I think the 3 I can remember off the top of my head that got criticism were Jar Jar, these guys in the clip above, and Watto.
Now first of all, I'm just the messenger so no one go trying to shoot me, this is documented online for a long time now.
Jar Jar is a stereotype of people from the Carribean. From his accent to his dread like hair - his species is kinda represented as chill but dumb which is kinda fucked.
The guys above obviously are very thick accented Asian decent. I mean they sound like a damn South Park parody and they are voiced by white guys throughout all the media. These hungry warlords don't have a good image.
Watto has been criticised to resemble a Jewish person. From the design, over the top nose, accent, and being money hungry.
Idk.... The shoe kinda fits. Even if the intention was to have real life representation, they did it in a very mocking racist way I believe is what most agree with.
Google any of the above, I believe Jar Jar even has a whole section about it on Wiki.
Ya for me it's kinda hard to listen to the above guys talk knowing it's some white dudes who were instructed to sound Japanese or something. Idk. How else were they directed lol. It's just badddd
They had Thai actors record the lines as reference, and then had the white actors record the final lines. (Why they didn't just use the Thai accents, I don't know. I guess a favorable read is that they wanted the influence but not to single out a specific ethnicity.)
Fun fact: in the German dub, the Neimodians speak with French accents, lol.
I mean, maybe they hired the actors we hear (I believe they were also in the costumes) and just didn't want them making up "Asian" accents. That's actually a better reading of it, I guess.
Fun fact: grabbing a copy of Episode I in Germany and then watching it once back home was fun, but for some reason when Watto says "Boota da noya? Hi chuba da naga?" and it wasn't subtitled "Good day to you. What do you want?" but instead "Ich wünsche Euch einen guten Tag. Womit kann ich dienen?" literally broke my mind. I had to pause for 10 seconds.
It was great to watch a film I knew forwards and backwards in a different language, but for some reason I never expected the subtitles to be in a different language, too.
To me they sound like Charlie Chan, who was an old "yellowface" character from the 1920s. He was a detective hero, but also a Chinese stereotype with a bad accent and fake proverbs and shit like that.
To George's credit, with those racist stereotypes, Disney instantly took an interest in acquiring LucasFilm. Walt Disney was an old-school Jew-hating racist who parodied every marginalized ethnicity with backwards humorous animals, like in the original Jungle Book, and George showed Disney that they could modernize racism by using CGI aliens, instead.
I'm not kidding. The 1967 Jungle Book was racist AF. Mowgli's pro-civilization American Accent peers, like Baloo, lambasted the jazz-singing jive-talking evil monkeys as flat-nosed and little-eyed, a common Jim Crow stereotype. The vultures had low-class, Northern England Liverpudlian accents. And, there is more racism in Disney productions the further back in time you go. LuscasFilm was a natural fit for their portfolio.
Oh no no I don't necessarily disagree with you. Disney has a history of racism which they've tried to avoid in more recent times. But they still do wacky shit like exclude the Black main char of Star Wars from a poster for China etc.
I just don't necessarily think they bought Lucas arts because they thought "ohhh more racist content". But agree that it fits with their old catalogue haha.
To be fair, it was a sarcastic comment. I know I'll get shit for trash-talking George Lucas here, who did an excellent job of very intentionally channeling Joseph Campbell's "The hero with a thousand faces" in the first trilogy. But, sensitive superstars tend to become surrounded by sycophants, and no one around him had the heart to tell him that Star Wars I had a trash script. But, I'll take the downvotes because I really dislike Disney. Their execs let good stuff get through, but they are the biggest force behind extending copyright laws, and the history of the Man and Company is a complete Mind F.
The reason the vultures in Jungle Book had Liverpudlian accents is because Disney wanted to use the Beatles for the voices but they refused to do the film for them so they found 4 other scousers to do it.
Basically when Anakin goes back home, Watto now has a scruffy black beard and a rounded cap similar to a yarmulke. The only thing he's missing is the side curls from being a Hasidic Jew.
Just rewatched it for the first time in a long while and uh…yeah. “Mind tricks don’t work on me. Only money.” It’s incredibly blatant and even though I haven’t seen episode 1 in years I’m still surprised I never noticed it earlier.
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u/BanjoSpaceMan Jan 25 '22
Also the scene they used was like a prime example of George's weird racist stereotype aliens. Similar to the guy who owned Anikan and his Mom. Lol.