The Phantom Menace was Racist and Here is Why That Matters

With a title as grandiose as that, it is easy to predict reactions from those who do not want their beloved franchise besmirched. As someone who has loved the franchise since I was a toddler, it was difficult to come to terms with some of the more problematic issues that take place within the ‘first’ Star Wars movie. Opening one’s mind to see the bias or prejudice attitudes taken by a series is a hard task, mainly because one would not want to ruin a nostalgic childhood memory, which, with the veil of egalitarianism still on, is simply an absent minded space adventure containing mindless action and crude jokes. However, when pulling off that veil, and being bale to analyze the film with newfound knowledge of racism and bias, it is clear there are several key figures which are obvious caricatures of different races, and even though the movie is decades old, perpetuating those characters, especially to children, will only serve to hinder societies journey in becoming more accepting and culturally accepting.

Without going on a mind-numbing rant discussing the multiple grandiose failures of this film, whether it is the writing, the directing, the pacing, the tone, or the acting, let me simply summarize the key characters and the stereotypes they enforce. Throughout the film, there are two main alien species who are presented are perceived by many to be offensive representations of certain races through their mannerisms and actions. Jar-Jar Binks, the most hated character in all of Star Wars, is a member of an alien race called the Gungans. People cannot decide if Jar-Jar, and the Gungan race, represent either a racist depiction of those native to the Caribbean islands, with their accents and speech patterns being a caricature of how many believe people native to the islands speak, or if Jar-Jar is a character who represents a sort of one-man minstrelsy, depicting black people as ‘stupid’ or ‘rash’ through many of his actions during the film, due to the connection being made between his species and people from the Caribbean islands. The second species to be discussed actually required less analysis in order to be connected to a racist stereotype. This alien species is referred to as the Neimoidians, with their species being one of the main antagonists of The Phantom Menace. The Neimodians have been metaphorically ripped to shreds for being obvious representations of Eastern Asian stereotypes. This is not only due to the clothing they wear, being long tunics, similar to those seen in historical depictions of Chinese royalty, but also due to the quick, stunted way in which the aliens communicate in English. This quick, stunted way of speaking is often used to further racist stereotypes of how people from Eastern Asia present themselves when attempting to speak in English or interact in American culture.

These caricatures and racist depictions matter in a much larger scale than simply understanding that those responsible for the creation of this film were either too ignorant or too oblivious to see the obvious problematic nature of these characters. Seeing these characters presented in one of the most famous movie franchises in history matters because many people love Star Wars and will love Star Wars for most of their lives. And many of the people who love Star Wars the most are children. George Lucas and the creators of this film had the opportunity to create new species of intelligent life forms in whatever ways they wanted. However, instead of using their imagination to envision new forms of life and creatures who’s biology and societal norms are fascinating and intriguing, the creators simply opted to take racist stereotypes, remove the color of their skin from the equation, and place these stereotypes within alien bodies, keeping their offensive mannerisms the same. Children growing up watching these films will internalize these alien’s behaviors as acceptable, given they ae included within the behemoth of a franchise such as Star Wars, perpetuating racial humor and stereotypes to a young generation, possibly changing the way they interact with people while they are developing into young adults. However, depicting them as aliens, separate from the human species, is possibly even worse, given that distinction between ‘human’ and ‘those who talk in a certain way’ could lead to racial biases being developed if children are not educated on stereotypes and stereotypical depictions of certain racial groups. Children need to learn that stereotypes are not acceptable, and portraying people in such a way is not entertaining or funny, but incredibly hurtful to large groups of people, rather than being tossed into juggernauts of movie franchises for cheap laughs from ignorant people.

In conclusion, just don’t watch The Phantom Menace. It is a cinematic failure at best and a movie that perpetuates stereotypes and racist behavior at worst. Rather, watch the original Star Wars movies, which are far more entertaining, and movies that avoid all manners of racist stereotypes or racial demonization, even though they were released as early as 1977.

18 thoughts on “The Phantom Menace was Racist and Here is Why That Matters”

  1. Possibly the most incredibly f***ing stupid thing I’ve ever read. Just… Wow.

  2. I think it is a movie and people need to stop being so butt hurt over stupid shit like this the movie was made for people to enjoy and lose themselves in to awaken the imagination and not take everything so serious man people have to analyze everything and ruin it for others and for what to make themselves feel superior we’ll get over yourselves and move on

    • Your response sorta leaves one open to assume your race. Lets just say I have my assumptions.
      WELL… lets look at it this way Joe. When you are a certain “Race” who doesn’t have to demand anything
      BECAUSE of your race?? Then its easy for you to sit off to the side and dictate how others should FEEL about a situation THAT YOU DONT HAVE TO DEAL WITH day to day.

      (PERSPECTIVE)
      Youre watching a “guy flick” that has 10 blonde women in the movie. In the audience there are 20 blonde females. Every single time a blonde in the movie shows up? She acts stupid… ditzy… and clueless.

      You being a brunette male aren’t effected by the stereotype you see BECAUSE BEING A BLONDE WOMAN……
      DOESNT… CONCERN …. YOU!!!

      But to the 20 blonde women in the audience?? Its disturbing. Because too many times they have been treated like stupid blondes by ….. well…. people like YOU. So they CANT “Lose themselves” or enjoy the film. Its nothing to “Analyze” cause the “STUPID BLONDE” thing is smacking them in the face the whole freakin Movie!!

      Blacks have a hard time enjoying the Phantom Menace cause JAR JAR BINKS is acting like a damn SLAVE the whole movie. But what YOU want them to do, is sit back, be silent, and take it so YOU can enjoy your racist movie.

      NO BUDDY!!!! It doesnt work like that. Nobody cares about YOU enjoying the movie when THEY are being culturally degraded throughout the film.

      YOU THINK THE COMPLAINING IS ABOUT PEOPLE TRYING TO FEEL SUPERIOR??? GET REAL!!!!
      ITS ABOUT PEOPLE NOT BEING MADE TO LOOK …………………INFERIOR.

      Maybe if and when a new degrading stereotype enters the world that has people treating people named JOE like CRAP, you wont be so dismissive about that same stereotype popping up in movies.

  3. I think that you guys forgot that Star Wars is not real isn’t that just crazy. What’s even more insane is that this movie isn’t depicting actual human races. Now this one will blow your mind ready, you are literally mental if you think that Asians, Caribbeans or black people thought that Star Wars was super offensive to their cultures because they watched aliens doing or saying certain things in a certain way that is supposed to reference a stereotype of their race. Unless they are people like you and Think that everything has to be perfect. I mean come on you have already destroyed video games and now you wanna destroy Star Wars. If you made Star Wars it would be the definition of garbage. If you really want to stop racism then shut up and stop talking about it. And don’t forget that you are your own person if you really believe that this film is racist. Then get up do something about it . But no instead you are going to sit in front of a computer and write an article about it, whining like a baby on the internet to whoever cares to listen. And don’t try to pass me off as some Butthurt Star Wars fan. I’m speaking for the people who are tired of your whining.

    • You seem to be sitting behind a computer and also whining, fellow human. You strike me as a Mickey Rooney fan. What makes you think you know better than anyone else? Your anonymous computer screen? Nice. Whine some more Eren 😉 the world is done with non-equitable people.

  4. It is possible that the entire Star Wars franchise perpetuates certain cultural stereotypes because it is a story created through the eyes of a white American creator, George Lucas. Whether these stereotypes are intended to be racist or are casually racist can be debated. This started in A New Hope with the depiction of the Empire as a loose interpretation of the British Empire (note those with Received Pronunciation tend to be in charge). In ANH, freedom was offered through a simple farm boy (with an American accent) turned liberator in the form of Luke Skywalker who grew up in on Tattooine surrounded by the unidimensional Bedouin-inspired Tuscan Raiders (brutal “savages”) and Zulu language-inspired Jawas. These characterizations continued through to the arguably Caribbean Gungans, presumably East Asian Neimodians, and ANZ-accented clone soldiers in the prequels. Again, this may not have been a set of intentionally racist depictions, as I think it can be best understood by thinking of the people who created the Star Wars experience and their own cultural context. That said, fans and critics should still challenge the way these things are presented, especially if the depictions are getting in the way of the story.

  5. 100% agree with this article! He forgot to mention Watto. Also the Neimodians had worse accents when the film first came out!

  6. To be honest I thought that the Queen of Naboo looked more like east asian royalty than the guys leading the trade federation. It should be mentioned that one of the Neimoidians on the bridge in the first few scenes is portrayed by an Indian woman and the rest of them were Thai men. Aside from that My main concern in Jar Jar. I Live in London, I am friends with so many people from Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean, to this day I still can’t hear or see a connection between Patois or Caribbean culture with Jar Jar. I’m a fluent Swedish speaker and growing up I was convinced that they based Jar Jar from a Stockholm accent particularly with his use of vowels. None of the other Gungans have the same accent, Boss Nass had a slavic accent from an English actor and the other Gungan with Dialogue was played a welsh guy. To me Jar Jar speaks in English but with Japanese intonation and a Stockholm accent with a voice that sounds like Stitch from Lilo and Stitch. Episode 1 had more black cast and crew than all the original films combined. But seriously you got to get things like accents from the real world; similar to creatures in star wars are based from bits of real animals. If Jar Jar is racist because he ‘sounds Jamaican’ and therefore you can connect goofy behaviour with racism against black people; then I would just say hey, not all Jamaican people are black, a large enough number of Jamaicans are white and their accent and dialect is the same. If we continue this witch hunt we may have to conclude that all of Star Wars is racist because they didn’t film real aliens and all of the characters were based off of actual people who belonged to a human race and culture somewhere.

    • A challenge for whoever is reading. Invent a new accent! Just one sentence whatever you like, just make it sound natural. After a while you will start to hear that it’s not so new and original. Making a new accent, dialect or language actually takes whole groups of people a long period of time and even then they are still all related to each other. Every language on earth is related. Maybe the Jar Jar being racist thing was just you thinking Jamaicans have long floppy ears and that the CG was just too much? What is the deal here?

    • FRED. Really??
      You can go through the Original Trilogy and only find two aliens speaking english.
      All the other languages were done simply by just being creative and not lazy.
      Its really not that hard to do.

    • Joe, None of the fictional languages in Star Wars were done with any sort of creativity. They were being lazy. Jawas spoke Zulu ffs. Huttese is made up sounds that change meaning as the films progress. Huttese was based on Mexican Spanish. Sorry are Mexcians too white to be a victim here? Ill just make my point again, that accent and race are not the same. I know white Jamaicans with Jamaican accents. I also know Thai people that guess what… speak with Thai accents.

    • Nute Gunray was voiced by Silas Carson, who is as white as can be. He was mimicking the Thai actor’s performance, which is more of a bad look than it is a loving tribute, on balance. They aren’t all cast like this, ditto the Gungans, but that casting decision is what takes the Nemoidians into Yellow Menace territory, versus if they’d just hired an Asian actor to be the voice of their leader.

  7. While Star Trek broke ground with an intelligent African American women who did not clean the ship back in the 1960s, Star Wars had a minstrels show character in the 1999, makes ya think

  8. Man you are really grasping at straws here lol.. I think you are about 20 years too late bud. But anyways, if you’ve actually watched any of the old films you’d know that that Asian sounding accent is used for many characters shown in all types of light (Ewoks for example) who doesn’t love an ewok?
    And honestly almost anyone trying to speak English as a second language sounds like that. Is it racist? Well it doesn’t involve hatred, so no it isn’t racist at all.
    And did you bother to mention Anikin and his mother were white slaves? No of course not because that would ruin your narrative. And I guarantee that kids don’t give a crap about what accent someone has in a movie about a fiction in space lol. And btw I would bet any money on it that there are more adult fans of star was then children.
    Good luck on your next attempt at finding “racism”

    • White guy mimicking an Asian ESL accent. Not a hill you need to die on to defend the movie, dude. Just recognize it’s unfortunate and should have been handled differently for legitimate reasons. Jar Jar is a shakier topic, but I don’t think anyone can defend Nute Gunray with a straight face, certainly not when talking to an Asian minority in a Western country.

  9. Isn’t the voice actor from the Caribbean himself? I looked him up and he’s a black West Indian man. In fact he nearly committed suicide after the backlash against Jar Jar.

    It doesn’t change your point of course, just seems like it would be important information to include given the subject matter.

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