I have a severe problem with Jar Jar Binks

Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:32 pm. 0 comments

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Jar Jar Binks was allegedly meant to be a comic foil in the vein of C-3P0. What he ended up being was a racist caricature. Even if he weren’t racist (there are George Lucases out there who would argue he’s not), he’s still extremely annoying. You can’t understand a word he’s saying, and if you’ve never seen “The Phantom Menace” don’t even try to understand him. You could pretty much just mute the TV during the times he’s talking and make things up. Hardly anything he says is useful to the plot, and most of the time he might as well be saying “Feets, don’t fail me now!”

When I first saw “The Phantom Menace,” I didn’t understand why Jar Jar Binks was racist. But may I plead Seven Years Old? I still didn’t understand that the Black Crows from Dumbo were racist. I read several “Boondocks” strip which included “Wacky Fun with Jar Jar Binks!” So, of course, I asked someone to explain it to me. Instead of just saying things like “He looks a little too much like Blackface Comedians” or “His ears look like dreadlocks, and his voice sounds like a Bad Jamaican accent,” my father decided to have me watch a clip of Stepin Fetchit. Oh my God, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such likeness in my life.

I recommend that you watch “The Phantom Menace,” even though it is a terrible movie, just to know what I mean.