'Star Wars' and Race

Cable news host and political science professor Melissa Harris-Perry spent two segments of her MSNBC show discussing Star Wars and the series’ representation of gender and race. An offhand comment she made about Darth Vader resulted in a flurry of critiques, mostly taking the shape of hysterical and misleading headlines claiming that Harris-Perry had declared all of Star Wars racist because Darth Vader was voiced by a black actor.
 
Harris-Perry’s comments on “the Darth Vader situation” can be found in the first video at 3:37.





It’s clear from the entirety of the discussion that Harris-Perry didn’t claim Star Wars to be the sci-fi equivalent of Birth of a Nation. Rather, Harris-Perry has “feelings, good, bad, and otherwise about Star Wars” and she took the time to discuss those opinions with her guests.

The fact is that Star Wars has a complicated relationship with race and gender issues. The original 1977 film features virtually no actors of color and The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi have only one such character (Lando Calrissian, played by Billy Dee Williams) even as the alien population of the series becomes much more diverse.

There was an attempt to correct this in the prequel trilogy with the addition of several more actors of color, most notably Samuel L. Jackson as Jedi Master Mace Windu. However, that progress was offset by several alien characters who, whether intentional or not, mimicked racial stereotypes in their voice, behavior, and character design. Toydarian junk dealer Watto echoed the clichés of Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs and Jews, the Neimodians of the Trade Federation spoke like Mr. Yunioshi from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Gungan goofball Jar-Jar Binks recalled the embarrassing history of minstrel shows.

But Star Wars’ take on race is not all terrible either. One of the themes that runs through the series, both the original films and the prequels, is that the heroes are people whose goals are democratic and who fight against tyranny by building coalitions among alien races. The Empire is ultimately defeated in Return of the Jedi by a Rebel fleet piloted by a variety of alien creatures and by ground forces who forge an alliance with the Ewoks. This is replicated in the climax of The Phantom Menace as the Gungans join with the human Naboo people to take on the occupation of the Trade Federation. By contrast, the titular army of Attack of the Clones is made of people who are literally homogenous (and in that respect indistinguishable from the automatons of the Separatist forces) and in Revenge of the Sith the clones become the basis for the Empire’s army of Stormtroopers. The fact that Star Wars tells stories of racial cooperation against oppression is itself significant no matter how compromised it may be.

The portrayal of women in Star Wars is not quite as knotty as its portrayal of race but it’s worth mentioning. As with characters of color, there are very few female characters across the entire series, with Princess Leia (played by Carrie Fisher) the sole female lead in the original trilogy. But Leia is a tough and complex character who is both assertive and feminine and she is rightly regarded to be among the great sci-fi heroines. More women were added in the Star Wars prequels, but mostly in background roles with few or no lines, and Padme Amidala actually regressed over the series, beginning in The Phantom Menace as an active player and ending in Revenge of the Sith as an anxious housewife.

As an aside, one of the interesting omissions from Revenge of the Sith is a pair of deleted scenes included as bonus material on the DVD release. Padme meets with a diverse group of characters to discuss politics and they plant the foundation for what will become the Rebel Alliance. These scenes were purportedly cut for pacing reasons but they would have given Padme something to do and changed the subtext of other parts of the movie.

Clearly, the filmmakers of Star Wars—which until now has primarily been George Lucas—have struggled with racial and gender representation in their movies. But there are two additional things to say about that. First, Star Wars underrepresentation of women and people of color is not exceptional at all. The critiques of this series are accurate but those same criticisms apply to virtually all Hollywood films. According to a study by UCLA, seventy-five percent of lead roles are held by men and eighty-three percent of lead roles are played by white actors. The racial and gender flaws of Star Wars are not particular to it. Rather, they are indicative of the entire Hollywood marketplace.

Secondly, representation of minorities in media is an issue that matters. If people never see themselves on screen in the most popular, most powerful, and widest reaching medium of our time it creates a sense of exclusion from society and renders those people invisible while reinforcing the impression among white male viewers that their stories are the only ones that are worth telling. But again, this is not about one story or one series. It’s about an entire entertainment system that has excluded a great deal of the population.

Hashing over the racial and gender politics of a populist sci-fi movie may seem like a waste of time that ought to be spent debating “serious” movies or other issues. But popular culture is still culture and Star Wars is a touchstone that transcends race, politics, and socio-economic class. Han Solo and Princess Leia and Darth Vader are as much a part of our American heritage as Jay Gatsby, Paul Bunyan, and Atticus Finch. But unlike those characters and their stories, the mythology of Star Wars is still open to addition and revision. As Star Wars moves into the hands of new filmmakers, I hope they will aspire to the best aspects of this series and create a universe in which all are welcome as characters and as audiences.