DARTH VADER & RACE: A Spoonful of Racism with your Sci-Fi?
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Whether said in tongue-in-cheek, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry stepped in it:
“Yeah, like, the part where [Darth Vader] was totally a black guy whose name basically was James Earl Jones...but while he was black, he was terrible and bad and awful and used to cut off white men’s hands, and didn’t, you know, actually claim his son,” she said on her MSNBC show.
But as soon as he claims his son and goes over to the good, he takes off his mask and he is white. Yes, I have many, many feelings about that, but I will try to put them over here.”
SOURCE: RADIXNEWS.COM
Melissa Harris-Perry's (MHP) point was not unreasonable. The logic might be misapplied here, but that doesn't make her crazy. She just hasn't bought in to all the programmed acceptance of our being diminished by the producers of these properties. Any criticism of how Blacks are treated by accepted sci-fi properties is met with attack instead of debate by fans afraid to have their worship tainted.
Maybe roughly one Black per movie wasn't enough for her and she became a little sensitive in response.
SOURCE: SCIENCEFICTION.COM
Yeah, that is true isn't it.
... and what about Jar Jar Binks...
Doesn't count hunh?
Precedent...
What I said was unpleasant but accurate. Ahmed Best (actor who played Jar Jar Binks) himself had a hard time with how his character was displayed... took a lot of heat for it.
You don't have to agree, but to say that it doesn't make sense... or that MHP is "clueless"...
The Kool-aid doesn't quench everybody's thirst.
If you produce a story for large scale public consumption and part of the design is to propagate a mythology where Blacks have little to no agency within it... in an environment where we should be an integral part of that existence...
It is no accident. It is by design and with full intent.
By definition that would be racism.
There is no other word for it, no matter how inconvenient it is for justification of your investment.
With the amount of work it takes to craft a story, the notion that race is not considered by the creators of these types of properties is absolutely ridiculous and worse... just false.
I construct a universe just to tell a convincing story within it. Why do all that work with no point to the story... no statement to be made?
The truth is it is all a statement.
Every word, every image... down to the way it's lit... and the color of the elements within it... all for specific intent.
That is just the truth of it.
Someone makes those decisions.
If part of the reasoning is racist, it is what it is.
The question is how much racism you are willing to accept is ok for you?
A personal decision.
Those movies weren't part of some twisted reality that just happened to practically contain only one token Black in the entire future, they were directed, casted productions... again not by accident.
To equate that to the retelling of tales from the past, about the past, in environments that we were removed from, by totally racist unopposed producers, is misdirection at best.
If you don't see a purpose in the "whining" then don't do it. Any time someone makes a statement that doesn't toe the programmed accepted line, here come the "whiners."
Racism exists in the media and there are those that don't blindly accept it. Get over it. Everyone is not going to just go along and get along to help you feel better about it, no matter how much you complain when they speak.
Any writer that does this stuff is familiar with the concept of "The Hero's Journey"... If you tell that story in an environment that non-whites populate in much greater numbers than whites and include practically none of them in your story or the production there of... you... and you hero's journey... might be racist.
Keep talking about what happened in the past and try to invalidate those that do not accept being programmed to invest in more of it. Just know that some of us don't play along and hear your protesting as whining also, we just are reluctant to disrespectfully call it so.
When people discuss an entertainment property, and one person likes it because of the special effects, the pretty graphics and the witty dialogue (and possibly because it reminds them of something that made them smile as a child before the world got real...) and the other doesn't like it because he or she sees poison woven into the production...
that is a difference of opinion.
That is what a debate within a discussion is about.
What change occurs from stating inferences drawn from observations about a topic?
Universities, religions... entire cultures are built on that premise. You might as well ask, why think?
It is more efficient to attack the next person for thinking, than to painfully flex your own reasoning function.
Example of the dissonance: I am accused of complaining instead of doing the thing that I am already doing
... and then advised that I should invest my energy and talent back into the damaged property to address their problems. That is what they do when they put the charismatic black token in each movie... problem solved.
You might make better progress on your own production if you removed your creative mind out of their sandbox.
It is almost impossible to freely create out of someone else's imagination.
Problem?
Solution...
Also, know that the not-so-blind lobbying for our blind investment in those possibly racist well-funded properties... and the culture that they are continually pitching, only makes the jobs of creators like me, that much harder.
I accept that.
I am actually enjoying the challenge.
~ Grey
