Pet Peeves About Sci-Fi #004
A few weeks ago I finally sat down and watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars. That would be the original CGI movie, not the television show. Um. I guess it wasn't that bad, but everyone is just so annoying and the action isn't anything special and Ahsoka is really, really annoying. I'll probably check out the show anyway.
Part of the plot is that Anakin and Ahsoka have to rescue the son of Jabba the Hutt, and when they find this little baby Hutt, he's sick, so they have to hurry, as if everyone trying to kill them wasn't enough of a reason to get their asses back to Tatooine. And at one point, Ahsoka holds up Baby Hutt and exclaims, "He's turning every shade of green but the one he's supposed to be!"
This annoyed me because neither the subject nor the speaker are human, and it's a very human-centric expression to use. "Turning green" is unusual for humans because we're usually pink or red or brown or yellow or whatever that isn't green. Even if we really don't turn green (though we do get a sickly yellow) the expression has its uses in indicating that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Sure, there's a hat tip to that in Ahsoka's comment in that she says "the one he's supposed to be" but the expression lacks the impact it would have for a human. Plus, how does she know what color the Hutt should be? They're kind of all over the yellow/green/brown scale.
Even worse is the fact that Ahsoka herself isn't human. She's a Togruta, and her skin is a bright orange. I doubt that her people would turn the same colors as humans, so that particular expression would have never developed for her people. They'd probably say something else, even if that expression does exist among the humans of the Star Wars Universe. Just because they speak the same language doesn't mean that they're going to use the same phrases as naturally... never mind a pun. Her phrasing indicates familiarity. I suppose growing up at the Jedi Temple could do that to you, but why are all the aliens assimilating human customs even though the Republic is supposed to represent many different species and worlds?
(The Empire gets a pass, as they're openly pro-human and very racist.)
And that's the problem with a lot of sci-fi. Aliens aren't very alien. The Federation of Planets in Star Trek also represents hundreds of alien worlds, but who do we mostly see crewing their ships? Humans. Now, I know that a lot of that is a budget issue, but even the movies have been cheap in this regard. I can give the Original Series a pass, in that back then, maybe the Federation was smaller and other worlds were slow in integrating their navies into Starfleet. But by TNG era it should have been much better, and hell, I would expect anything produced post-Dominion War to be fully integrated given the beating many planets took and how many casualties the Federation sustained. People get a lot less picky in situations like that.
(The humans should also be more racially-diverse by that point too, but that's for another post.)
But it's not just the staffing. It's the way characters talk. Everything is a reference to long-ago Earth culture, even if the speaker is not human. And the humans never absorbed any alien habits in 300 years of space travel? (Well, except on DS9 where everyone drank raktajino.) It's always "just like Romeo and Juliet" Or even worse, "your Romeo and Juliet" when an alien is speaking to a human. It's like, "Here, you're too dumb to understand anything outside your sphere, but I am intimately familiar with human culture." Peter David is especially bad at all these things, as not only are his human characters throwing around inappropriate pop culture references, but his aliens will use human expressions prefaced by "as they say on your world" in a very weak attempt to lampshade it.
This is why I appreciated Andromeda so much: it was about the Federation, but humans were not in charge. The empress or whoever was in charge of the Commonwealth, I think they said she was a centaur-like being. Of course, I have no idea if they ever followed up on this (any time they seemed to recruit someone to their cause it was always a human group). But the thought was nice.
I know that the creators are only trying to make their work easier for us to relate to, but here's the thing: they don't have to. It's science fiction. It's supposed to show us new worlds that we may not entirely understand. It's about going beyond what we know to show us something different. Look at District 9: the aliens are incredibly, horribly alien and we never really understand them, but that doesn't stop us from feeling bad for them and understanding the story as presented to us. I've heard people call these gaps in our knowledge "plot holes" but maybe they're just used to have everything spoon-fed to them, like a human baby.
(Yesterday I found this on Cracked.com: 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die). #5 and #3 are my sentiments exactly.)
Part of the plot is that Anakin and Ahsoka have to rescue the son of Jabba the Hutt, and when they find this little baby Hutt, he's sick, so they have to hurry, as if everyone trying to kill them wasn't enough of a reason to get their asses back to Tatooine. And at one point, Ahsoka holds up Baby Hutt and exclaims, "He's turning every shade of green but the one he's supposed to be!"
This annoyed me because neither the subject nor the speaker are human, and it's a very human-centric expression to use. "Turning green" is unusual for humans because we're usually pink or red or brown or yellow or whatever that isn't green. Even if we really don't turn green (though we do get a sickly yellow) the expression has its uses in indicating that something is horribly, horribly wrong. Sure, there's a hat tip to that in Ahsoka's comment in that she says "the one he's supposed to be" but the expression lacks the impact it would have for a human. Plus, how does she know what color the Hutt should be? They're kind of all over the yellow/green/brown scale.
Even worse is the fact that Ahsoka herself isn't human. She's a Togruta, and her skin is a bright orange. I doubt that her people would turn the same colors as humans, so that particular expression would have never developed for her people. They'd probably say something else, even if that expression does exist among the humans of the Star Wars Universe. Just because they speak the same language doesn't mean that they're going to use the same phrases as naturally... never mind a pun. Her phrasing indicates familiarity. I suppose growing up at the Jedi Temple could do that to you, but why are all the aliens assimilating human customs even though the Republic is supposed to represent many different species and worlds?
(The Empire gets a pass, as they're openly pro-human and very racist.)
And that's the problem with a lot of sci-fi. Aliens aren't very alien. The Federation of Planets in Star Trek also represents hundreds of alien worlds, but who do we mostly see crewing their ships? Humans. Now, I know that a lot of that is a budget issue, but even the movies have been cheap in this regard. I can give the Original Series a pass, in that back then, maybe the Federation was smaller and other worlds were slow in integrating their navies into Starfleet. But by TNG era it should have been much better, and hell, I would expect anything produced post-Dominion War to be fully integrated given the beating many planets took and how many casualties the Federation sustained. People get a lot less picky in situations like that.
(The humans should also be more racially-diverse by that point too, but that's for another post.)
But it's not just the staffing. It's the way characters talk. Everything is a reference to long-ago Earth culture, even if the speaker is not human. And the humans never absorbed any alien habits in 300 years of space travel? (Well, except on DS9 where everyone drank raktajino.) It's always "just like Romeo and Juliet" Or even worse, "your Romeo and Juliet" when an alien is speaking to a human. It's like, "Here, you're too dumb to understand anything outside your sphere, but I am intimately familiar with human culture." Peter David is especially bad at all these things, as not only are his human characters throwing around inappropriate pop culture references, but his aliens will use human expressions prefaced by "as they say on your world" in a very weak attempt to lampshade it.
This is why I appreciated Andromeda so much: it was about the Federation, but humans were not in charge. The empress or whoever was in charge of the Commonwealth, I think they said she was a centaur-like being. Of course, I have no idea if they ever followed up on this (any time they seemed to recruit someone to their cause it was always a human group). But the thought was nice.
I know that the creators are only trying to make their work easier for us to relate to, but here's the thing: they don't have to. It's science fiction. It's supposed to show us new worlds that we may not entirely understand. It's about going beyond what we know to show us something different. Look at District 9: the aliens are incredibly, horribly alien and we never really understand them, but that doesn't stop us from feeling bad for them and understanding the story as presented to us. I've heard people call these gaps in our knowledge "plot holes" but maybe they're just used to have everything spoon-fed to them, like a human baby.
(Yesterday I found this on Cracked.com: 6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die). #5 and #3 are my sentiments exactly.)