Face Palme d'Or

Um, yeah, but they have a point. Who and what about? you might reasonably ask? Why, the anonymous critics who suggested that the first six Star Wars films weren't exactly cutting edge when it comes to representation.

Pictured: Director George Lucas on the set of Star Wars trying
to remember which of the two white guys he cast is Luke.

In his defense, if you want fascist space
colonizers you can't go wrong casting a
bunch of white British guys. 

Last week, George Lucas was in conversation with someone from the Cannes Film Festival before they bestow upon him the Palme d'Or in recognition of his contribution to the industry and that's great. He 100% deserves it. To be clear, I like George Lucas and Star Wars. It's great, he's great, and good on him, but I mean, his films, that is the original and prequel trilogies, don't exactly have the most diverse casts and pointing this out isn't, you know, unfair.

I'm going to suggest that bringing up the aliens
in Star Wars is maybe not the best move when
responding to criticisms about diversity?

He addressed this criticism of Star Wars, unsolicitedly mind you, saying:

"There are certain aspects of that movie which say, you know they would say well, there's no, it's not uh, it's all white men. I said: it's not. Most of the people are aliens."

-George Lucas, evidently referring to

some other series of sci-fi fantasy movies?

Fine, there were two if you count the guy
with the ice cream maker in Cloud City.

Um...I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say that having space aliens in your movie isn't the same as representation, but it gets worse. He goes on to awkwardly remind us how Billy Dee Williams and later Samuel L. Jackson were in the films which, yes they were. Billy Dee Williams played like, the only Black character in the three original movies. And Lucas kind of makes it sound like Samuel L. Jackson begged him to do the film which seems unlikely and kind of comes off like he's telling us how some of his best friends are Black. 

Pictured: that time Jabba fed a third of
the film's female characters to the Rancor

It's an uncomfortable, cringey discussion, so obviously I decided to watch the whole thing and then try and count the number of characters in both the original and prequel trilogies who aren't white men. Ready? Here goes. I've already mentioned Billy Dee Williams, so moving on to women in the original films: Carrie Fisher. Ok, I kid, there are others, but I think I can count them on one hand Aunt Beru, Mon Mothma, and Oola. 

Four if you count the Jedi in the wide shots at
the end of Episode I who's definitely not Samuel L.
Jackson's character. Let's call him Mace Windon't.

As for people of color in the prequels, there's the aforementioned Samuel L. Jackson's Mace Windu, but the ratio of the main roles is not much different from that of original trilogy. That is, the leads are still two white guys and one white lady. There are some people of color in minor roles, like Padmé's body guards Captain Panaka, and later Captain Typhoon. So not counting single-line extras, that's three named, speaking Black characters over three movies, and except Mace Windu, none are as memorable as Billy Dee Williams's Lando Calrissian.

"I'm afraid she's dying. It's wandering womb,
or possibly hysteria. It's impossible to know."

-Some Robot

There are more women in the prequels: Shmi Skywalker, young Aunt Beru, and Padmé's handmaidens, but no leads other than Padmé. Padmé who--in the prequel movies anyway, as opposed to her extended universe appearances--is a noticeably weaker character than Princess Leia. Like, she falls for a whiney child-murderer and then dies in childbirth from sadness. Because emotions. And again, I'm not ragging on George Lucas or these films. I've come to enjoy them, but they were products of the times in which they were made. 

That's not an excuse, it's just that back then, there was maybe less of an expectation that the cast would be anything other than almost all white. And acknowledging that, and using that as a springboard to discuss how the industry could be more inclusive and have better representation seems more productive than getting super-defensive about it. 

George Lucas coming dangerously close to reminding us how
he made Redtails and is therefore immune to criticism.