rhythmaning: (Default)

[personal profile] rhythmaning 2020-09-05 12:22 pm (UTC)(link)

Race and Star Wars

[personal profile] anna_wing 2020-09-06 06:34 am (UTC)(link)
It was fairly clear quite early on in the trilogy that the film-makers had no idea what to do with Poe, Finn and Rose, and I myself think this was because their race was made the biggest thing about them. Perhaps the scriptwriters should simply have written assuming that all the actors would be white (by the bizarre US/UK taxonomies, nowhere else in the world would consider Oscar Isaac not white) and male, and then casting actors and actresses from other races (which obviously they did for the minor background characters). As is done in the theatre or the opera.

I remember an interesting conversation with a fantasy novelist friend from the UK, who told me that she had a problem writing female characters. I suggested that she write her whole novel with all-male characters, pick a few at random and change their sex, and see if it made a difference to how she thought the characters would behave. She was quite receptive to the idea, but I don't know if she ever did it.