George Lucas reviews Star Wars The Force Awakens

[binary solo]

AlfredoTurkey said:

binary solo said:

So you can't actually explain why it's so wrong to have a black dude and a woman as the central characters. I would like to understand why it is such a massive Star Wars sin. 

*sigh*

It's not a sin to have a black man or a young white woman as leads in Star Wars. It IS a sin, in my opinion, to have them as lead characters if it's done as a result of market research and focus groups. To take something like Star Wars and "hip it up"? No, just... no thank you. This is why I mentioned the dreaded artistic integrity argument. Artistic integrity is lost when said art is being created, in any way, with profits in mind. It's a well known fact that black guys and young girls, by in large, don't give a flying fuck about Star Wars and never have. In their misguided, profit driven minds, Disney thinks that by adding these two demographics, they're going to broaden the Star Wars market. To me, that's just unacceptable. I refuse to buy into it and support such disgusting practices.

It has nothing to do with women or black people and everything to do with modifying an artistic vision in order to make more money. 

So you actually have a problem with Holywood, not with this Star Wars movie.

While this perspective is not overtly racist or sexist is still comes from an inherently racial and gender bais. And it reflects a certain naivete about the big budget movie business and the degree to which the profit motive influences this particular art form, and indeed that money has a influence on all commercial artistic endeavours. In terms of corporate intereference with artistic freedom this really doesn't rate any attention in comparison to the worst such sins that have been commited. You are really not cynical enough about the movie business if this particular situation amounts to an unforgivable sin necessitating a boycott of the movie.

What you are effectively saying here is that the default hero of a story is a white male and that any divergence from that requires some justification, because absent a clearly articulated justification a hero that is not white and male is simply pandering and an egregious unforgivable compromose to artistic integrity. How do you know that the business interefered with artistic vision in these two casting / plot choices? Do we have a Disney insider who said the script was originally envisioned with two white dudes playing Rey and Finn? Do we know for sure who made the decision on the race and sex of these characters and what factors had the greatest influence on those decisions? Or are you just assuming that these roles should have both been white dudes, and the fact that they are not is diversity pandering and coporate tampering, and therefore an unconscionable, purely financially motivated, affront to movie artistry?

There may be, situations where clear contrivances have been forced into a story to introduce diversity for purely profit driven reasons. Obviously Fantastic Four is an example of that, where a brohter and sister are of difference race and therefore the entire back story of these character had to go off canon in order to accomodate this diversity. If someone feels strict faithfulness to the original material is essential, then objecting to the casting decision for Fantastic 4 can be seen as reasonable. In terms of the casting being plausible or realistic, the idea of different race adoptive siblings is a real thing, so while it is a considerable contrivance and departure from the source material it is not out of step with actual human experience, in the modern age. One can argue that there is nothing wrong and in fact a lot right about putting old stories into a more modern, multicultural context. And not merely for money reasons. Art both reflects and influences society, and art that reflects a multicultural, gender balanced society and that shows multiculturalism and gender balance as being normal and positive is an inherently good thing. That presupposes that one actually thinks multiculturalism and gender balance in society is a good thing, which I do. 

But in the case of Star Wars, the Fantastic 4 objection doesn't even apply. Finn and Rey are literally blank canvasses. Within the the Star Wars universe there are both black and female humans that can be Jedi or otherwise heroic figures. So the characters of Finn and Rey could be literally any race or gender and it does not affect the essence of the story in any way. Who these characters are is not at all pre-determined by the fact that the principle cast of all the previous Star Wars movies have been white, and predominantly male. Mace and Lando are secondary characters, not principle cast. So the casting of a black male and a white female is completely consistent with the Star Wars universe. In theory the Star Wars universe is a post-racial, post-gender society, and is even largely post-species, though species prejudice does seem to continue to exist in some societies in the SW-verse. Therefore no one within the story thinks it is particularly odd or noteworthy that Finn is black and Rey is a woman.

It's also rather amusing that you think this is such a disgusting and outrageous thing for a movie to be made that tries to broaden its market and therefore make more money. Artists have been pandering to markets ever since art became a sustainable source of income for artists.

Where is it written that a character that has no identifiable race on the pages of a script must be white?