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If you saw the film, he's memorable.
He's called Watto the Toydarian. He's a slave owner and slave driver to our young blond hero, Anakin Skywalker. "Even in a galaxy far away, the Jews are apparently behind the slave trade," observes Bruce Gottlieb in a 5-26-99 piece on Slate, the only article we've seen on the subject and one we didn't see until this column was nearly finished. Gottlieb also pointed out the racial stereotyping in the character Jar-Jar Binks, as have many African-Americans.
Then there's that character in "The Mummy" who waved the Star of David and got passed over by the Mummy and then appeared to play the role of Judas to betray the good guys. Hated archetypal portraits are everywhere, building upon and reinforcing disparagement of their source. Some are subtle, some blatant. Part of watching the pathology of media is to watch for them.
Watoo's characterization goes way beyond the amusing allusion we occasionally see, picking up nearly every negative trait associated with Jews accumulated over centuries in cartoons and caricatures. He's supposed to elicit a humorous response and initially he does, until we begin to sense his seriousness, his total lack of morality, his deep badness which becomes obvious when he is poised opposite the deep goodness of the Christ-like figure of the Jedi master, Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson.
Oddly, the official Star Wars website (www.starwars.com) illustrates all the "Episode I" characters except this strikingly anti-Semitic portrait of a greedy Jewish merchant who sports droopy eyes, rotten teeth and an elephantine hooked nose (without any effort to simulate an elephant). He speaks in a heavy Yiddish accent and haggles prices. He floats in the air on tiny wings and hovers "in your face." He's amoral and tries to cheat in a bet on the race. He's downright devilish when it comes to splitting Skywalker from his mother at the tender age of nine. This early wounding is psychoanalytically supposed to have been part of the cause of Anakin's fear and depression which ultimately turned him into Darth Vader. So Watto's role is seen mythically to be part of the incipient root of evil.
Watto as merchandized toy:
The figure "talks" in a Yiddish accent?
And what does he say?
"You should cheat, Anakin, and win a race for once."
(c) 1999 Lucasfilm
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The website notes, "The only real wealth in Mos Espa [the slave city on the planet Tatooine] is tied up in gambling and off-world trade, especially in the lucrative black market beyond the trade laws." This conforms to the fate of Jewish outcasts throughout history, when Jews were not allowed to trade in normal venues, were cast out of many professions and allowed only to deal in much-hated short-term loans, associated with greed, interest rates and high prices.
In "Episode I," one such holder of wealth "beyond the trade laws" is the owner of the young slave boy Anakin Skywalker. How curious that Mr. Watto is not represented on the "official Star Wars website" where he can be studied. He is referred to but not named. There is no picture of him, only this verbal sketch of the anti-Semitic character is given: "A winged, harsh-mannered little alien who loves to haggle over spare parts. His junk shop is one of the best places to find elusive mechanical parts, but the asking price can be very high."
(The images of Watto here were gleaned from non-official sources, all (c) Lucasfilm, run in fair use for education and analysis).
We noticed the Star Wars "Episode I: Phantom Menace" merchandise display in the grocery store, including children's books such as "Anakin's Fate" by Marc Ceracini (Random House, $5), containing these descriptions of Watto and statements by him: "He loved to make deals. 'I'll make a merchant of you yet,' he said to Anakin. 'You should cheat. Maybe you'd win a race for once.' " As we left the movie theater, a couple of young boys around age 12 made reference to "that weird little Jew guy with wings." The movie's depiction in Watto was not at all subtle. It can be counted on to flush out already-formed Jew-haters among young audiences and give them permission to continue their hatred out loud.
Toydarian as toy
(c) 1999 Lucasfilm
In short, George Lucas has served up one of the oldest and vilest of human portraits in an almost perfect package of stereotypical traits traditionally associated with Jews by those who have harassed, reviled and annhiliated them over the centuries. Ironically, Lucas places Watto opposite Liam Neeson who portrayed the hero of "Schindler's List" who saved hundreds of Jews from the gas chambers during WW II. Spielberg and Lucas are the two great myth-makers of our age. Their choices of display types are worth noting.
Lucas offers Watto as a falsely benign "bad guy" for the entertainment (and dys-education) as well as economic consumption of millions of young boys and girls. Long after thousands gave their lives to rid the earth of the root of this ugly lie, Lucas mainstreams it into what is arguably the dominant media mythology of the 20th Century.
Thanks a lot, Mr. Lucas. The price of your movie ticket is very high.
The character of Watto reminds us of the anti-Semitic slander built with great precision in the Penguin character in "Batman" several years ago. Only a few university academics spotted the obvious--or talked about it. In fact, it was universally if subliminally spotted. The silence after the spotting is the problem, the ease with which it's gotten away with, slipped by, overlooked, shrugged off.
Amazing.
The film has been in theaters for over a week without an outcry or even passing comment in dozens of reviews. Parents should have been notified about Watto long before they sent their children to the midnight premiere so they could show them a cool example of how hatred works and make the whole thing a conscious lesson. Of course that would have ruined the fun of the movie, which is probably why nobody took a serious shot in the reviews. The idea, if any idea was consciously formed, was to pretend this immensely snide picture of a Jew was just a joke. It almost works, too, unless you are aware in the back of your mind of the parallels with foul portraits of Jews throughout history, the association of Jews with greed, cheating and a generalized bodily ugliness seen in cartoons in early newspapers and especially in Europe in the Twenties and Thirties when government-sponsored pogroms and ghettos were tolerated much more readily--even applauded--in part because of these kinds of stereotypical depictions that made people want to get rid of Jews.
There are no pictures of Watto on the Star Wars website and few are found in print material. He's chiefly seen in the movie theater by kids age 5 to 15, and in toy form, by and large away from adult scrutiny. One cannot help but wonder if this avoidance of scrutiny was done by design.
Official poster for "The Power of Myth"
European Roadshow to be held June to September 1999
throughout Europe, sponsored by Kellogg's.
Where's Watto? Saved for most potent mythic spot: the movie itself.
(Notice King Arthur thrown into the mix)
(c) 1999 Lucasfilm
On 6-3-99 CNN finally ran an item on Jar-Jar Binks which also alluded briefly to Watoo. It was reported that the Anti-Defamation League "saw no racial stereotyping in the Watto character." If this is true, it's a chilling reminder of the state of denial that overcame Jews in Hitler's Germany. Lest the concrete thinkers say we're comparing Lucas to Hitler, no, we are not, although Hitler certainly benefitted by exactly this kind of stereotyping. We mean we (as Jews) didn't want to see the truth and so we did not see it. We don't mean the truth of the stereotype, because the stereotype is a composite of extreme traits, some of them completely false, that do not typify average Jews. Like "the Emperor has no clothes," what is astounding is the truth of the display of the stereotype in plain sight without significant complaint. No self-respecting Jew wants to admit this is possible.
Lucas is merely (probably) unconscious, which increases rather than decreases concern in this matter because it means this much ugliness of thought is fully arrayed underneath the surface of the mind. Hence the power of the negative image, from this dark and unexamined basement, especially in children with no historical memory, to allow the forgetting that some people are human. Watto is portrayed as different, un-human, to the extreme of making him insect-like, yet he is down-to-earth human in other ways. Although he seems amusing, eccentric, perhaps harmless, the danger of the Semitic stereotyping of a figure like Watto, coupled with the insectifying of Watto, is that it conditions in children (and reinforces in adults) a notion allowing "that weird little Jew guy" to be expendable.
He can be laughed off. He can be flicked off. He can be exterminated.
Just because Lucas is unconscious doesn't mean we have to be unconscious too.
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