Jar Jar Binks: Racism?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well for one Lucas did say himself that Jar Jar wasn't meant to be racist and with Ahmed Best who played character also saying that it's easy to see that he wasn't lying. Bay how ever is someone you can believe to think that racial stereotypes are funny considering how often he uses those for humor in his bad movies.

That's not a consistent comparison in the slightest between the two artistic sides. Side 1 says it's not racist. We can believe side 2 is... That's just horseshit reasoning, honestly sorry. The stereotypes are used for style yes, and they're likably humorous. It all comes together badly, but that says jack shit as far as intent.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

- The Twins were made as robots imitating a black subculture in the movie.

- Critics saw the movie and loathed it, and one of the criticisms made against it was that the Twins were a negative black stereotype and were thus racist.

- Studio / production crew responded by saying they weren't meant to be black at all, but robots imitating a black subculture and thus, not racist.

That's what went down.

These are the indisputable facts, no less. There's been no argument that RotF isn't racially insensitive, but there's no basis for saying that Bay was set out to mock anybody, and using that as a comparison to validate Jar Jar's depiction is dumb.

[Jonathan101]

I'll add that the script wasn't written by Michael Bay, but by Ehren Kruger, David Marconi and our old buddies, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So lines like "we don't do reading" are...well, a) they are not "indisputably" racist, since it could easily just be more about the characters than the subculture, and b) not something Bay himself wrote. Said script was also rushed due to threats of strikes by the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, for what it's worth.

Bay seems like a guy who doesn't worry so much about the script; he, like Lucas actually, is more about the technical side of filmmaking.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I never considered the writer's strike and I remember it going on around that time.

[Riedquat]

Some people just love to throw the word "racist!" around. Idiots. With their boy who cried wolf behaviour they're just encouraging people to ignore it even when encountering genuine racisism.

It's very hard to be completely original creativily (and why not borrow and tweak the real world a bit?), and especially when you're involving real people such as actors. It'll therefore be very hard to not find some racial or cultural aspect in a character that doesn't have some reflection somewhere in the real world, and if the character is bad (in whatever sense you want), yay, material for yelling "racists!"

And not all stereotypes are complete fictions either (although when they're not they're almost always exaggerated caricatures).

[Jonathan101]

I never considered the writer's strike and I remember it going on around that time.

Writers Strike was two years earlier.

This was a strike by Directors and Actors. It never happened, but they were thinking about it at the time and that meant that the writers rushed the script "just in case".

[Mecha82]

I'll add that the script wasn't written by Michael Bay, but by Ehren Kruger, David Marconi and our old buddies, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So lines like "we don't do reading" are...well, a) they are not "indisputably" racist, since it could easily just be more about the characters than the subculture, and b) not something Bay himself wrote. Said script was also rushed due to threats of strikes by the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, for what it's worth.

Bay seems like a guy who doesn't worry so much about the script; he, like Lucas actually, is more about the technical side of filmmaking.

To be fair I had impression that Bay wrote that script himself because of threat of strikes. I remember Chuck mentioning that in his review of RotF. Considering how bad that one is (easily worst of all 5 Bayfomers) it seems like something that was possible. But I stand corrected about that one.

Well unlike Bay, Lucas is world builder so he is more creative individual from those two even if he used elements from things that he loved to do so. Sure Lucas might not had been much as script writer and director during his career but at least he did try to give people while flawed still enjoyable movies instead of going for lowest common denominator like Bay does. So to me his word is worth more than word of Bay and his Yes-Men.

[Karha of Honor]

I'll add that the script wasn't written by Michael Bay, but by Ehren Kruger, David Marconi and our old buddies, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So lines like "we don't do reading" are...well, a) they are not "indisputably" racist, since it could easily just be more about the characters than the subculture, and b) not something Bay himself wrote. Said script was also rushed due to threats of strikes by the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, for what it's worth.

Bay seems like a guy who doesn't worry so much about the script; he, like Lucas actually, is more about the technical side of filmmaking.

To be fair I had impression that Bay wrote that script himself because of threat of strikes. I remember Chuck mentioning that in his review of RotF. Considering how bad that one is (easily worst of all 5 Bayfomers) it seems like something that was possible. But I stand corrected about that one.

Well unlike Bay, Lucas is world builder so he is more creative individual from those two even if he used elements from things that he loved to do so. Sure Lucas might not had been much as script writer and director during his career but at least he did try to give people while flawed still enjoyable movies instead of going for lowest common denominator like Bay does. So to me his word is worth more than word of Bay and his Yes-Men.

13 Hours is the best movie about the post Bush US foreign policy.
It pleases everyone, rednecks, anti war people, conspriacy theorists, military man....
Lucas could make a movie that good in the last 20 years, period.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I'll add that the script wasn't written by Michael Bay, but by Ehren Kruger, David Marconi and our old buddies, Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So lines like "we don't do reading" are...well, a) they are not "indisputably" racist, since it could easily just be more about the characters than the subculture, and b) not something Bay himself wrote. Said script was also rushed due to threats of strikes by the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, for what it's worth.

Bay seems like a guy who doesn't worry so much about the script; he, like Lucas actually, is more about the technical side of filmmaking.

To be fair I had impression that Bay wrote that script himself because of threat of strikes. I remember Chuck mentioning that in his review of RotF. Considering how bad that one is (easily worst of all 5 Bayfomers) it seems like something that was possible. But I stand corrected about that one.

Well unlike Bay, Lucas is world builder so he is more creative individual from those two even if he used elements from things that he loved to do so. Sure Lucas might not had been much as script writer and director during his career but at least he did try to give people while flawed still enjoyable movies instead of going for lowest common denominator like Bay does. So to me his word is worth more than word of Bay and his Yes-Men.

13 Hours is the best movie about the post Bush US foreign policy.
It pleases everyone, rednecks, anti war people, conspriacy theorists, military man....
Lucas could make a movie that good in the last 20 years, period.

Yeah but anything that John Krasinski in is going to be good, so that doesn't really say much.

[Karha of Honor]

Yeah but anything that John Krasinski in is going to be good, so that doesn't really say much.

If it was someone else playing in it would be the same. Stop this nonsense.