Yeah, the voice actor was black (via the Caribbean, if memory serves) and the acting was along those lines.
However, if fell flat in front of an american audience, because it was too close to step-n-fetchit.
I have no doubt that there was nothing about that in the intent of Jar Jar (a black actor was largely responsible for his creation, for cryin’ out loud!) but it just rang really badly for too many viewers.
worse crime of all, he sucked!
We like the goofy sterotype when they embarass us and themselves for two hours then in the end save the day. Not when they suck. I think the lesson is, if you want to have the Twins be a sterotype, they have to be really cool cars and kick a lot of butt!
I think part of the issue with Jar Jar was the character was simply the most obvious example of racial stereotyping in the movie. There were many others, but because he was the highest profile one, much of the public angst was focused in his direction. The Trade Federation dudes were clearly based around the stereotype of ruthless Japanese businessmen, concerned far too much with the bottom line and economic dominance, but ultimately too dependent on technology/robots. The winged character (whose name escapes me) who owned the junkyard was interpreted as a caricature of the Jewish stereotype with his speech patterns and “money first” attitude.
Then again, a small part of me wonders if it’s fair to fault Lucas and directors/writers who do the same thing. Sci-fi, at its core, is a vehicle for social commentary. That’s how sci-fi started, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Perhaps depictions, even those that are slightly exaggerated, of different races and cultures are simply par for the course with this in mind. There still has to be a line, though, and I personally feel like the Twins pushed a bit over it.
To be honest I thought the Trade Federation was more overtly racist than the twins. Twins were the way they were in a humorous context. Trade Federation was serious in their mannerisms and speech and such which personally I think takes it to a worse level.
Iunno if I’m alone in that but meh.
QFT
Yeah, got that too. It is interesting that it rarely gets brought up.
I never even noticed it. i put the movie in tonite see what you guys were talking about… and I can see it.
I think that Lucuas was just following his old formula. He had the aliens in other three movies speaking a forign language as a way to “trick the mind”. his theory was that you have jawa’s or millinium falcon co-pilots speak an actual language rather than giberish, then speed it up and the viewer feels that it is more real.
With these TF guys I think he modled their speech patern after asians with no dubious intent. I think he just picked a culture out of thin air. Nobody bitches that the Empire’s guys ( the bad guys of the bunch) all sound british.
This is beginning to remind me of an argument I had with a former Star Trek fan because she thought the show was racist. The funny part was I could have almost gone with her if she were arguing that many alien races are depicted as stereotypes of some recent human cultures (i.e., Klingons as ruthless Japanese, Ferengis fitting a Semitic stereotype). However, the ridiculous extent of her argument was that she felt all the different alien races were depicted as stereotypes of themselves with very little diversity within their societies, while humanity was depicted as this diverse, well-rounded culture that always managed to succeed in the end.
While I am certainly one that appreciate border crossing humor, I can get a little wary of those that accuses people who find offense as being overly PC. But, the case of my friend I can agree she took PCness a bit too far.
I would like to clarify so there’s no misunderstanding. Was I horribly offended because I’m some major PC nut? Not really, I just thought it was inappropriate for the audience they are aiming at.
As for the PG-13 rating, the thinking behind getting it really irks me. They do it so they can get a supposedly larger audience, whether that’s true or not, I’m not so sure. What I do know is that you take any 6 year old & tell them a movie about giant robots is coming out, they want to see it. The fact that it’s obviously aimed at kids makes it even more difficult to justify not letting them see it. The fact that they put that stuff in there with the express purpose of obtaining a PG-13 rating with little effect on the overall plot is what is truly offensive to me. But I don’t get worked up over it, it’s Hollywood. They can be truly clueless when they chose to be.
As for the humor, humor is subjective, I find lots of “offensive” humor funny, this I really didn’t, I felt they were tyring to hard to get the laugh which always falls flat for me. Also, I must show that Default Prophet is wrong, because that is my mission!
QFT
I guess I am not the PC peace maker! PC person should have to earn the right to be offended. I don’t believe tht anything that offends someone is automaticaly bad. Cause here is a novel idea… what if the PC person is the one that’s being a douche? What if the PC person is just blowing things up to make everything offensive. ( like getting the black eyd Peas to change the song “let’s get retarded in here” to “let’s get it started” Like seriously does anyone think that there were a few down syndrome persons who heard that song and started crying and that real harm was cause, no… it was someone else that just wanted to get their rocks off by affecting change for the sake of it. And Further more… do you think Will I am and Fergie said "lets insult the people with Down’s syndromw with our new song?) Surely not
Like when in doubt… people should choose to not be offneded! I guess I don’t believe that any asshole REALLY wants to insult people. I also don’t think that jsut because someone invents a new thing to be offended about ( that normaly pepole aren’t offened by) that the “offended” person is always right. I don’t think that the majority of American would have hated the BEP’s if they had left the somg as it was. But they were cowards to free speach. BTW… you can download the song from Zune and itunes and is one of their most popular downloads ever… so I guess it really wasn’t that offensive.
As much as many think we have a responsibility to not be purposefully offesnive, the PC crowd has a responsibility to only really get mouthy about it when something has ACTUALLY happened. I’ll give examples.
I just hate to see people that aren’t being hurtful intentinaly get raked over the coals because someone has INVENTED a situation to be offended over.
I define “overly PC” or “created offense” as finding ofense when :
A) you are not the group being cracked on. So my opinion is, why are they burning so many calories actually getting mad at the situation. ( aka if I, a “cornbread white guy” had gotten mad and walked out of tranformers because the twins were offensive to black people that would just be a WTF momment. I would look pretty stupid. There is a BIG differance between acknowledgeing a bad taste move and actualy getting upset over it. Especialy when it’s none of your bussiness. People shouldn’t try to be the culture police. If something is truely offensive … the people that it actually offends can probably handle it themselves.
b) If the benifit of the doubt is not given that the offending material is not designed to be ofensive. ( aka the Jar jar situation we were talkingabout. I totaly can see the mild offense, but like Pike said: Benifit of the doubt given that Lucas and Amed were more stupid than racist is the right move)
c) If a case has to be made ( aka it’s not blatent) for the offesnse. ( aka thinking up an overly scholastic explanation that the creators of Star Trek were harming the women of the world by saying “where no man has gone before”) Then one shouldn’t be offneded. There is obviously no plot to opress women there.
D) getting mad and trying to pretend that sterotypes aren’t funny for a reason. In other words: They wouldn’t be funny if we hadn’t all seen multiple people in real life who fit the label. ( as long as it’s not Hate filled!) That’s how humor works because it’s true. ( my southern buddy that hates seeing southern boys being portrayed as truck driving red-necks- even thou we pass a hundred trucks with “git-R-Done” blasted across their overly tinted rear window every week when we drive the 3 hours from Charlotte to Ft Bragg.)
That’s what I mean by overly PC.
other examples:
The person who’s not a gypsy, never seen a gypsy, and doesn’t really even know what a gypsy is, who gets sand in their pantys because a 10 year old kid says " I got jipped at the arcade, that Pac man machine took my quarter" Something that most people wouldn’t even know that it means gypsy( therefor it isn’t causeing socity any damge by supporting a sterotype) and PLUS there probably arent EVER any gypsy’s around when that is said. ( i had never heard of it till I was like 30, and have grown up hearing it from preachers, teachers, parents, and friends as a verb with no race insult even implied )
Spike Lee for getting mad that there were no black people in “flags of our fathers”. even thou that movie was about the guys that raised the flag at Iwo Jima and none of them were black. Ther were only one group of black marines on the iland and they weren’t a part of the story Clint was telling. It wasn’t movie about the island or the war… it was a movie about the lives of the guys that raised the flag. ( look that feud up under Clint eastwood- spike lee… it’s a crazy example of “created offense”)
A woman from my office get’s offended when the crack head on Law and Order is cast as a black actor, but doesnt get mad when Katt Williams ( she’s a big fan) says " let’s face it… all niggas have smoked a little weed". Once again… someone looking for offense while being a hipocrit.
If you can’t make a good case that the offender it TRYING to cause discomfort and pain . aka KKK speach, hatful jokes, strait demeaning jokes not based on any facts ( aka the old “jews have horns” sterotype that the Nazi’s used to put out) Then you shouldn’t get personaly upset about jokes and crap in movies. It’s not healthy for your own stress level. And it’s just lame.
People say that bigotry is learned, I agree. I also think that being offended is learned as well. Many of the Uber PC things that the overly PC person get’s offended about wouldn’t have offended them a few years ago… they made an effort to “learn” to be offended. To TRY to read too mcuh into things, really research figures of speach ( like jipped) to see that it was offesive so they can get mad at the first opprotunity that they hear someone say it. They get crazy about something that wouldn’t have evolved into offesne without their effort or trying to get ofended.
All this being said. All bad words are not equal. The N word and K word and all that stuff is just plain bad. There is NEVER any place for hate speech. Anything that activly trys to recruit for the hatred or domination of others is jsut wrong… but jokes, oppinions, and movie characters aren’t in the same discussion as these things. Even if the PC crowd would like for them to be.
Conjugate the plural of Hyundai
They are twins after all:D
Good, cos them peoples is bad;)
Well everyone else likes to try, haven’t been proven yet!
Japanese? Never thought about them like that because the original Klingons were just nasty, unhonorable conquerers. I think they were supposed to be Cossacks.
'Course everything ‘changed’ with ST:TMP
This was only a few decades after the Rape of Nanking, so…
I think Klingons were supposed to be a sort of barely-civilized-barbarian-type early on, and the Romulans were supposed to be the banality-of-evil-type. The Romulans seemed to hold to that throughout, while the Klingons were retconned all over the place.
(Odd, Safari spellcheck knows “Klingons” but not “Romulans.”)
My friend’s argument mostly pertained to ST:TNG and later Trek where each alien race seemed to be able to be characterized to a particular stereotype.
The obvious paradox being that the point of the show is that it’s humanity’s diversity in composition and action that allows us to succeed in all its dealings with other alien groups…
Personally, I think the Klingons suited being portrayed as the space equivalent of the Mongol Horde, using the bird of pray spaceship insteed* of a horse.
*Not a typo;)
Now that is racist - making Aliens alien, giving them a freakish appearance.
I don’t care to reply to a lot of individual comments here, but I want to say two things.
First, being “PC” and being thoughtful and decent regarding the feelings of those who might be different from us are two completely different things. Often, people who are the latter get trivialized by being accused of being the former so their ideas can be easily written off.
Second, one of the most powerful statements I’ve read regarding this issue is from Martin Luther King in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail”:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
I believe if you ponder this statement and understand its implications, the answers to many of these debates become clear.
Politiking Correctness should really do away the term us, as well as the term them.
Otherwise it all becomes as meaningless as using Fanboy and Hater.
I had been looking for away to express those exact sentiments in a clear and concise way for a few days now. Now I don’t have to…
Frankly, I got the vibe that Old Cybertronian was a dead language, that’s why they had to find Jetfire to read the symbols. It wasn’t about an issue of common literacy.
Also, I thought the twins were like “baby autobots” in the grand scheme of things, so they wouldn’t know.