Amos ‘N’ Anakin: Sci-Fi and Racism in the 21st Century
The sci-fi genre (including science fiction, fantasy, and horror) has a long history of unofficial equal rights advocacy. As far back as the 18th and 19th century, sci-fi stories like Gulliver’s Travels and The Time Machine subtly touched on topics of racial intolerance and class disparity. The 1950s brought us The Twilight Zone, an anthology of morality plays, many of which dealt with racial injustice. In the 1960s, Star Trek repeatedly championed the civil rights movement, airing television’s first multiracial kiss and producing episodes like “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, a deft allegory of the consequences of racism. In the late 60s and 70s, George A. Romero put strong black characters in leading roles in his socially conscious zombie films.
So how is it that after two centuries of progressive, forward-thinking literature, racism has begun to pervade sci-fi? Since the turn of the millennium, there have been a few prominent examples of bald racism in the sci-fi world. These may be isolated incidents, but they do have one glaring common aspect: they were all defended by fans. Rather than a public consensus shaming the offenders into apology, which has become the protocol in these situations (see: Michael Richards), in each of these cases fans mounted a counter-argument denying any existence of racism. These have not been good arguments, but they have, like creation “science”, been enough to muddy the waters for those who don’t want to see the truth.
POD RACE WARS
In 1999, the lifetime of anticipation millions of Star Wars fans had built up waiting for Episode I finally ended. And it ended the way every lifetime does: with death. The pristene sense of wonder and joy that was born out of seeing Star Wars for the first time died that day. And out of its ashes grew a bitter cynicism from which society will not recover until the only ones left are the kids who saw the prequels first, carefree and ignorant without a frame of reference for what should have been.
On a laundry list of complaints about The Phantom Menace, the use of racism as a storytelling device certainly takes priority. At least three different alien races in the film, in voice, dress, and manner, are indistinguishable from specific racial stereotypes. The Neimoidians, leaders of the Trade Federation, with their large-sleeved robes, bowing, and thick Asian “r” and “l” switching accents are clear corollaries for the Japanese. Watto, a hairy, big-nosed, money-obsessed junk dealer is an overt Semitic caricature. And then there’s Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans, with their definitive Porgy and Bess accents are obviously stand-ins for native Caribbeans. All of these characters are depictions of racial stereotypes, and all of them are bad. The Trade Federation are in league with the Sith, Watto is an unscrupulous slave owner, and Jar Jar is a rude, lazy fool.
Some fans refuse to believe these characters are the product of racism. These fans contend that the alien races are original compilations of traits, and racially sensitive people pick out specific traits they associate with races and extrapolate racism that isn’t there. But it isn’t just one trait; it’s the whole package. There’s a reason the Anti-Defamation League hasn’t ever voiced serious concerns about the anti-Semitic undertones of gold-hoarding dragons. Because that is extrapolating association from a single trait. That’s not what they do. No one came to Star Wars looking for racism. They saw it because it smacked them in the face.
Another common defense is simply to ask why Lucas would put in racist stereotypes. In other words, these fans are demanding the prosecution show motive. Well, the motive is simple and sad: lazy writing. A thoughtful, creative writer will spend time developing characters, but a lazy writer can import easily recognized stereotypes in place of unique characters. Essentially it’s like stealing a stock character from another work of fiction, only this time the fiction is the magical world that racists live in.
Compare the races of Episode I with those of the Lord of the Rings series. J.R.R. Tolkien practically invented what we think of as elves and dwarves not by recontextualizing pre-existing stereotypes but by creating a world and considering how that world’s history and landscape would affect how societies developed. Each race has a specific set of culturally inherent traits, but even if they share any history with or bear any resemblance to real peoples, they don’t stick out as identical with persistent stereotypes. And Tolkien was part of the tradition of promoting racial unity as Gimli the dwarf found friendship with elf Legolas. Of course their common ground was the hunting and killing of a third race, but hey, Orcs are jerks. Even Dr. King said we could judge people by the content of their character.
You don’t even have to leave the Star Wars universe to find an example of well-done race introduction. A New Hope‘s Mos Eisley Cantina is full of many different alien races, all distinct and imaginative variations on basic animal features. Their manner and clothing tell us immediately that these creatures are sentient despite reminding no one in any way of any human race or even the human race.
The “shorthand” of racial stereotypes is unnecessary to convey an individual’s personality or even the cultural identity of a recently introduced alien race; good storytellers are able to give us this information through good writing. Lucas clearly used to be a good storyteller, but he got old, tired, and lazy.
REVENGE OF THE APPALLIN’
About a decade after Episode I, sci-fi race relations suffered a very similar setback with episode 2 of the Transformers franchise. We’ll just call Jazz’s breakdancing in the first Transformers a misguided homage. But he was replaced in the second film by the duo of Mudflap and Skids, robots that used rap slang and sounded “street”- one of them even had a gold tooth (I’m not sure which one- the movie Transformers all look alike to me). Once again, we’re talking about lazy writers using offensive stereotypes in place of original characters, but this goes even further. These obvious black analogues are rude, gross, craven, and even, despite presumably having advanced alien CPUs for brains, illiterate. And even this was not universally acknowledged as racism.
The defense here was similar to that of The Phantom Menace. Fans who jumped to the film’s defense said, “They’re not black men, they’re robots! They’re not even black robots! How can it be racist?” But racism is more than meets the eye. It doesn’t have to be a black man to be a depiction of a black man. Amos ‘N’ Andy were two white guys in minstrel makeup. The caricature already exists in our culture and can be depicted via cartoon bird, CG robot, cave etching- it’s still making fun of black people.
FAN BLACKLASH
So are fans racist? Well, yes and no. Obviously there’s nothing inherently racist in sci-fi to promote extra intolerance, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some fans who bring their racism with them. You might think sci-fi’s myriad fables against discrimination would discourage ethnocentrists’ interest, but even in their religions people hear what they want to hear. Sci-fi’s biggest deterrent to racism is its innate intelligence; the often complex rules and sophisticated storylines of new universes tend to naturally repel those of lower intelligence, whom studies have shown are more likely to hold racist beliefs. So sci-fi fandom probably has a slightly lower proportion of racists than the rest of society, but they are there.
Unfortunately, in the Venn diagram of society, the circles of racial intolerance and genre enthusiasm do have some overlap. Two recent examples made me ashamed of my people. The first is the rejection of a black Spider-man. When Sony announced in 2010 that it would reboot the Spidey franchise with a new Peter Parker, a sharp-eyed fan suggested writer/actor Donald Glover for the role. Glover is a smart, funny young actor with a slim, muscular build; he would have been a strong choice for the iconic character. As an excited fan himself, Glover retweeted the idea, causing a flurry of Internet excitement. But not all of the buzz was positive. Hundreds of fans denounced the idea, saying they would never see a movie with a black Spider-man.
Some argue that this was not a racially motivated disgust. They argue that die hard fans’ ire is notoriously easy to provoke by adaptations straying from the source material, and that’s a fair point. Fans were also annoyed that John Constantine was played by a brunette American instead of a blond Brit. However, those that tweeted death threats and epithets at Glover were not pre-occupied with comic accuracy, but were clearly a different kind of purist altogether.
The more recent example is also in casting, but this one isn’t merely hypothetical. The Hunger Games movie adaptation broke box office records, but a vocal minority soured the occasion. These readers apparently missed the indication to beloved character Rue’s dark skin in the book and were shocked and disgusted by the decision to cast a young black actress. Naturally, these fans vehemently denied that their outcry was in any way racist. All they said was that they couldn’t see a little black girl as innocent or be upset when a little black girl’s life was in peril, because she’s black. Nothing racist about that.
For the most part, I don’t think all that many sci-fi fans out there are racist. The Hunger Games and Spider-man franchises have much larger audiences than most genre works, and a bigger crowd always means a bigger, louder fringe. I don’t even think those who denied the racist elements of Star Wars Episode I and Transformers 2 are themselves racist. I just think they’re in denial. they’re choosing to believe that the things they love so much could not possibly be so flawed. They’re like abused housewives attacking the cops who are trying to protect them. The reality is just too hard to face.
But we have to face it if we are going to move forward. Sweeping this under the rug is not acceptable. The only way we will ever remove racism from sci-fi in specific and society in general is to stop denying that it exists. The first step in recovery is admitting that you have a problem. And right now we do.
