The Elephant

   A problem with Hollywood (well one of the problems anyway) is the lack of diversity. For the most part big blockbuster movies or at least movie that seem to make a lot of money are dominated by handsome Caucasian males. To me we are only just now starting to tap (not crack) the glass barrier between Hollywood and diversity. We seem to be just now tapping into the black and female barriers that plague Hollywood with things like Hungar Games and rumors that John Boyega will be the lead in the new star wars films. Now that's where I want to bring things in full circle.


 A couple weeks ago the main Star wars cast was unveiled ninety-percent which were male. The only girl unveiled for the cast was an unknown actress named Daisy Ridley who from looking at her picture will obviously be the child of Han Solo and Princess Leia. Now I am not obviously asking for a completely female dominated cast what I am asking for at least one or two more female characters that are not going to be evil (which seems to be way more co-ed than the good guy playgrounds) or related to the original trilogy. Now I know about the rumor that one or two more female characters are still being cast but those are rumors and since they weren't unveiled with the rest of the cast chances are they won't pay that huge of roles.Now of course this is a problem with Star Wars films across the board.


  Now while the star wars movies while often complimented with being landmarks for special effects and story telling have been very 50's when it comes to diversity. There is only one (well now two but Lando has been confirmed on whether or not he will be returning) token black guy in all of star wars movies. The prequel's were called out often for racist stereotypes and there have only three actual female characters in Star Wars: Padme' Amidala, Princess Leia and Shimi Skywalker. No I am not counting Mothmo or any of Princess Leia's hand maidens since there is a difference between being an actual character than there is on being a background extra. While listening to the Escapist Podcast I learned you can't actually get a  Princess Leia action figure.


  This is weird since Disney has so many female brands you would think they would want to sell this to girls as much as they would too boys. Setting aside all the sexist evil Disney Jokes, Disney has a corporation has basically made a science on marketing to girls heck one of the reasons they bought Star Wars is because they didn't have enough boy brands. They had Marvel but that was just about it, they needed more.


 This also kind of points towards a rather dark spot on nerd culture of the pretty scary fact that sexism, racism and homophobia is present to the point where it becomes slang. I could be operationalizing but this is a very big elephant in a very big room.