This has nothing to do with anything
It just made me laugh. And that’s the first laugh I’ve had all week.
11 Responses to “This has nothing to do with anything”
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Puma-SF says:
It made me laugh, too.
June 7th, 2009 at 3:41 am EST -
Val says:
Ha! – thanks, I needed a good laugh too..
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deanbcurtis says:
Now all we need is an opening of Magnum P.I. set to Cagayake Girls, and all would be right with the world.
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slythwolf says:
This would probably have made me laugh if I had ever seen Magnum P.I. as opposed to just sort of having heard of it.
But Chewie-as-sidekick-of-color made me think a little. I am not really up on the theory of the politics of scifi/fantasy (especially not for how much of it I read), but I am vaguely aware that non-human sentient species are generally considered to be metaphorical people of color? I’m not sure I’m in favor of the implications of that. For one thing, obviously, when movies and TV shows are made with non-human sentient characters, it’s very easy for the white dudes making the thing to cast all those characters as white people. Which has in the past allowed people like Gene Roddenberry to tell stories about race that would not otherwise have made it onto mainstream TV, but which can also be a kind of cop-out on the part of studios who don’t want to cast any more actors of color than they have to.
And then, what really hit me just now watching the video was how uncomfortable it makes me that, generally speaking, in scifi there are white people, who are human, and non-humans, who are people of color.
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slythwolf says:
Oh, especially when one takes into account the tendency in scifi for the non-human aliens to be the villains, barring one or two token non-humans who work for the humans.
Although it does alert me to the fact that, if non-human aliens are metaphorical characters of color, until Han Solo meets Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, it looks like he’s the only white guy he knows.
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Violet says:
T.C. = Chewie because they’re the same character, in terms of dramatic structure. They’re Han/Magnum’s co-pilot, best buddy, and “heavy” when things get tough. I don’t think there’s any big statement there about race. (Edited to add: though it does also work as a tongue-in-cheek poke at the whole “black people = SF aliens” thing. Though I don’t think that really holds in the Star Wars world, because there are black humans.)
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Violet says:
Although it does alert me to the fact that, if non-human aliens are metaphorical characters of color, until Han Solo meets Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, it looks like he’s the only white guy he knows.
Hardly! He got the Millennium Falcon from Lando!
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Reader says:
Lando was Black – see: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lando_Calrissian
Chewie probably had more screen time and a bigger role in moving the plot forward than Magnum’s sidekick, fwiw…
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Violet says:
Yes, that was my point, that Lando was black. And I realize now that I misread slythwolf’s comment as saying that Han only knows white guys. Hence my point that he knows black people too (Lando).
Apologies for reading too fast and misunderstanding slythwolf’s comment.
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slythwolf says:
Although it does alert me to the fact that, if non-human aliens are metaphorical characters of color, until Han Solo meets Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, it looks like he’s the only white guy he knows.
Hardly! He got the Millennium Falcon from Lando!
Yeah, I’m saying: Han is the only white guy Han knows.
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slythwolf says:
Ah, and I want to clarify: I’m not taking the non-human sentient characters as POC thing just from this YouTube video. I had seen the idea bandied about in discussion of Star Trek, in a way that assumed everyone in the discussion took for granted that non-human sentient characters are metaphorical POC.
