surprises me) but rather objecting when it turns out she is. Also the number who freely admit to seeing 'dark skin and dark eyes' and thinking 'probably a pale white girl then.' If you miss it, that's your mistake.

If you saw it, and then thought 'probably she's white' then I get a bit 'whaaaa?'

And if you saw it, then saw she was black in the movie, and then COMPLAINED about it, THAT is a problem.

I mean, as I said, I thought Malfoy had dark hair. Read several books under that assumption. But when it turned out I was wrong... I admitted I was wrong. I WAS wrong.

To err is human, after all. But if you get all upset when it turns out that she was black... What did you have invested in her whiteness that was so important to you?

*At least as in 'skin tone' not 'hispanics are better than blacks' or something.