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.