While looking for a cultural artifact that would constitute a stereotype regarding racial identity I found tons of movies and television shows all showing different stereotypes. When I came across the new “Star Wars” trilogy it stood out compared to the rest of the movies that had been accused of having hidden racial stereotypes. These movies were accused of having four different characters that all stood for a different race and degraded them all in some way.
First there is Watto, some may remember him as the pot belled, green, bug thing who owned the pawn shop that Anakin worked for. Many believe that he can be seen as trying to be represented as Jewish but not in any good or neutral way. Instead he is seen as avery greedy man, with a long hooked nose. If those two traits do not scream the stereotypes that are used for Jews they also gave him a thick middle eastern accent. In the second in the trilogy they gave Watto a beard and a hat that makes him look like he is a hasidic Jew. By doing this George Lucas has created a character that is supporting the stereotype that Jews are greedy. In order to make sure the audience realized that Watto was portraying a Jew they gave him a big nose which is also another stereotype people use when they are stereotyping Jews.
That was not the only stereotype that the movies show. The movies also makes references towards the Arabs. They have a group of people known as the Sand People. They are a group of people that live in the desert, wearing robes and keeping their faces covered and wearing long pale robes. At a point Anakin goes and slaughters an entire village of sand people. After slaughtering women and children Anakin goes and confesses what he had done to Padme and all she can say is so what. Essentially the movie is saying that it is okay to just slaughter them they are just animal, showing a stereotype about Arabs and the stereotype of them being animals.
The biggest stereotype in the trilogy has to be the character Jar Jar Binks and the Gungans. They live underground and do not understand technology, while there is a very sophisticated race that lives above ground with gorgeous palaces and a royal court. The Gungans can be seen as a stereotype for blacks. Jar Jar can hardly speak English, he speaks a very hard to understand simplified version of English. Some may think English is not his first language and thats why he speaks like that but later they learn that is how he speaks to his king and that is the only language they have. This points to a stereotype that black people are illiterate and can not speak proper english. They also give the Gungans huge lips which is another stereotype of black people. These two stereotypes are both used when stereotyping blacks and George Lucas uses them to create a dim witted character.
Now the movie does not always refer to the obvious stereotypes but it does make fun of another race and mentions a little stereotype. It makes fun of Asians with the Neimoidians, which are a race who ran the Trade Federation. They are dressed as Chinese emperors and all their colony planets have Japanese sounding names . They also mix up their “R” and “L” sounds which is a stereotype that many asian people do when they speak English.
When looked at closely the the movies reinforces stereotypes of, Jews, Arabs, Blacks, and Asians. The movie was rated PG so the target audience was young kids, so they either did not pick up on the messages or subliminal picked up on them and believed certain things about people because of the movies, maybe kids believe that people with big noises and middle eastern accents are greedy because thats what Watto was.
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