That being said, some groups that fall under the label of \u201coppressed\u201d don\u2019t quite appear that way in the movies. Throughout the original trilogy, for example, we only really see two characters that we could call \u201cdisabled\u201d: Luke and Darth Vader, father and son. With Luke, whether or not we can consider him disabled is up for debate. Additionally, it should be noted that this concept has evolved over time, and even goes so far as to produce results in the recent movies. When George Lucas first released the films, \u201cdiversity referred more to prosthetics and CGI aliens than differences in ethnicity among the cast\u201d[3]<\/span>. The core cast is essentially all white men, with Leia, a white woman, thrown into the mix. Occasionally you might see an actor of color, but it is usually only in the background. We do see Lando Calrissian as a minor character in <\/span>The Empire Strikes Back <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Return of the Jedi<\/span><\/i>, but otherwise we get little in the way of actors of color. Times have changed, however, and we are starting to see more and more diversity in mainstream media. The more recent films like <\/span>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>The Force Awakens<\/span><\/i> do a great job of this. In particular, <\/span>Rogue One<\/span><\/i> sports a diverse cast of characters, including a female lead, a Latin actor, a British-Pakistani actor, and two Chinese actors[4]<\/span>. Although the species in the original trilogy act as a representation of voiceless groups, the conversation surrounding race has evolved; along with it, so has the representation in the media. No longer is this crude alien metaphorical representation of race needed since we are seeing more and more people of color in leading roles in these films.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the films, we hear a variety of constructed languages\u2014Huttese<\/span>, Ubese<\/span>, Shyriiwook<\/span>\u2014all spoken by the various different alien species we encounter during the original trilogy[5]<\/span>. However, our story is told primarily in English, or Galactic Basic as it\u2019s known in-universe, since Lucas first created it for an English-speaking audience. Gayatri Spivak argues that the subaltern<\/span> groups under imperial rule cannot speak since they have no power over the tiers of society that exist above them. Therefore, the power dynamics of language amongst the alien species can be broken into two parts: assisted speech and incomprehensible speech. Although many characters do not speak Basic in the films, many of them have no trouble communicating with other characters. However, the English-speaking audience does not speak these languages made up for foreign alien races, so we need a mediator to help us understand the context of the scene. This is what we are calling \u201cassisted speech,\u201d and it can be broken down into two subcategories: through subtitles and through a third-party translator.<\/span><\/p>\n Jabba’s subtitles in A New Hope<\/p><\/div>\n The first type of assisted speech appears a few times in <\/span>A New Hope<\/span><\/i>, particularly when we first encounter Greedo and Jabba the Hutt. Both characters are never seen speaking Basic, and it is unclear if they even have the capacity to do so\u2014Jabba speaks Huttese and Greedo speaks an unspecified language (probably either Huttese or Rodese).Both characters are powerful in their own sense; Jabba is a crime lord and Greedo is a renowned bounty hunter. However, despite their power in the universe, they hold little power over the audience, as they rely on subtitles to convey their speech. Similar to the racism and discrimination African Americans often experience even when they achieve economic success, Jabba\u2019s money and Greedo\u2019s skill do nothing to help them communicate better with the audience. <\/span><\/p>\n The second type of assisted speech comes in the form of a third party translator. We see this type in pairs, with one character speaking a foreign language while the other translates for the other characters in the scene. One example of this is the famous duo, Han Solo and Chewbacca. Chewbacca speaks Shyriiwook, the language of the Wookiees that consists of combinations of growls and groans that put together create dialogue. The only problem is that, unlike Jabba and Greedo, Chewbacca has no subtitles. Try as he might to communicate, the only way that the Wookiee can be understood by anyone other than Han (including us, the audience) is through Han himself. Therefore, Han, a white man, has complete control over what others hear. Luckily the two are good friends, but even so, we trust Han to give us an accurate interpretation of what Chewbacca is saying. According to Spivak in her interpretation of subaltern communication, it is the responsibility of the intellectual to speak for the marginalized groups that cannot speak for themselves[6].<\/span>\u00a0In this situation, Han is the intellectual, and Chewbacca, who is physically incapable of speaking Galactic Basic, is representational of the subaltern\u2014someone who cannot speak for themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, there are those aliens who cannot be understood\u2014full stop. No character tries to translate for them; no subtitles accompany them. They are simply and utterly incomprehensible. Consider the Tusken Raiders. In the first film, Lucas clearly wants us to see the Tusken people as savages, merely an obstacle for Luke and his droid companions to overcome. However, we know from the book <\/span>Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View<\/span><\/i> that the \u201csand people\u201d have their own culture and society. In the short story, \u201cRites,\u201d a young Tusken Raider named A\u2019Koba takes part in a rite of passage involving killing a Krayt dragon, a tradition that has persisted in some form for generations[7]<\/span>. Through the shift in perspective from the movies to the book, we get to see so much more than the grunts and shrieks that the Tusken language could ever communicate. Without communication, however, they have virtually no power in any sort of conflict, as the empire eventually comes to slaughter them like animals; even the alien species that have \u201cassisted speech\u201d hold more power than the incoherent races. They have no one speaking for them, so to an English-speaking audience, they might as well be meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/cosmoso.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Luke-Skywalker-prosthetic.jpg\")
He loses his hand at Cloud City but quickly replaces it with a cybernetic one that almost perfectly mimics a biological hand. With Vader, similarly, we see that his cybernetics have turned him into a sort of cyborg. In both instances, \u201cLuke and Vader have effectively been cured of their physical impairments\u201d[1]<\/span>\u00a0and are thus representations of supercrips[2]<\/span>. Additionally, <\/span>Star Wars<\/span><\/i> subverts typical sexism often found in popular culture in the form of Leia. Leia is a character that does not progress in the same way that her narrative counterpart Luke does, but this might be due to the fact that we encounter her as an already developed character. Although she does have some lapses in terms of her agency (i.e. her revealing bikini in Jabba\u2019s palace) and the argument can be made that her arc represents an inverse of Luke\u2019s rise to power, we see her throughout the original trilogy as a strong woman who does not let the opinions of men get in her way. Therefore, through these examples, marginalized representation only extends to racial and ethnic minorities, as any other marginalized groups are represented positively in the first three films.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/93DzOXD_91o\/maxresdefault.jpg\")