I was a Jar Jar jackass

How a "Star Wars" fan took aim at a despised Gungan and discovered the power of grass-roots Net campaigning.

By Steve Wilson

Jun 8, 1999 | I didn't realize quite how much Jar Jar Binks of "Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace" is reviled until someone calling themselves JarJarSux sent me a link to his site.

"Jar Jar Binks is Gay!" read a diatribe he had posted there, calling for the alien sidekick's immediate execution. "This particular character stays a little too close to Obi-Wan and company, and who else but the gay male community would wear that sleeveless leather vest? Ever wonder what he does with that tongue of his? Kinky stuff, I bet!"

Bink-ists aren't the most tolerant folk, but their well-publicized cause against the digital creature (who was inserted into frames with less animated humans like Natalie Portman) is an impressive model of people mobilizing on the Net and making themselves heard. It's also a frightening example of a cyber mob mentality gone awry.

I speak from experience. Since launching my Delete Jar Jar! campaign online a few weeks before the release of "Phantom," (I have a good excuse, please bear with me), I've seen the sarcastic rumblings of fans and critics build like a Tattoine sandstorm into a relentless gale of vitriol against the bumbling, Jamaican-flavored "Gungan."

Servile and cowardly, he strikes many as not just a cheap marketing ploy, but a black minstrel-ish stereotype on par with Stepin Fetchit. Perhaps the absolute creative freedom director George Lucas enjoyed while dreaming up the flick's "comic" relief -- with no studio execs and not many an independently minded actor involved -- is a path to the dark side: Lucas also included an alien Shylock slave owner and two villains redolent of Asian "Charlie Chan" thugs in his CGI animated lineup.

Steeped in the sort of adolescent humor that prefers violence to subtlety, hundreds of sites have sprung up demanding Gungan blood. And they won't merely settle for his death -- they want him raped by Sandpeople, dismembered with a light saber and strangled Darth Vader style.

Not that I deserve to take the high road here, but I never invested that much emotion in Binks. "Delete Jar Jar!" was but a prank to piss off some "Star Wars" freaks. Honest. In fact, it was something of a let-down to learn that many of them were thinking along similar -- if more extreme -- lines.

My comparatively humane proposal was to simply edit the prancing homunculus out of the film and release a new version, the cinematic equivalent of what the software industry calls a "patch" for fixing bugs in a program. I soberly explained on the site that since well over half the movie is digital anyway, "Menace 2.0," sans-Binks, could be created in a matter of months or even weeks and rereleased for an even greater box office windfall.

The week "Menace" opened, I received around 2,000 hits and over 200 messages of both support and condemnation. This is nothing compared to the roughly 50,000 hits, 13,000 posts, major media attention and ad banner deals that 23-year-old comic store clerk Jeremy Mueller garnered in the same period for his JarJarMustDie -- but it was exhilarating all the same.

Next Page: How is Lucas taking all the Jar Jar bitchery?

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