Talking about the white men issue, I’m not fully convinced about your argumentation.
Firstly, I feel like blaming Lucas to be participating in non representation of colored and female actors is true, but somehow unfair.
To me, part (and only part of it) of the problem is linked to the time where star wars was created. That question is obviously complicated, because it can quickly be seen as ‘people are not tolerant, so I won’t be either’ which of course is unforgivable. But just like we today have to fight for more representation of diversity, people at that time had different scale in their action to promote tolerance.
Given the social climate 5 decades earlier, I believe that it could be fair, before pointing Lucas’ mistakes, to acknowledge what he did great. I consider Leia to be a major female figure of pop culture and a conterpoint to the damselle in distress. To some extent, Mon Mothma being a rebel leader serves that point of representing strong women, in a time where it was rare.
I would also argue that the budget of Star Wars has something to do with that. I do believe that Lucas was willing to showcase the alien-human opposition, more globally conveyed through a nature-technology dichotomy. One argument in favour of this is that in Jedi, which can be described as what George would have like Star Wars to look like, pilots are as you said more represented through aliens. So Lucas does showcase that good guys are the one promoting differences when he has the money to make aliens and more pilots (female pilots deleted from Jedi’s final cut, what a shame)That being said, it is true that almost all rebels are white men, and I can only deplore that this era wasn’t giving chances to minorities (and that today’s era still has so much to accomplish), but I believe that Lucas was on the good side, trying, probably not enough, to fight against this.
‘Good side’ being backed by the sort of hippie resistance that he and his friends represented back then : I think we can’t say that they were for the establishment and statu quo. I won’t extend on the social movements of a country that isn’t mine though.I agree with the non-sense of Lucas declaration like ‘There is only racism against alien’ since the Empire is obviously racist against colored people.
Looking forward to read your comments !
It was not my intention to make an argument, that part of the post was not directed at you, and I left a large gap in my post to indicate a new separate topic. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
That part of my post was only to highlight that it is George’s answer to the valid criticism of there being mainly white men in the movies that makes no sense: Because he hired Billy Dee and Samuel L Jackson, and that “Most of the people are aliens!”, that doesn’t invalidate or answer the criticism.
I agree with the points you make for the most part, and of course he had more money and technical expertise to get more memorable alien characters as the OT films progressed. Although I think he could have easily used women in the Rebel technical and Rebel leadership roles, and could have employed non-white males or women for some of the scenes I linked images as examples to. Perhaps even re-dressing some previously used alien costumes or figure heads as distant background characters for the Rebels.
Unfortunately the racial stereotypes that appear in TPM especially (Jar Jar, Neimoidians and Watto), does George no favours:
George Lucas Receives Honorary Palme d’Or From Francis Ford Coppola At Cannes Film Festival - a Deadline article, with a video of George bring presented with the award by Coppola.
Good for him, although I wish he would smile more, or look a little happy (collecting a prestigious award from an old friend!).