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Post #927614

Author
TV's Frink
Parent topic
Filmmaker and New Yorker film critic Richard Brody's thoughts on the prequels.
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/927614/action/topic#927614
Date created
11-Apr-2016, 5:48 PM

Wasn’t responding to you.

yotsuya said:

I don’t seriously think any of the characters in the PT are intended to be racist in any way. I think it is the result of certain shortcuts Hollywood has always taken in creating accents. They can’t hardly do anything without making it sound like something that already exists. Everyone seems to keep focusing on Jar Jar’s idiocy as some indication, ignoring that the rest of the Gungans aren’t idiots but talk exactly the same way. Watto is only racist if you want him to be. His accent is indistinct, he has wiskers like many lazy men do, and he is a business man. There is more of Fred Sanford (and even more of Steptoe, the original character) in him than anything Jewish. He seems like the kind of shady junk dealer you might find on the East Coast and his accent bears this out. And Nute Gunray is too tall fit the typical image of a stereotyped Asian. They have strange pupil, not strange eyes. I don’t see any deliberate attempt to craft characters based on extant races. I see a huge attempt to craft unique creatures who speak uniquely (like Yoda). It’s supposed to be a big galaxy, but this planet isn’t big enough to escape comparisons that I do not think were intended.

None of this comes close to the faux pas of Hollywood when it was being racist.

I think there are plenty of faults with the PT without making them up.

EDIT: I see why you thought I was addressing you with that half of my post, so I modified my original post to make it more clear who I was addressing.