Before I begin I’d like to
make clear that I’m not accusing George Lucas or Star Wars in general of being
racist. In fact, I’m a huge Star Wars fan and I would not have been able to
make the following observations if I wasn’t one. However, it is important to
point out that Star Wars is not immune from reflecting the biases of the
audience it was made for, which is primarily western. All films do this, and it
is fascinating, if not important, to reveal these hidden messages about society
and civilization. Star Wars happens to be a perfect example of
western notions of orientalism. Orientalism refers to the negative stereotypes
of eastern civilizations (especially The Middle East) made by western
civilization, as well as western civilization’s fascination with the exotic
from the 18th century onward. I believe Star Wars adequately
demonstrates both in the depiction of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine.
It was no accident that
George Lucas chose Tunisia as the location to film scenes of the planet Tatooine.
Luke had to come from a dark and barbaric land to overcome his unfortunate
situation and have greatness thrust upon him in the form of two droids. Tatooine
is depicted as a harsh environment with a dry/hot landscape inhabited by
undisciplined tribes, crime lords, poor farmers, slaves, cheats, and
scoundrels. To quote the late Sir. Alec Guinness “you’ll never find a place
with more scum and villainy.” Tatooine is a personification of western
civilizations negative view towards the Arab world. It is untrustworthy,
backward, cruel, and malicious. Tatooine is a planet located far from the
civilized worlds of Naboo and Coruscant . It is ruled by what appears to be a
patriarchal villainous autocrat Jabba the Hut, whose character is based off of
Sydney Greenstreet’s role in Casablanca. He makes a good replacement for Saddam
Hussein, The House of Saud, or Gadhafi.
The first characters we are
introduced to on Tatooine are the Jawas who are little clocked people who come
out of caves not dissimilar to those we see the Mushahadeen residing in
Afghanistan. The Tuscan Raiders are a nomadic people who are violent and barbaric
nature, which could easily be seen as a reference to a great many Middle
Eastern tribes. In the second set of films we see the young white Anakin and
his mother enslaved by a cruel and shrewd businessman who is depicted as
untrustworthy and dishonest. The list goes on in on. We as the audience
identify with Luke and want him to escape Tatooine because we perceive it to be
a backward and hostile world unworthy of his extraordinary attributes as the
protagonist. Therefore, a location that appears to be similar to the area of
our own planet we refer to as the Middle East serves the purpose perfectly. The
important question to ask is why?
Well let’s put Star Wars in
historical context. I could talk about western civilization’s relationship to the
Middle East from the crusades onwards but that would be a waste of 100 pages.
Let’s fast forward to the 20th Century when America takes the lead
as champion of western civilization. Since our support of Israel in 1948,
America has had a cantankerous relationship with the Middle East. Following the
west’s support of Israel in the wars with Palestine in 1967 and 1973, the
Muslim world took a step to punish the west for its insolence. Thus the 1973
oil embargo was implemented by oil producing Arab nations. This was America’s
first economic crisis that was intertwined by an energy/resources crisis. It
severally changed Americans’ perceptions of the environment, energy, economics,
and especially their view of the Middle East.
Furthermore, America’s war in
Vietnam was ending, and Asia as a theatre ceased to be important. The late
1970s would witness a great shift from American military involvement in East or
Southeast Asia to American military involvement in the Middle East. It is
during the peak of this shift that the first Star Wars film is made. Then in
1979, Iran overthrows the American supported Shah and replaces him with the Shiite
Islamic Cleric Ayatollah Khomeini and establishes the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Following this, Iranians storm of the US embassy and take 52 American citizens
hostage. Following their release, the Iranian and US relationship became silent
and cold and has remained so to this day. Before the second movie featuring Tatooine
was made in 1983, another crisis enveloped in Lebanon when terrorists blew up a
facility containing French troops, thereby forcing President Reagan to
withdrawal all security personnel from the country. By the time the second trilogy
of films was being produced the relationship between the US and the Arab world
only became more antagonistic following the Gulf War. Once you put the Star
Wars movies into historical context it makes sense why the dusty rock of Tatoonie
was depicted to appear Middle Eastern.
Now take Tatooine and
contrast it to other worlds. Coruscant is
depicted as metropolitan and multi-global like an intergalactic New York.
However, those individuals who speak English in the film have European/Anglo
American accents. Naboo is ruled by Anglo-Whites, the Death Star is completely
British, and a Token Black character commonly placed in 1970s pop culture
manages Cloud City. Furthermore, the rebels themselves, while less advanced
militarily than the empire, are majority white or have American accidents as
opposed the imperial British in the Death Star. This distinction is made to
separate American hegemony, which supports the virtues of freedom, independence
and self-expression from European hegemony, which seeks to merely dominate, intimidate,
plunder and exploit.
One more thing I find
interesting about Star Wars from a civilization perspective is the Ewoks. The
Ewoks reside on the forest moon of Endoor, which is largely untouched save for
the Death Star’s defense shield reactor. The Ewoks are wild, unbridled by the
constraints of technological advancement and social progress. They reflect many
of the same attributes as the American and Meso-American Indian civilizations.
While western civilization certainly had its antagonisms with Native American
civilizations, there also existed a sense of fascination and admiration of their
way of life.
Western ideas of liberty,
equality, and democracy were influenced by the discovery of these new civilizations.
Following the discovery of native peoples in the New World, European society
was forced to reflect upon its own ideals and expand western philosophy into
new realms of science, rationality, economics, religious freedom, and
eventually republicanism. A perfect example of this was the Spanish myth of the
city of Eldorado in South America, a glittering city made of gold where
prosperity was plentiful and harmony permanent.
When Luke and Han come across
the Ewoks for the first time, the Ewoks attack them and make them the sacrifice
for C3PO (who appears to them to be some sort of deity). This demonstrates both
the humor and dangers of their innocence. But soon Luke is able to fool the
Ewoks into thinking they will be doomed if they kill him and his companions
when he uses his Jedi Powers to lift the flamboyant C3PO off the ground. This
demonstrates that while the primitive minds of the Ewoks can easily turn to
violence, it can easily be molded into submission. The Ewoks soon become
friends with our protagonists and help them bring down the Empire with the use
of asymmetrical warfare, very much in the same way the American colonists took
down the British Empire.
To conclude I just want to
say once again that racial biases are common in any form of creative expression
whether in literature (Heart of Darkness), Poetry (The White Man’s Burden), or
film. What’s important isn’t to purge these classic pieces of the humanities,
but to analyze them and reflect upon what biases we hold ourselves. May the
force be with us in our quest to do so, always.
