logo Sign In

Post #1404417

Author
ThisIsCreation
Parent topic
The Phantom Menace - anyone want to chat about TPM?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1404417/action/topic#1404417
Date created
19-Jan-2021, 7:03 PM

jedi_bendu said:

ThisIsCreation said:

jedi_bendu said:

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)

A New Hope for instance is George’s way of bringing the Vietnam war to the big screen through the eyes of a fantasy story. In it there are no insensitive insinuations about characters, there are no stereotypical accents. He avoided the whole problem in the original trilogy completely, but once he wrote the prequels it seems he was implementing too many ‘real world’ elements under the guise of worldbuilding, hence my issue with the Neimoidians & the Gungun’s portrayals and accents. it could have been avoided, but now we’re stuck with it.