Here are some of the replies to when I asked (be sure to expand that last one):
Uh, yes? He’s a money-grubbing businessman/slave-owner who has a huge nose and lives on a desert planet where he gambles in chariot races straight out of Ben-Hur.
We’ve had this discussion before, and not just with Watto…there’s Jar Jar, the Nemoidians…some people see it, some people don’t. Some who don’t see it argue furiously that it’s not true, for some reason.
Nah, it’s not necessarily weird to not notice those things – but it’s definitely the sort of racial coding that ought to be avoided when writing.
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by other non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
I guess it didn’t bother GL though (cf. the Neimoidians, whose voice actors were deliberately told to mimic line readings by non-English-speaking actors saying the lines phonetically.)
Well I mean, to play Devil’s Advocate here, I would imagine Neimoidians might not speak English as their native tongue and they do have very odd mouths so I would assume they would speak English pretty awkwardly.
http://www.davechen.net/2012/02/racism-stereotypes-phantom-menace-star.html
In a 1999 article for the Boston Review, Alan Stone corroborates Gottlieb’s take on things. He also identifies one of the reasons why Lucas got himself in trouble: he made the aliens English-speaking. Unlike aliens from the previous Star Wars films (see: Chewbacca, the Ewoks, all the people in the Cantina scene), the aliens in this film spoke our language and had accents and other characteristics reminiscent of the ones found in ethnic stereotypes:
What has made my student and many other cultists of his generation feel betrayed is the new ingredient in Lucas’s recipe: aliens who, unlike any of the previous exotic life forms, suggest racist stereotypes. The evil henchmen in this story seem to be Fu Manchu style Asians, and the primitive Gungan people who live under the sea suggest old Hollywood stereotypes of African-Americans.
I’m not sure I personally see it as intentionally meant to be racist, but it was certainly a poor choice.