Post-racial society my eye. If ever a modern institution would have the decency to heed the pangs of white guilt, wouldn’t it be Hollywood?
Nope. At least not in a galaxy far far away.
I haven’t seen the new Star Wars nor do I plan to, but the fifty-billion commercials and pop-up ads have made it loud and clear that the movie is lousy with racism.
The very first Star Wars movie was pretty dicey. The only sign of black people came in James Earl Jones’ voice-over of a white character — dressed in a black costume. Not that little kids would know it was a sign of black people, but the second movie gave Billy Dee Williams a heroic turn as a self-confessed criminal gone straight. And time heals all wounds, etc.
In matters of Star Wars ethnicity the only clear and simple stereotype to embrace was the caucasian Storm Trooper. The Nazi reference goes without saying — I hope — but the Dark Side’s worker-bee infantry, in their glaringly shiny white armor and masks; they became the literal embodiment of “bad guy” for my entire generation. Even the occasional scrap of Trooper dialogue was pure, white-bread middle management.
But if you’ve seen the ads, you’ve seen what lies beneath. The face of evil is unmasked for the very first time and, surprise! It’s a black dude. The promos make clear he turns into a good guy and becomes a hero for kids of all creeds to admire, but the damage is already done.
A mind-boggling number of children are about to spend the next few years assuming that the villains in their favorite movie are all black on the inside. That is, until they learn about Hitler’s do’s and don’ts. God knows what happens then.
I just hope our black Trooper isn’t the first good guy to bite the dust.
Granted, I might be more sensitive to this stuff because I hail from a rebel base called South Carolina. It was here that Indian Sikh-American Gov. Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley recently put an end to our nation’s racial disharmony. A long-time, vocal supporter of the Confederate flag, all Haley needed to change her tune was a church full of murdered black people.
But Nimrata looks like Harriet Tubman compared to the dragon-lady queen in Game of Thrones. Another iconic force in today’s pop culture, HBO’s R-rated fantasy epic has a cast of dozens who inhabit any number of different countries and cultures. The show features two recurring black characters, a man and a woman.
They’re both slaves.
Actually, they’re freed slaves but that makes it even worse. They are both so grateful to their emancipator, they opt to stick around and keep their slave jobs. The man leads the army. Admirable gig, but he can only speak in grunts (missing tongue) and he has no balls. Literally. Clipped at birth it’s not clear how the pitch of his grunt can be so low.
The woman slave is the translator of several languages for the oversexed blonde queen. Again, not too shabby, but she’s also “the maid.” Meaning, in addition to maid chores, she keeps her naked majesty warm and happy on nights when she can’t score a man.
To top it all off they’re hopelessly in love. The multilingual black lesbian sex-slave and the grunting eunuch warrior. And they are obviously headed for a bad end — together. Will the future of the black race go with them? The show’s producers are so gleefully proud of its gruesome, often distressing sex and violence, I worry they’ll save the day by having her raped.
Gun to my head, I’d rather be a Stormtrooper than a tongueless gelding, but does that make me an anti-semite?