The R-Word: Hollywood Throws It Around So Effortlessly
For George Lucas, Star Wars becoming The Film That Changed Hollywood was the equivalent of winning the lottery, only with much, much more money involved than what a state typically pays out from a ticket bought at the convenience store. While he was shooting Star Wars, he thought he was producing the equivalent of the live action family movies that Disney was producing in the years between Walt’s death and the launch of Touchstone Pictures, their more adult division. Given a budget of ten million dollars by 20th Century Fox, Lucas thought he’d be lucky if his film made $20 million back.
Once Star Wars hit movie screens in the summer of 1977 and quickly became the highest grossing film Hollywood had, up to then, seen, it officially had to be all things to all people. It was analyzed over its religious message and mysticism. The implications of its technology. And of course, Lucas began being routinely castigated for the film’s all-white casting, with the exception of James Earl Jones’ iconic voice-over work, which was added in post-production. But while he was prepping the film, Lucas had briefly considered casting legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune to play the wizened Samurai-like Obi-Wan Kenobi, and black actor Glynn Turman to play Han Solo. Regarding the latter casting choice, Lucas told one interviewer, “I didn’t want to make Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner at that point, so I sort of backed off.”
When Star Wars began to print money, complaints began to appear from time to time from blacks calling Lucas’s movie racist. It was around that time that Richard Pryor had a stand-up routine about Logan’s Run, another science fiction film released only a couple of years earlier, with an all-white cast. (Again, except for a character – a robot this time, rather than a masked man – overdubbed in post-production by another black actor, the mellifluous Roscoe Lee Browne.) Pryor quipped:
They had a movie of the future called Logan’s Run. There ain’t no n*****s in it.
I said, “Well, white folks ain’t planning for us to be here. That’s why we got to make movies.
It was easy to transfer Pryor’s riff to a much more successful science fiction film, and as I recall at the time, a few critics did just that. In 1983, Lucas’s early biographer Dale Pollock wrote Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. It hit the streets when Lucas was at the height of his powers – coming off an amazing run of hits of films he directed or produced — American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Raiders of the Lost Ark — and just before taint of the Ewoks began to slowly tarnish his image as a monster hitmaker. As a result of such complaints from critics about the lack of black roles in Star Wars, Pollock wrote of Lucas:
The most sensitive part to cast in Empire was Lando. Still smarting from criticism that Star Wars was racist, George conceived of Lando as “a suave, dashing black man in his thirties” and specified in his script that half of the Cloud City residents and troops were to be black (in the actual film, only a few blacks are visible). Lucas sought Billy Dee Williams for the role from the outset, after seeing him in Lady Sings the Blues. Williams was reluctant to play what he thought was a token black, but soon realized that Lando could be portrayed by a black or white actor. “The part requires a universal, international quality, which I have,” Williams says. “Lando is an alternative to the usual WASP hero.”
Lucas says he uses aliens and robots to make (however subtly) a point about discrimination—at one point, R2-D2 and C-3P0 are barred from entering the space cantina. “Chewbacca’s nonhuman and nonwhite,” Lucas says. “I realize it seems rather obscure and abstract, but it was intended to be a statement.” Lucas claims to be a fervent believer in equality. “I get upset over injustice and inequality,” he says. The robots and Chewbacca were there to demonstrate that no matter how odd or different people seem, they can still be true and faithful friends. This is an unusual form of humanism, to be sure, but Lucas says he was trying to make a point. “A lot of problems could diminish if we realized we’re all the same underneath our costumes,” he says.
Lucas also insists that he didn’t cast James Earl Jones as Darth Vader because he saw the character as a black villain—he simply thought Jones had the best voice for the role. “We got attacked in Star Wars because there were no Puerto Ricans in it,” Lucas complains. “I mean, come on — you can’t win.”
And of course, back in 1999 and 2000, numerous film critics called Lucas racist when the character of Jar-Jar Binks debuted in The Phantom Menace, including this author in Salon:
He seemed extraordinarily defensive. I thought I’d phrased the question carefully enough. I went through the checklist in my head. Did I call him Mr. Lucas? Check. Did I studiously avoid suggesting that I thought the film was racist? Check. Did I phrase it in such a way that he wouldn’t feel attacked? Not according to him.
“You hurt my feelings,” he told me privately after the discussion ended. And I suppose that’s a possibility. But Lucas, as he had shown, isn’t willing to extend his viewers the same courtesy.
I assume that he felt attacked. Maybe it was the setting: There were dozens of university students seated before him in rapt attention, eager to learn from him, the George Lucas. And I had burst his bubble — again. Back when “The Phantom Menace” came out last summer, several critics accused Lucas of perpetuating racist stereotypes, particularly with the Gungan character Jar Jar Binks. Joe Morgenstern, writing for the Wall Street Journal, called Binks a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen.”
Lucas stubbornly dismissed the idea that Jar Jar could be linked to stereotypes of African-American slaves or minstrel characters. “How, in any credible way, could you take an orange amphibian and say that this was a racial stereotype for African-Americans?” he asked.
When I mentioned Jar Jar’s Caribbean patois he simply cut me off. “Just because somebody has an accent doesn’t make them a stereotype of a particular kind of thing.”
And he was right. Accents in and of themselves may not be stereotypical. But it’s the overall image of Jar Jar that smacks of racism. His buffoonery, gait, appearance (one journalist thought his ears were reminiscent of dreadlocks) and word choice all combine to make him offensive. Lucas refused to even entertain the possibility his work might contain such stereotypes.
As Lucas said in the early 1980s, you can’t win.
You still can’t in 2012 — not when studios receive comments like this from Lucas himself, promoting his new film Red Tails:
For those not familiar, the Tuskegee Airmen were a group of black pilots that fought in WWII segregated from white forces.
“It was designed to [look like it was shot] during the war,” Lucas said. “It’s very patriotic, very jingoistic, very old-fashioned, corny, just exactly like Flying Leathernecks, only this one was held up for release from 1942 when it was shot, and I’ve been trying to get it released ever since.”
Lucas told Stewart he’s been working on the film for 23 years. Although paying for it himself, he went to the studios to create the prints, ads, and be responsible for distribution.
“I showed it to all of them and they said, ‘No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.’”
When Stewart asked why, Lucas first responded, “Because it’s not green enough. They only release green movies.”
The filmmaker clarified, “It’s because it’s an all black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all black action pictures ever made.”
You would think Lucas would be sensitive enough to say something like, “Look, I know Hollywood isn’t intentionally racist. I received those same sorts of complaints about my casting choices when I made Star Wars. And I know that HBO already did a small screen version of this story costarring Cuba Gooding, Jr., back in 1995. And I was fortunate to get Cuba for my movie, as well. But this is a story with universal appeal that deserves both a big screen to fully appreciate the flying sequences and the quality of special effects that my crew at Industrial Light & Magic are capable of. So yes, you may have seen this story before. But you haven’t seen it like this.”
But no, because that would relegate Lucas back to the standing he’s maintained with the industry and its critics since Star Wars: a brilliant technician, but not exactly an artiste. So Lucas is left having to play the race card against an industry that’s as exquisitely politically correct as Hollywood. But then, whenever a new film is released, so does at least one newspaper critic it seems. Not to mention dropping the F-Bomb on the few movies made over the past decade designed to appeal to Red State audiences. (And occasionally both within the same review.)
If Hollywood is wondering why it’s seeing headlines along the lines of “Box Office Shocker: Movie Attendance Falls to Lowest Level in 16 Years,” between what the industry itself is saying about its audiences, and what critics are saying about the industry, it need only look at itself. Perhaps when the circular firing squad runs out of bullets, moviegoers will return.
Or not. But if that’s the case, then the industry and those who should be its most fervent supporters have only themselves to blame.
Update: Related thoughts from Jehuda (aka the Rhetorican) at the PJ Lifestyle blog.
Also worth snarkily noting that the Hollywood movie company Lucas ended up partnering with on “Red Tails” was the same one he partnered with 35 years ago on “Star Wars”, 20th Century Fox. Except that it’s now the Rupert Murdoch-New Corp.-owned 20th Century Fox, and if you go by the average liberal website, politician or simply OWS alum, that’s one of the most evil, racist companies on the planet. Surely George could have found another more enlightened movie studio-owning corporation to handle distribution, like Viacom, GE or Sony?
As much as I love to hate Hollywood like anyone else, the difficulty in getting Red Tails made likely has to do with its (lack of) international appeal.
Movies today make most of their money outside of the US, and Uruguayans and Singaporeans likely won’t care about a movie featuring American black pilots from 70 years ago. And the studios recognize this.
Any excuse will do to give a negative response. A conversation I had with a chain store manager springs to mind. I was looking for a common product, when I didn’t find it I asked the manager his respones, “We don’t carry it.” My question, “Why?” “Doesn’t sell.” “Has you company ever carried this item?” “No.” “Why not?” If you’re guessing his answer, “Doesn’t sell.”
While I hate liberals and am particularly satisfied whenever leftist hypocrisy is exposed, I don’t think we can take Lucas’s word here at face value. The truth is, we don’t know why nobody wanted to make his movie…it could even be that the producers didn’t want to insult blacks! Phantom Menace was probably the most racist movie since Nazi propaganda films, with ridiculous steroeotyped portrayals of Space blacks (Jar Jar), space Jews (Anakin’s master) and space Asians (the Neimoidians). Perhaps Lucas had all of the characters in the proposed Red Tails movie act like Jar Jar – would the refusal to make the movie have been unjustified then? Perhaps the movie was just terrible, like episodes I-III (which were successful only because of Episodes IV-VI)?
There have been a number of movies released in the last decade with all or mostly black casts. What kind of box office have they done? I bet that is what scares the studios.
Porgy and Bess had an all black cast (with the exception of the white lawyer, a minor character, but it became a great favorite, however controversial. Perhaps these all black cast movies that you mention were just not very good. I wrote about the Porgy controversy here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/13/the-porgy-controversy/.
I don’t for second believe that the studios turned this down–if indeed they did; and on that I’m not certain–strictly because of the black cast. Tyler Perry has become a billionaire making all-black movies, and several others have been made over the years, including the period piece about the black debaters. So Lucas’s comments may not be entirely true; they may be–shocker!–self-serving.
Also to be noted is that while Hollywood is willing to make a movie, like Glory, about Civil War black troops that fight and lose a battle, they have never made a moving about a battle where black Civil War soldiers won a major battle — as for example, the Battle of Honey Springs (the Gettysburg of the West), or perhaps the Battle of Nashville (where a “demonstration” by black troops became a charge that broke the Confederate line.
Can’t show them blacks winnin’, I guess. (The biggest crackers in the USA are in Hollywood — not the Deep South.)
Well, I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call Honey Springs, a battle that produced only about 200 casualties, the “Gettysburg of The West.” There’s a strategic parallel as Honey Springs did eliminate the Indian forces as an offensive force in the same way that Gettysburg eliminated the Army of Northern Virginia as an offensive force, but the entire Trans-Mississippi was a backwater once the Yankees seized New Orleans and major portions of the Mississippi River. I did manage to cause my daughter’s 8th Grade US History teacher to have to bind her head in duct tape when she assigned my daughter to write a biographical paper on a famous American and the subject couldn’t be White. So, I helped her research and write a paper on Stand Watie.
I don’t think there’s ever been a good movie about the Civil War in The West, and by West I mean any theater other than Northern Virginia. GWTW isn’t really a “war movie,” but rather a story of civilians in a war. I’d be hard pressed to think of a good book about the war in the West. There’s a lot of history on Shiloh and Vickburg, but no compelling stories. Just like today, if something doesn’t happen within earshot of the BoWash corridor, it isn’t important, though most historians would hold that the Civil War wasn’t won in Virginia facing the dashing Bobby Lee, but rather in the dull vicious grind of turning the Confederate left flank at Atlanta which placed Sherman’s army relatively unopposed and in Lee’s rear. ‘Course, they don’t like to talk about Sherman’s refusal to use USCT or his cutting the bridge over the Ogeechee River and abandoning the contrabands that had joined his Walk to the Sea to their fate.
What they won’t talk about in movies like Glory and why there’s been so little written or filmed about the USCT, is the fact that the US grossly misused the USCT and that doesn’t fit the meme of the war to end slavery and to trample out the vineyards of wrath and all that crap. No doubt the men of the 54th MA were proud and brave, but sending them in a massed attack against entrenched Confederate troops was little short of murder and was done by their very dedicated but not very skilled white commanders to make a statement. Likewise, the last minute substitution of USCT at The Crater and sending them screaming “No Quarter” against entrenched Confederates was nothing short of murder, and that’s even if you discount the stories of the USCT having been given ample liquid courage before the attack. US commanders had learned their lesson about that at Cold Harbor when Grant lost 7000 men in 20 minutes, and if the commanders had ordered them to do it, it is unlikely that regular US troops would have obeyed the order. The greatest uses to which the USCT were put were their use as teamsters and laborers and the fact that contraband slaves “recruited” to the USCT could be counted to offset the conscription quota in the area from which the “recruiting” regiment was raised. And that certainly doesn’t fit the meme.
One good thing about pulling the R card now – if the movie bombs he can always invoke Teh RAAACISM as an excuse.
It’s a great story that Lucas neither wrote nor directed. Given those limitations, not even he could screw this one up.
The story of the Tuskegee Airmen Red Tails is one of the most inspiring stories to come out of WWII, for any American of any race.
Exactly. There are places in the world though, that a story about a minority overcoming adversity and the majority being wrong, would not sell. Freedom and equality are not universally held concepts.
If the tv advertisements are anything to go by, it is overdone.
The Tuskegee Airmen story has become more myth than truth over the years. The real story is much less far-fetched but that doesn’t serve the PC crowds agenda. In real life, they had a record not no better than any other group in the ETO. Lucas has made a piece of propaganda with little relationship to the truth. Star Wars in WWII Europe.
Yeah, they flew like jazz musicians in ways no one ever thought of before and with soul. Inspiring. Sigh.
Yes, they flew like basketball players…no, wait, I mean tap dancers. Anyway, it was their inborn athletic ability combined with natural rythm. Made ‘em better pilots. Plus they were very clean and well-spoken.
So, to review:
Not casting any blacks: racist
Casting only one black: tokenism
Casting a diversity of races: perpetuating racist stereotypes
Casting black men as heros: magic negroes
Black Entertainment Network [BET]: not racist
Then there’s the flip side of black casting: anytime there’s a small role for a judge, police chief, policeman, professor, teacher, etc — someone with authority in other words — it seems that more than half those parts go to blacks.
Once you start to notice this, it becomes comically predictable.
Hollywood is being killed by videogames, and they know it.
I think this the most insightful thing said in this discussion. It’s still in its infancy, but video games as an interactive storytelling medium will soon replace the film. Just like them talkies once replaced the silent film, so soon will the [insert clever slang here] will replace the talkies. Big name actors and actresses can increasingly be seen doing voice work for top games, and I see this trend only increasing. However, with that success comes the same uncreative whiners who want creative people to tune everything for their own aesthetics. For instance, BioWare regular gets attacked by the LGBT community for not going far enough with their same sex romances. As Lucas said, “You can’t win.”
I find these arguments very unconvincing. Accusations of a racist Hollywood would be fine if you could back it up with actual racism on the part of Hollywood. What you fail to address, and until you do this argument will remain unconvincing, is that Hollywood may simply know it’s audience. If a movie is made and results in $Y revenue if it casts all white actors, but only makes $Z if it casts some or all black actors. If Y greater than Z, then why the hell would Hollywood cast black actors?
If you assume that Hollywood movie makers mostly simply want to maximize profits, then having them understand their audience doesn’t want to see black actors is simply good business practice, not evidence of racism on the part of movie makers. If Y is greater than Z, this could be for many reasons: the audience could be racist, black actors are generally not that good, the audience recognizes the pandering of the token black and are insulted, etc.
The only way you can convincingly make the argument that movie makers are in fact racist is to show that Z is greater than or equal to Y and still blacks are not cast often.
Even then, this might not be the case. There could be other reasons which you don’t know/understand, but results in racial disparities. The existence of racial disparities does not by itself indicate racism. The implication by you that it does merely shows that you think as shallowly on race as the left and have degenerated into reflexive finger pointing and stale accusations of racism.
As a pink guy I wonder why this Black/White war is still going on. The black couple that came to my lilly white church in 1964 to attend my wedding did not worry about being a token. Jackie Robinson didn’t worry about it in 1947. Then there was Willie O’Ree in the NHL in 58. The guy I met on a bus in Italy, spoke English and was from Kenya when we went to a bar and talked with the British owner. Now every movie and every TV commercial has to have mixed race people. It’s just not realistic. There are more important things than color but some people can’t see it. Observe Obama’s 95% black vote.
Part of Hollywood’s problem may well be the effect that Obama’s economic policies are having on ordinary Middle Americans. With people out of work, people working only part-time, people worried that they might lose their jobs at any time, you have to prioritize your expenses. Not going to the movies is one obvious commonsense money-saving strategy. Hollywood may well have shot itself in the face by enthusiastically supporting Obama. It serves them right.
So that was why he chose the Clone actor. It was all about the demographics.
“You would think Lucas would be sensitive enough to…(fill in the blank)”
We are talking about Hollywood here.
I don’t think Hollywood is malicious aforethought, it is simply poorly educated and incredibly self absorbed. It not conscious of anything beyond the image it adores in the mirror. That’s pretty much the case for individuals, as well.
I’m a conservative white guy who loves movies and rarely if ever goes to see them anymore. I made exceptions for Atlas Shrugged and Battlefield Los Angeles. I’ve been wanting to see this movie since I saw the trailer what seems like a year ago.
If Hollywood decides to make pro-America movies that don’t insult right leaning people like me they might win me back as a customer. It would also help if their major talent didn’t go out of their way to piss off half the country every time they open their mouths.
The most racist movie I’ve ever seen in a theater was called “Wind Across the Everglades” and that was about 1958. It starred Burl Ives and was about the fashion of 1890 that used lots of feathers from rare birds. It was sort of amusing that I saw it in a theater in Los Angeles near USC and the audience, except for me and my friends, was all black.
The most racist film I can recall is Higher Learning. The anti-white, pro-black racism of that movie is as clear an example of racism in the movies as I can think of.
I enjoy movies whose actors are great looking and talented, Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn to name just a few; costumes are costumes not cut out jeans and dirty t-shirts; comedies are funny, The More the Merrier; tear jerkers jerk tears, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; thrillers thrill, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, D.O.A.; heroes are heroic, High Noon; musicals have beautiful music, My Fairlady, The Sound of Music, Westside Story, Wizard of Oz…
Let’s face it, no one goes to movies because the movies are no good, the storylines are stale, “talents” are untalented. There are many more things that a person can waste time on than to sit thru a poorly acted rehash.
Those who enjoy good stories and beautiful actings by beautiful actors can always borrow DVDs from their local libraries, rent them from local video stores, stream them from Netflix, or download them from Youtubes before the politician scums outlawed the uploads, or buy them from Amazon. The movies I enjoy most were made before I was born.
I am just happy that the film has been made and is going to be released. I have always loved the story of the Tuskegee Airmen. They were true heroes of WWII. It is sad that they movie was not made 25 or more years ago when most of these men were still with us.
But it was — for HBO.
And a good movie it was, but this story really deserves the big screen treatment. It’s just got too much going for it to be limited to television. You have internal struggles with racist stupidity. You have external struggles with the mighty Luftwaffe. Add good writing, acting, and special effects (the one area Lucas can do without fail), and you have a great movie going time in the offering.
No, I don’t think it was racism that stopped this movie from being made, at least not directly. I think it has more to do with the patriotic nature of the story (it’s impossible to see the Tuskegee Airmen as anything BUT a story of true American heroism) that prevented studios from taking Lucas up on this. As someone else pointed out, for at least a decade of the time Lucas has been shopping this thing around, Hollywood was telling us how evil America was (in the Bush years anyway). That “America as evil” meme that probably sold well overseas just isn’t as prevalent in this one. Sure there are bad Americans in it (and in real life at the time), but it’s clear that the Airmen are heroes and that heroism is celebrated.
I think you are missing Ed’s point, this movie has been made before, the only differece being the budget. Lucas thinks if he adds enough special effects to a movie it makes it better and different. He only hsows how to do the tecnicaal aspects of film making, not actually story telling or directing.
The Tuskeegee Airmen were giants, heroes, as were almost all the men who wore the uniform in combat. Heroism doesn’t know color.
That said, I saw the preview in the theater of “Red Tails” last weekend, and, who’d a thunk, every white guy in the movie is a bad guy. All the Germans are bad guys because, of course, they’re Nazis. And all the white Americans are bad guys because, of course, they’re racists.
And still Lucas had a hard time selling the plot!
Of course he had a hard time selling it. The element missing from the plot is the weepy, hyper-moralistic white guy who, the scales of evil racism having fallen from his eyes, becomes the hero, showing to the beleaugered, hapless black pilots that whites can “understand” and change.
There is a great deal of fractured thinking hereabouts.
Movies are not mass entertainment any more-TV assumed that role for about 2 (50-75 or so) decades, then when you get to cable fractionation of the audience begins in earnest. Since “JAWS” & Star Wars 4 –Hollywood has mistakenly concluded they have to hit a home run 2 out of three time, three out of three is best. So its money deals and star appeal which drives the Tinseltown business model. The fact that even (so it appears) at the 11th hour FOX picked up the distribution precludes “Racism” from being even a slight possibility. The folks that run the studios (My RANT!) areMBA’s or money men, they may not sit in the biggest chair but they have
almost iron control on what gets “Greenlighted”. They have a hugh blind spot a gaping hole in their organization and they dam well have no intention of fixing it-
There is a great deal of fractured thinking hereabouts.
Movies are not mass entertainment any more-TV assumed that role for about 2 (50-75 or so) decades, then when you get to cable fractionation of the audience begins in earnest. Since “JAWS” & Star Wars 4 –Hollywood has mistakenly concluded they have to hit a home run 2 out of three time, three out of three is best.
So its money deals and star appeal which drives the “Tinseltown” business model. (that has never changed) The fact that even (so it appears) at the 11th hour FOX picked up the distribution precludes “Racism” from being even a slight possibility.
The folks that run the studios (My RANT!) are MBA’s or money men, they may not sit in the biggest chair but they have almost iron control on what gets “Green lighted”. They have a hugh blind spot a gaping hole in their collective organizational charts and they dam well have no intention of fixing it-
The folks running the studios today are not!! repeat not!! “STORY TELLERS”. they have no inclination toward or about storytelling. Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron, Scot, Lee, Eastwood (to name just a few) –all have exceptional track records and are proven story tellers producers etc. Even they with their stirling records and they are all stirling from my point of view-have to bend to these MBA Nitwits! at certain times.
Maybe Jack warner was a bastard, maybe Harry Cohn was a prick, Maybe Sam Goldwyn was abusive – but they and their compatriots were story tellers of the first magnitude and they knew stories and they new writers like Joe Mamkiewicz or Sidney Buchman and there are dozens more. No the reason Lucas had some problems this time out is these Arrogant MBA asses couldn’t find a good story with both hands, a seeing eye dog or radar. You have only to look at the trash Lionsgate regularly releases to se their world! and its ugly.
Check “6″
The whole concept of “racism” is cherry picked to the core. Producers are constantly trumpeting about adding Hispanic or Black actors to a cast to bring in viewers from those demographics. The obvious implication is that those ethnic groups prefer to watch shows starring people in their own group.
However, only when it’s whites preferring to watch whites is it called racism. Most men don’t like all female cast movies either, and vice versa. It’s not that we don’t like seeing women (we do). It’s just we know we probably won’t like the subject matter or storyline.
Perhaps the reason I don’t want to watch this movie isn’t because of the all Black cast, but the likelihood that I’m going to be smacked repeatedly with the whole racial injustice thing for 2-1/2 hours. Of course, that also makes me racist because I don’t want to listen constantly to the entire racial grievance canon.
Sorry but even though this may be the greatest story ever told and I do love WWII movies I cant pay to see this film. I will never give Lucas anymore of my money. He has to be stopped and the only way to shut him up and make him fade into obscurity is to stop bying his products. He is a hack and a liar so he does not deserve my money ever.
The filmmaker clarified, “It’s because it’s an all black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all black action pictures ever made.”
Lucas could have pointed out that if those concerns were valid, he could always chnage it for the re-release. Or the remastered version. Or the blue-ray edition. Or…
With Lucas, the movie is never really done…
I saw all the series of Star Wars and I never ever thought that something in it would be remotely racist by any chance!
Sure, nobody around me noticed anything racist either, indeed, I always thought that Lucas was making a point about diversity with all those kinds of monsters there.
I notices however two things: there are some underlying philosophy changes between the first 3 movies and the 3 later “prequels”. In the first 3, being a Jedi meant studying and applying a set of Principles (however fantastic) so it was more like a matter of choice and the power of the will. Instead, in the latest 3 movies, being a Jedi was all about determinism (genetic, in the form of midichlorias) and THAT is way more raaaaciiist.
Also, me and everybody around me, noticed how Lucas turn the movies into a political tool against Bush (“you are with us or against us”), however it’s also interesting he illustrated the falling of a Republic (rule of law, or of principles) by becoming a Democracy (rule of the people).
When I later wrote a review for a long forgotten blog, I showed how Lucas, even when using many types of monsters in a fantastic Universe with strange rules and principles, was still aesthetically able to convey the Good and Evil, and so the good characters were joyous, perfect, healthy while the bad were ugly (asymmetrical), badly ill, mutilated or with bad humor. Which is, to his merit, a sound esthetical view that can be traced to the Classical Greece when a beautiful Aphrodite was molested by an ugly Phaunos.
A Hollywood Studio declines an oppurtunity to help advertise and distribute a movie about American airmen in World War II. George Lucas concludes that the studio executives must be racist because the airmen are black.
To test his hypothesis, he should propose making a movie about World War II that does not involve black military personnel. Maybe a move about the Battle of Samar? If the atudio greenlights, then he has proven his point. If the studio sends it back for more work, then perhaps the studio has decided that the market for any movie about World War II is too small to be profitable.
Hollywood is in the business of making money, unless it is an anti-wat movie depicting George W. Bush as evil and it is to be released in time for Oscar consideration. The beauty of “Red Tails” is that it can depict certain airmen in a very positive light and every other airman as racists. It can show all of the positives about some Americans and the evils of American society.
Hollywood needs lots of cash from popcorn blockbusters to have the money to throw at unprophitable oscar vehicles. There is only so much money that can be dumped into criticly acclaimed pictures, so they must prioritize.
“Phantom Menace was probably the most racist movie since Nazi propaganda films, with ridiculous steroeotyped portrayals of Space blacks (Jar Jar), space Jews (Anakin’s master) and space Asians (the Neimoidians)”
Yes. I saw the same thing. But the stereotypes were so blatant, they were comical. I’m still not sure if Phantom Menace was a racist movie or a parody of one. It certainly
Maybe Lucas was trying make racism look ridiculous by example. Or maybe he was just flipping off the vapid Hollywood Elites.
Sure, nobody around me noticed anything racist either, indeed, I always thought that Lucas was making a point about diversity with all those kinds of monsters there.
It was blatant to most poeple. Jar Jar was a 1999 “Stepin Fetchit”. While Wato the Slave-trader “has a large nose, beady eyes, and speaks in a gravelly, Jewish-sounding accent and is portrayed as greedy and covetous, another common stereotype of Jews. J. Hoberman of The Village Voice called him a blatant ethnic stereotype due to his hooked nose” [wiki]. And it strains credulity that a director/producer/screenwriter was not aware that he was recycling the character Shylock the Moneylender from the “Merchant of Venice”.
Also, me and everybody around me, noticed how Lucas turn the movies into a political tool against Bush (“you are with us or against us”),
True. The punchline was “only a Sith deals in absolutes”. That was a total distortion of what Bush had said. Bush was talking about nation states, not people. He was making the point that nation states should not passively allow terrorists to operate freely inside their borders. Much the same way that a good neighbor shouldn’t let criminals use his house as a base to steal from yours.
So maybe Lucas *is* an ignorant bigot. He certianly lacks critical thinking skills and good judgement.
Lucas knows he’s made a film where morality is doled out by skin color and he’s feeling his own stupidity and projecting it onto others. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs had moral and immoral blacks and immoral and moral whites. Lacking the nuance and balance of a writer of pot-boilers from 80 to 100 years ago during Jim Crow doesn’t exactly recommend the film as not being a racial tract rather than a dispassionate telling of the story of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Ironically, this puts Lucas as occupying the same intellectual space as he is complaining others are since rather than using dumb stereotypes of blacks, he’s using dumb stereotypes of whites.
Think back on Hollywood films from 1930 to 1955 during Jim Crow and tell me how many you’d have to put together to find as many evil black guys as there are evil white guys in the Lucas film. Between this and “Dances With Wolves” you’d have to add up a lot of black and white films to match the racism of the “non-racist” modern films.
“The filmmaker clarified, “It’s because it’s an all black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all black action pictures ever made.””
Is it really one of the first all black action pictures ever made.
Is it really one of the first all black action pictures ever made.
Of course not. I spend my pubescence sneaking into such R-rated blaxploitation gems as “Gordon’s War”, “Cleopatra Jones”, “Slaughter”, “Foxy Brown”, and “Blacula”, just to name a few.
the good news for George Lucas is that, like blacks…liberals cannot be racists….Lucas is smart…he knows this…Hollywood protects its own…(even from blacks)..So he can say generically, “Hollywood” has failed live up to its responsiblities…but because he is a liberal….He won’t name names.
Liberals will quickly “name names” if the object of their ire is a conservative or a Republican. But safe cover is provided when a liberal insincerely criticizes “Hollywood” for its shortcomings…Hollywood, and its nauseating liberals will never bite the hand that feeds it..the pimp needs the whore and the whore needs the pimp.
All one has to do is watch any of the screen actor awards shows (I would rather watch Telemundo, though I don’t speak Spanish)..and quickly surmise an astonishing absence of blacks….there is absolutely nothing new about that.
Make no mistake about it though…Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney etc..etc…live quite comfortably…with dollars paid to them by blacks. But, they provide the complimentary lip service about racism and discrimination from time to time (in front of the camera, of course)…Just like George Lucas does.
You have to hand it to actors…they do learn their lines…don’t they?
IF, and that’s a big IF, I go see it, I’ll go solely for the special effects. We’ve been beat over the head with the Tuskeegee Airmen, the 761st (?) Tank Battalion, the 442nd RCT, the “code whisperers” and all the other boutique ethnic units of WWII that were just ever so superior to their White counterparts when just given the chance. And somehow they almost always neglect to mention the direct sponsorship of these units at the highest level of goverment and the training lavished on them. You can get an argument that the reason they were so highly trained was that the racist Army was reluctant to commit them, that’s certainly the meme, but you can also get an argument that Mrs. Roosevelt’s personal interest was enough for the Army bureaucrats to go out of their way to make sure they wouldn’t fail. There’s no doubt that the Tuskeegee Airmen performed well in combat. There is also no doubt that they weren’t escorting the 8th AF against occupied Western Europe and Western Germany and facing the bulk of the Luftwaffe “Defense of the Reich” forces but rather were in Italy mostly escorting raids on Southern and Eastern Europe or approaching the German heartland from the south against less than first line units. People consistently denigrate the performance of German Aces whose service wasn’t in the “Defense of the Reich” units facing the 8th AF, so sauce for the goose and all that.
And, Hell, I think a goodly portion of the electorate thought they were voting for Morgan Freeman when they voted for Comrade Obama. Blacks are 12% of the population, Hispanics a little more, together they’re only a quarter of the population, yet EVERY scene in movies or on television has to be a “rainbow,” and all of us evil, racist, avaricious, cowardly Whites must always be rescued or redeemed by Morgan Freeman, Wesley Snipes, or one of the other designated heroes. I’ve done my time working around AA hires and tokens.
Art – Enjoyed your comments and observations with the exception of your comment about “boutique ethnic units”. Not only do you do them a dis-service in that snarky comment but, they had little other choice but to serve in the structure provided them by the US armed forces of the time.
Also, if you will allow, the technical advantages provided by the the escort fighters P51D and Tbolt overcame the poorer ME109 and FW190 airframes. Not to say the later model Gustave-12′s and Ta-152 were not worthy platforms, they were just too little and too late. Considering that the core Luftwaffe combat vets had been attrited by ’44, its hard to see any other result for Defense of the Reich. The system that forced German fighter veterans to remain in combat rather than being rotated out and added to the training cadre was the final nail their coffin. Frankly, man for man, ship for ship, I’ll take Tommy Older or Gabby Gabreski in their ‘stang over… you pick ‘em in a ME-109G12/14, ME-262… Hartaman? Galland? meh…
I believe he was referring to our later Critical Pedagogic portrayal of those boutique units and not the units themselves. Remember? Social position trumps and magnifies actual contributions. White P-51 pilots, well, they had golden faucets in their barracks and women on command and weren’t “real” pilots – not like the “real” pilots of the Tuskegee Airmen. If Karl Marx wrote films he’d write this one.
Art,
You must be talking about how the Tuskeegee Airmen and the Red Ball Express helped the Russians and the French Underground liberate the Jews and American-Japanese from internment camps using Navaho Windtalkers on D-Day? I believe that’s how WWII is described in high school history books these days.
I guess you expressed my thoughts better than I could. I don’t like heroism if it’s shoved down my throat and has a certain skin color. I think the reason so many Americans didn’t want the MLK holiday had to do with being contrary than anything about King. Having said that, I ain’t building any statues to men who banged women 2 at a time while the wife and kids sat at home.
This is politically correct success as opposed to conspicuous and obvious success. I’m tired of being asked to apologize for success and magnifying the trivial success of others, especially by gender and skin. This idea that Muslims need to be included in NASA because they WOULD be there as if it’s someone’s fault is stupid.
Women act as if they’ve been held back forever but name one all female army in the last 5,000 years. You can’t keep a good man, or woman, down and water finds it’s own course and level and success is where you find it not where the NAACP and liberals want it to be. Carry your own water and use your own bucket too before you start telling me how jazzy and soulful the way you walked to a well I dug and with a bucket I made was.
Coming soon to PC America: the Ministry of Cinematic Diversity. Every movie will be given an “oppressed minority quotient” (OMQ) in addition to a usual rating in order to reflect its adherence to diversity in casting. The movie’s OMQ will reflect inclusion of the following victim groups which are to be shown in positive light:
Blacks
Muslims
Asians
Homosexuals/transgendered
Hispanics
American Indians
These groups are only to be depicted as wise, kindly and oppressed by evil white men.
If any member of these groups are shown doing bad deeds, it is to be in cahoots with evil white people, or on the payroll of said evil whites.
I believe you just pretty much described “Rent” and “Glee,” or as I like to call them, mindless diversity software with less of a connection to reality than video games where you kill terrorists in bombed out cities.
http://pointsandfigures.com/2012/01/13/the-red-tails-need-your-help/ Read more about Red Tails here. Nationwide project to honor them in the National World War Two Museum.
Anyone who has followed Lucas’ career since Star Wars knows he has been wanting to do this Tuskegee Airmen movie for the longest time, and I’m glad he finally got it done. Sadly, it’s not going to be seen by a lot of people. Why? As someone pointed out above, it has a lot to do with the international audience. It may be the studios don’t think a domestic audience will sit through a “history lesson.”
If the cry of racism came out of the mouth of an african american, it would be front page news. But Lucas is white, and he’s still vilified in the press and on the internet by scores of disgrutled fanboys who still whine about Phantom Menace and would rather shout him down than listen to his valid point.
Plus he’s hated by the industry because he made billions after turning his back on Hollywood and the guilds 30 years ago, so they couldn’t care less about what he says.
Yeah, I liked the prequels. I know that’s not a popular opinion to have (especially on the internet) so fire away. I’ve heard it all be fire.
It’s the foreign sales that kill the all-black movie concept.
There are enough braindead liberals in the USA that would go out of their way to watch and “appreciate” such movies but folks in China, and East Asia where the big DVD bucks are made aren’t interested. Full stop.
And young people; they might not have much interest in the film unless Li’l Wayne, Ice Cube and master spy Queen Latifah are dropping Fifth Ward B’s on those Nazis while funkifying the stodgy whites with an incisively instinctive and brilliant way to introduce some soul into those wing surface controls with Whoopi Goldberg knowingly nodding her head at the endemic stupidity of people with white skin.
Hollywood and Other Liberal Hypocrites
Scratch a liberal often enough and you’ll always uncover a bigot–and a hypocrite.
No less a figure than George Lucas of Star Wars fame has discovered that fact of life and called out Hollywood liberals–if that’s not redundant–for its racism.
Accused of racism himself after the release of Star Wars due to the lack of inclusion of blacks, Lucas should have been prepared for the racial politics that exists in the Movie Capital of the World.
The famous film producer didn’t, couldn’t, express his feelings in those terms since he still has to work in Tinsel Town but he left no doubt what he meant during an appearance on ultra-liberal Jon Stewart’s ”Daily Show.”
The subject of Lucas’ charge concerned his film about the segregated Tuskegee Airmen in WWII, Red Tails, and Hollywood’s monumental disinterest in distributing the movie or having anything to do with it because, as he told Stewart, “It’s an all black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all. It’s one of the first all black action pictures ever made.”
He also described Red Tails as “very patriotic, very jingoistic, very old-fashioned, corny,” which may have been another factor in Hollywood’s refusal to assist Lucas even though he financed the filming on his own.
Bigotry is acceptable in Tinsel Town but they cringe at patriotism there saying, “No. We don’t know how to market a movie like this. . . And they don’t believe there’s any foreign market for it. That’s 60 percent of their profit.”
See a brief clip from the film and Stewart’s sit-down with George Lucas here http://bit.ly/zAJ3HG.
In other words, the big wigs wouldn’t distribute Red Tails because it was all about blacks, was patriotic AND, as is typical with “black movies,”didn’t have enough profit potential to stuff their wallets.
Maybe if Lucas’ next effort involves African-Americans bad-mouthing their country, he’d get more support from Hollywood hypocrites.
Hypocrisy–and deception–are rampant in Liberal Land and the current effort to resurrect and refurbish President Barack Hussein Obama’s mentor and pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, is probably the most blatant in Washington.
In the event no one has noticed, 2012 is an election year and the president is in the process of “pulling a Clinton,” that is, ostensibly moving to the middle of the socio-political spectrum, transforming into a “moderate,” in hopes of concealing the extremist changes and dashed hopes of the past three years.
With the economy still a mess, there’s little hope in the White House of restoring any real economic hope before November 6th so rehabilitating Obama’s radical background is one way he can forestall anticipated Republican campaign attacks on his extremist past and his far-out leftist associations.
Obama’s old buddies, the un-reconstructed revolutionary Bill Ayers is as out there as he ever was preaching revolt to the Occupy Wall Street anarchists and Rev. Michael Pfleger has never given up his message of self-hating race hatred.
However, Rev. Wright has been relatively less-incendiary–relatively–since candidate Obama disowned him under pressure in the heat of the last campaign.
Therefore, close presidential adviser and confidante, David Axelrod, figured this was a good a time as any to re-hab the good reverend so that the Republican nominee can’t beat his boss over the head with Wright. Since the mainstream media ably assisted last time around in hiding the intimate Obama-Wright connection, the MSM should be onboard again.
Notwithstanding Wright’s history of denouncing white people as congenital liars, his mindless, vicious allegations that America brought on September 11th, 2001, that we caused the AIDS virus, that America is under the control of the KKK and supports terrorism, plus a slew of other craziness, Axelrod is defending the certifiable racist nut.
Axelrod contends that all the criticism boils down to “ninety seconds of vitriol plucked from thirty years of sermons by some enterprising opposition researcher.”
Either David is smoking what his hero smoked for years, and it’s not cigarettes, or he has evolved into a bigger nutcase than Rev. Wright. . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12135.)
If there is any doubt of the aura of political correctness and smug notions of the endemic racism of whites and the just as endemic innocence of black folks when it comes to bigotry, watch the Piers Morgan interview on CNN with 2 of the “Red Tails” actors, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Terrence Howard.
Morgan refers to the issue of race as now one that can be “properly debated” but let’s face it, that is with the tacit understanding that it can be debated in only one direction. To speak of a white value system that enabled Jim Crow and white guilt decades on by skin color as the sole association is perfectly fine but to talk about black cultural value systems, crime and welfare using the exact same standards fits one for a KKK hood. Piers Morgan is a complete idiot.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1201/13/pmt.01.html
Phantom Menace wasn’t proof that Lucas is a racist – even a crypto-racist. It proves he’s got a tin ear for dialog and character. He has an idea: “Oooh, I like it when primitive people win great victories over technology, just like the Viet Cong!” Then he proceeds to implement this idea in the most ham-handed, ridiculous, condescending way imaginable – in this case, by creating Ewoks.
I think he probably did the same thing with his other controversial characters. He had some sort of Deep Thoughts about…some group or situation or other. He wanted to make a statement, teach us a lesson, God knows what. But he’s just not the man to bring big concepts to the screen. He is, first and foremost, a technologist. A nerd. He’s a visual storyteller. He belongs in the SFX shop or the editing room. He’s not a writer. He does not have a deep enough understanding of his characters, his audience, or humanity in general. And he’s not a racist – he’s just clumsy with people.