That’s a pretty common criticism. It might not be so much of a problem if the film didn’t also contain an anti-semitic stereotype in the form of Watto and Neimoidians with stereotypically Japanese accents and behaviour.
I think it could be said these were simply oversights and the filmmakers never intended the characters to be seen as racist - they often gave existing accents to alien races (Twi’leks sound French, for example) although that’s definitely questionable in itself. It’s still a totally valid thing to criticise TPM for.
You are 100% right. It doesn’t matter if George had his best intentions in mind, someone involved with the creation of the movies should have realised what was being done. I don’t like the idea of using stereotypes to make the audience laugh at a character, not laugh with.
It has the same issues that the Harry Potter series has when it comes to stereotypes & caricatures of cultures.I’m not offended, but there should have been atleast some awareness on George & the producers part that they were feeding into something that would be perceived as insensitive.
Thanks, and absolutely, yeah. When making a film, you might not intend something as racist, edgy or offensive in any way, but you should keep an eye out for it, because stereotypes like that can ruin someone’s enjoyment of your movie. It’s like films having underlying political meanings. You could be apolitical and not be writing because of something you believe, but people are going to have a political interpretation of your work no matter what, so you’d be best to keep that in mind. Like, you want to make sure your buddy cop comedy flick isn’t inadvertently advocating for a police state or something like that.*
(*I’ve no example in mind, and in the case of Star Wars, I think George Lucas thinks very deliberately about the political message of his films anyway so that’s not a criticism)