Carl Sagan explains the problem with ‘Star Wars’ in a classic clip
Carl Sagan was an American astronomer and astrophysicist who made many public appearances in a stream of popular media to educate the general society of the 20th Century scientifically. The 1900s saw an astronomical rise in the popularity of science fiction, particularly with the release of George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy in the 1970s and 1980s. However, Sagan found significant issues with the films.
“My sense of [Star Wars] is that the 11-year-old in me loved them, but they could have made a better effort to do things right,” Sagan said. “There’s a lot of different aspects. There’s Star Wars starting out by saying it’s in some other galaxy, and then you see there are people; so starting in scene one, there’s a problem because human beings are the result of a unique evolutionary sequence based upon so many individually unlikely random events on the earth.”
Sagan added, “In fact, I think most evolutionary biologists would agree that if you started the earth out again, and just let those random factors operate, you might wind up with beings that are as smart as us and as ethical and artistic, and all the rest of it, but they would not be human beings. So, on another planet, in another galaxy, it is very unlikely to have human beings. […] It just needs a little more effort to get the science right.”
While Sagan clearly has a scientifically correct point, I think he is missing the whole point of fantasy and science fiction; that it allows us to go beyond the realms of scientific truth and fact to more closely examine the philosophical and spiritual questions of humanity. However, Sagan had a further point which ought to be paid more credence.
Sagan said, “And another thing, they’re all white, the skin of humans in Star Wars is all white, and not even the other colours represented on the earth are present; much less greens and blues and purples and oranges. None of the [alien characters] seem to be in charge of the galaxy. Everybody in charge of the galaxy seems to look like us.”
This much is accurate, and it was typical for films in the 20th Century to exclude races other than Caucasians from being represented. Fortunately, this has been somewhat addressed in recent years, particularly in Star Wars; perhaps as early as Mace Windu’s introduction in 1999’s The Phantom Menace – he was played by Samuel L. Jackson. The more recent Star Wars films have made an even greater effort to represent the non-white races, though arguably more still needs to be done across the industry.
Sagan added, “I thought that was a large amount of human chauvinism. And I felt bad at the end that the Wookie didn’t get a medal. Also, I thought that was an example of anti-Wookie discrimination.”
Check out the full clip below.
