You would think George Lucas would have learned his lesson. After the backlash over Jar-Jar Binks’ pidgin Jamaican accent and the Trade Federations’ faux Asian accents in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace, you’d think that he would know enough to shy away from potentially offensive stereotypes. I guess not.
The story burning up the Internet today is a post on MTV Movies Blog which features a snippet of an interview with Star Wars: The Clone Wars diector Dave Filoni about who new character, Ziro the Hutt, is based on:
“Ziro, Jabba’s uncle, originally spoke in Hutt-ese, like Jabba and then he had a different sluggish voice just like Jabba, and then George one day was watching it and said ‘I want him to sound like Truman Capote.’ He actually said that and we were like ‘Wow!’ ” Filion revealed. “It’s a hybrid of it but the inspiration is definitely there on Capote. It’s one of those things that takes him from being an interesting character and I think really does put him over the top and does something. He’s a favorite among the crew here.”
Truman Capote, for those of you unfamiliar, was the openly homosexual writer of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood. To compound Lucas’ point, the character’s skin is a light lavender and wears a peacock feather as a form of adornment.
It appears that Lucas is trying to present Ziro the Hutt as a gay sterotype. I don’t know who is going to be offended more–gay rights groups or hardcore Star Wars fans. Sure, the former has yet another character that supposedly pokes fun at what they are, but the latter have spend years believing the Hutt to be different race with a different language to have one of them now, on a whim, speak Capote-ized English.
The George Lucas of today is a shameless rapist of the quality of the Lucas of Yesteryear. Why not, instead, strive to be like George Costanza? – leave on a high note.