Long ass post. Here goes:
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Originally Posted by
Ambler 
This is how I feel about it. It's a genre film set in racist times based on the old serials with the same sensibilities. I really don't understand how else the Indians were supposed to be portrayed in Temple of Doom...I think this is a case of the viewer (JMulder) bringing baggage to the film. And I still fail to see how this has anything to do with the likely hood of Lucas making a movie about the Tuskegee Airmen.
What baggage am I bringing into it? The baggage of being aware of cultural stereotyping and looking at things for more than their face value? I think that's the kind of mentality everyone should go into movies with, or maybe operate with every day in their daily lives.
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I'm going by what you initially said, which was that it was strange for Lucas to be producing Red Tails because of a few stereotypes in his films. That is absurd to me.
Well, then we might have to agree to disagree, because it does strike me as strange -- not twisted, what-the-fuck strange, but definitely an eyebrow-raiser -- for one of the wealthiest, most famous white men on the planet, who is an arbiter of ideology (which every filmmaker or artist essentially is) and a creator of entertainment for a predominantly white audience, who is very conscious of what is potentially lucrative and what isn't, who moves in Hollywood circles, which are not the typical place you'd find a "progressive" mentality on race or anything else really, to champion another race so brazenly. And for the record, I also find it a little strange that Spielberg directed The Color Purple, but since he is Jewish you can see that there was a shared connection of ethnic marginalization, suffering, etc. between him and his subject that made it a little less unexpected. With Lucas, there's so little apparent connection between him and his subject that surely you have to admit it must seem a little random?? That kind of racial bridging is rare, especially by someone in Lucas's position of comfortable white wealthiness.
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It's not unusual, because Lucas is an independent filmmaker who germinates his own projects and has the money to make them compete with other Hollywood product. If this were being made and released by Fox or Warners or something it would be unusual. It's only unusual if you're judging his likely filmic output on his past movies...this is no different than Spielberg going from Jaws, E.T. and Raiders to The Color Purple. It's a story he's interested in, he has the money to make it and release it wide. Nothing unusual about it.
The fact that Lucas is working outside the studio system doesn't mean he doesn't make certain considerations about a project before he takes it on. One of those considerations is that project's potential for success, and the Lucas of the prequels has shown himself to be little more than a money grubber. For a guy like that to take a risk with such a notable departure from the norm is unexpected to me. Also, I don't see what else you can judge him on other than his previous "filmic output." Surely if Michael Bay suddenly made a restrained biopic of Mother Theresa we would all find it a little out of the ordinary.
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In ANH, Han was a womanizing scoundrel who turned from apathetic and disinterested in anyone but himself to a hero. In ESB, Lando was a womanizing scoundrel who turned from apathetic and disinterested in anyone but himself and his city into a hero. It's virtually the same character, you're just focusing on the fact that he's black because there are no other major blacks in the film, and you're missing the greater subtext.
I'm not missing that subtext, I know it's there. That's what Lucas intended to include. But there's a whole other, more implicit level of meaning to movies that works with our social assumptions and plays on how we want to see our world reflected back to us. For example, if Han and Lando had a homosexual relationship, people would reject Star Wars pretty fast. Similarly, white audiences can't often accept black people in roles that don't fit into some essentialized stereotype, because that would challenge them and make them reconsider things. So Lando gets put into the role of a slightly sinister, seductive, corrupt womanizer, which is a stereotype, and since, as you say, he's the only black man in the film, the near-subconscious assumption is that this portrayal is a sufficient reflection of the whole race.
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The fact that Jar Jar is a rasta, the bugs are Arab, and the trade guys are Asian (none of which you can definitively prove by the way) means it's racist? I don't follow.
Temple of Doom is set in India during the early 20th century...there was going to be questionable racial stereotyping. Again, I really fail to see where you're headed with this.
How the fuck don't you see how that's racist? The black equivalent Jar Jar is played for comic relief, which is basically like old minstrel shows where the perceived habits and generic traits of black people are parodied for the amusement of whites. Your typical Asian stereotype is that they're all money-minded, highly calculating, rigidly organized, completely hierarchical, and very shrewd. The Trade Federation fits that, plus they dress in Fu Manchu clothes and have slit eyes and speak in what very closely approximates an Asian accent. Imagine a mercilessly stereotyped Japanese businessman, and you probably imagine something like Nute Gunray. And the king bug looks like Osama Bin Laden and speaks in clips and clops. The thing to realize is that this is how Western white people see the concept of foreign. When asked to come up with an alien, designers/Lucas/whomever falls back on what, to them, has symbolized a strange alien culture in the past. So we get reproductions of old stereotypes, but now attached to alien creatures that are basically an extrapolation of foreign cultures in the present.
The problem is that (and I can't believe I have to explain this) it very subtly perpetuates an antiquated view of race that will cause us to continue viewing these cultures in a way that does not approximate reality. Instead, it is merely a reflection of how we wish to see them in order to fit them logically into a system we've already established. Obviously this enforces a pretty ethnocentric viewpoint.
