Whats wrong with Gungans?

I never had a huge problem with the Gungans (though they're manner is speaking always annoyed me.)

My problem was always with Jar Jar because (if Mike is reading this thread he'll enjoy this) when I was 10 years old I couldn't stand the sound of his stupid voice, I hated poop jokes, and in the middle of everything cool going on there'd be another random Jar Jar slapstick routine. So incredibly annoying to me.

Unfortunately for the Gungans, Jar Jar was the face of the race.

 

^This
(Only that I was around 18 years old first time I saw Jar Jar, so I suppose I hated poop jokes even more than a 10 years old kid...)

 

Nothing wrong with Gungans...Jar Jar is the problematic subject...I hope to see a badass Gungan in the Sequels...

 

Not to mention the other racist cartoon aliens from The Phantom Menace, like the evil cowardly oriental Fu Manchu people, and the greedy Jewish trader alien!

 

I think Gungans were originally made to represent the poor and oppressed, those people living on the margins of society. They lived underwater because the humans on Naboo wouldn't make a place for them. Boss Nass' anger towards the Naboo expresses the problem succinctly - "Wesa no like da Naboo! Da Naboo tink day so smarty. Day tink day brains so big."

The Naboo thought they knew it all. They never imagined they'd need Gungan help for anything. And the Gungans didn't like feeling inferior. Who would?

When the droid army attacked, the official Gungan response was "Meh. They never appreciated us before, so why do anything to help them now?" Obi Wan pointed out that "What happens to one of you will affect the other. You must understand this."

Yes, I'm certain Boss Nass did understand this.I bet he knew it much better than the Naboo did. Remember it was the Naboo who thought they didn't need the Gungans, not the other way around. Boss Nass understood, but he didn't offer help because he and the Gungans were already fighting a war against racism.

All through human history the powerful have sent the marginalized to fight their wars for them. Here in the United States we recruited battalions of Native American and black soldiers to fight our wars for us long before we gave them voting rights. I believe these were the types of situations George Lucas was attempting to address with the Gungans. The Gungan accent was never meant to be racist; it was meant to give the audience a clue to understand that the Gungans represent the marginalized, forgotten, and best-left-unmentioned living among us.

Just how far removed from Gungans were the rich and powerful of Naboo?

JAR JAR: Whosa are yousa?

PADME: I'm Padme.

JAR JAR: Mesa Ja Ja Binksss...

PADME: You're a Gungan, aren't you?

The Queen of the planet has to ask Jar Jar if he's a Gungan. Apparently she's never met one before.

Think about that for a moment. These two races live in a simbiotic circle with one another, sharing a planet together, yet the Queen of one race had never met a member of the other race. That, my friends, is how to define a marginalized segment of society.

After Naboo fell to the Trade Federation Queen Amidala had to humble herself and ask Boss Nass for help. Being approached as an equal instead of as a cockroach was all Boss Nass and the Gungans ever wanted - "Yousa no tinken yousa greater den da Gungans? Mesa like dis. Maybe wesa... bein' friends."

What's wrong with Gungans? Nothing, in concept. Many things, in execution. And everything, in Jar Jar.

 

"Watto"

 

The aliens in TPM are not "racist". They have accents. That is all. Showing that groups of people share speech patterns is NOT racism.

 

Mind tricks don't work on me, only money!

He's got the big nose, the curly sideburns, east european-sounding accent, and otherwise looks exactly like caricatures of Jews from like the 1800s.

 

Am I the only one who thought Watto sounded more Italian than anything?

As for the Gungans, I've always been rather indifferent to them. I was never sold on their pidgin English, and I still marvel at the fact that Lucas creature designers came up with an aquatic race with stumpy elephant feet rather than feet that look like they might conceivably be used for, oh, I dunno, swimming...

...but on the other hand, they did work okay as a marginalized race that proved to be much more valuable as allies than as forgotten "untouchable" types living out of sight in the swamps. Plus, they did have a pretty badass army.

Unfortunately, that badass army was upstaged during the big land battle by the tiresome antics of Jar Jar. I won't mince words on this one... I can't stand Jar Jar. Never have been able to. The whole concept of the Jar Jar character was both ill-conceived and ill-advised, and my understanding from having watched the Making Of documentaries on the TPM DVD is that even Lucas' "inner circle" on the production didn't seem to cotton to the idea. But, since Lucas was the boss, there wasn't much they could say against it. (I just remember some very awkward silences in the documentary after they'd watched either some Jar Jar scenes or the rough cut of the movie.)

Here's the thing. If you're going to have a comic relief character, you need a comedic actor to play it. Period. Ahmed Best is a good mo-cap actor, but he's not a comedian. The ILM animators who created Jar Jar are VERY good at what they do, but again... they aren't comedians. Comedy requires very specific talents and instincts, and without that in the mix, a comic relief character is just going to fall flat.

And boy did Jar Jar fall flat. No pun intended. And he was just EVERYWHERE in TPM, upstaging everyone else, and "spoiling the atmos" and all that. A good comic relief character isn't supposed to be a distraction. It's supposed to add some comedic texture to an ensemble. Look at Walter Brennan in "To Have and Have Not", for instance. A great comic relief character who gets some laughs, but who also serves as a foil for the main character, and who is naturally likeable despite being kind of a screwup. Brennan had excellent timing and the ability to modulate his performance to fit the needs of each scene he was in.

Jar Jar, on the other hand was just GREAT BIG ALLLLLLLLLLL THE TIME. There was no subtlety, there was no modulating his performance, and there was no sense of comedic timing there. And the bits and dialogue that were written for him didn't help matters at all.

As others have pointed out here, the fact that Jar Jar came across so badly to so many moviegoers often tends to bleed over onto the Gungans as a whole, and I think it's easy to dismiss them right along with Jar Jar. I think they're better than their most obnoxious member, but not to the point where I'm all that jazzed to see them in the ST. IMHO, J.J. and company should let them be and not try to "rehabilitate" them in Episode 7 or the other ST films.

(Your mileage may vary...)

 

Alright. I'm not trying to be offensive or cute or sarcastic or anything. Just my thoughts. But Jamaican is not a race. It's a nationality. It's people are known (by perhaps a false stereotype?) to have a distinctive accent. Now, to me, Gungans don't sound like "stereotypical" Jamaicans. I don't know if that's why your friend was upset or not. I don't know what race the Gungans are unintentionally stereotyping. Black? White? Latino? Asian? I've never heard anybody talk like a Gungan. Now about them showing the Gungans as "primitive". Well, compared to the Naboo, the were more primitive in a sense. Just like here on earth, there are more "advanced" cultures and more "primitive" cultures. The Maasai are "primitive" compared to the dwellers of New York city. Not better or worse. Just a different lifestyle, different technology, different circumstances, different history. Primitive is not a bad word. It just has negative connotations in some people's minds. I don't think they were portrayed as "less intelligent" (except for Jar Jar). TPM showed that the prejudices between the two cultures of Naboo was unfounded when they came together and helped one another. That sounds like anti-racism. No race is better than another. We can learn a lot from each other. That kind of thing. As far as the gauge for "if it's racist or not" being based off if someone is offended...I don't know what to say. It seems to me that people are just waiting to jump out and scream racist any chance they get, founded or unfounded. I'm not a fan of walking on eggshells, and running every little thing through the "will this offend anyone?" filter. But that's just my opinion. People see what they want to see, I guess. Racism is terrible and idiotic. But I still see no racism here.

All that being said, I hated Jar Jar and didn't really care for the Gungans, as a whole, either. But I did think that their underwater city was pretty awesome.

It's just my opinion.

 

The Trade Federation aliens (Neimoidians) were Asian.

 

That's pretty funny!

Like I said in the Ewok thread, I am not arrogant enough to think I know how every 10 year old thinks, thus why I made sure to point out that I was aware that there are some kids that would not like that type of humor. I just think that if you took a poll of most children in that age range, most (not all) would say they either liked Jar Jar (Ewoks) or didn't really care. Obviously, in my opinion, you would fall in the minority of that group that hated him.

Gungans were fine. They served their purpose in the story.

Now Jar Jar... He didn't bother me (surprise surprise). First of all, I was 25ish when I saw TPM, and I guess I am pretty immature because I did laugh when Jar Jar got his face stuck in the energy binders. I still crack a smile when I see it.

Just as the Ewoks, Jar Jar was geared towards kids, so I wasn't going to (and won't) analyze him to death. I am not going to break down whether toilet humor geared towards kids works for me (as an adult) or not, because it's not meant for me (as an adult). I'm not going to let humor geared towards kids in a family movie ruin a movie for me. I just don't see the point in over analyzing it. That's just how I am, obviously other people feel differently.

That's why last weekend when my family went to see Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and toilet humor involving puke started to fly (pun intended) it didn't ruin the movie for my wife and I. We understood that humor is geared towards our kids, while the stripper joke that went over our kids heads was there for the adults. I'm not going to over analyze whether the puke scene and subsequent jokes after worked for me, because it wasn't for me, it was for my kids, and they liked it. We all walked away enjoying the movie, even though there were specific aspects geared to only certain age ranges.

OK... I will admit it, I laughed at the puke too...