A Carl Sagan interview from 1978, in which he tells legendary TV talk show host Johnny Carson that the original Star Wars movie is essentially “too white,” went viral after being posted on Twitter on Monday.
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Zeus Tipado went to Twitter to share the clip, attaching it to a tweet that said, “That time Carl Sagan called out Star Wars for being too white and the audience didn’t know what to do.” That video has gathered over 2.3 million views since going up.
The interview clip featuring the late astronomer and astrophysicist, and famed host of the PBS series Cosmos, faults the groundbreaking movie for depicting a galaxy in which white-skinned humans appear to be in charge.
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“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 pointed out to Carson. “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 it was ethical and artistic and all the rest, but they would not be human beings.”
Sagan went on to comment on the lack of diversity present in the Star Wars universe of humans, noting that all the principal humans were of what Earthlings would read as European descent.
“They’re all white,” Sagan pointedly said. “The skin of all the humans in Star Wars, oddly enough, like this, and not even the other colors represented on the Earth … much less greens and blues and purples and oranges.”
When Carson pointed out that there were plenty of non-human characters in the movie, Sagan pointed out that it was humans in charge, evidence of the “human chauvinism” at work in the script and in George Lucas’ final creation.
The franchise would somewhat redeem itself, starting with the introduction of Black character Lando Calrissian (played by Billy Dee Williams) in The Empire Strikes Back, but some on Twitter thought Sagan had a valid point.
Franklin Leonard quote tweeted Tipado, with the observation that Sagan said, “Let me punctuate the word ‘white’ here.”
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“He was subtly calling out white supremacy. He acknowledged the other aliens, BUT said everyone in charge was white,” one person said in response. “Carson didn’t know what to do with that mic drop.”
Another pointed out that Sagan was part of a group of people challenging thinking of the day, noting, “People like Carl Sagan, Walter Reuther, Lloyd Garrison, and Thaddeus Stevens are why we shouldn’t accept “it was a different time” as an excuse. There were white people who saw the inequality and fought it. Anyone who refused to see it at all was just supporting white supremacy.”
Sagan also pointed out another injustice at the end of the clip that wasn’t lost on some fans of the movie. “I felt very bad that at the end, the Wookiee didn’t get a medal,” Sagan said, referring to the medal ceremony that closes the movie, where Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are rewarded for their bravery and Chewbacca, next to them, is just left to just awkwardly stand there.
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“All the people got medals, but the Wookiee, he had been in there fighting all the time,” Sagan observed. “He didn’t get any medal. I thought that was an example of anti-Wookiee discrimination.”
*First Published: July 16, 2021, 1:03 pm
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