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Star Wars, Asian Representation, & the Importance of TTRPG Narratives
🕑 Added 2019-11-29 06:27:49 +0000 UTCStar Wars is HOT right now and its time to remind everyone of it's Asian roots. Akira Kurosawa's films (and Japanese culture as a whole) had a profound influence on George Lucas as he was creating one of the most enduring science fiction franchises ever. Unfortunately, it took decades for us to finally see fair representations of Asian characters in Star Wars. With The Mandalorian streaming on Disney+, The Rise of Skywalker coming out in less than a month, and Jedi: Fallen Order quickly becoming one of my favourite video games, I'm itching for some Star Wars TTRPG content in my life. Not only because I'm a lifelong fan of the franchise, but because I actually want to see characters in a story set in a galaxy far, far away that aren't: white people wearing orientalist costumes, racist Asian caricatures, or background characters with little influence over the plot.
Let's start with the sub-optimal:
1. Lieutenant Telsij - the first Asian actor to have ANY dialogue in a Star Wars movie (Return of the Jedi). While not inherently racist or problematic, it's a single line.
2. The Twi'lek dancer Lyn Me in the special edition of Return of the Jedi. As a dancer in Jabba's Palace, this echoes the problems with Leia's slave outfit, with the problematic dragon lady caricature that sees Asian women depicted as characters for sexual objectification in league with villains.
3. The Neimoidians of The Phantom Menace are simply offensive. The most racist Asian caricature in the Star Wars films. From the accent, down to their conceiving personalities, these characters scream of yellow peril.
4. Don't get me started on Padme's obvious orientalist fashion sense.
5. Then there's "Kanjiklub" - a gang featured in The Force Awakens. Indonesian actors Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, and Cecep Arif Rahman of The Raid fame were cast as members in very minor roles. But let's be honest, Kanjiklub just isn't the best name.
Ken Leung as Admiral Statura and Jessica Henwick as Jess Pava positive were steps forward. Finally, an Asian character with dialogue who serves as a member of rebel leadership (Statura). Finally, an Asian rebel pilot with a backstory (Pava) - though this wasn't in the films, just the Poe Dameron comics.
Asian representation really sucked in Star Wars movies, until Rogue One came about. We were graced with the characters Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen), Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), and Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed). Three Asian characters serving as protagonists in a Star Wars movie?! Count me in.
Image from: http://blog.angryasianman.com/2016/06/meet-asian-characters-in-star-wars.html
As someone of Chinese ancestry, I'm going to focus on Chirrut, who's played by Donnie Yen. He wasn't a comedic foil to the white protagonists, nor was he a background character with little relevance to the plot. Chirrut is like Narset in Magic the Gathering - a character coded as Asian because of a) how they look, b) their proficiency in the martial arts, and c) their mystic abilities. Don't get me wrong, it was unbelievably cool seeing one of my favourite action stars play a character with so much screen time in one of my favourite franchises. Rogue One was a nice start. But thematically and narratively, those characters never spoke to me and my experiences. I never felt like I connected with them.
The best of Star Wars:
Rose Tico is easily the most significant to the franchise as a whole. Portrayed by Kelly Marie Tran, Rose is the first Asian woman (and woman of colour in general) to be a leading character in a Star Wars movie (The Last Jedi). She isn't a Jedi. She's no commando or ace pilot. Rose is a relatable audience surrogate to the political and military drama of the latest trilogy of films. She's vulnerable, speaks her mind, is compassionate, and brave. Rose is what positive representation looks like.
Then there's Sabine Wren, a Mandalorian and one of the protagonists of Star Wars: Rebels. She's a badass rebel, loves explosives, and it's most certainly coded as Asian - down to her South Asian voice actor Tiya Sircar. Not only is Sabine a strong-willed martial character, but she has an artistic side that is a big part of her identity. As a Canadian-born Chinese person, seeing an Asian Star Wars character struggle with her culture and love of art is mind-blowing.
Iden Versio, the protagonist of Star Wars Battlefront II's campaign, is portrayed in both voice and motion capture by South Asian actress Janina Gavankar. Iden is the commander of Inferno Squad, an elite Imperial Special Forces commando unit assembled to destroy rebel extremist groups.
But my favourite so far is Dr. Chelli Lona Aphra.
First appearing in Marvel's Darth Vader issue #3, Aphra is a human archaeologist (like my own former career) who roams the galaxy with her assassin droid companions Triple-Zero (0-0-0) and Beetee (BT-1). Without spoiling anything, she is recruited by Darth Vader after the Battle of Yavin and goes on awesome missions to help his ascension in power. Here's why she's an incredible character:
- She wears functional clothing that suits her mission objectives. She isn't a dragon lady.
- She's a blaster-wielding, intellectual badass. She's multi-faceted and is capable of getting what she wants through brains and brawn.
- She's multi-faceted.
- She's independent, interesting, and doesn't exist to simply prop up the white characters of the series. Why? Because Disney actually took the time to flesh out her story through both the Vader series and her own - Star Wars: Doctor Aphra.
Aphra is an outlier in the world of Star Wars, but she's the kind of character I would've made in a tabletop RPG. I don't want to be JUST the computer geek. I want to be a technologically proficient character who can hold their own in a blaster fight. Heck, I want to be a Jedi-turned-smuggler who galivants around the galaxy getting into trouble with the Empire.
This is why TTRPGs are such an important medium of self-expression. They allow us to play the characters WE want to see. They allow us to CREATE characters with agency, free of stereotypes, and coded in a positive manner. In a Star Wars RPG (regardless of the edition or publisher), the ethnicity of my character, let alone how they look, isn't the biggest defining feature of who they are as a person.
Rose Tico, Iden Versio, Sabine Wren, and Dr. Aphra are probably the most ground-breaking portrayals of Asian Star Wars characters to-date. But with Rose being the only one of these characters to appear in the movies, we have a long way to go. The movies are the foundation of the franchise and its fandom. Just the other night, I was chatting with an Asian friend about our mutual love of Star Wars. He revealed that he had only watched the movies and played Battlefront II. While this is totally cool, I felt bad because he'd missed out on two awesome characters.
So for Boxing Day, I'm going out to purchase myself a copy of the Star Wars Edge of the Empire core rulebook. I'm going to tell my own Asian stories set in the Star Wars universe with my friends. Our experiences will impact the galaxy in ways the movies have never portrayed. Maybe you'll hear some of them on the Asians Represent podcast.
Comments
Daniel Kwan
Yes!
Peter Larsen
Also, I only follow Star Wars casually these days, but you really make me want to hunt down the Dr. Aphra comics....
Peter Larsen
Great essay. I’ve long though Lucas is a poster child for why uncritical love for anything is dangerous and why having diversity in the writing room is critical. Because it’s obvious that Lucas loved the old pulp serials, and updating those stories without also replicating the racism and sexism and homophobia (and so on) takes a lot more critical eyes and varied experience than he could bring to the material. Even better, of course, would be a more diverse set of creators, and that’s happening, but not fast enough.
