Posted on 01/11/2020 8:05:36 AM PST by EdnaMode
All fantasy worlds draw from reality, and the Star Wars universe is no exception. As fans flock to theaters to see “The Rise of Skywalker” this holiday week, most of their minds will be on the grand visuals, enduring characters and exciting storytelling, and not on how the films reflect our culture — including its prejudices. But if we take a moment to think about it, George Lucas’s galaxy is, and has always been, far, far away from being an original or an inclusive creation.
Star Wars is shot with “Orientalizing” stereotypes — patronizing tropes that represent an imagined East, or the Orient, as inferior to the rational, heroic West. Think, for example, of the uniformed conformity of the evil Empire vs. the scrappy (American) individualism of the rebel heroes, the vague Eastern mysticism of the Force and its Shaolin-cum-Samurai practitioners, and the uncomfortable racial stereotypes embodied in the hookah-smoking Jabba and the miserly Watto.
Even those who have noted these prejudices could be excused for not noticing the presence of such tropes in another key element of every Star Wars film: John Williams’s iconic musical score. Williams’s music associates the “good guys” with the grand orchestral style of the European Romantics (think of the beautifully hummable melodies for Luke, Leia and Rey), while the themes for the “bad guys” are expressed in the vocabulary of Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern music. AD
This may seem incidental or unimportant. But this music reinforces, even at an unconscious level, the primacy of Western culture against an imagined “other” that reproduces harmful prejudices in pop culture that, given the power of mass media, has larger political consequences.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No kidding. It’s a game. Find the offense in the innocuous.
Imagine waking up every day looking for racism everywhere.
Discrimination is a time tested and ancient mechanism living things use for survival.
If I see something with 6 inch fangs, I am going to be wary of it, regardless of how harmless the Compost tells me it is.
“Offendsensitivity”
That’s the word Burke Breathed put in Opus’ mouth when in the Sunday comic people decided that life is offensive before running off into the distance.
Gaydar pegged to the max
Well is the Compost saying that Western culture is NOT superior? That individualism and freedom trumping the collective is bad?
Well, if so, they are wrong . . . . . again.
Is that a donkey pin he’s wearing?
A good rule of rhumb: The first person to bring up race is the racist.
Even the lefties at the WaPost are calling out the idiocies of this polemic.
What a bunch of navel gazing nonsense.
Fast becoming C. J. Double Chen.
I never saw evidence of racism in the movies. The author needs to be de-programmed.
I’m sorry Mr. Chen was born oriental. But that’s not what Star Wars is about. Everyone has their cross to bear sport.
The Star Wars movie industry is for stupid people.
Bwahahahaha
Oh you mean they’re serious
Consider what tyrannical regimes do to people who assume they have the ‘Right to Free Expression’ ...
The very writer of this scree would be killed (or be disappeared) if they didnt say EXACTLY what the Collectivist State wanted ...
Tooth/bone breaking beatings of course would dissuade any such Freedom-like actions quite early.
.
Is Luke a black lesbian yet?
These “social justice warriors” said the same thing about “The Lord of the Rings,” the books as well as the Peter Jackson movies. And I have seen some websites/bloggers looking for homophobia everywhere. What a useless bunch of human beings.
Looks like Mr. Chen is about to snatch the windpipe out of his conversation partner’s neck. How’s that for ‘stereotyping’? Intellectual windbag!
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