I understand that there is so much more than just have people of color in film. Women, LGBTQ, and persons with disabilities are underrepresented as well. I wrote this article as a response to the backlash for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. I acknowledge we have a long way to go, this is just one of the stones on the path.
I love Science Fiction films. I have no shame; they are exciting, action-packed, mind-boggling, and just plain awesome. It’s a world where anything is possible from superheroes and aliens to advanced weapons with cool sound effects and time travel. The setting could be on Earth or it could take place in another galaxy. Science fiction is a world of possibility with creativity and imagination, except when you’re a person of color.
After the Star Wars trailer blessed the internet, it seemed the entire world was awestruck. The ticket sales record was obliterated and twitter was booming with Star Wars tweets, approximately 17,000 tweets per minute. Star Wars is back, what else could we be talking about? Race.
#BoycottStarWarsVII stunned the internet after the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer was featured. People claimed it promoted “white genocide” and a “non-white Star Wars.” Not long before that, fans were not happy about the new Fantastic Four movie having a black man play the fictional character Johnny Storm, the Human Torch (Superhero movies have science fiction origins).
Diversity in science fiction is nothing new! People of color have always been in science fiction movies and television, some of them just had a mask on while other were portrayed as aliens. In 1966, a TV show called Star Trek: The Original Series featured a woman of color named Nichelle Nichols who played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura. In Star Wars, we had Lando Calrissian played by Billy Dee Williams (in the Empire Strikes Back) and the best villain there ever was, Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones).
Still, diversity in science fiction has been minimal. If you look up on Google “Science Fiction movies,” you get many successful movies such as Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Back to the Future, The Matrix, E.T., Jurassic Park, Terminator and so much more! But, the majority of these people are white and only a few persons of color are present (sometimes one or none at all). There’s usually a few black people and Asian people, but where are the Middle Eastern and Hispanic/Latino people? If sci-fi/fantasy movies are made in the future we wish to live in, why so little diversity? Time and time again we have been conditioned to see ourselves as the minority. Movies are supposed to be our escape and yet, we are constantly reminded about where we are supposed to stand in society.
I understand that some comic book characters have specific origin stories are tied up to their identity or ethnic background, such as Storm and Magneto. But in many cases, characters that were usually type-casted as white that changed races, actually worked. Avengers was a huge hit, and guess who put the team together? Nick Fury, played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson. We have had successful movies with people of color playing lead characters, but it’s time for us to continue that legacy. We cannot ignore racism exists if people get upset when fictional characters changed to be played by people of color.
We need more diversity in sci-fi movies so that genius kids like Ahmed Mohamed are not automatically labeled as terrorists because they are ahead of their time. It’s so that people living in third world countries have something to hope for, for the future of their children. How does a whitewashed film display hope when the rest of the population doesn’t exist? The time for the normalcy of white is over. People of color are here, always have been, always will. From the words of Bidisha, a writer of The Guardian, "Technicolor was never meant to be white."
