The Problem with Star Wars’ Portrayal of Black Characters
Deconstructing the problems with the Disney Star Wars movies and how they mistreat and underrepresent people of colour.
Star Wars is a billion-dollar multimedia franchise that has spanned over four decades.
Throughout the franchise’s history, Star Wars has always featured people of colour in the movies and supplementary material. In the original trilogy, James Earl Jones provided an other-worldly voice portrayal of Darth Vader. Also, Billie Dee Williams starred as the charming swindler Lando.
For the prequel trilogy, Samuel L. Jackson chewed the scenery and battle scenes as the purple blade swinging Jedi Master Mace Windu.
Moving into the sequel trilogy, John Boyega's Finn was the most prominent black character throughout. In an interview with GQ, Boyega said; “Do not market a black character as important and push them aside.”
Boyega’s recent comments are in line with the way his character was portrayed in the movies. In ‘Episode VII: The Force Awakens’, Finn is set up to have an important role.
Finn started his character arc as a stormtrooper, Finn later evolved throughout the movie to wield a lightsaber. Even going into Episode IX, Finn was hinted to have force sensitivity, but nothing came of it.
This is problematic as it sees Disney pandering to ethnic minorities by shoving them in prominent roles, only to reduce said role and importance later on. This also applies to Vietnamese-American actress Kelly Marie Tran. Her character Rose was introduced in Episode VIII to only have two minutes of screen time in Episode IX.
This indicates that the real intention was to only to check ethnic tick-boxes of inclusion without any proper care or development.
Disney and Star Wars’ disingenuous and calculated approach is evident thanks to the Chinese poster for Episode VII. The international poster featured Finn prominently alongside the other characters.
However, when the film landed in China, Finn’s presence in the advertisement was reduced tenfold to only be in the bottom right corner.
This was a clear example of Disney pandering to Chinese audiences for profitability.
While black Star Wars characters are often praised and beloved, it is hard to tell where the real diversity starts and the tokenisation ends.
