UWM historian takes on race, relationsh The Star Wars movies are a major force in popular culture, spanning eleven motion pictures and dozens of associated television shows, books, comics, and other media. They’re also a mirror for the eras in which they’re written, and that’s particularly evident when it comes to racial representation. Greg Carter, an associate professor of history at UWM, studies interracial relationships and mixed-race identities in the United States. He’s also a huge fan of Star Wars. Why not, he thought, combine his interests in his research? So, Carter is writing a new book that explores race and identity in a galaxy far, far away. Tell me about your book. Being a historian and writing about Star Wars, the fun challenge is to go back in time and look at it with fresh eyes. We’ve had Star Wars going on 44 years now, with billions in merchandising and terabytes of web conversations. Part of what I am doing is going back in the historic record and looking at how race relations and racial representations unfolded at the times of the movies’ releases. Since in many science fiction movies and TV shows, race is hidden under other symbolic layers, it is not always obvious. I think that the real interface has been in the stuff that the fans say, do and believe. This has been the nexus between the fantasy world of Star Wars and our real world of race relations in the U.S. That carries through to the current day. The book I’m writing does have some analysis of the story of Star Wars and its visual representations, but I also look at the story of a fanship surrounding the movies. Minority fans are very marginal in that, unfortunately. Finding their voices has required more work than the mainstream, predominately white fan voices. Does Star Wars have a large non-white fanbase? I think most people think of a Star Wars fan as the stereotypical white nerd who lives in the basement. See? Even for the white fans, there’s a stereotype of what they look like, which isn’t really true. I think overall, the real fan looks nothing like the stereotype. If it’s hard to see the white mainstream fan for what they are, it’s especially hard for writers to develop an eye for detecting the minority fans. I’m resistant to say minorities don’t like Star Wars or don’t like collecting, cosplaying, and writing fan fiction. Instead, I’ve been asking – how do they do it differently? What is important to minority fans? Where can I find their perspectives? 10 • IN FOCUS • January, 2021
You mention there is hidden symbolism to denote races within science fiction. How so? In the initial thinking that led to this project, I had a literal spreadsheet where I laid out every interracial and inter-species relationship I could think of in all of the movies. Whether based in cooperation, servitude, intimacy, or violence, white characters are the norm, are the most valued. Most other sentient beings are subservient. Often, when is someone doing labor, it’s a droid, alien, or indigenous being. Princess Leia even calls Chewbacca a ‘walking carpet.’ Star Wars is very elitist. Generally, when we look at them in a racial way, aliens and androids are non-white people. They are secondary to the main characters, who are mostly white. What about among the main characters? In the book I look at the idea of, was Darth Vader black? I look at the sources and the conversations coming on the heels of blaxploitation movies in the early 1970s. Hearing James Earl Jones’ voice, who was not a major blaxploitation star, but was in black films of that time, Darth Vader was not that Greg Carter clearly a white guy. It’s very easy now to say, Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker’s father – definitely a white guy. But when you go back to 1977 and view Darth Vader as an original moviegoer might have interpreted him, there is the black suit, the swagger, and the very distinctive voice of James Earl Jones. In the original trilogy, there is one black character. What was the fan reaction to Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian? It was incredibly revolutionary for Lucas to cast the African American actor, even that prominently. Lando was a developed character who contributed to the story. He’s in two of the movies, and he has a positive legacy. At the same time, Lando was a sidekick to Han Leia, and Luke, three squarely white people. I have not run across backlash to Billy Dee Williams’ casting. That kind of reactionary, hostile attitude seems to take off later with the prequel movies.
