Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized jar jar binks, star wars 0 Comments

saferincages:

I was writing this as a private message to @mothlissa because she is the most lovely and patient, and has been listening to all my ramblings and happy memories and beloved feelings about Star Wars for the past week, but I was inspired to post it instead. (I actually thought I told this story once a long time ago, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere on my blog?)

when I was a senior in highschool, I took a drama class that was open to everyone, so there were students from all four grades in it. (I was deeply into my passion for LOTR at this point, and was writing my AP thesis on Tolkien’s trilogy, so that was a major omnipresent part of my identity right then, as I did research and collected scholarly sources and pored over chapters repeatedly. you could probably find me wearing my Evenstar or at least my Nenya on any given day, because I have never been anything less than a parody of myself). anyway, I had a huge binder, it was white, and it had those clear plastic coverings on the front and back, and to further reduce myself as a nerd stereotype, I made collages of a bunch of my favorite characters and covered the whole binder in them, underneath the plastic.

so one day we were working on scenes, and I pulled my binder out, and a freshman in my class got excited because she saw Anakin and Padme as part of this collage, and she started telling me how much she loved Star Wars and the prequels were her favorite everything, and it made her so sad because kids were mean to her about it.

she was a special education student, she had some learning disabilities and a little bit of a speech disorder, along with a physical component. (I don’t want to be ableist in ANY way in describing this, but it’s important to relay for the sake of the story.) she was incredibly sweet. cohesion/concentration was hard for her sometimes, but she told me she never got bored or had trouble understanding Star Wars. kids, because unfortunately they can be super mean, told her she looked/sounded like “an alien.” Star Wars made her feel better about it.

I worked with her a lot, she was genuine and likable and it killed me that other students (particularly in her grade) bullied her, and sometimes if we had free moments she would ask me about LOTR and what my necklace was etc, because those movies/books were too much for her, but she was so curious and she wanted to KNOW. gosh typing this up makes me tearful remembering it

at some point in the class we were assigned to bring an object of comfort/importance in our lives to class and write (then read aloud) about it. as it turned out, she had a doll of Jar-Jar Binks that she’d cherished for years, and most days she secretly carried him with her in her backpack, like a talisman against the unkind words that were thrown at her, and she was SO FREAKING BRAVE she did her scene about it. imagine this for a moment. the MOST mocked character, maybe of all-time, and she expressed her love for him in front of an entire class in a blackbox theatre. she said he made her feel less “weird” – his eyes protruded too! he got overly excited and hyper, he had trouble with grammar and sentences and sometimes didn’t relate to/understand the people or events around him! but he was still brave and he had a job in the SENATE and he had helped save his people! I legitimately sat in awe of her doing this, just straight up defying ridicule and basically proclaiming – I LOVE this, and I don’t care if everyone else hates it, because it means something to me!

is he obnoxious to many? well…yes. but. I haven’t been able to see a single word or joke against his character since without thinking of her, and I really do not care if every other person on this earth who has seen TPM derides him, his existence is important, because he gave this ONE little girl solace and hope in a world that treated her badly simply for being different.

that, my friends, is an example of why stories and fictional characters matter. it may not be “real,” but the impact it can have on our lives, the strength and consolation it can bring us, the way it can help to shape our identities, the way we carry that love as a source of joy, even (perhaps especially) during hard times, that is undeniably, indelibly, powerfully real, and true, and good, and beautiful.

I know I’ve reblogged this already, but I honestly think someone should send this to Ahmed Best.

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized jar jar binks, star wars 0 Comments

redrikki:

wingletblackbird:

jediscourse:

mylordshesacactus:

wingletblackbird:

redrikki:

Heresy time: I don’t find Jar-Jar all that irritating. Yeah, his speech pattern is a bit dumb, and he has a lot of pratfalls, but he’s not that bad. He has a genuine role within the film and helps facilitate the plot at multiple points. Also, his surprisingly useful flailing during the battle has me convinced that he’s an untrained Force-sensitive. If Anakin can blow up a droid control ship completely by accident with his untrained Force powers, then Jar-jar can take out half the droid army with his.

Jar Jar was also useful in showing the arrogance of the Core Worlders and the Jedi. His very presence is useful in termed of character and world building. He, and more importantly his entire species and culture, was derided as “primitive,” by the Naboo, the Republic, and the Jedi. There’s a lot of social commentary to be made there on many varying levels.

That’s LITERALLY the point of Jar-Jar’s character in the narrative, god, thank you so much.

The POINT of Jar-Jar is that everyone, everyone, including the fucking Jedi who are sworn to protect all life in the galaxy and should damn well know better, dismiss him. It’s not due to his personality; Jar-Jar is deeply loyal, he’s kind, he’s eager to help, he’s very honest and very genuine. It’s entirely due to superficial things; his speech patterns are annoying. He looks weird. He’s clumsy and messes things up, he’s from the “primitive” marsh-dwellers who live in the swamps or something. So they talk down to him, they push him around, they view him with disdain, they wish he was gone. You know. Much like the fandom.

Everyone except Padme. 

Padme is interested in him, she speaks to him with respect, she listens seriously when he speaks. Naboo is saved not because of the Jedi (who fight Maul and do nothing else) and not even because of Anakin’s trick with the droid control ship, because the Gungan army made that possible in the first place. Naboo is saved because Padme from the beginning treats the Gungans with respect.

Somewhat relevant, but… in the original draft of Attack of the Clones, Jar-Jar, now a representative of Naboo, has adopted a “proper” lifestyle and dialect of Basic, with the implication that he was essentially forcibly culturally assimilated in order to maintain Naboo’s respectability:

There’s a subplot wherein he struggles to maintain his adopted dialect, and flat-out refuses to keep it up around people he trusts, which leads to moments such as this:

So, yeah. There’s a ton of social commentary to be made surrounding Jar-Jar and the whole “primitive marsh-dweller” thing. Personally, I think it’s criminal that this got cut. (This characterization, and its corresponding dialogue changes, lends a much more chilling tone and subtext to the scene where Jar-Jar convinces the Senate to grant Palpatine emergency powers, by the way.)

Wow, did not know that, but it is so cool. I did know though that there was specism involved in the early drafts of TPM. The other Naboo, besides Padme, were unwilling to let Jar Jar on the ship to escape just because he was Gungan. That’s also why Jar Jar accompanies Padme and Qui-Gon on Tatooine, @redrikki, as Panaka said that he was “stinking the ship up.” The very fact that Padme befriended Jar Jar, (indeed she claims to have never met a gungan before, I wonder why…), and made an alliance with the Gungans speaks greatly of her character, as almost no one else on Naboo would have had the intelligence and humility to have been able to see past their bigotry to do it.

I can also only imagine what the Core Worlders thought of a “primitive species,” defeating the mighty Trade Federation, and moreover, the fact that Queen Amidala chose to ally with them over waiting for Republic assistance form the Core. Boy howdy….

Honestly, I do find Jar Jar slightly annoying at times, but his presence and his arc are not bad things at all. If anything, the crime is that his potential is under utilized.

(Also, Padme is awesome. I love her; I just had to say it.)

The key to Padme’s success is two fold and, in both cases, it involved listening to marginalized people. She took the time to talk and listen to Jar Jar and it lead to a valuable alliance. She took the time to talk and listen to Anakin, a slave boy Qui-Gon basically ignored, and it resulted in them having shelter from the storm, them getting the part, and the shot which destroyed the droid control ship. She took the time to listen to and acknowledge the concerns of the Gungan bosses and ended up with staunch new allies.

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, on the other hand, bullied Jar Jar into taking them to his people’s underwater city and nearly got themselves and Jar Jar executed. They lectured and mind tricked the Gungan bosses and found themselves nearly getting eaten on a faulty ship while traveling through the planet’s core.The Jedi Council refused to listen to Qui-Gon’s concerns and ended up getting him killed and facilitating the Sith’s rise to power.

The moral of the Phantom Menace is that listening to and treating the marginalized with respect leads to positive things, while arrogant dismissal of the powerless leads to bad. It’s the same message as the Rebel’s alliance with the Ewoks in RotJ, so clearly it’s one near and dear to George’s heart.

Whenever a discussion like this comes up I always get stuck on the racial stereotype thing. I mean, if you’re going to do a Fantastic Racism story, there are far worse ways to do it (actually casting a black person to play Jar Jar was, I’m assuming, done with noble intentions) and this thread highlights all the actually good things about it –

– s’just something obviously went wrong somewhere, and I don’t know enough about either racial stereotyping or the early days of motion-capture performance to really know what.

Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized jar jar binks, star wars 0 Comments

imaginaryanon:

imaginaryanon:

starrelia replied to your post:google jar jar sticky tounge. do it

Is it the jar jar toy thing where he’s sticking his tongue out

is there any kind of jar jar toy thing where he’s NOT sticking his tongue out or being otherwise vaguely unsettling

i mean. there’s this fucking thing, right

• what the fuck

buT THEN THERE’S ALSO THIS PIECE OF SHIT LOLLIPOP

• jUST MAKE OUT WITH JAR JAR, CHILDREN.
• JUST DO IT
• WHAT THE FUCK

then there’s THIS FUCKING NIGHTMARE:

• YOU ARE THE DANCING QUEEN, YOUNG AND SWEET, ONLY JAR JAR BINKS

THEN YOU’VE GOT THAT:

• it’s a toothbrush holder
• i want to die

AND WHAT IN THE FRESH HELL IS THIS??

• DON’T TELL ME I DON’T WANT TO POSSESS THAT KIND OF KNOWLEDGE

N O

GOODBYE

all right now who the fuck brought this back

Oh HOLY SHIT I think I had one of those last gross sticky tongue ones? They gave them away in cereal boxes and they were A NIGHTMARE